From: ternst <ternst1@cox.net>
Subject: [CR] US track racing, no road
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
The history of how cycling e or devolved in the USA is always of
interest as it's very different than most of the world.
Track and road racing was big during cycling's hey-day in the 1890's.
even with bad roads, 100 mile distances were common.
Track racing drew thousands of spectators and was probably larger
because of the professional riders as well as amateur.
It's fairly well documented that as the cars, motorcycles, and airplanes
grew with our wealth as a country, the brains went into these industries
and that talent that made our bike industry the world's best was
transferred to Europe.
Our racing didn't go into the multi gears and big road races but stayed
with fixed gears because the track racing held somewhat better and the
6-Day competition kept track riding alive. Motor industries growth
curtailed that development of the bike industry here.
There was a great outdoor circuit of tracks in the East, and singular
velodromes throughout the rest of the country kept some activity going
through the summers, pro 6-Days holding sway in the winter. Every "6"
had an amateur hour before.
The proximity of the Eastern tracks was a big plus in keeping that area
as the cycling hotbed.
There were still road races all over the country, but maybe one a month
and so riders were forced to travel far or ride the local tracks.
There weren't that many racers so fields were more in the 50/60 men and
occasionaly 100 for a big classic.
Distances were 25-100 miles and ALL were done on fixed gear track bikes.
Remember, the average American in the '30/40's referred to thin tire
bikes as racers, as regular bikes were the fat tire ballooners.
Even the English 3-sp bikes were called racers into the '50's by many
people.
Anybody who raced didn't know anything about road bikes and when people
said a racing bike it meant a track bike, which was a fixed gear no
brake machine.
It was called a machine from the 1880's on because it had a chain and
gears which made it a machine as compared to the high wheel with direct
crank drive commonly referred to as one's wheel.
Track bikes were used on the road into the mid '50's, slowly giving way
to derailleur bikes.
The American Olympic team in '48 got Schwinn Paramounts with Simplex
derailleurs just before the boat left and the guys trained on the
rollers while sailing over.
None of the guys ever rode a roadbike before as far as I know.
The first race with mandatory roadbikes were the Olympic Trials in '52.
But criteriums and the short park and road races were still fixed gear,
giving way slowly as I mentioned before.
The roaring '20's gave life back to the 6-Days, and held thru the '30's
in the depression.
WW2 almost wiped out bike racing, with returning GI's devoting time to
family and futures.
Cycling was a small sport with exception of the 6-Days, but it was all
professional, and the amateur ranks were thin indeed, and slowly grew
with dedicated supporters and then exploded in the '70's with the first
gas crisis.
Road bikes were in and track racing held, but was then the small
brother.
The European emigres brought their kids into the sport in those pre WW2
years, but that died after the war as our immigration numbers fell after
the war.
This seems to have been a direct result of Europe's economies growing
and the need to emmigrate waned.
Hand brake bikes were rare in the US during the '20's/'30's, stock bikes
had coaster brakes usually, some fixed gear oldies were still used but
fixed gears were really the domain of the racers and the guys used their
bikes on the road and track.
With the car such a dominant force, and cycling as a recreation not
really considered, racing was a minor sport as compared to being the
major sport just a few years before.
Now it's a major sport again, so it seems what went around is now coming
around again.
Hope this fills in some gaps, and I look forward to additional comments.
Ted Ernst
Palos Verdes Estates
CA USA
Also the young girl of the Blind Faith cover was paid: she asked for a
horse in exchange for this work.
Here is the history:
"Story of the origins of the Blind Faith album cover, from Bob
Seidemann's (photographer of the album cover artwork) perspective:
I was being on the "scene" because it was happening. It was ground
zero of the cultural revolution. How I managed it was by producing a
handful of photographs for a small poster company I was a partner in.
The company was founded by a raving poet with a hundred dollars and a
picture of the face of Christ, supposedly an impression on the veil of
Mary Magdalene. His name is Louis Rapoport, today he is news editor of
the "Jerusalem Post". It was our first poster and it was a hit. My
work consisted at the beginning of pictures of Janis Joplin and the
Grateful Dead. They were impressionistic and successful.
I called Eric Clapton in London to ask if he would put me up for a
while. He did. I stayed at his flat in Chelsea with a wild crowd of
ravers. The party had been going on for some time when I arrived.
Other residents of the never-ending, day-for-night, multi-colored
fling were Martin Sharp, a graphic artist and poet with an uncanny
resemblance to Peter O'Toole, and the wildest of ravers, Philippe
Mora, a young filmmaker who looked like a cherry Peter Lorre, and
their handsome girlfriends. I bunked on a ledge under a skylight in
the living room. All of the London scene came through. It was wild and
wooly all over.
A year passed and I had my own room in a basement flat in the same
part of town with another bunch of hipsters. Not employed, I received
a phone call from Polydor Records London Office. It was an assistant
of Robert Stigwood, Clapton's manager. Cream was over and Eric was
putting a new band together. The fellow on the phone asked if I would
make a cover for the new unnamed group. This was big time. It seems
though the western world had for lack of a more substantial icon,
settled on the rock and roll star as the golden calf of the moment.
