Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gangs

by Thompson, Tony

  A few weeks before the opening of that year’s annual Rock and Blues, the police in Derbyshire received a tip-off that the Hell’s Angels were planning to mount an attack at some point during the proceedings. The police promptly told the organisers (the Road Tramps MC) that they would only allow the event to go ahead if the Hell’s Angels were not allowed to attend.

  This was the first time such a ban had been imposed at the festival, and in passing it, the authorities unwittingly cleared the way for one of the most significant events in the British biker world to take place totally unhindered.

  A few hours after the show opened on 17th July 1992, all the members of the Pagans, Cycle Tramps, Road Tramps, Coventry Slaves, Pariah, Wolf Outlaws and Stafford Eagles moved into a secluded marquee, removed their old tattered patches, and replaced them with pristine sets featuring the new name and logo.

  The new club had no single leader. Instead, each of the original clubs retained their structure and elected officials but as a chapter of the Midland Outlaws. The president of the Leicester Pariah became president of the Leicester chapter; the sergeant-at-arms for the Road Tramps became the sergeant-at-arms for the Derby chapter of the Midland Outlaws and so on.

  Nothing like this had ever happened before. Clubs had been patched over one at a time and occasionally multiple chapters of a single gang had all switched allegiances en masse, but for a brand new gang to emerge out of so many others in this way was completely without precedent.

  Having bonded over a common enemy, the members of the new club were determined to be a class apart from the gang that had caused them so much grief. As they admired their new club colours, one of the senior officers from Derby put those thoughts into words. ‘There’s one thing I would like to say that I hope we can all agree on,’ he said, marching up and down the line like a leather-clad William Wallace, ‘let no man here ever act like a Hell’s Angel and bring this club into disrepute.’

  They had all seen other biker gangs, and members of the Hell’s Angels in particular, being overly aggressive and picking on punters for no good reason. They had all learned the hard way that if you treated people with respect and didn’t abuse them, that they tended to treat you with far more respect as a result. The Midland Outlaws were keen to continue that philosophy.

  There would be no bullying, no elitism, no riding rough-shod over the rights of ordinary bikers. If a civilian was deemed to be out of order, rather than beating them half to death the way the Hell’s Angels might, the Midland Outlaws would have a harsh word and embarrass the person in front of their friends. If it became necessary to get physical, they would bitch slap the person down rather than give them a good kicking.

  If someone was found to be in breach of their rules and regulations by, for example, taking photographs of club members at a shows where signposts specifically asked them not to, rather than smashing their camera to pieces and putting them in hospital, the Midland Outlaws would take the camera off the person, remove the film and then give them some money so they could buy a replacement.

  Having established the ground rules for behaviour, it was time to go public. With onlookers wondering just what on earth was going on, the members of the new club emerged from the tent proudly flying their new colours, and lined up for a series of official photographs.

  Details of the launch had supposedly been kept from the partners of the patch holders, but in reality many of them were fully aware of what was about to happen. Soon after the unveiling, all the old ladies gathered on footbridges over the A38 down towards Derby, cameras at the ready, to capture the moment as all 122 members of the new club went out on their inaugural run, down to the city and then back up to the festival.

  It was a moment that none of them would ever forget. Not only were they witnessing the birth of a brand new club, they were also proud members of the single largest MC anywhere in England. Not only were they now bigger than the Hell’s Angels, but the Midland Outlaws were far more united than their rivals could ever dream of. All the members of the new club were within, at most, a couple of hours’ ride of one another while the full strength of the Angels was spread right across the country. While the Angels knew the members of their own chapter well, virtually every member of the Midland Outlaws knew every member of the entire club.

  The Angels may have been one brotherhood, united by a patch, but the Midland Outlaws were well and truly one, single club. And unlike the individual clubs the new gang had replaced, they were a force to be reckoned with.

