“Ride” and The Bikeriders: An Obvious Match

Although Jeff Nichols’ latest film, The Bikeriders, is absolutely correct in wielding The Shangri-Las’ “Out in the Streets” as the constant musical refrain throughout the narrative, one song that feels as though it’s “missing” in many ways is Lana Del Rey’s “Ride.” However, since Sofia Coppola is typically the only director to condone using anachronistic music in a period piece, it makes sense that “Ride,” originally released in 2012, couldn’t be “accurately” used in The Bikeriders. And yet, even placing it in the credits would have been a compromising consolation to those who can’t unsee or unhear “Ride” within the context of a story like this.

It’s possible that Del Rey herself, like Nichols, came across Danny Lyon’s seminal photography book (also called The Bikeriders) at some point before she hit the big time. After all, the book was released in 1968, a prime year within the decade that Del Rey is famously “inspired” by (complete with the Manson Family, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan and Woodstock). So it’s not unfathomable that Lyon’s work would have crossed her path. And since she describes “reading Slim Aarons” as though he were a writer instead of a photographer, it’s apparent that Del Rey does know how to “read” imagery and repurpose it. One of the key gifts of any postmodern artist. And oh, how Del Rey put her postmodern skills to use in the video (or “short film,” if you prefer) for “Ride.”

Directed by Anthony Mandler, who had spent the better part of the 00s directing Rihanna videos, “Ride” opens with the now iconic image of Del Rey on a tire swing (that looks as though its rope extends all the way to the heavens), swaying back and forth (à la Mariah Carey in the “Always Be My Baby” video) with her dark curled hair billowing in the wind. As though to presage the idea that she would “go country” with Lasso, Del Rey also sports cowboy boots and a fringed denim jacket—emblems of her love for “the country America used to be.” Which, in her mind, was a country where a girl could be “fragile” and “delicate” without condemnation. Where rugged men like John Wayne still existed, and were idolized by other men, as well as sought after by women.

This rugged archetype is present throughout “Ride” in the form of the rough-hewn, usually much older bikers that Del Rey rides with. Whether “playing” (a.k.a. languidly leaning over the machine) pinball while one of the bikers lecherously hovers behind her or letting another man brush her ribbon-bedecked hair, it’s clear that Del Rey yearns for a time when “men were still men,” as it is said. The kind of men that Lyon documented in those years from 1963 to 1967. Men that didn’t fit into mainstream society—whether because of the way they looked, dressed, thought or acted. The kind of men that find community only through “just riding,” as Del Rey would say.

These are the bikeriders that Nichols brings to life onscreen, with Johnny (Tom Hardy) and Benny (Austin Butler) positioned as the embodiment of camaraderie (and yes, even a father-son sort of dynamic) within the outlaw motorcycle club niche. But it is Kathy Bauer (Jodie Comer) that acts as the true anchor of the story, with her character serving as the important feminine/outsider perspective needed. In some ways, Del Rey does mirror Kathy’s role, not merely aesthetically, but in terms of being “taken in” and glamored by this lifestyle she never knew before. At the same time, Del Rey asserts that she’s just as much a rider—therefore a true part of the gang as opposed to just a wifey—as any of the other boys. This is her tribe in ways beyond the romantic or sexual, something that separates her from Kathy, who ultimately finds that she just wants to settle down and lead a normal, quiet life. A task that’s impossible to achieve with a man like Benny. He who refuses to ever surrender to that oh so hideous word and concept: responsibility.

An aversion that Del Rey, in this nomadic “persona,” can certainly identify with. And, in turn, identify with the type of men who pursue this life as the only thing they can really “commit” to. This much is evidenced by the opening of her monologue: “I was in the winter of my life, and the men I met along the road were my only summer.” Here, too, it’s interesting to note she says “winter of my life” rather than “winter of my youth,” as though she knows that those who embrace the transient, rebellious biker lifestyle are doomed to “live fast, die young.” A small tradeoff, in their eyes, for being able to experience pure freedom.

