Indian Larry

According to a Rolling Stone interview that was mentioned in a New York Times article, Larry's first motorcycle was a 1939 Harley Knucklehead that he bought when he was a teenager for a couple hundred dollars.

"Within hours, he had taken it apart, and it took him nine months to put it back together."

As a young man Larry learned how to weld from Conrad Stenglein in the Newburgh, New York area.

The shop was simple.

As Stenglein described it: "All we had in the shop was a welding machine, torches, grinder, body putty, stuff like that."

Quality of work was important to Larry early on.

Stenglein said that "Whatever part we made for a bike, it had to be strong and had to be good, that was our thing. It had to be perfect. If Larry put something on a bike that he didn't like, he'd cut it off. That's how he was."

Indian Larry (born Lawrence DeSmedt; April 28, 1949 – August 30, 2004) was a motorcycle builder and artist, stunt rider, and biker.

Indian Larry was born Lawrence DeSmedt in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York on April 28, 1949.

He grew up in the Newburgh, New York area including the town of New Windsor.

The oldest of three children, with two younger sisters, Diane and Tina, Larry was described by his mother, Dorothy, as "a good boy, but mischievous."

Larry's strict father, Augustine, was a carpenter at United States Military Academy and had built the family's home.

He wanted his son to follow in his footsteps in the carpentry trade.

As a boy Larry liked Lincoln logs and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth Revell plastic model kits.

Roth, a legendary California artist and hot rod builder, was a big influence on Larry and his style would later bubble up to influence Indian Larry's motorcycle designs.

Larry attended a Catholic elementary school where he suffered abuse.

The nuns would hit his knuckles until they bled and lock him in dark closets.

He kept what was occurring to himself, and didn't tell his family what was going on.

When his mother asked about his knuckles, Larry would always just say that he had gotten into a fight.

It wasn't until years later that his family learned what had actually happened.

As a child Larry was described as being sensitive and artistic, and "feeling more than most."

A well-known anecdote about Indian Larry is that as a kid he attempted to build a bomb in his parents' basement in order to blow up the Catholic school.

The contraption exploded taking off the little finger of Larry's left hand.

Another version of the story states that the injury occurred while he was trying to build a skyrocket for the 4th of July.

A month before he was to graduate from high school, Larry told his mother that he was heading to California to join his younger sister Diane who was deeply immersed in the 1960s counterculture (Diane had run away from home when she was 16).

In California Larry also took part in the scene and delved into drugs.

Larry saw his sister Diane as a kindred spirit who understood what it was like to feel like an outsider in society.

He first became known as Indian Larry in the 1980s when he was riding the streets of New York City on a chopped Indian motorcycle.

Respected as an old school chopper builder, Larry sought greater acceptance of choppers being looked upon as an art form.

He became interested in hot rods and motorcycles at an early age and was a fan of Von Dutch and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, whom he would later meet in California.

Wide acknowledgment of Indian Larry's talent only came in the last few years of his life.

His bike, Grease Monkey, was featured in Easyriders magazine in September 1998.

In 2001 Indian Larry participated in the Discovery Channel program Motorcycle Mania II, followed by three different Biker Build-Off programs.

During this period he built the motorcycles, Daddy-O (known to most people as the Rat Fink bike), Wild Child, and Chain of Mystery.

When asked about the experience of being maimed as a kid during a 2003 Biker Build-Off program, Larry seemed to have come to peace with it:

"Like most horrible atrocities that happen to you in life, when you look at them in retrospect, it's usually a blessing or a lesson. It's not much fun when you're caught up in it. But it's better. You can get into tighter spots. Makes you a better mechanic."

As a youth Larry participated in the Boy Scouts.

His scoutmaster, Gerald Doering, had raced Indian motorcycles which had an influence on Larry.

Larry's first build was when he took his little sister Tina's tricycle and equipped it with Schwinn bicycle handlebars and a lawn mower engine.

He died in 2004 from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident while performing at a bike show.