Ed Roth - Roth and Bikers

Roth and Bikers

Roth had his shop at 4616 Slauson Avenue in Maywood, California (about 4 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles) that he started in early 1959. He ran an ad in Car Craft magazine that year announcing the new address of his shop.

For a period in the mid 1960s, Roth associated with various Outlaw motorcycle clubs who liked to congregate at his shop (a lot of bikers were living in Lynwood and Maywood at the time). It wasn't just bikers though; Hollywood types would visit as well as musicians. Cops and FBI agents also liked stopping by. This was a creative period for Roth and an important period in Kustom Kulture.

Roth incorporated the iron cross into his artwork (surfers had previously been using the iron cross as a symbol of youthful, carefree rebellion). Roth didn't own a bike at the time so he bought a brand-new Harley-Davidson Sportster and then proceeded to paint its gas tank a flat black color. Roth painted white lettering on one side of the tank that said: "Love is Hate"; and on the reverse side: "Hate is Love".

Roth had taken black and white photos of different bikers and made posters out of them which he sold at car shows, usually to kids. The posters had titles like, "Beautiful Buzzard", or "Gray Cat". Roth would periodically give these bikers money to party, but soon some of the bikers started to feel that Roth was "getting rich" off of them and they wanted a larger cut; which Roth agreed to, but inevitably things turned nasty. Roth was 6 ft 6, and 250 pounds at his slimmest. Rumors started going around that a certain club was going to be showing up to shoot up Roth's shop; and it happened just as expected. They arrived at the shop with their guns drawn, but one of Roth's crew got a bead on them first. Roth challenged the head biker, a big dude himself, to a one-on-one fight to settle matters. The fist fight went down right in the middle of Roth's shop, and equipment and paint cans were flying everywhere. Eventually Roth got the upper hand and "just started to beat the living crap" out of the guy.

After this incident, Roth took all the biker posters and made a big bonfire with them — it was symbolic as well. He left that lifestyle behind at the same time. Things started winding down at the shop in the late 1960s, and in 1970 the shop folded up.