John Edwards Panhead

So I finally had the opportunity to meet John Edwards and shoot his 1952 Panhead at his house in Garden Grove, CA. I first saw his bike at the Mooneyes BBQ party a few months back. I had taken photos of it in the parking lot and sent the pics over to Nelson Kanno. I knew Nelson would know who owned the bike. “That’s John Edwards’s bike, everyone loves that one.” I can see why. Nelson offered to give John a call for me, but I got tied up with other projects so I was not able to follow up right away.

A few months past and I was at Brandon Holstein’s of “Brawny Built” shooting his “Rusty Nail” bike and I was asking him questions about it. Brandon told me that John had done the paint job for it. That got me back on track of trying to hook up with John. Brandon made a call to John and let him know I was interested in shooting his bike. I then gave John a call and set up a day and time to meet.

My wife Liz and I drove down to John’s house in Garden Grove and met him and his fiancée, Fawn. John was either in the middle of painting or just finishing but greeted us and offered us drinks. We looked at the bike and John started getting into the details of how it came to be and then showed me some of the other projects he has going on in his garage.

Fawn had turned on her laptop to show us bikes and cars that John had painted in the past. Turns out he painted the roof top on my old ‘64 SS Impala that I had sold to one of his friends a few years back. You can also see John’s work in the newest “Horse” mag in the article that I shot of Denver Dan’s “Chainsaw” motorcycle.

After we were done looking at some of his amazing work, I started shooting his Panhead.

I will be posting more photos throughout the week along the story behind the build as told to me by John Edwards.