  It took only a few hours for word of the new club to reach the collective ears of the Hell’s Angels and for a moment it was as if all the shit in the world had hit every fan ever made. The response from Angel HQ in California was equally dramatic: what the fuck is going on over there?

  Within a couple of days, senior officers from the Angels had got in touch with the newcomers and demanded they attend a meeting at The Fort. The response was curt: No. If you want to meet with us, you come to our clubhouse. The Angels said they would only agree if the Midland Outlaws would guarantee their safety with a verbal peace treaty, which in the MC world is considered wholly binding. The new gang pointed out that if the Angels only wanted to talk, there was nothing for them to worry about.

  The meeting took place at the Derby clubhouse – formerly home to the Road Tramps – which had been fully refurbished to reflect the colours of the new club. All the chapters’ premises had been done up accordingly, but Derby was the ultimate showpiece. Fitted out in sparkling stainless steel and dark veneer, with highly polished wooden surfaces and low-level mood lighting, it looked more like a plush city centre bar than a biker hangout. All those who visited agreed it was a truly stunning place and the Midland Outlaws couldn’t wait to show it off.

  The Angels, who had been expecting something of a rag-tag bunch, were in for a shock. As they exited the motorway at the Derby turn-off they were greeted by teams of outriders displaying their shiny new patches, who then escorted them through the outskirts of the town and right up to the clubhouse door.

  Looking distinctly uncomfortable and more than a little intimidated, the six Angels fought to compose themselves as they sat down in the meeting room on one side of the large oblong table. Boone and the others could sense that what they really wanted to do was shout and scream and kick off, but under the circumstances they felt compelled to remain relatively restrained.

  The first words they spoke betrayed their true emotions. ‘You can’t do this,’ said the lead Angel.

  The Midland Outlaws had no national president – each individual club retained its original structure within the new organisation – but Joey Lagrue, the man who had taken over presidency of the Cycle Tramps following the death of Brewer, acted as chair for the meeting.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he replied. ‘We’ve already done it. It’s a done deal. Build a bridge and get over it.’

  For a few moments the Angels were rendered speechless.

  ‘Well you can’t call yourself Outlaws.’

  ‘We are Outlaws. And we’re certainly not changing it for you.’

  ‘But listen guys, this would be much less of a problem if you changed your name.’

  ‘It’s not going to happen. We’re not changing anything. We haven’t done it to upset you. This is a new club. Anything that happened in the past is ancient history as far as we’re concerned. We just want to be left alone. You do your thing, we’ll do ours.’

  The Angels demanded to know exactly how many full patch members the Midland Outlaws had. Lagrue refused to tell. In the spirit of détente the Angels then revealed exactly how many members they themselves had in the country at that moment in time. Lagrue would only reply cryptically: ‘That means there are more of us than you. But don’t worry, we’re not planning on coming after you. We haven’t all got together to seek retribution.’

  The idea that anyone other than themselves would raise the issue of revenge attacks really put the Angels on edge. ‘How dare you say there will n
ot be any retribution,’ their spokesman said. ‘We’re the ones who will …’

  ‘But there won’t be any retribution,’ interrupted Lagrue. ‘We forgive you everything that you’ve done to all of us in the past. This is a brand new start. The slate has been wiped clean.’

  The Angels went off for a private group huddle, animatedly discussing the situation, while the Midland Outlaws sat back and enjoyed the fact that they had made their once formidable adversaries quite so uncomfortable. A few minutes later the Angels returned to the negotiation table.

  ‘Okay, we’ve talked about it and the only real problem we have is the name. If you change your name then we can all get on and party together.’

  Lagrue snorted dismissively. ‘But we don’t want to party with you!’ he said. ‘We’ll get on with you if you want, but if you don’t, then we don’t care. We really don’t care. Either way, changing the name is out of the question.’

  ‘But the thing is, we’re at war with the Outlaws in America.’

