Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

  Crime and the Community

  Far from being freaks, the Hell’s Angels are a logical product of the culture that now claims to be shocked at their existence. The generation represented by the editors of Time has lived so long in a world full of Celluloid outlaws hustling toothpaste and hair oil that it is no longer capable of confronting the real thing. For twenty years they have sat with their children and watched yesterday’s outlaws raise hell with yesterday’s world … and now they are bringing up children who think Jesse James is a television character. This is the generation that went to war for Mom, God and Apple Butter, the American Way of Life. When they came back, they crowned Eisenhower and then retired to the giddy comfort of their TV parlors, to cultivate the subtleties of American history as seen by Hollywood.

  To them the appearance of the Hell’s Angels must have seemed like a wonderful publicity stunt. In a nation of frightened dullards there is a sorry shortage of outlaws, and those few who make the grade are always welcome: Frank Sinatra, Alexander King, Elizabeth Taylor, Raoul Duke … they have that extra “something.”

  Charles Starkweather had something extra too, but he couldn’t get an agent, and instead of taking his vitality to Hollywood, he freaked out in Wyoming and killed a dozen people for reasons he couldn’t explain. So the state put him to death. There were other outlaws who missed the brass ring in the fifties. Lenny Bruce was one; he was never quite right for television. Bruce had tremendous promise until about 1961, when the people who’d been getting such a kick out of him suddenly realized he was serious. Just like Starkweather was serious … and like the Hell’s Angels are serious.

  Soon after the Post article appeared, the Associated Press put this item on the wire, with a Detroit dateline: “A gang of seven teen-age terrorists—13, 14 and 15 years old—has been broken up, police said yesterday. Police said the boys perpetrated arson, armed robbery, burglary and cruelty to animals. The gang usually wore hoods, made of pillowcases. They called themselves ‘The Bylaws’ and named Jews, Negroes and Frats (well-dressed students) as hate objects.”

  Several months earlier the United Press International wire carried this item, from Dallas, headed: MOB BLOCKS RESCUE.

  Firemen attempting to reach a burning home in south Dallas Thursday night were blocked by a group of 60 yelling, heckling youths who refused to move out of the street.

  The firemen called police. Several carloads of police, using dogs, finally dispersed the young hecklers, whom they described as “wild punks.”

  The youths threatened and fought with police.

  Firemen who then were able to make their way into the burning house found the limp form of Patrick Chambers, two. But it was too late. The child was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital.

  His mother, Mrs. Geneva Chambers, 31, and a neighbor, Mrs. Jessie Jones, 27, were hospitalized in shock.

  “If your police want trouble, they’ve come to the right place and we’ll take care of you, too,” a fire department spokesman quoted one of the youths as saying.

  Firemen said when they tried to revive the baby on the lawn, several youths ran up and “tried to stomp on the dead baby.”

  A woman and two men, part of the growing crowd of 400 persons, were arrested.

  Police said the woman scratched and slapped a policeman. The men jumped on policemen trying to prevent the woman from attacking the officer.

  As you were, I was

  As I am, you will be.

  —H. Himmler

  (quotation scrawled on a wall at a Hell’s Angel party)

  Now, looking for labels, it is hard to call the Hell’s Angels anything but mutants. They are urban outlaws with a rural ethic and a new, improvised style of self-preservation. Their image of themselves derives mainly from Celluloid, from the Western movies and two-fisted TV shows that have taught them most of what they know about the society they live in. Very few read books, and in most cases their formal education ended at fifteen or sixteen. What little they know of history has come from the mass media, beginning with comics … so if they see themselves in terms of the past, it’s because they can’t grasp the terms of the present, much less the future. They are the sons of poor men and drifters, losers and the sons of losers. Their backgrounds are overwhelmingly ordinary. As people, they are like millions of other people. But in their collective identity they have a peculiar fascination so obvious that even the press has recognized it, although not without cynicism. In its ritual flirtation with reality the press has viewed the Angels with a mixture of awe, humor and terror—justified, as always, by a slavish dedication to the public appetite, which most journalists find so puzzling and contemptible that they have long since abandoned the task of understanding it to a handful of poll-takers and “experts.”

