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SONNY BARGER
By Simon SteinhardtPhotos By Dan Monick
Ralph “Sonny” Barger lives by one rule: treat others the way you want them to treat you. Show him respect and he’ll graciously shake your hand; steal his bike and he’ll crush your hand in a vise. It ain’t complicated-just another example of traveling light on the road of life for the man the Hell’s Angels call Chief.
Growing up during the late ‘40s and early ‘50s on the mean streets of blue-collar Oakland (streets that got a little meaner when he came around), Sonny’s favorite extracurricular pursuit was fighting-a weekly, if not bi-weekly, pursuit in his junior-high and high-school days. At 16, bored and unmotivated by school, he forged a birth certificate to join the army. The Korean War had ended a couple years before, and the vets spent their peacetime service teaching young soldiers like Sonny about carousing and round housing. Fourteen months into his service, the army discovered his act of counterfeiting and kicked him back to Oakland. Lucky for him, they gave him an honorable discharge, rendering him undraftable when the Vietnam War came around.
Out of the army and once again bored, Sonny decided to emulate his hero, Lee Marvin’s happygo- lucky, tough-guy character Chino in the 1953 biker movie The Wild One. Sonny bought a Harley Sportster and started a bike club, the Oakland Panthers, with some other riders. After a couple weeks, he knew that he needed a close-knit group of riders who would stick up for each other and take no shit from anybody else, and the Panthers weren’t cutting it. He went out on his own, eventually hooking up with a wild pack of riders who seemed like the rebel comrades he was looking for. One wore a vest that once belonged to a member of a defunct biker club. The jacket’s patch on the back featured a profile of a winged skull wearing an aviator cap. They decided to name the new club after the patch: Hell’s Angels.
During a trip to Southern California, Sonny and a friend came across a fellow biker sporting the same “death head” patch as them. Shocked to discover that there were other Hell’s Angels scattered throughout California, they returned to Oakland intent on making their club a full-fledged organization. Soon after, Sonny took over as president of the Oakland Hell’s Angels, bringing order into the ranks. He was a natural leader, administering the structure and discipline he had learned in the army (and later in jail). Oakland became the alpha chapter in Northern California.
The Oakland Hell’s Angels quickly gained notoriety for being the wildest of the one-percenters, the outlaw bikers dissociated from the law-abiding 99 percent by the circumspect American Motorcycle Association. They developed a national reputation during the counterculture revolution of the early ‘60s, and by the middle of the decade they had gone national, with chapters in the Midwest and Northeast.
Sonny, who was the main character in Hunter Thompson’s 1966 verite expose, Hell’s Angels, became the de facto national spokesman, even though there was no national organization of Hell’s Angels. (What, you thought they were federalists?) He conducted the club’s business with the national media, most notably after the 1969 Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway, where the Angels were hired to work security and a concertgoer who pulled a gun on an Angel was stabbed to death. Sonny also worked with Hollywood producers who wanted to use the death head logo and the Angels’ inside knowledge of the biker world to make their increasingly popular biker films. Sonny was the face of the Hell’s Angels, but he was-and still is-quick to point out that he has always been just one link in the chain. “People don’t understand,” he asserts. “No one person put this club together. I became the spokesman because somebody had to do it.”
The Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club (not Gang, and don’t you forget it) became synonymous with the term “badass,” and it’s probably no coincidence that they both emerged around the same time. Sonny earned the nickname “the baddest man on two wheels,” though when asked about it he tends to be taciturn, or at the very least tacit. It’s a stance that he’s honed since his first arrest in 1957 and through the course of 20 subsequent ones (and six convictions), with charges ranging from drunk driving to kidnapping and attempted murder to racketeering Ð mostly bogus, if you ask him. He has spent over 13 years in prison over the course of his life, but he still takes great satisfaction in being the first individual to beat federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) charges. “We stuck together,” says Sonny, “and we won.”
These days, Sonny, now in his late 60s, is taking it easy on his ranch in Phoenix, Arizona, just a few miles down the road from the site of his last prison stint. He still rides frequently, now as a member of the Cave Creek Hell’s Angels. He has published three non-fiction books: Hell’s Angel, his bestselling autobiography; Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free, a collection of stories from the road sent in by other bikers; and Freedom: Credos from the Road, a self-help primer for aspiring take-no-shit leaders. Sonny has also penned a pair of novels, Dead in 5 Heartbeats and 6 Chambers, 1 Bullet, about the saga of Patch Kinkade, a fictitious bike-club leader who leaves California for Arizona but can never escape the biker world. “I have to keep telling people that it’s fiction,” he says, “but all fiction, unless it’s fantasy, has to come from somewhere.” He also licenses his name to a brand of beer: Sonny’s Mean and Lean Lager.
In many ways, Sonny sees the world as a different place today than it was when he became a Hell’s Angel. “Motorcycles are recognized today in a way they weren’t in the ‘60s,” he remarks. “When we showed up someplace in the ‘60s, we were the spectacle; now we’re an everyday thing. We were in Reno a few years ago, and a casino paid us to come in. I was laughing about it, because when we were there in the ‘60s they used to call the sheriff and run us out of town. Now they’re payin’ us to stay.”
Some things never change, though, like Sonny’s stance on politics. Because he’s a felon, he can’t vote or own a gun, but he encourages both. He is a firm believer in the individual freedoms of Americans, and a staunch opponent of the Patriot Act and the Bush Administration. “If you disagree with George Bush on anything, he calls you un- American. Well, I think I’m much more American than he is.”
Sonny speaks softly and sparingly, thanks largely to the laryngectomy he underwent in the early ‘80s to remove a cancerous tumor from his throat. At the time, he was told he only had two months to live. “I’ve accomplished a lot, but the one thing I’m most proud of is the fact that I’m still alive,” he chuckles. “I’ve made it almost 50 years in the bike world, so I’ve done pretty good. I’m happy to be here. I’m happy about what I did, whether anyone likes it or not. If I did anything, I was doing it ‘cause I wanted to.”