Nick’s Note: Mitch Boehm and I met at the University of Utah in 1980 and our shared love of motorcycling catalyzed a 35-year friendship. Mitch raced a lot of motocross before his roadracing days, and I don’t think there’s a better journalist to tackle the autobiography of one of America’s greatest motorcyclists: Malcolm Smith. Smith gave motorcycling a face and a spirit in Bruce Brown’s iconic documentary On Any Sunday, and over the years has become a large part of the foundation on which our sport and industry rest. Mitch had been telling me the back story of how the book came together, and I asked him to share that story with you. So here, in Mitch’s words, is the inside story of creating what really is an amazing book about a true legend of motorcycling.
“Six, maybe eight months,” I said. “Shouldn’t take much more than that.”
I was speaking to Malcolm Smith and his wife Joyce at their home in Riverside, California, Malcolm having just asked me how long I thought it would take to complete the autobiography we’d just agreed to do together. And I was pretty sure of my answer – at the time, at least.
It’s almost funny now, nearly three years later, and with the book selling well and generating amazing reviews, to think about that conversation, and my reply. Not sure if it was naivete, ignorance, supreme chutzpah or just a crazy cocktail of all three on my part, but for whatever reason I really did think I could research, record, write and edit a comprehensive autobiography on one of the most interesting, traveled, and successful motorcyclists on the planet in less than a year. I mean, I’d written complete issues of magazines all by myself in six, eight weeks, and ran one the world’s largest motorcycle magazines for nearly 15 years. Words and pictures, right? What could be so hard?
See what I mean? Jeez…. Books, it turns out, are a bit more involved than magazines.
Of course, we had plenty of challenges along the way, not least of which was the mammoth scope of the project, and all the work it would take to do it right (which I was obviously unprepared for). The primary obstacles were health-related. Malcolm is into his 70s now and has Parkinson’s, along with a host of other physical and structural maladies caused by him bashing across rough surfaces on a motorcycle with five inches of wheel travel for decades. And so there were some serious surgeries during our time together. He also loves Baja, and has a small beach house down on the coast, which he and Joyce liked to disappear to for weeks at a time during our time together. Can’t say I blame him; if I was working with me, I’d need to get away, too.
Malcolm’s autobiography is a hefty piece: 400 pages and 11 x 11 inches, with 451 images and over 100,000 words worth of stories.
My family had a serious challenge, too, when my strapping, football-playing son Alex son was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor three-quarters of the way through his junior-year high school football season. As a very good tight end and defensive end he’d been getting some attention from college scouts, and was poised to do the college-football thing at some college somewhere. But instead he ended up doing something much less appealing: a terrifying, eight-hour surgery, followed by months of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, which he braved with amazing fortitude. He’s doing well now – in remission, and with excellent chances for a normal future, albeit one without football. But I have to tell you, it was an ugly year at the Boehm residence. All this, along with Malcolm’s surgeries (and two knee surgeries of my own), definitely slowed the book’s progress.
The roots of the Malcolm Smith book project go back a couple years before we even started, actually. I was at the electronics store one day to buy myself one of those digital voice recorders, the ones that replaced the analog microcassette recorders we used back in the day. As I stood there, I happened to think of Malcolm’s yet-unwritten book, and grabbed a second recorder, thinking I’d give it to him the next time I saw him, sort of a gentle reminder to do the autobiography I figured everyone wanted to read. I’d sure thought about it enough over the years.
I saw Malcolm a few weeks later, and handed him the recorder (which he still has, by the way, still in its original packaging!). “Malcolm,” I said with one of those serious but humorous looks, “you really need to do a book.”
“I know,” he said with one of his sheepish, trademark-Malcolm Smith grins of his. “I’m such a procrastinator sometimes.”
“I don’t care who you work with,” I told him, “just do it.”
Honestly, a book project wasn’t even on my radar, and I didn’t want to horn in on a decision that must be very personal for someone of Malcolm’s stature. I just wanted the book to happen, wanted to read it, hear the man’s stories.
No surprise that this is one of the book’s most popular chapters…
“You don’t have to write everything down,” I told him, knowing full well how daunting that sort of thing could be to someone not used to riding a keyboard that much. “Just talk into the recorder, get those stories down. Do a little each day, pick a year or an event, and just brain dump!” He said he’d try, and as I drove home I hoped he wouldn’t procrastinate.
He did, of course. And when I saw him a couple of weeks later and asked how it was going, he said, “It’s not. It’s just hard to get going.”
“I know the feeling,” I told him, “trust me. But you need to do this. It’s important!” The look in his eyes said he knew I was right.
The next time I saw Malcolm was at Vintage Motorcycle Days at Mid-Ohio, probably in 2011 or so. On Saturday afternoon, Malcolm and Joyce asked me and my son Alex to dinner at a local Mexican joint. “I want you to help me with the book,” Malcolm said, getting right to the point. “It’s time to do it.”
Wow.
I was stunned, of course, as the idea of helping Malcolm Smith – easily one of the most popular and successful motorcyclists on the planet – produce his one and only autobiography slowly sank in. But once the shock wore off, I just grinned and shook my head yes. We were off.
