Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga

by Hunter S. Thompson

  In Sacramento there was no sign of harassment. Hundreds of curious spectators lined the route between the funeral home and the cemetery. Inside the chapel a handful of Jim Miles’ childhood friends and relatives waited with his body, a hired minister and three nervous attendants. They knew what was coming—Mother Miles’ “people,” hundreds of thugs, wild brawlers and bizarre-looking girls in tight Levi’s, scarves and waist-length platinum-colored wigs. Miles’ mother, a heavy middle-aged woman in a black suit, wept quietly in a front pew, facing the open casket.

  At one-thirty the outlaw caravan arrived. The slow rumble of motorcycle engines rattled glass in the mortuary windows. Police tried to keep traffic moving as TV cameras followed Barger and perhaps a hundred others toward the door of the chapel. Many outlaws waited outside during the service. They stood in quiet groups, leaning against the bikes and killing time with lazy conversation. There was hardly any talk about Miles. In one group a pint of whiskey made the rounds. Some of the outlaws talked to bystanders, trying to explain what was happening. “Yeah, the guy was one of our leaders,” said an Angel to an elderly man in a baseball cap. “He was good people. Some punk ran a stop sign and snuffed him. We came to bury him with the colors.”

  Inside the pine-paneled chapel the minister was telling his weird congregation that “the wages of sin is death.” He looked like a Norman Rockwell druggist and was obviously repelled by the whole scene. Not all the pews were full, but standing room in the rear was crowded all the way back to the door. The minister talked about “sin” and “justification,” pausing now and then as if he expected a rebuttal from the crowd. “It’s not my business to pass judgment on anybody,” he continued. “Nor is it my business to eulogize anybody. But it is my business to speak out a warning that it will happen to you! I don’t know what philosophy some of you have about death, but I know the Scriptures tell us that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked … Jesus didn’t die for an animal, he died for a man … What I say about Jim won’t change anything, but I can preach the gospel to you and I have a responsibility to warn you that you will all have to answer to God!”

  The crowd was shifting and sweating. The chapel was so hot that it seemed like the Devil was waiting in one of the anterooms, ready to claim the wicked just as soon as the sermon was over.

  “How many of you—” asked the minister, “how many of you asked yourselves on the way here, ‘Who is next?’ ”

  At this point several Angels in the pews rose and walked out, cursing quietly at a way of life they had long ago left behind. The minister ignored these mutinous signs and launched into a story about a Philippian jailer. “Holy shit!” mumbled Tiny. He’d been standing quietly in the rear for about thirty minutes, pouring sweat and eyeing the minister as if he meant to hunt him down later in the day and extract all his teeth. Tiny’s departure caused five or six others to leave. The minister sensed he was losing his audience, so he brought the Philippian story to a quick end.

  There was no music as the crowd filed out. I passed by the casket and was shocked to see Mother Miles clean-shaven, lying peacefully on his back in a blue suit, white shirt and a maroon tie. His Hell’s Angels jacket, covered with exotic emblems, was mounted on a stand at the foot of the casket. Behind it were thirteen wreaths, some bearing names of other outlaw clubs.

  I barely recognized Miles. He looked younger than twenty-nine and very ordinary. But his face was calm, as though he were not at all surprised to find himself there in a box. He wouldn’t have liked the clothes he was wearing, but since the Angels weren’t paying for the funeral, the best they could do was make sure the colors went into the casket before it was sealed. Barger stayed behind with the pallbearers to make sure the thing was done right.

  After the funeral more than two hundred motorcycles followed the hearse to the cemetery. Behind the Angels rode all the other clubs, including a half dozen East Bay Dragons—and, according to a radio commentator, “dozens of teen-age riders who looked so solemn that you’d think Robin Hood had just died.”