  The widespread appeal of the Angels is worth pondering. Unlike most other rebels, the Angels have given up hope that the world is going to change for them. They assume, on good evidence, that the people who run the social machinery have little use for outlaw motorcyclists, and they are reconciled to being losers. But instead of losing quietly, one by one, they have banded together with a mindless kind of loyalty and moved outside the framework, for good or ill. They may not have an answer, but at least they are still on their feet. One night about halfway through one of their weekly meetings I thought of Joe Hill on his way to face a Utah firing squad and saying his final words: “Don’t mourn. Organize.” It is safe to say that no Hell’s Angel has ever heard of Joe Hill or would know a Wobbly from a bushmaster, but there is something very similar about the attitudes. The Industrial Workers of the World had serious blueprints for society, while the Hell’s Angels mean only to defy the social machinery. There is no talk among the Angels of “building a better world,” yet their reactions to the world they live in are rooted in the same kind of anarchic, para-legal sense of conviction that brought the armed wrath of the Establishment down on the Wobblies. There is the same kind of suicidal loyalty, the same kind of in-group rituals and nicknames, and above all the same feeling of constant warfare with an unjust world. The Wobblies were losers, and so are the Angels … and if every loser in this country today rode a motorcycle the whole highway system would have to be modified.

  There is an important difference between the words “loser” and “outlaw.” One is passive and the other is active, and the main reasons the Angels are such good copy is that they are acting out the day-dreams of millions of losers who don’t wear any defiant insignia and who don’t know how to be outlaws. The streets of every city are thronged with men who would pay all the money they could get their hands on to be transformed—even for a day—into hairy, hard-fisted brutes who walk over cops, extort free drinks from terrified bartenders and thunder out of town on big motorcycles after raping the banker’s daughter. Even people who think the Angels should all be put to sleep find it easy to identify with them. They command a fascination, however reluctant, that borders on psychic masturbation.

  The Angels don’t like being called losers, but they have learned to live with it. “Yeah, I guess I am,” said one. “But you’re looking at one loser who’s going to make a hell of a scene on the way out.”

  ‡ It reminded me of a cartoon in The Realist showing the World’s Fair Poverty Pavilion.

  ‡‡ One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion

  ‡ Several months later, when Kesey came to trial on the first marijuana charge, one of the conditions attached to his relatively light six months’ jail sentence was that he sell his property and leave San Mateo County—permanently. Which he did, but he moved a little farther than the authorities had in mind. On January 31, 1966, Kesey jumped bail and disappeared. A suicide note was found in his abandoned bus on the northern California coast, but not even the police believed he was dead. Results of my own investigation are very hazy, although I managed—after many months of digging—to locate his forwarding address:

  c/o Agricultural Attaché

  U. S. Embassy

 
Asunción, Paraguay

  ‡ Name deleted at insistence of publisher’s lawyers

  ‡ There is a minority opinion among acid-eaters that the solemn preparations for a controlled LSD experiment might produce more bad trips than they prevent. Many “subjects” are so rigidly indoctrinated by what they’ve read and heard that by the time they finally swallow the capsule, their reactions have already been articulated in their own minds. When the experience deviates from their preconceived notions—or shatters them altogether—they are likely to panic. And panic is always a bad trip, with or without acid.

  ‡‡ In retrospect I think the cops’ restraint was not entirely rooted in the knowledge that any illegal arrests might cause them embarrassment later, in the courtroom. I’m sure they also felt that if they waited long enough the loonies in Kesey’s enclave would destroy each other, thus saving the taxpayers the expense of loading court dockets with complicated trials.

  ‡ In June 1966.

  ‡‡ After three or four months of chronic overindulgence on acid, most of the Angels began tapering off. A few suffered terrifying hallucinations and swore off the drug entirely. Some said they were afraid it would drive them crazy or cause them to wreck their bikes. By 1966 only a few were still eating acid with any consistency. One of these told me LSD was the best thing that ever happened to him, “I haven’t had a worry since I took the first cap,” he said.