Malcolm and I generated the guts of the book over a 20-month period, mostly in several-hour interviews at his home in the hills and orchards above Riverside. Before I’d arrive we’d agree to talk about a particular year or segment of his life, which we’d broken down into chapters early on in the process: Family, his early years growing up, school, his first bike, first racer and race, first job, his racing and businesses, family, etc.
Once I arrived we’d get situated somewhere comfortable, I’d turn on my recorder (using my iPhone as a backup) and start asking questions – and Malcolm would just start talking, as he’s wont to do. The guy is a heck of a storyteller, and as the days and weeks wore on, with him churning out stories, details and dates at a sometimes furious pace, I began to see just how much interesting old information he had stored in that head of his. Not all of it was in order, of course… One story would bring out another, and many times the new story wasn’t applicable to the chapter or period we were working on. But I encouraged him to chatter away, as we both wanted as much material and anecdotal story telling as possible. He’d said early on that the book would be as long as it needed to be, and we stuck to that credo along the way.
This dry-erase board proved invaluable over the months. Look closely and you'll see years from 1954 to 1965 written down, with notes below.
Of course, as the stories and years and people piled up, and the large dry erase board we had sitting against the wall got more and more names and story titles and years written on it, my job got tougher and tougher. I remember being literally scared during the first month or two…afraid that I simply wouldn’t be able to absorb all this information and put it together in a way that made sense. There was just too much to take in at first, and I had yet to start to see the bigger picture of his life. Early on it was just hundreds of facts and names and places, with no common thread. I worried: What if I screwed up? What if I simply couldn’t do it, or did a crap job? (“Mitch Boehm? Oh yeah, he’s the guy who screwed up Malcolm Smith’s autobiography! The goon!”)
But as I began to get a feel for the layout of his life over the next several weeks, and how all these unknown-to-me stories and people fit together, I began to see things more clearly – and the anxiety was slowly replaced by confidence. That, and a good load of good cheer, for I knew that the end result was going to be really, really great. There were simply too many good stories and images – many never-before-seen from Malcolm’s personal archive – for it not to be.
We started, naturally, at the beginning, talking about his mother and father, and his extended family, before delving into his early years in Canada. Over the following months we worked our way through his childhood, his family’s move to Southern California, and then his early adulthood and motorcycle beginnings. And, little by little, I began to see what an utterly fascinating story his was, one filled with adventure, happiness, sadness, and challenge.
We used that large dry-erase board constantly over the months, and it came in amazingly handy. On it was sketched events and years, races and people, jobs and narrow-misses, loves and hates, bikes and cars, and friends and family. We talked at his home, at mine, at events we’d attend together, and over many meals. We’d even go out into the garage and tinker with bikes on occasion when we needed a break. My son Alex came with me a few times, and I hoped him seeing the process live and in person would be inspiring in some way.
One day, a few months into the project, and with the board chock-full of important dates and names, I thought I should shoot a photo or two of it, just in case something happened to it… which it did, less than a week later! One of Malcolm’s grandkids erased most of what was on it, and never have I been so happy to have snapped a photo!
Malcolm and me in his sun room, reviewing a chapter I’d just finished, line by line.
After each of these sessions I’d head home and transcribe Malcolm’s spoken words into my computer, integrating some of the side information I’d scribbled in my notes, and adding a bit of relative background information I’d researched. And slowly but surely, the sections and chapters began to take shape. Whenever I finished one, Malcolm and I would then go over it very carefully, line by line, him reading a printout, me following along on my laptop. While I read aloud, Malcolm would often stop me, saying things like, “I wouldn’t have used that word, let’s use this one instead.” Or, “you left something out, so let’s add this back in.….” Or, “I think I got that wrong initially…here’s what happened…” This was tedious, time-consuming work, and it took hours on top of all the transcribing, research and actual writing. But it was interesting nonetheless, and a key part of getting the tone and information just right – as both of us wanted it to be.
Once we had the words the way he wanted them, the text went to art director Todd Westover, who flowed it together with photos we’d chosen for each section from Malcolm’s personal archive, many of which have never been seen by the outside community. Todd and I worked together at Motorcyclist for many years, and he’s a fantastic designer, having art directed Hot Rod for several years before joining the Motorcyclist staff. Todd’s also an old motocrosser, having ridden and raced Suzuki RMs back in the ’70s and ’80s, so he was plenty aware of the subject matter, and was the perfect guy to help choose the appropriate photography for each chapter.
Malcolm’s wife Joyce was also a key part of the team, helping to keep us moving forward, and scanning and organizing photography. At one point an entire front room in Malcolm’s home was filled with boxes of photos, each labeled for a particular chapter. Malcolm and I spent an entire afternoon one day hauling boxes down from his attic, each filled with photos and slides, transparencies and negative strips, each in its own protective sleeve. It was reasonably easy to look at prints and even slides, as we had a light table in the couple’s dining room (which also served as a storage room for photos). But the negatives were tougher to ascertain, and Todd did a wonderful job looking through the hundreds and hundreds of negs to find the handful that were just screaming to be published. And boy did he find some gems! I remember Malcolm being surprised at some of the photos we found and used in the layouts: “Wow,” he said a couple of times, “I had no idea I even had these images!”
