Title: Hell’s Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angel Motorcycle Club
Author: Sonny Barger, Keith Zimmerman, Kent Zimmerman
Year: 2001
Genre: Crime, Autobiography
In this autobiography, Sonny Barger details his life as an outlaw and leader of the Hell’s Angel Motorcycle Club. The book was selected for the first choice in my local bookshop Blue Sheep Books‘, new True Crime and Crime/Thriller Book Club.
Going into reading this book my knowledge of the Hell’s Angels was pretty limited to being a bunch of guys riding motorbikes and seeming to get into a lot of trouble but in terms of knowing exactly what went down in their history I had no idea.
Sonny Barger was the president of the Oakland Hell’s Angels in California and as shown during this book lead the entire club in many run ins with the law and the American public. The book is an unflinchingly honest, brutal and violent account of both Sonny’s life (up until 2001 anyway) and the history of the club, which in many ways are one and the same.
From Sonny’s creation of the Oakland chapter in the 1950s, to the height of the Hell’s Angel’s notoriety in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as Sonny’s periods of imprisonment, fights with rival gangs and his own fight against throat cancer in 1982, this autobiography really feels like it doesn’t leave any stone un-turned. Also having grown up in the 2000’s when any D list celebrity had a book it’s fascinating to read one by someone who lived such a full life outside of the law.
Sonny does also show who he is as a person to the reader and I found him to be quite complex. Whilst he clearly enjoyed partying and some of the violent acts that came with it, there was also a very principled side to his personality and a loyalty and dedication to the HAMC and you really get the sense that he lived and breathed that club throughout the sixty or so years the book spans.
I do find with autobiography’s there are always parts that can be kind of slow or less interesting for different readers. For example, there is a chapter where Sonny discusses his love of motorbikes and Harley Davidson’s, as well as the modifications members made which I have to be honest as somebody who doesn’t know a lot about bikes went completely over my head, whilst I fully understood his passion for motorbikes.
My personal standout chapters in the book were when he described a time when the Hell’s Angles were used as bodyguards at a free Rolling Stones gig at Altamont Raceway in 1969. This was something I didn’t know anything about and had to ask my dad if he remembered anything from he time and he did recall something about a troubled concert of there’s around the same time but not exactly what happened).
I also found fascinating the chapter surrounding Sonny’s battle against the RICO charges. RICO stood for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and whilst it’s intention seemed to have been around breaking up Mobsters and criminal organisations, the law and how it was implemented as described here seems like a very problematic law that could easily be used for corruption. This formed the basis of the Hell’s Angels defence but seems even more timely when we live in an era where data privacy and government usage of people’s data and state intervention is such matters is such a controversial topic and talking point.
My final thought which I have to share because I found it amusing was how the Hell’s Angels groups described themselves as Chapters. My ex-boss was in a business networking group called BNI and they also describe their groups as chapters (and also started in the USA in California), so reading references to Hell’s Angel Chapter Meetings gave me some very interesting images in my head but probably the two would not be the same.
In conclusion, for a very hard-hitting but fascinating account of one of America’s most controversial, yet I would say globally iconic, groups, this book would be a great place to start. If you have read this book, let me know in the comments down below your thoughts.
