Top 10 Album Covers featuring Motorcycles

#1 – Prince and the Revolution, Purple Rain

Number One on our list and in your hearts, the bike Prince famously used to woo Apollonia into skinny-dipping. The bike is a 1981 Honda 400 automatic. It had Comstar wheels, The fairing is a Kutter, The seats are one-off, with hot pink velour inserts custom made, the sissy bar was a standard item. The handlebars are the 6 bend variety. One of the bikes … is on display at Paisley Park Studios in Minnesota.

#2 – Motley Crue, Girls Girls Girls

LA’s bad boys of hard rock nailed it when they decided to accompany this ode to girls with Harleys, and carried the theme through on the classic Girls Girls Girls video. Opening with a leg shot and a kick start, no other rock anthem more lasciviously embodies the bond between chicks, bikes and rock. The intro rev is the sound of singer Vince Neil’s own Harley®, and the closing run through the gears is bassist Nikki Sixx’s Hog roaring down Franklin Canyon near Hollywood. Both bikes are prominently featured in the video and on the album cover. Here’s a story:

#3 Meat Loaf, Bat Out of Hell

Bat Out of Hell is a bombastic, operatic and melodramatic musical razz. Full of silly puns and Wagnerian grandiosity, it touches on all the Boss’ favorite themes – adolescent angst, awkward teenage love and driving. And, in this case, riding. The title track has been referred to many times by composer Jim Steinman as the ultimate “motorcycle crash song.” In its beginning, our protagonist is “speeding down the highway on a black phantom bike.” By the end of the song he’s been thrown off his bike and his organs exposed: “And the last thing I see is my heart still beating/Breaking out of my body and flying away/Like a bat out of hell.” The motorcycle sound in the middle of the song is producer Todd Rundgren on electric guitar.

#4 – Janis Joplin, Greatest Hits

This immortal 1973 album, its cover image snapped at the infamous Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, was released three years after Joplin’s death and cemented her status as Rock’s First Lady. This Sportster chop she’s sitting on reportedly belonged to her Big Brother. Pearl performed and partied as hard as any of the guys in the male-dominated world of hard rock, and as a result she became an unlikely icon for the burgeoning women’s rights movement. Whether Janis was the proverbial “reluctant” icon is open for debate – although everyone knows the fate that awaits rock’s reluctant icons, and that same fate definitely befell Janis Joplin. There’s no indication of Janis ever being a motorcyclist herself.

#5 – Cheap Trick, In Color

Cheap Trick’s second record made them superstars in Japan, setting the stage for 1978’s Live At Budokan, which blew up their careers worldwide. Can you identify the Harleys? By the way, In Color’s also-classic back cover is an upside-down, black-and- white photo of notorious nerds drummer Bun E. Carlos and guitarist Rick Nielsen riding mopeds, a shot that spawned an army of hipsters.

#6 – Brigitte Bardot, Harley-Davidson®

On this 1967 track, the legendary actress/chanteuse teams with renowned French composer Serge Gainsbourg – with sexy results! “I don’t need anyone on a Harley-Davidson®/I press the starter, and here is where I leave the earth/Maybe I’ll go to heaven/But at top speed on a train from hell.”

#7 – Lady GaGa, Born this Way

This cover received a fair amount of backlash when it came out, and it’s no wonder – it’s freakin’ hideous. But Gaga does what she does best and took this concept even further, morphing into a motorcycle onstage during the song “Heavy Metal Lover.”

#8 – Vanilla Ice, Cool As Ice Motion Picture Soundtrack

Johnny Van Owen, a freewheeling, motorcycle-riding rapper, drifts from town to town with his crew. … He meets a girl named Kathy… a role that was initially offered to Gwyneth Paltrow. Her father forbid her from accepting it, due to the script’s content…. The film was developed as a vehicle for Vanilla Ice, and was commercially and critically unsuccessful.”

#9 – Merle Haggard, Motorcycle Cowboy

In his Motorcycle Cowboy video, Merle straddles a Harley® and sings about marrying his “stringy-haired blonde biker babe” as bikers circle the happy couple. Merle’s body of work stands with country music’s best.

#10 – Bon Jovi, Lay Your Hands On Me

The ultimate ’80s hair-metal rock symbol reclines in skin-tight pants, slouching suggestively in the saddle of a tassled road hog. Even though this ’88 Heritage Softail (on permanent display at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio) was featured in a video and a number of posters, it was more than just a set piece. In the heyday of the band’s popularity, the Harley® apparently helped the singer escape the limelight. “I’d started feeling like part of a machine I didn’t want to be part of,” he said in 2006. “I’d ride cross-country for a month at a time with two pairs of jeans, a few T-shirts and a couple of credit cards.”