Indian Larry (born Lawrence DeSmedt; April 28, 1949 – August 30, 2004) was an American motorcycle builder and artist, stunt rider, and biker. He first became known as Indian Larry in the 1980s when he was riding the streets of New York City on a chopped Indian motorcycle. Respected as an old school chopper builder, Larry sought greater acceptance of choppers being looked upon as an art form. He became interested in hot rods and motorcycles at an early age and was a fan of Von Dutch and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, whom he would later meet in California.
Wide acknowledgment of Indian Larry's talent only came in the last few years of his life. He died in 2004 from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident while performing at a bike show. His bike, Grease Monkey, was featured in Easyriders magazine in September 1998. In 2001 Indian Larry participated in the Discovery Channel program Motorcycle Mania II, followed by three different Biker Build-Off programs. During this period he and his team built the motorcycles, Daddy-O (known to most people as the Rat Fink bike), Wild Child, and Chain of Mystery.
Early life and education
Indian Larry was born Lawrence DeSmedt in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York on April 28, 1949. He grew up in the Newburgh, New York area including the town of New Windsor. The oldest of three children, with two younger sisters, Diane and Tina, Larry was described by his mother, Dorothy, as "a good boy, but mischievous." Larry's strict father, Augustine, was a carpenter at United States Military Academy and had built the family's home. He wanted his son to follow in his footsteps in the carpentry trade. Roth, a legendary California artist and hot rod builder, was a big influence on Larry and his style would later bubble up to influence Indian Larry's motorcycle designs.
Larry attended a Catholic elementary school where he suffered abuse. The nuns would hit his knuckles until they bled and lock him in dark closets. He kept what was occurring to himself, and didn't tell his family what was going on. When his mother asked about his knuckles, Larry would always just say that he had gotten into a fight.
A well-known anecdote about Indian Larry is that as a kid he attempted to build a bomb in his parents' basement in order to blow up the Catholic school. When asked about the experience of being maimed as a kid during a 2003 Biker Build-Off program, Larry seemed to have come to peace with it:
As a youth Larry participated in the Boy Scouts. His scoutmaster, Gerald Doering, had raced Indian motorcycles which had an influence on Larry.
Larry's first build was when he took his little sister Tina's tricycle and equipped it with Schwinn bicycle handlebars and a lawn mower engine. According to a Rolling Stone interview that was mentioned in a New York Times article, Larry's first motorcycle was a 1939 Harley Knucklehead that he bought when he was a teenager for a couple hundred dollars. "Within hours, he had taken it apart, and it took him nine months to put it back together."
As a young man Larry learned how to weld from Conrad Stenglein in the Newburgh, New York area. The shop was simple. As Stenglein described it: "All we had in the shop was a welding machine, torches, grinder, body putty, stuff like that." Quality of work was important to Larry early on. Stenglein said that "Whatever part we made for a bike, it had to be strong and had to be good, that was our thing. It had to be perfect. If Larry put something on a bike that he didn't like, he'd cut it off. That's how he was." In California Larry also took part in the scene and delved into drugs. Larry saw his sister Diane as a kindred spirit who understood what it was like to feel like an outsider in society. On June 21, 1971, Diane was murdered. Larry accompanied her body back to their hometown for her funeral. The experience was emotionally devastating to him.
Coupled with his grief, Larry was spiraling into drug addiction. To pay for the drugs he was robbing stores. The cops had an idea that it was Larry but had not been able to catch him so they set up a sting operation. In 1972 as Larry was exiting a bank he had just robbed, he was fired upon by two police officers. He narrowly escaped being killed when one of the bullets grazed his eyebrow. At the age of 23, Larry was sent to Sing Sing prison for three years. During his incarceration Larry earned his GED, and started taking courses in welding and mechanics. Prison was "the place where he honed all his best mechanic skills." He also asked his mother to send him a dictionary and books on philosophy and other topics. He was released in September 1976.
