Original publication: BikerTrash.com
Original byline: Larry Gore
Hell’s Angel
The life and times of Sonny Barger
and the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club.
Ralph “Sonny” Barger with Keith and Kent Zimmerman
Published by Harper Collins
Release date May 17th, 2000
Reviewed by Larry Gore
“Hollister, The Wild Ones, Rebel Rousers, Hell’s Angels ’69, Born to be wild, Easyriders, Electra Glide in Blue, A walk on the wild side”
These events, movies and music all evoke memories and feelings. Feelings about being free, doing your own thing, standing with your brothers. The dream of being on a motorcycle on the open road – the wind in your hair, no schedule – just taking things as they come.
Whether you are a hard-core biker, a “loner” who just loves motorcycling, a RUB (Rich, urban biker) with a $35,000 toy with almost no miles on it or someone who has never ridden but always just wondered about it a little . . . you will find Hell’s Angel by Ralph “Sonny” Barger to be fascinating reading.
Barger – an icon among bikers and the founder of the Oakland Hells Angels MC – tells about the early days of starting the club. About the fights when the brothers had to stand together against the outsiders – the law, other clubs, or strangers in bars. The story is not always pretty and is probably not for the squeamish. Barger does not apologize for his life or for his club. He is simply relating stories in a straightforward manner and, in many cases, to set the record straight between what really happened and the ways in which events got reported. Barger tells the real story about what happened at the Rolling Stones Concert in Altamont in ’69, about the confrontation between the Hell’s Angels and the Viet Nam War protestors in ’65, and about the mutual acceptance between the Hell’s Angels and the Haight-Asbury Hippies of the early 60’s.
The people Barger writes about are unforgettable. They were a violent group, many of whom met early death through drugs, accidents, shootings or disappearance. The women in his life; from his birth mother who deserted the family, his first wife who died of a botched abortion attempt to his current old lady – the women who rode with, loved, and were loved by, Barger.
Some of the stories will make you cringe such as the stories about busting people’s fingers with a ball-peen hammer or putting their hands in vises. Other stories will make you laugh such as the guys who thought a coffin would make a cool coffee table so they stole one – they just forgot to make sure it was empty! All of the stories will make you think – about what these guys really were.
Some of the club rules seem amusing now; “no swearing at meetings.” Some rules made basic sense; “no messing with another member’s wife, girlfriend, old lady, whoever she is, if she’s yours, she’s yours. If you fuck with someone else’s old lady, you are out of the club. There are fifty million women in the world, which leaves only a few thousand Hell’s Angels old ladies you can’t fuck with.”
Legal battles won -Feds attempts to bust the HA under the RICO laws and lost -several stints of prison time.
Barger tells of his personal battles with throat cancer.
Those who are casual bikers today feel the influence of the Hell’s Angels MC and the biker movies. When you ride down the street and the civilians are scared and don’t want to make eye contact, when you go in a place of business and are told “no biker attire”, when you lose a job because you wear colors, when people assume that you are a criminal because you ride a bike, when people are intimidated by the black leather.
But then isn’t seeing people a little intimidated part of the fun of being a biker?
We hope that when people read this book that they will understand that this is a story about a very small percentage of the people who ride Harleys. The vast majority of the bikers are good, law-abiding citizens who just love motorcycles and being with other bikers. For every one biker that is out there raising hell there are 99 more just out for a good time.
Hell’s Angel will be available May 17th, 2000. The kick-off event in New York City will be followed by a cross-country tour by Barger with book-signing events in many major cities along the old “Route 66”. Barger will also appear at the Hollister Rally and at the Sturgis Rally.
There will be 5,000 limited edition, leatherbound, personally autographed collector’s edition available. These can be pre-ordered through Barger’s website. The book is published by Harper Collins Publishers, NYC.
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