We all know Birth of the Cool in jazz was the 1957 compilation by famed producer Pete Rugolo of 11 songs Miles Davis had recorded for release on 78 rpm singles. The origin of “cool” as a slang term is murky, as underground language development often is. However, Harlem Renaissance figure Zora Neal Hurston put it in print in a 1935 folklore collection, when she quoted a character saying, “Ah don’t go nowhere unless I take my box [guitar] wid me…And what make it so cool, Ah don’t go nowhere unless I play it.”

So, “cool” is over 90 years old and still going strong. That got me thinking about motorcycles, as I often do.

In my reviews of cruisers, I’ll often talk about how much cool a motorcycle reflects onto the rider. As motorcycles have been around for longer than “cool”, what were they before they were cool?

Primarily, early motorcyclists were viewed as daredevils, a term I quite like, even though no one has ever referred to me that way. Certainly, riding a motorcycle in the pre-WWII era was highly risky. Not only were the motorcycles sketchy, but the vehicles around them were, too. While they all crash, motorcyclists typically take a harder hit, and those were the days before helmets and airbags.

Post-WWII, motorcycles took on a different character as society became more affluent. They became fashion accouterments rather than simply a way to travel more dangerously. When danger and style intertwined, as they did at the AMA Gypsy Tour rally in Hollister in 1947 and with the involvement of the Boozefighters motorcycle gang, Life magazine paid attention, for better or for worse.

Hollywood soon came to the rescue, as the Hollister affair was fictionalized in 1953 in The Wild One, turning actor Marlon Brando into a counterculture hero, and you can’t get cooler than that. “Whaddya got?” indeed.

While 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O’Toole and the following year’s The Great Escape with Steve McQueen weren’t motorcycle movies, the two-wheel cameos reminded people that motorcycles were cool. Don’t forget that McQueen’s character was known as Cooler King, and McQueen himself was dubbed the King of Cool by the late 1960s. We all know McQueen was an ardent motorcyclist, and he remains a standard for cool that few can meet.

1969’s Easy Rider forever solidified the coolness of motorcycles and their riders. Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Jack Nicholson, in starring roles under Hopper’s direction, delivering a script by Fonda, Hopper, and Terry Southern, cannot help but be cool. Add two iconic Harley-Davidson choppers, and you have the dictionary definition of cool.

Two years later, Bruce Brown’s On Any Sunday documentary added fun to the cool. Real-life motorcycle enthusiast McQueen added the cool star power, while Malcolm Smith became an overnight King of Fun. The recently departed Grand National Champion, Mert Lawill, seemed downright normal compared to McQueen and Smith, offering a more approachable, cool-adjacent appeal.

In the 55 years since On Any Sunday, the tables have turned completely. Motorcycles offered reflective glory. The actors didn’t make the motorcycles cool. Instead, the motorcycles confirmed that the actors were cool. That was true in 1986’s Top Gun, where Maverick rode a Kawasaki Ninja 900, and Charlie noticed. “What? I can’t hear you.”

In 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the T-800 Terminator famously demanded, “I need your clothes, your boots, your motorcycle.” A subsequent chase down the Bull Creek flood control channel in LA’s San Fernando Valley, with the Terminator aboard a Harley-Davidson Fat Boy and a young John Connor on a Honda XR80 kids’ dirt bike alongside him, was unforgettable.

Okay, so maybe Prince did some damage to his Honda CM400A Hondamatic in Purple Rain in 1984. Still, at several points in the movie, Prince does have Apollonia on the back, so perhaps all is forgiven. “Get on.”

If you ride motorcycles now, you likely add your own dose of cool to the proceedings. However, we all have a parade of Hollywood stars to thank for our head start on cool.