  The men on the Midlands side of the table paused briefly and exchanged glances. Then they all shrugged their shoulders. The club members had precious little interest in what was going on outside the Midlands, let alone outside of the UK. Up until that moment, it simply hadn’t occurred to them that they were about to become namesakes with a big American club. After all, the Wolf Outlaws had existed for many years without anyone claiming they had connections overseas. So far as they knew, the American Outlaws had no chapters outside of the USA and had no plans to open any. If the choice of name made the Angels uncomfortable, that could only be seen as a good thing, but it certainly hadn’t been a deliberate ploy.

  ‘We don’t care about who you’re at war with,’ said Lagrue. ‘We’re not the same as the Outlaws in America. We don’t have anything to do with them whatsoever.’

  ‘Then why did you call yourselves Outlaws?’

  ‘Because we had to come up with a name and that was the one that fitted best. That’s what we are. We’re outlaws from society and most of the biking world now. It’s our name and you’re just going to have to live with it.’

  ‘Well I’ll tell you this much; if you start going over to America and hanging out with the Outlaws there, then we will be at war.’

  Lagrue looked into the faces of the men sitting either side of him then leaned forwards towards the Angels, his voice low and slow. ‘You still don’t get it, do you? You can’t tell us what to do anymore. You’re not in charge of any of us and you don’t make decisions for us. We’ll do what we want.’

  The meeting ended soon afterwards. As the Angels rode off, their frustration was plain for all to see. It had been a pretty futile exercise for them. They had left with little information and went away shaking their heads, not knowing what to say. One thing was clear to all: there were unlikely to be any more cosy chats between the two sides.

  On 8th August, a few days after the meeting, there was a bungled attempt to nip the new alliance in the bud. A former member of the Cycle Tramps narrowly avoided death after answering a knock on his door. As he walked down the hall to see who was there, someone pushed the barrel of a sawn-off shotgun through the letterbox and fired.

  Two weeks later, at the Bulldog Bash, two Angels kidnapped a member of a neutral biker club that was known to be friendly with several members of the Midland Outlaws. He was tortured until he told everything he knew about their reasons for forming and their plans for the future.

  For Boone and the others the fact that the Angels were running scared was a good thing. It meant they had lost the initiative, they were on the back foot and with any luck, they would realise that the best thing they could do would be to leave their former enemies alone.

  The Angels saw it differently. Whichever way they looked at it, the choice of name was anything but coincidental and this new club had firmly allied itself to their biggest global enemy. That in turn meant only one thing: a new front in the vicious and brutal war that had been raging across America since the late sixties had now been opened up in the UK.

  11

  BLOOD FEUD

  The hatred between the Outlaws and the Angels is epic in nature and deeply ingrained in the psyche of both clubs. The Hell’s Angels consider themselves to be the premier back patch motorcycle club in the world. They have more than 3,600 members in at least thirty countries, a proud history that can be traced right back to the end of World War Two and, thanks to an ill-informed public at large who consider virtually all bikers to be Hell’s Angels, a name that has become synonymous with the whole boozing, brawling, rule-breaking lifestyle.

  Their ultimate aim is nothing less than global domination of the entire biking brotherhood. Back in 1969, the controversial underground magazine Oz featured an interview with Crazy Charlie, then president of the newly formed London chapter. Speaking about the club’s plans for the future, he said: ‘We’re going to get bigger and bigger. There’s no limit. One day it’s not going to be Hell’s Angels London or Chapter California. It’s going to be Hell’s Angels, Earth.’

  The power of their legacy combined with the might of their marketing and public relations machine means that outsiders can easily be forgiven for assuming that the Hell’s Angels were the original driving force behind the creation of the alternative biker movement.

  But the simple truth is that the Outlaws were there first. According to the official history of the Hell’s Angels, the club was born on 17th March 1948 in the San Bernadino district of California. The official history of the Outlaws states that their club was founded in 1935 in Matilda’s Bar on the old Route 66 in the town of McCook, Illinois, just outside Chicago.