Move to New York City
After completing parole, Larry relocated to New York City where he became involved with the underground scene. The first magazine article about Indian Larry was in Iron Horse Magazine in 1987. It featured his 1950 Indian Chief chopper with red-orange flames. It was during this period that people began to call him Indian Larry. In the 1980s he hung out with Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol. For many years Larry struggled with alcohol abuse and heroin. In November 1991, during a period when he was living around the Bowery, Larry was going through severe withdrawals one night, wandering the streets cutting himself with a broken beer bottle. Larry would later say, "I was homeless, shirtless, penniless, showerless...I had nothing. I had nothing left". According to Larry's sister Tina, when a cop arrived on the scene shining a spotlight in Larry's face, Larry told him, "Just shoot me." They committed him to Bellevue Hospital. It was through Bellevue that Larry got connected up with a drug and alcohol program.
Larry had "1991" and "1994" tattooed on his arm, as he explained that he had to go back after his initial treatment. It was not until the late 1990s that Larry was finally able to free himself and stop using. Mentioning the long journey that it took, Larry expressed that he didn't think that he could do it all over again. "It was too hard," he said. In 2000, Larry and friends opened Gasoline Alley in Brooklyn. Larry considered himself to be a "gearhead" originally, and was rooted in the hot rod culture of the 1950s and 1960s. During the Biker Build-Off period in 2003–2004, Larry's appreciation for modern horsepower and twin carburetors for increased fuel/air intake was expressed in his builds.
In the art of building a bike, Larry preferred old school methods and didn't use CNC machines. He favored Paughco rigid frames and panhead motors.
Indian Larry appeared in Easyriders magazine in 1998 in an article entitled, "Hardcore NYC Troubadors". Later that same year the magazine profiled Larry with his motorcycle, Grease Monkey, which won the 1998 Editor's Choice Award at the Easyriders Invitational Bike Show in Columbus, Ohio, which was an important recognition by the biker world of Larry's talent.
The beginning of Indian Larry becoming known to the general public was his appearance in the Discovery Channel program, Motorcycle Mania II in 2001. The program's primary focus was on customizer Jesse James, but it also featured different scenes profiling Indian Larry as he and the group (which included Jesse James, Chopper Dave, and Giuseppe Ronsin) set out to ride 1400 miles from Long Beach, California to the Sturgis 2001 Black Hills Classic in Sturgis, South Dakota. When one of the choppers breaks down in Southern Utah, Larry is shown performing his mechanical skills on the bike in a supermarket parking lot (when his own bike has magneto problems, Larry explains to the camera, "If the bike is not running; if it's leaking oil; and if it's dirty. That's about the only three things that will really get to me.") The program also shows Larry displaying his famous neck tattoo, sharing snippets of his personal philosophy, and doing riding stunts – this included him reclining back on his bike, Grease Monkey, with his legs outstretched over the handlebars, and standing up on the saddle with his arms outstretched to the side as he speeds down the highway. The group also visits Denver's Choppers in Las Vegas, Nevada (now in Reno) where Larry is shown meeting chopper builder, Mondo Porras for the first time.
Biker Build-Off
Larry wanted to "elevate the art of the motorcycle" in the general perception and the art world. (In addition to metalwork and painting, Larry included engraving and leather work to the list in another interview).
The bike builders would then meet at a neutral location and be filmed riding across several states to a particular bike show. The road trip was meant as a testing ground. Upon arrival at the bike shows, the general public in attendance could view the bikes and vote their preference between the two. Usually on the final day of a bike show, the votes would be tallied, a winner announced, and a trophy awarded. Indian Larry was voted the winner in all three Biker Build-Off competitions that he competed in. His second trophy was cut up and shared with his opponent, Billy Lane and the audience, after Larry unexpectedly declared an exact draw after it was announced that he had won in the voting.
Indian Larry's fatal motorcycle accident occurred during the filming of his third Biker Build-Off in 2004, on the same day, and at the same bike show, where the votes were being tallied to determine the winner.
Last build: Chain of Mystery
Indian Larry and crew built the Chain of Mystery bike for the final challenge. Larry said that the original idea for the bike's frame came to him in a flash of inspiration. He explained that his most creative ideas for a new build would flash across his mind in the form of an image, and then it would be his job to relentlessly chase that vision during a build until the image materialized in the finished product. As it turned out, the bike held up, and Larry rode the chopper to what would be his final bike show.