  In September of ’66 Kesey returned to California unannounced and made a series of brief appearances at “underground” parties and press conferences. He said he’d decided, after six months south of the border, to return to this country as “a permanent fugitive and salt in the wounds of J. Edgar Hoover.” Kesey’s red panel truck was either too slow, or his driver too inept, to avoid J. Edgar’s hounds. As this was written he was free on more than $30,000 bail and awaiting trial on charges that could send him to prison for one to five years. My own feeling is that he should have stayed in Asunción and gotten a job.

  ‡ The Rattlers are generally older. The club dates back to the days of the Booze Fighters. “The Rattlers had a lot of class in the old days,” one of the Oakland Angels lamented. “But all they do now is sit around their bar and play dominoes.”

  ‡ Oakland’s official population is nearly four hundred thousand, but it is the center of a vastly urban sprawl called the East Bay, with a population of about two million—more than twice the size of San Francisco

  ‡ Eisenhower

  ‡ At one press conference in Oakland, held at the downtown office of the Angels’ bondswoman, I counted forty-two reporters on hand and thirteen microphones massed in front of Barger while he spoke—and five TV cameras.

  22

  He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

  —Dr. Johnson

  The neighborhood suddenly exploded with excited, morbid crowds. Hysterical women surged forward in a frenzy, screeching in almost sexual ecstasy, scratching and fighting the agents and police in their attempt to reach the body. One fat-breasted woman with stringy red hair broke through the cordon and dipped her handkerchief in the blood, clutched it to her sweaty dress and waddled off down the street …

  —From an account of the death of John Dillinger

  Toward Christmas the action slowed down and the Angels dropped out of the headlines. Tiny lost his job, Sonny got involved in a long jury trial on the attempted-murder charge,‡ and the El Adobe was demolished by the wrecker’s ball. The Angels drifted from one bar to another, but they found it harder to establish a hangout than to maintain one. In San Francisco it was just as slow. Frenchy spent three months in General Hospital when a can of gasoline blew up on him, and Puff went to jail after a fracas with two cops who raided an Angel birthday party. Winter is always slow for the outlaws. Many have to go to work to stay eligible for next summer’s unemployment insurance, it is too cold for big outdoor parties, and the constant rain makes riding an uncomfortable hazard.

  It seemed like a good time to get some work done, so I dropped off the circuit. Terry came by now and then to keep me posted. One day he showed up with a broken arm, saying he’d wrecked his bike, his old lady had left him and the niggers had blown up his house. I’d heard about the house from Barger’s wife, Elsie, who was handling the communications post at their home in Oakland. During one of the sporadic flare-ups between the Hell’s Angels and the Oakland Negroes somebody had thrown a homemade bomb through the window of the house that Terry was renting in East Oakland. The fire destroyed the house and all of Marilyn’s paintings. She was a pretty little girl about nineteen, with long blond hair and a respectable family in one of the valley towns. She’d been living with Terry for nearly six months, covering the walls with her artwork, but she had no stomach for bombs. The divorce was effected soon after they moved to another dwelling. “I came back one night and she was gone,” said Terry. “All she left was a note: ‘Dear Terry, Fuck it.’ ” And that was that.

  Nothing else happened until January, when Mother Miles got snuffed. He was riding his bike through Berkeley when a truck came out of a side street and hit him head on, breaking both legs and fracturing his skull. He hung in a coma for six days, then died on a Sunday morning, less than twenty-four hours before his thirtieth birthday—leaving a wife, two children and his righteous girl friend, Ann.

  Miles had been president of the Sacramento chapter. His influence was so great that in 1965 he moved the whole club down to Oakland, claiming the police had made life intolerable for them by constant harassment. The outlaws simply picked up and moved, not questioning Miles’ wisdom. His real name was James, but the Angels called him Mother.

  “I guess it was because he was kind of motherly,” said Gut. “Miles was great, great people. He took care of everybody. He worried. You could always depend on him.”

