The King Of Customs

With Arlen Ness set to turn 80 and his business in the midst of its 50th anniversary, this feature was prepared to honour him, his incredible customs, his great life and fantastic achievements. But it is with great sadness, I am instead having to write that Arlen has passed away …

- Michael Lichter

Arlen has been a big part of my life since he allowed me into his more than 30 years ago. I photographed Arlen at motorcycle events everywhere, photographed more than 50 of his custom creations for features and wrote a book just on him. That’s how big this man was.

As Arlen would have wanted, let’s keep this upbeat and celebrate the man thought by many of today’s builders not only as the King of Custom but indeed, the Godfather.

From his earliest times, Arlen was a trendsetter, quietly and steadily producing some of the most creative bikes the motorcycle world has ever seen. Many of his innovative ideas and designs evolved into popular styles and trends and year after year, even when custom bike building was going through hard times, he came out with spectacular new machines that caught the attention of the media and the riding public.

It all goes back to a fateful day in 1963 when a 24-year-old Arlen noticed a Harley-Davidson Knucklehead for sale while driving home after working his day job delivering furniture. With his wife Bev at home with their two-year-old, Sherri, and pregnant with Cory, Arlen took $300 of his bowling winnings to go buy the Knuckle the next day. His friend Charlie had to ride the bike most of the way home since Arlen had never ridden a suicide clutch, but he did get on it and, after killing it a dozen times, managed to pull it into his garage. Bev promptly opened the door, took one look, and slammed the door on him.

Arlen rode that ’47 Knuck everywhere. He soon made friends with other riders and got involved with the motorcycle scene. They hung out in Harry Brown’s Hayward garage where Harry painted bikes on the side and where Arlen learned as much as he could by helping Harry out. All the while, he practiced his own paint, graphics and flaming techniques by working on Harry’s customer bikes as well as his own.