Once Todd had a chapter roughed out with text and photos, we’d run through it again, re-reading it, editing passages, making sure the photos were just right, each one placed in the right spot (to back up the text in that particular area – not always easy to do). Once everyone was reasonably happy with a chapter, we put it aside and continued work on the next one, and all the talking, transcribing, writing, editing, tweaking and photo-choosing that went along with it.
During all this there was also work to do on ancillary parts of the project: coordinating with our print broker in Seattle; asking friends of Malcolm’s to write small sidebar stories; getting Bruce Brown to write the book’s foreword; and talking to members of the press about reviews, etc.
Once we got all 10 chapters laid out in the spring of 2015, we began the very difficult process of final editing, which took the better part of six weeks and the help of a handful of people. We had local print shops near my home and in Riverside spit out large-format printouts of all 400 pages, which several people read two and three times each. Each chapter was gone through, line by line, in search of things like simpler sentence structure, more appropriate wording, and typos. Once those few changes were approved and made to the master files, we did a final set of printouts, each of which was re-read again for a final read and to be sure each of the changes was made correctly. When you’re dealing with a 400-page book filled with 450 images, captions for each, and over 100,000 words of narrative, it’s not a small job.
In early June of 2015, more than two years after we started, we were finally ready to send clean files to the printer. I remember being tremendously nervous at the time: Would the book print correctly? Would a chapter be missing? Would we get anything terribly wrong? Would I look like a rube? And most importantly, would I let Malcolm Smith and his family down? I’d been telling them for two years what a great book this would be, and how much motorcyclists around the world would love it. Would I be proved wrong?
Malcolm and my son Alex go through the first air-freighted copies in Malcolm’s kitchen.
A month or so later a few boxes of books were air-freighted to us, ostensibly to check the print run, but also to send to members of the press for review purposes. I remember meeting Malcolm at his home with Alex in tow, and how excited – but nervous – we all were. We tossed a carton on the kitchen table and opened it; inside were five books, each in its own protective bumper box, which we’d insisted on for individual shipping protection (to buyers) and which Todd had designed so nicely, with blue and black Malcolm logos and the book title printed on the white box. We each opened one, feeling like kids at Christmas, and began to leaf through them. And very quickly, the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ and “look at this!’ began to flow. It looked great! I checked every chapter quickly, just to be sure everything was in the right place, and then began to go through each page, one by one.
The book looked amazing! The photos were sharp, the contrast good, the type was large enough to read easily, and the layout and design were simply beautiful. We were soon smiling, all of us, and hearing Malcolm’s positive comments – and seeing that big ol’ Malcolm Smith grin – was music to my eyes and ears.
Within the week we’d sent off a bunch of signed copies to various editors, and had worked out a deal with Tucker Rocky to carry the book and distribute it to dealers around the country. In two weeks time the bulk shipment of books arrived at Malcolm’s shop, and we began filling the first thousand or so pre-orders we’d taken – each of them signed by Malcolm himself. This was a massive process, as each book had to be removed from a carton, its individual box opened carefully, the book removed, then signed (sometimes with a personal inscription), then returned to its box, sealed with a strip of tape, and placed in another box – this one addressed – for shipment to the buyer. It took 10 full days of work for several people to hand-sign and ship those pre-order books, the entire process overseen by Malcolm’s daughter Ashley, co-manager of his motorcycle store. But the responses we got from buyers made it all worth it. People are loving Malcolm’s book. And that makes all the hard work worthwhile.
Signing the pre-order books took more than a week, but Malcolm was a trooper, signing every one.
In October, Malcolm, Joyce, Todd, Alex, and I traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, for the Barber Vintage Festival and the public launch of the book. The following week we trekked to Orlando, Florida, for the AIMExpo show, where Malcolm was the Expo Champion for the weekend. At both events we sold and signed books, and talked to enthusiasts, and the response to the book was even better than we’d expected. We plan to do several more events in 2016.
Few experiences in my professional life during the last 30-odd years have quite measured up to this project in terms of satisfaction, and that’s saying a lot given the amazing stuff I’ve been fortunate enough to have done during my time at Motorcyclist, American Honda, Cycle World and Moto Retro Illustrated. I’ve ridden and raced all over the world, seen the inner workings of the factories that have produced our great motorcycles, spoken to the people that actually designed and built those machines, seen epic races that’ll be remembered for decades, and met many of the people who’ve made motorcycling the wonderfully exciting and satisfying sport it is. But helping Malcolm Smith write and design this autobiography has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Thanks, Malcolm!
So in the end, it may have taken a lot more than six or eight months to finish. But given the end result, I’m quite sure – and I know Malcolm agrees – it was definitely worth it.
More information at: www.themalcolmbook.com
More Next Tuesday!