  The Hell’s Angels knew better. Not all of them had read about Robin Hood, but they understood that the parallel was complimentary. Perhaps the younger outlaws believed it, but there is room in their margin for one or two friendly illusions. Those who are almost thirty, or more than that, have been living too long with their own scurvy image to think of themselves as heroes. They understand that heroes are always “good guys,” and they have seen enough cowboy movies to know that good guys win in the end. The myth didn’t seem to include Miles, who was “one of the best.” But all he got in the end was two broken legs, a smashed head and a tongue-lashing from the preacher. Only his Hell’s Angels identity kept him from going to the grave as anonymously as any ribbon clerk. As it was, his funeral got nationwide press coverage: Life had a picture of the procession entering the cemetery, TV newscasts gave the funeral a solemn priority, and the Chronicle headline said: HELL’S ANGELS BURY THEIR OWN—BLACK JACKETS AND AN ODD DIGNITY. Mother Miles would have been pleased.

  Moments after the burial the caravan was escorted out of town by a phalanx of police cars, with sirens howling. The brief truce was ended. At the city limits the Angels screwed it on and roared back to Richmond, across the Bay from San Francisco, where they held an all-night wake that kept police on edge until long after dawn. On Sunday night there was a meeting in Oakland to confirm Miles’ successor, Big Al. It was a quiet affair, but without the grimness of the funeral. The banshee’s wail that had seemed so loud on Thursday was already fading away. After the meeting there was a beer party at the Sinners Club, and by the time the place closed they had already set the date for the next run. The Angels would gather in Bakersfield, on the first day of spring.

  ALL MY LIFE MY HEART HAS SOUGHT

  A THING I CANNOT NAME.

  —Remembered line from a long-forgotten poem

  Months later, when I rarely saw the Angels, I still had the legacy of the big machine—four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning, when all the cops were lurking over on 101. My first crash had wrecked the bike completely and it took several months to have it rebuilt. After that I decided to ride it differently: I would stop pushing my luck on curves, always wear a helmet and try to keep within range of the nearest speed limit … my insurance had already been canceled and my driver’s license was hanging by a thread.

  So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head … but in a matter of minutes I’d be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz … not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach.

  There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.

  Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out … thirty-five, forty-five … then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these … and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything … then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a high board.

  Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly�
��zaaapppp—going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea.

  The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil-slick … instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-inch notices in the paper the next day: “An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway I.”

  Indeed … but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there’s no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes.

  But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right … and that’s when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it … howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica … letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge … The Edge … There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others—the living—are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.

  But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it’s In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

  ‡ Which ended with a hung jury and eventual reduction of the charge to “assault with a deadly weapon”—to which Barger pleaded guilty and served six months in jail.

  Postscript

  On Labor Day 1966, I pushed my luck a little too far and got badly stomped by four or five Angels who seemed to feel I was taking advantage of them. A minor disagreement suddenly became very serious.

  None of those who did me were among the group I considered my friends—but they were Angels, and that was enough to cause many of the others to participate after one of the brethren teed off on me. The first blow was launched with no hint of warning and I thought for a moment that it was just one of those drunken accidents that a man has to live with in this league. But within seconds I was clubbed from behind by the Angel I’d been talking to just a moment earlier. Then I was swarmed in a general flail. As I went down I caught a glimpse of Tiny, standing on the rim of the action. His was the only familiar face I could see … and if there is any one person a non-Angel does not want to see among his attackers, that person is Tiny. I yelled to him for help—but more out of desperation than hope.

  Yet it was Tiny who pulled me out of the stomp circle before the others managed to fracture my skull or explode my groin. Even while the heavy boots were punching into my ribs and jolting my head back and forth I could hear Tiny somewhere above me, saying, “Come on, come on, that’s enough.” I suppose he helped more than I realized, but if he had done nothing else I owe him a huge favor for preventing one of the outlaws from crashing a huge rock down on my head. I could see the vicious swine trying to get at me with the stone held in a two-handed Godzilla grip above his head. Tiny kept him mercifully out of range … and then, during a lull in the boot action, he pulled me to my feet and hurried me off toward the highway.

  Nobody followed. The attack ended with the same inexplicable suddenness that it had begun. There was no vocal aftermath, then or later. I didn’t expect one—no more than I’d expect a pack of sharks to explain their feeding frenzy.

  I got in my car and sped off, spitting blood on the dashboard and weaving erratically across both lanes of the midnight highway until my one good eye finally came into focus. I hadn’t gone very far when I realized Magoo was asleep in the back seat. I pulled off the road and woke him up. He was jolted at the sight of my bloody face. “Jesus Christ!” he muttered. “Who’s after us? You shoulda woke me up!”

