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

Ralph " Sonny" Barger; Keith Zimmerman; Kent Zimmerman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060937548 ISBN 13: 9780060937546

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks, 2001

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

"The hombre who gave you motorcycle culture...The biker style that Barger originated remains timeless."--Chicago Tribune

"Barger's autobiography is about as subtle as a kick in the groin, and that's what's so refreshing about it."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Not your ordinary book...A peek at another side of America."--Tulsa World

"Barger paints an engrossing picture of a distinctive subculture that receives precious little literary attention."--Booklist

"Maybe the baddest man on two wheels."--Rolling Stone

"Hell's Angel chieftain Ralph 'Sonny' Barger has led one interesting, bad-to-the-bone life."--Seattle Times

"A ripping good read...as gripping a tale as you would expect from the most famous pack of all time."--New Times Los Angeles

"One of the best books of the year."--Maxim

From the Back Cover:

The autobiography – the dangerous life and wild times – of Sonny Barger, the legendary leader of the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club.

Keith Richards walked over to me after finishing 'Love In Vain' and told me the band wasn't going to play any more until we stopped the violence. 'Either these cats cool it, man, or we don't play,' he announced to the crowd. I stood next to him and stuck my pistol into his side and told him to start playing his guitar or he was dead. He played like a motherfucker.'

Sonny Barger is the Hell's Angel of all Hell's Angels, the motorcycle club's de facto leader for nearly thirty years, the man immortalised by Hunter S. Thompson in the classic Hell's Angels as 'nothing short of Winston Churchill when it comes to leading people'. He's feared and revered by people on both sides of the law. Now Hell's Angel sets the record straight – from the club's formation in the 1940s to the height of their notoriety twenty years later, from Sonny's first-hand account of what really happened with the Rolling Stones at Altamont to his lengthy periods of imprisonment, from his fights with rival gangs and the police to his own battle with cancer. Sonny Barger has ridden with the Angels for forty years, obeying no law but that of the HAMC. For the first time, this is his own – and their own – story.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0060937548
• ISBN 13: 9780060937546
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288