  I knew Miles in a distant kind of way. He didn’t trust writers, but there was nothing mean about him, and once he decided I wasn’t going to get him locked up somehow, he was friendly. He had the build of a pot-bellied stevedore, with a round face and a wide, flaring beard. I never thought of him as a hoodlum. He had the usual Hell’s Angel police record: drunk, disorderly, fighting, vagrancy, loitering, petty larceny and a handful of ominous “suspicion of charges that had never gone to trial. But he wasn’t plagued by the same demons that motivate some of the others. He wasn’t happy with the world, but he didn’t brood about it, and his appetite for revenge didn’t extend beyond specific wrongs done to the Angels or to him personally. You could drink with Miles without wondering when he was going to swing on somebody or lift your money off the bar. He wasn’t that way. Booze seemed to make him more genial. Like most of the Angels’ leaders, he had a quick mind and a quality of self-control which the others relied on.

  When I heard he’d been killed I called Sonny to ask about the funeral, but by the time I finally got hold of him the details were already on the radio and in the newspapers. Miles’ mother was arranging for the funeral in Sacramento. The outlaw caravan would form at Barger’s house at eleven on Thursday morning. The Angels have gone to plenty of funerals for their own people, but until this one they had never tried to run the procession for ninety miles along a major highway. There was also a chance that the Sacramento police would try to keep them out of town.

  The word went out on Monday and Tuesday by telephone. This was not going to be any Jay Gatsby funeral; the Angels wanted a full-dress rally. Miles’ status was not the point; the death of any Angel requires a show of strength by the others. It is a form of affirmation—not for the dead, but the living. There are no set penalties for not showing up, because none are necessary. In the cheap loneliness that is the overriding fact of every outlaw’s life, a funeral is a bleak reminder that the tribe is smaller by one. The circle is one link shorter, the enemy jacks up the odds just a little bit more, and defenders of the faith need something to take off the chill. A funeral is a time for counting the loyal, for seeing how many are left. There is no question about skippin
g work, going without sleep or riding for hours in a cold wind to be there on time.

  Early Thursday morning the bikes began arriving in Oakland. Most of the outlaws were already in the Bay Area, or at least within fifty or sixty miles, but a handful of Satan’s Slaves rode all of Wednesday night, five hundred miles from Los Angeles, to join the main caravan. Others came from Fresno and San Jose and Santa Rosa. There were Hangmen, Misfits, Presidents, Nightriders, Crossmen and some with no colors at all. A hard-faced little man whom nobody spoke to wore an olive-drab bombardier’s jacket with just the word “Loner” on the back, written in small, blue-inked letters that looked like a signature.

  I was crossing the Bay Bridge when a dozen Gypsy Jokers came roaring past, ignoring the speed limit as they split up to go around me on both sides of the car. Seconds later they disappeared up ahead in the fog. The morning was cold and bridge traffic was slow except for motorcycles. Down in the Bay there were freighters lined up, waiting for open piers.

  The procession rolled at exactly eleven—a hundred and fifty bikes and about twenty cars. A few miles north of Oakland, at the Carquinez Bridge, the outlaws picked up a police escort assigned to keep them under control. A Highway Patrol car led the caravan all the way to Sacramento. The lead Angels rode two abreast in the right lane, holding a steady sixty-five miles an hour. At the head, with Barger, was the scruffy Praetorian Guard: Magoo, Tommy, Jimmy, Skip, Tiny, Zorro, Terry and Charger Charley the Child Molester. The spectacle disrupted traffic all along the way. It looked like something from another world. Here was the “scum of the earth,” the “lowest form of animals,” an army of unwashed gang rapists … being escorted toward the state capital by a Highway Patrol car with a flashing yellow light. The steady pace of the procession made it unnaturally solemn. Not even Senator Murphy could have mistaken it for a dangerous run. There were the same bearded faces; the same earrings, emblems, swastikas and grinning death’s-heads flapping in the wind—but this time there were no party clothes, no hamming it up for the squares. They were still playing the role, but all the humor was missing. The only trouble en route came when the procession was halted after a filling-station owner complained that somebody had stolen fourteen quarts of oil at the last gas stop. Barger quickly took up a collection to pay the man off, muttering that whoever stole the oil was due for a chain-whipping later on. The Angels assured each other that it must have been a punk in one of the cars at the rear of the caravan, some shithead without any class.