  Originally known as the McCook Outlaws, the gang hand painted their colours – a winged motorcycle – onto the back of their leather jackets and spent their time either racing or going on long distance bike tours, in-between drinking and partying. They somehow managed to stay together during World War Two, albeit on a limited basis, but were once again a force to be reckoned with at the first major post-war biker rally in Soldier’s Field, Chicago in May 1946, nearly two years before the Hell’s Angels were even founded.

  The club grew rapidly and by 1950 had moved to a new base in Chicago and changed its logo to a small skull with Old English style lettering above and below. At this time, members also voted to adopt a new name: the Chicago Outlaws. Three years later, The Wild One hit screens across the USA. Starring Marlon Brando, the iconic biker film shocked the mainstream, and became a cult favourite with MC members across America. The Chicago Outlaws loved the film, and in particular, they loved the back patch worn by the Black Rebels Motorcycle Gang. Like their own design, it featured a skull but with the addition of two crossed motorcycle pistons underneath, giving the effect of a modern-day Jolly Roger. They quickly incorporated crossed pistons into their own logo, placing them behind a larger skull in an arrangement that would affectionately become known as ‘Charlie’.

  By 1964, the original contingent were joined by clubs from Milwaukee and Louisville so the ‘Chicago’ part of the name was dropped and the various chapters united as one Outlaw nation – incorporated as the American Outlaw Association, or AOA, on New Year’s Day 1965. (The Hell’s Angels did not incorporate their own club until the following year.)

  One notable Outlaw member from this time was Danny Lyon, who in 1965 was a twenty-year-old student of the University of Chicago. A self-taught photographer, he joined the club and began snapping pictures of his buddies at every opportunity. His photography book, The Bikeriders, was published in 1968 and depicts a time when most MCs across America considered one another to be brothers above all things. One particularly iconic picture shows a smiling Hell’s Angel wearing his colours while riding pillion behind a Pickelhaube-wearing Outlaw, also in full colours. The peace between the two gangs lasted only a few more years.

  The seeds of the clubs’ lifelong enmity were sewn in the summer of 1969 when a young man named Sandy Alexander travelled from his New York home to Californ
ia to ask Sonny Barger for a Hell’s Angel charter. Alexander had been a member of the Aliens Motorcycle Club, which had chapters across the state, but after learning to kill with his bare hands during a stint in the Marines and fighting as a professional boxer, Alexander found that the Aliens were simply not tough enough for him.

  He persuaded thirteen other Aliens to break away and form a gang of their own with the hope of eventually becoming Angels. But while Alexander was away, a fellow Alien, Peter ‘Greased Lightning’ Rogers, allegedly raped his wife. Alexander returned and searched high and low for Rogers, only to discover that he had fled to Florida.

  Alexander had not returned empty-handed: he received his charter, became president of the Manhattan chapter of the Hell’s Angels and went on to become one of the most powerful figures in the organisation, second only to Barger himself. He demanded absolute loyalty and introduced a rule that all prospects had to commit a murder before earning their colours. They were instructed to pick a target from extensive files of enemies kept by the club’s security officer and provide documentary evidence of the deed once it had been done.

  In the meantime, Rogers joined the Outlaws and, in time, he too rose to become an important figure in his club. He returned to New York in 1974 to visit old friends and was soon spotted by two bikers who remembered that this was the man Sandy Alexander had been trying to get his hands on for the past five years.

  Forcibly held until Alexander himself arrived, Rogers was offered a fair one-on-one fight. In the event, there was nothing fair about it. Alexander spent the next twenty minutes beating Rogers to a bloody pulp and then left him for dead. Battered, bruised and brutally humiliated, Rogers returned to Florida and told his club mates a face-saving lie: he had been attacked by more than a dozen Angels who jumped him from behind. Now it was the Outlaws who needed to save face, something they could only do by taking revenge on the Angels.