That feeling is displayed in the “Ride” video as Del Rey sits on the back of a motorcycle with the wind whipping in her face (“I hear the birds on the summer breeze”). This kind of unbridled, undiluted liberty is also shown in a scene from The Bikeriders where Benny guns his bike down the streets and highways in a high-speed police chase. By cutting them off at a red light, he gains ground and takes to the open road, letting out a loud cry of joy as he passes by a signature silo of the Midwest. Of course, that sense of victory and liberation is soon counteracted by the realization that he’s out of gas, and will now have to surrender to the police when they catch up.

For those who can’t fathom taking such risks for the “mere” sake of feeling free—from the pressures of society, family and even so-called friends—Del Rey addresses it best when she also mentions in her monologue, “When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living, they asked me why. But there’s no use in talking to people who have a home. They have no idea what it’s like to seek safety in other people. For home to be wherever you lie your head.” Further explaining that she has “an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about. And pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me.”

The same goes for Benny in The Bikeriders (and, to a lesser extent, Johnny and Kathy). He has to be free, no matter the cost. No matter if it means alienating others or alienating himself from anything resembling a “future.” Nothing else matters but the ability to cut and run, to take to the open road whenever he feels the call. Something Kathy can never quite grasp, which is exactly why “Out in the Streets” is so perfect for describing their relationship, for its lyrics speak directly to how stifled and repressed Benny feels now that “he don’t hang around with the gang no more.” As our woeful narrator, Mary Weiss, also describes in the song, “He don’t comb his hair like he did before/He don’t wear those dirty old black boots no more/But he’s not the same/There’s something ‘bout his kissing/That tells me he’s changed/I know that something’s missing inside/Something’s gone/Something’s died/It’s still in the streets/His heart is out in the streets.” A characterization that fits Benny to a tee by the end of the film.

And yet, for as tailor-made as “Out in the Streets” is for The Bikeriders, so, too, is “Ride.” For Del Rey even speaks from a Kathy-esque perspective when she pleads, “Don’t leave me now/Don’t say goodbye/Don’t turn around/Leave me high and dry.” At the same time, she knows that, when you live this life, it’s filled with perpetual goodbyes and moving ons. From her own Benny-centric view of things, that’s exactly why she likes it, can’t get enough of it.

As she says in the closing monologue of the “Ride” video, “Every night, I used to pray that I’d find my people. And I finally did, on the open road. We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore. Except to make our lives into a work of art. Live fast, die young, be wild and have fun.” This might as well be the Vandals’ mantra, too.

At another moment, she declares, “I believe in the country America used to be.” This line unwittingly speaks to an overarching theme of The Bikeriders, which is an acknowledgement of an America in increasing decay, and one that is, accordingly, evermore morally bankrupt. Even so, Del Rey still insists, “I believe in the person I want to become. I believe in the freedom of the open road. And my motto is the same as ever. I believe in the kindness of strangers [as does Blanche DuBois]. And when I’m at war with myself, I ride. I just ride.” Much the same way Benny does. For, even though Kathy and many others outside/on the periphery of the motorcycle club might not understand it, it can best be summed up with the Del Reyism: “I am fucking crazy. But I am free.”

Thus, while the baleful, sustained “ooooh” at the beginning of “Out in the Streets” is a perfect fit as a musical refrain for the film, it has to be said that Del Rey’s almost equally baleful “mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm” (though some will say it’s an “ooooh” not an “mmmm” sound) opening to “Ride” is as well. Not to mention the fact that the plot of her “Ride” video is très The Bikeriders oriented (well, minus the part where she’s vibing out in a war bonnet a.k.a. “Native American headdress”). And so, it’s hard to say, within this ouroboros of being inspired by Danny Lyon’s photography, if maybe Nichols wasn’t in some way also inspired by “Ride.” Either way, the song’s absence in the film is partially what makes it simultaneously feel as though it’s there, out in the streets like a sonic specter.