The record cover had become the place to be seen as an artist.
I could not get my hands on the image until out of the mist a concept
began to emerge. To symbolize the achievement of human creativity and
its expression through technology a space ship was the material
object. To carry this new spore into the universe innocence would be
the ideal bearer, a young girl, a girl as young as Shakespeare's
Juliet. The space ship would be the fruit of the tree of knowledge and
the girl, the fruit of the tree of life.
The space ship could be made by Mick Milligan, a jeweler at the Royal
College of Art. The girl was another matter. If she were too old it
would be cheesecake, too young and it would be nothing. It was the
beginning of the transition from girl to woman, that is what I was
after. That temporal point, that singular flare of radiant innocence.
Where is that girl?
I was riding the London Tube on the way to Stigwood's office to expose
Clapton's management to this revelation when the subway doors opened
and she stepped into the car. She was wearing a school uniform, plaid
skirt, blue blazer, white socks and ball point pen drawings on her
hands. It was as though the air began to crackle with an electrostatic
charge. She was buoyant and fresh as the morning air.
I must have looked like something out of Dickens. Somewhere between
Fagan, Quasimodo, Albert Einstein and John the Baptist. The car was
full of passengers. I approached her and said that I would like her to
pose for a record cover for Eric Clapton's new band. Everyone in the
car tensed up.
She said, "Do I have to take off my clothes?" My answer was yes. I
gave her my card and begged her to call. I would have to ask her
parent's consent if she agreed. When I got to Stigwood's office I
called the flat and said that if this girl called not to let her off
the phone without getting her phone number. When I returned she had
called and left her number.
Stanley Mouse (Miller), my close friend and one of the five
originators of psychedelic art in San Francisco was holed up at the
flat. He helped me make a layout and we headed out to meet with the
girl's parents. It was a Mayfair address. This was a swank part of
town, class in the English sense of the word.
Mouse and I made our presentation, I told my story, the parents
agreed. The girl on the tube train would not be the one, she was shy,
she had just passed the point of complete innocence and could not
pose. Her younger sister had been saying the whole time, "Oh Mommy,
Mommy, I want to do it, I want to do it." She was glorious sunshine.
Botticelli's angel, the picture of innocence, a face which in a brief
time could launch a thousand space ships.
We asked her what her fee should be for modeling, she said a young
horse. Stigwood bought one for her. I called the image "Blind Faith"
and Clapton made that the name of the band. When the cover was shown
in the trades it hit the market like a runaway train, causing a storm
of controversy. At one point the record company considered not
releasing the cover at all. It was Eric Clapton who fought for it. It
was Eric who elected to not print the name of the band on the cover.
This had never been done before. The name was printed on the wrapper,
when the wrapper came off, so did the type.
This was an image created out of ferment and storm, out of revolution
and chaos. It was an image in the mind of one who strove for that
moment of glory, that blinding flash of singular inspiration. To etch
an image on a stone in our cultural wall with the hope that the wall
will last. To say with his heart and his eyes, at a time when it
mattered, this is what I feel. It was created out of and a wish for a
new beginning. It was created out of hope and a wish for a new
beginning. Innocence propelled by BLIND FAITH."
Kevin and all,
The Confente "thing" has many components which contribute to our current
state of "understanding". What Mario was and was not is an interesting
subject. Much of what is out there in the form of opinions is based on t
he efforts of a few people who had an interest in taking advantage of th
e "situation" after Mario passed away and it all happened a number of ye
ars ago. Those original efforts set the snowball effect in motion and th
e advent of the internet and the mailing lists have fueled it ever since
. As with the person asking $9000 for one; most of the promotion is for
the sake of money and profit. That being said, please let me contribute
my observations based on my personal contact with both Mario and Faliero
Masi while at Masi in Carlsbad and the period shortly thereafter. In ad
dition to my personal experiences with Mario I am a framebuilder/painter
myself and know a bit about the processes involved and at what level Ma
rio's work sits. I've handled a good number of Confente frames over the
years and I'm really familiar with the work.
Let's begin with Mario before he came to the US. There is no doubt that
Mario was considered one of the better framebuilders in Italy back in th
e day. But for some reason Mario REALLY wanted to come to America and ge
t OUT of Italy. We know for a fact that Ernesto Colnago wanted to "buy h
im out" before he came here; Chuck Schmidt has a copy of the letter sent
to Mario in Carlsbad containing an "offer (Colnago hoped) he couldn't r
efuse". Mario had escaped from Italy and had no intention of going back,
not for a generous offer from Colnago (which would have buried Mario in
the Colnago organization) or anything else. So there is no question Mar
io had made his mark in Italy, even though almost all of his work had th
e Masi name on it. But Masi turned out to be his ticket to freedom.
