Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club - Softcover

9780060937546: Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 

The only authorized, authentic book about the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club by founding member, Sonny Barger—featuring a brand new introduction

Narrated by the visionary founding member, Hell's Angel provides a fascinating all-access pass to the secret world of the notorious Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club. Sonny Barger recounts the birth of the original Oakland Hell's Angels and the four turbulent decades that followed. Hell's Angel also chronicles the way the HAMC revolutionized the look of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle and built what has become a worldwide bike-riding fraternity, a beacon for freedom-seekers the world over.

Dozens of photos, including many from private collections and from noted photographers, provide visual documentation to this extraordinary tale. Never simply a story about motorcycles, colorful characters, and high-speed thrills, Hell's Angel is the ultimate outlaw's tale of loyalty and betrayal, subcultures and brotherhood, and the real price of freedom.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Ralph "Sonny" Barger is the author of Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club. A master mechanic who has owned and operated his own bike shops, he currently lives in Arizona, where he rides every day.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Chapter OneMuster To Custer

A motorcycle run is a get-together, a moving party. It's a real show of power and solidarity when you're a Hell's Angel. It's being free and getting away from all the bullshit. Angels don't go on runs looking for trouble; we go to ride our bikes and to have a good time together. We are a club.

Most Hell's Angels are great riders. A group of Hell's Angels cruising down the road, riding next to each other and traveling at a speed of over eighty miles an hour, is a real sight. It's something else, a whole other thing, when you're in the pack riding. It's fast and dangerous and by God, you better be paying attention. Whatever happens to the guy in front of you is going to happen to you. It's different from other vehicles. You gotta be alert. Like Fuzzy, an Oakland Angel, once said, "God damn, we do eighty-five or ninety in the rain sometimes. I don't even go that fast in my car!"

When Hell's Angels chapters started getting chartered outside the state of California in the late sixties, that's when we first started our cross-country rides like the USA and World Runs. We'd meet up with the new clubs along the way, and they'd join the run. Man, we used to ride from Oakland to New York on those early rigidframe bikes, and they bounced around so much that if you drove sixty miles in an hour you were making great time. The vibration left you tingling and numb for about an hour after you got off your bike. lf you covered three or four hundred miles in a day you were hauling ass. The other big problem then was that we'd have to find gas stations every forty miles or so, since those old-style bikes with small tanks couldn't make it past sixty miles. Today, on a Harley FXRT, with their rubber-mounted motors and big gas tanks, you not only get a smoother ride, you can log five or six hundred miles a day on a few tanks of gas without breaking a sweat.

The big differences between the Hell's Angels and the rest of the motorcycle world are our bikes and the way we ride. This is serious business to us. Our bikes are us. We know that. The copsknow that, and everybody else should know that too. The law and the road are one. Even today, if the cops know a large group of Hell's Angels is headed somewhere, they'll show up in force, alerting neighboring police forces along the way. This mutual assistance pact they set up has been used against us for as long as I can remember. It's no different today than it was thirty years ago. We keep going and they keep coming around with all their surveillance methods and radio equipment watching us and keeping tabs. We don't look for trouble or have intentions of starting any, but by God, it always seems to be around.

The reactions of law enforcement can depend on where you are. We were on the road tearing through the Texas panhandle and on into Oklahoma. As we approached Oklahoma City, ten or twelve Oklahoma state troopers pulled onto the freeway and escorted us right through the city limits. They didn't even want us stopping for gas.

In Texas a cop asked me, "Excuse me, partner, but ... why do you and your friends carry those big knives?"

I told him, "Because we're all felons and we can't carry a big gun like you."

Another time in Missouri, fifteen of us were sitting by the side of the road taking a break when a state trooper pulled up, got out of his car, walked up to us, and said, "Mind if I ask a stupid question?"

"Not if you don't mind a stupid answer."

"What are fifteen Hell's Angels from California doing sitting on the side of the road in Missouri?"

"We lost four or five of our people and now we can't figure out where they're at."

The trooper thought for a few seconds. "I just might be able to help you. I could get on my radio and start checking around and help you find them." He radioed around to a bunch of stations and other troopers, and once he located them, he gave us directions on how to meet up with our lost brothers.

On the other side of the coin, there was a cop in Texas who spotted us on a highway outside of Amarillo, got scared, or else thought he was doing his job, and called for reinforcements. They roadblocked the highway in front of us with machine guns. Another time on our way to South Carolina we were stopped and each of us was ID'd. It took over two hours, and all for nothing. Cops can be assholes when they want to be.

The Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club has four or five mandatory runs per year and probably fifteen or twenty parties and smaller runs. If you multiply that by the forty years the Oakland club has been around, that's a lot of motorcycling. But of all the runs, there is one in particular that sticks in my mind, and that was the time we decended on the big annual Black Hills motorcycle run in Sturgis, South Dakota, in 1982. I'll try to describe it as best I can remember it, because in my mind it separated the sheep from the goats. We code-named that run "Muster to Custer."

There was another motorcycle club-whose name I won't mention because it is a big club and we've been at odds with them for years-who in early 1982 had said publicly that the only reason the Hell's Angels didn't go to Sturgis was because they went to Sturgis.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherMariner Books
  • Publication date2001
  • ISBN 10 0060937548
  • ISBN 13 9780060937546
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages288
  • Rating

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Sonny Barger, Keith Zimmerman, Kent Zimmerman
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks (2001)
ISBN 10: 0060937548 ISBN 13: 9780060937546
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
Ergodebooks
(Houston, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Reprint. Seller Inventory # DADAX0060937548

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 13.62
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Seller Image

Sonny Barger", "Keith Zimmerman", "Kent Zimmerman"
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks (2001)
ISBN 10: 0060937548 ISBN 13: 9780060937546
New Soft Cover Quantity: 10
Seller:
booksXpress
(Bayonne, NJ, U.S.A.)

Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780060937546

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 14.08
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Sonny Barger; Keith Zimmerman; Kent Zimmerman
Published by Mariner Books (2001)
ISBN 10: 0060937548 ISBN 13: 9780060937546
New Softcover Quantity: 2
Seller:
Lakeside Books
(Benton Harbor, MI, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Brand New! Not Overstocks or Low Quality Book Club Editions! Direct From the Publisher! We're not a giant, faceless warehouse organization! We're a small town bookstore that loves books and loves it's customers! Buy from Lakeside Books!. Seller Inventory # OTF-S-9780060937546

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 11.03
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.99
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Seller Image

Barger, Ralph; Zimmerman, Keith; Zimmerman, Kent
Published by Mariner Books (2001)
ISBN 10: 0060937548 ISBN 13: 9780060937546
New Softcover Quantity: 2
Seller:
GreatBookPrices
(Columbia, MD, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 498673-n

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 12.98
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 2.64
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Barger, Sonny
Published by Harper Collins Publishers (2001)
ISBN 10: 0060937548 ISBN 13: 9780060937546
New Softcover Quantity: > 20
Seller:
INDOO
(Avenel, NJ, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Brand New. Seller Inventory # 0060937548

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 12.76
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.99
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Seller Image

Ralph "Sonny" Barger
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Inc (2001)
ISBN 10: 0060937548 ISBN 13: 9780060937546
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
Grand Eagle Retail
(Wilmington, DE, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. The only authorized, authentic book about the Hell's Angels by founding member, Sonny Barger Hell's Angel chronicles the origins and rise of the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club through the eyes of its founding member. Sonny Barger started the Oakland chapter of the Hell's Angels in the late 50s with a loose-knit group of high school dropouts and social outcasts. Bonded by the love of motorcycles, they formed a cadre of hard-driving hombres and answered the call of the open road. Hell's Angel is not only a story of motorcycles, it is a tale of loyalty and betrayal, subcultures and brotherhood and freedom. It is Sonny's fight for personal freedom and his right to exist with a band of individuals who choose an alternative life. A tale of loyalty and betrayal, brotherhood and liberation, "Hell's Angel" is the bestselling story of the group's visionary founder and his fight for personal freedom and the right to live the outlaw life on the open road. 50 photos. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780060937546

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 17.97
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Sonny Barger; Keith Zimmerman; Kent Zimmerman
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks (2001)
ISBN 10: 0060937548 ISBN 13: 9780060937546
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
Ergodebooks
(Houston, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # BKZN9780060937546

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 18.43
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Sonny Barger
Published by HarperCollins (2001)
ISBN 10: 0060937548 ISBN 13: 9780060937546
New Quantity: 8
Seller:
PBShop.store US
(Wood Dale, IL, U.S.A.)

Book Description PAP. Condition: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000. Seller Inventory # WB-9780060937546

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 19.91
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Sonny Barger; Keith Zimmerman; Kent Zimmerman
Published by Mariner Books (2001)
ISBN 10: 0060937548 ISBN 13: 9780060937546
New Softcover Quantity: 3
Seller:
California Books
(Miami, FL, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # I-9780060937546

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 20.00
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Sonny Barger
Published by Mariner Books (2001)
ISBN 10: 0060937548 ISBN 13: 9780060937546
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldenWavesOfBooks
(Fayetteville, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_0060937548

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 22.61
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.00
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds

There are more copies of this book

View all search results for this book