The Yamaha RD400 and a memory that’ll be with me until my dying day. Actually many memories, but for this first post I’ll dwell on the cuddly feel-good one, not the insane, highly illegal, or horrific ones.
I got my first 400 brand new, in July ’76. Wow! I don’t have any images of that time, as I was too busy living the life. But here is a more recent image of an RD400 I owned much more recently, highly modified and tuned (not my build) with an utter smack-in-the-mouth powerband:
In May ’76 two of my best friends were killed before my eyes on a Suzuki T250. A head-on crash with a farmer’s Land Rover. Closing speed about 140mph (about 90-100 from the bike, 40-50 mph to the LR). I was following way behind on my Yamaha FS1-E, a 50cc “sports moped”, Not a pretty sight: I was a witness at their inquest. Anyway, the RD400 was THE hooligan’s fast two-stroke sports bike of the day. Well, the discerning hooligan’s. The Kawasaki H1 500 triple was faster, but its handling and braking were shit, whereas the RDs was excellent. By the standards of the day, and the engine very easily tune-able to 50%+ standard power. That summer I dropped out of Sixth Form for punk, having quite literally told the Sixth Form master to go fuck himself. In front of the class. That accident happened on a Sunday. I went into school the very next day. This necessitated riding over a pink patch in the middle of the carriage way where sawdust had been put down to soak up the blood and brain matter, “Sorry about that mate!” (He would have understood.) Cue loads of school gossip about what had happened, and judgemental comments from teachers, along the lines of “That’ll teach you lot!”; as I left my long-suffering parents’ home for school the phone rang. My other friend had been writing pillion. It was his father calling me to say his son had just died in hospital from head injuries. Off I set to school. No counselling, no nothing. Just school. “Go fuck yourself!” Two months later I was riding one of the most desirable sports bikes of that day. What could possibly go wrong? I don’t think the term PTSD had been coined back then. I lived with it undiagnosed for years. In 2011 it’d come back to haunt me with a vengeance. But that’s a totally different story.
Anyway, I’m going off the point. I said something about that enduring memory, the cuddly feel-good one. so here it goes.
It was a Friday evening in the Autumn of ’78, I was 19. I was on my way up to London from where I lived in rural west Kent. Halfway up I stopped off at an Indian restaurant in the well-to-do suburb of Bromley, on what had been a market square. That weekend I was to stay with one of the leading punk bands of the day, to whom I was very close and did creative work with, and my girlfriend of the day. Quite literally a weekend of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. I took a window seat and ordered an expensive lobster vindaloo, washed down with a then exotic German lager. I looked out of the window, my RD400, my second (my first one got stolen), was on its prop-stand, with UK speedblocks livery, chrome expansion chambers, ace bars, steel braided brake hoses, drilled rotors, a Stage II road-track tune. It was drizzling, and the chrome and the water droplets shone in the orange glow of the old fashioned sodium street-lights, very much as if it was in a photoshoot for an official advert. As I washed down curry and naan the thought occurred to me “So this is what it is to be 19, life can’t get any better!” I’ve done lots of wicked things in my life, but yes, in a sense life never got any better than that magic moment.
TOXIC GRAFITY 