The period of time that this all takes place must be taken into consider
ation. Save for Albert Eisentraut, American framebuilding in the "modern
era" was just being born. Mario was a big fish in a little pond. Most c
yclists were on the Italian bandwagon, even though English and French fr
amebuilders built frames every bit as good in a technical sense as the I
talians, somehow the hype and the sexy graphics of Italian bikes ruled.
Much of this is actually due to the prominence of the racers in Italy an
d on the Continent being highly regarded and therefore often used to pro
mote the bikes they rode. I suspect had the English been the dominate fo
rce in racing at the time we would be MUCH more English-centric in our t
aste for exotic frames. Marketing is everything. Top end English and Fre
nch frames of the period are every bit the equal in construction as the
Italians. In other words, the Italians were as crude by modern standards
as anyone else. The next level of detailed and precise construction act
ually began in the US with Eisentraut.
Working at Masi was enlightening for me. I had a number of bikes at that
time including English, French, Italian, and American. My Eisentraut se
t the standard for me in both ride quality AND fit and finish. Yes, the
same Eisentraut that Faliero himself stood 20 feet from (because Italian
s never get up close to judge another framebuilders work; they wait unti
l you go away and then look, but from a distance they pronounce the bike
no good). Faliero told me my Eisentraut was no good on account of the w
ay the seat stays were attached! He also said that my Colnago was no goo
d. I had both a Masi (Italian) and a Colnago at the time; and the Colnag
o was a far superior ride than any of the 7 or 8 Masis I owned in my siz
e. The bottom line is that Italians, at least these ones, were VERY inse
cure people. That means to me that they knew that they were no different
than anyone else, but had to keep up appearances. Mario would come in t
o Masi on weekends and fix whatever went wrong on his end during the wee
k; and using quite crude methods I might add. Faliero also did some "fun
ny" things that he wanted to hide. Like the time he decided to trim 1mm
off of a steering column of a fork while the bike was completely assembl
ed and in a bike stand. He slipped with the hacksaw and damaged the pain
t big time. The bike was immediately removed from the workshop and wheel
ed into a closet in the office. The painter had to secretly come in on t
he weekend and fix it. I don't know what they were trying to protect. We
all knew what was going on and our impressions of them were much worse
by them trying to hind the stuff than by just being human and getting on
with it.
Mario was a good craftsman for sure, but not at all the best brazer with
brass I've ever seen. Both Joe Starck and Dave Tesch could braze circle
s around Mario as far as clean brazing goes. What Mario did with lugs ba
rely qualifies as custom by today's standards and much of it was done my
pantograph and with stamped parts to make a production operation out of
it. Had he stayed with Recht (who actually fired Mario from Bicycles by
Confente since Recht owned the company and the tooling and building he
occupied) Mario would have been using the investment cast lugs which eli
minated pretty much all of the interesting hand labor involved in frameb
uilding. I suspect Mario would be into titanium and carbon fiber these d
ays. His only interest was in racing bikes. Mario was not even close to
a well rounded framebuilder like is common these days. It takes a lot mo
re knowledge to build a variety of types of frames in different styles a
s opposed to making one bike one way and that's it. A lot of the Italian
s know very little about anything other than racing bikes. The English,
French, and Americans are all much more progressive in that respect. To
be a true custom framebuilder one has to do better than just make one fr
ame the same basic way every time.
Getting away from Masi for me was the best thing; because they did not w
ant to share knowledge. What we learned at Masi came from our own effort
s on weekends at home in our own work spaces and from Ron Smith, the ori
ginal painter who taught me the essence of what I know today.
I think a lot of the "value" of a Confente is coming from those who are
protecting their investments; especially those who have bought them in t
he last 10 years or so and had to pay through the nose for them. They wo
uld prefer not to lose their ass if and when they decide to off the bike
. There are a ton of frames that eclipse what Mario did from periods bef
ore, during, and after his time. His untimely death is probably the bigg
est factor, combined with the marketing that preceded that. Had McLean b
een in the same position as Mario when he passed, there might be more in
terest in his work now. But still since Mario had high dollar backing an
d support from the beginning, his graphics and marketing (through Recht
and Masi, CA) gave him a huge advantage. Throw in "I'm Italian" and ther
e is the main difference. Mario did have a superior sense of style to Ma
Lean; but in a technical sense I'll bet the McLean is a better built mac
hine.
My opinion is that much of the Confente mystique is perceived as opposed
to real. But there is nothing new about that. As always there are a bun
ch of quiet small builders who do much superior work to the builders who
are in a position to do a lot of promotion. The lesser knowns do work f
or which they will never be paid and are really appreciated by only a fe
w connoisseurs. The other approach works better in the marketplace for a
number of reasons, and one can minimize their framebuilding efforts and
their creative investment in time and effort by doing so. But down the
road 50 to 100 years there will be a different perspective I'm sure, sin
ce the work will have to stand on it's own merits. At that time, when no
ne of this matters to any of us, the frames will speak for themselves. I
t will be a different tune, I'm sure.
Brian Baylis
La Mesa, CA