  “Never mind,” I said. “You better get out. I’m leaving.” He nodded blankly, then lurched out to meet the enemy. I left him standing in the gravel beside the road.

  My next stop was the hospital in Santa Rosa, nearly fifty miles south of the Angel encampment. The emergency-ward waiting room was full of wounded Gypsy Jokers. The most serious case was a broken jaw, the result of a clash earlier that evening with a pipe-wielding Hell’s Angel.

  The Jokers told me they were on their way north to wipe the Angels out. “It’ll be a goddamn slaughter,” said one.

  I agreed, and wished them luck. I wanted no part of it—not even with a shotgun. I was tired, swollen and whipped. My face looked like it had been jammed into the spokes of a speeding Harley, and the only thing keeping me awake was the spastic pain of a broken rib.

  It had been a bad trip … fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer. On my way back to San Francisco, I tried to compose a fitting epitaph. I wanted something original, but there was no escaping the echo of Mistah Kurtz’ final words from the heart of darkness: “The horror! The horror!… Exterminate all the brutes!”

  The author wishes to thank the following for permission to reprint material:

  The World of Sex by Henry Miller, Copyright © 1959 by Henry Miller; Copyright © 1965 by Grove Press, Inc. Used by permission of Grove Press, Inc.

  California: The Wild Ones. Copyright © 1965, Newsweek, Inc. Used by permission of Newsweek, Inc.

  The Wilder Ones. Reprinted by permission from Time The Weekly Newsmagazine; © Time Inc. 1965.

  They Came, They Saw, They Did Not Conquer by William R. Rodgers. Copyright © 1963 The Farm Tribune. Used by permission of The Farm Tribune.

  Mrs. Pat Whitwright for her letter on this page.

  California Takes Steps to Curb Terrorism of Ruffian Cyclists. © 1966 by the New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

  “The Bowery Grenadiers,” words and music by John Allison. © Copyright 1948, 1957 Hollis Music, Inc., New York, N.Y. Used by permission.

  “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Copyright © 1955 by Quintet Music, Inc. Used by permission.

  The Hell’s Angels Scandals—Black Boots, Booze, and Highway Broads by Birney Jarvis. Copyright © 1965 by Male Magazine. Used by permission of Male Publishing Corporation.

  “A World of Our Own.” Copyright © 1965 by Springfield Music, Ltd. Chappell & Co., Inc., owner of publication and allied rights for the Western Hemisphere.

  “Do-Re-Mi,” words and music by Woody Guthrie. Copyright © 1961, 1963, Ludlow Music, Inc., New York, N.Y. Used by permission.

  Hell’s Angels by William Murray. Copyright © by Curtis Publishing Company, 1965. Used by permission.

  Hell’s Angels: How They Live and Think by Jerry Cohen. Copyright © 1965 by The Times Mirror Company. Used by permission of The Los Angeles Times.

  “To the Angels” by Allen Ginsberg. Copyright © 1966 Liberation. Used by permission of Allen Ginsberg.

  Mr. Ralph Barger for his telegram on this page.

  To the friends who lent me money and kept me

  mercifully unemployed. No writer can function

  without them. Again, thanks. HST

  By Hunter S. Thompson:

  FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL 72

  THE GREAT SHARK HUNT

  FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS

  THE CURSE OF LONO

  GENERATION OF SWINE: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the 80’s Gonzo Papers, Volume II

  HELL’S ANGELS

  BETTER THAN SEX

  THE RUM DIARY

  SCREWJACK
AND OTHER STORIES

  KINGDOM OF FEAR: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

  About the Author

  HUNTER S. THOMPSON (1937–2005) was a journalist and novelist who created what came to be known as “Gonzo journalism.” A native of Louisville, Kentucky, he began writing as a sports columnist in Florida, and subsequently wrote for many newspapers. His research on the Hell’s Angels involved more than a year of close association with the outlaws—riding, loafing, plotting, and eventually being stomped. Thompson’s other works include Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72, and The Rum Diary (a novel).

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