Hunter Thompson Speaks On The Hells Angels (1967)

companionship and group loyalty and Power they get together and they can frighten people who might ordinarily frighten them and especially now they get well since the California attorney general an official report on them they got a massive amount of attention and publicity National publicity they made the cover of the Saturday evening post movies you know this book and there'd be no other way for these people to do this without going out and it's doing something like the Boston Strangler or the mad bomber it's an easy way to get what they can't get in the Square world it's a it's a whole subculture of dropouts and washouts and people who just can't make it in this automated you know technological Society they vary from the big ones the runs to uh just want the continuing round of beer parties here and there but on a run they might get 150 bikes to anywhere up to 300. in some sort of a state park somewhere and they parked them in a big ring around the massive bond for 1015 feet tall foreign just as a starter instead of in the afternoon they'll drink hundreds of dollars worth of beer in a matter of two or three days so they've actually cleaned out the Whole Town's beer supplies at the same time they're taking oh amphetamine pills you know too LSD well that comes with a lighter they start off with pills uh you know barbiturates and amphetamines mixing them all together then beer then the wine starts and later on there'll be some LSD and everything gets mixed in all together and this goes they don't they try not to sleep and they get Wilder and Wilder and you they don't recognize each other and they begin people can just scream and whip on trees with chains and it just it turns into sort of a it's a Bedlam you know well I remember one reporter from the Los Angeles Times showed up on one of them and he showed up at noon after the whole most people were wasted and still kind of asleep he said it looked like Dante's Inferno Mr Thompson what is your book that I'm going to try to link them to the other people like you know like the Hell's Angels who don't wear the colors like I say there are thousands of losers and Thugs and muggers and Petty criminals who would like to have this kind of attention but don't well to summarize how would you explain to Hell's Angel oh wow always be between 20 and 40 more likely around late 20s you have a he'd be a high school dropout I'm talking about a very typical one High School Dropout he'd have a minor police record with a lot of arrest and a few convictions or anything serious maybe a year or so in jail at different times for small things uh he'd be a motorcycle freak you know in sort of a lifetime sort of bike rider and uh that would get him into the hills and that would make him eligible after that he becomes a sort of a creature of the club and he gets more and more bizarre and his his police record will start piling up because he's much more obvious be eligible for the club if you're eligible for the club it's assume that you have a police record then nobody really cares I think there was only one angel had never been arrested when he got in and he was arrested almost one almost at once immediately after he got in I forgot what for what would you say that the organization does for what you describe as a loser in society you spent at least a year knowing them and living with them what would your most Vivid impressions of it third impressions oh visually I there's nothing no site that I can think of that compares to the these Labor Day runs where they got several hundred bikes out on the road what is a run exactly well run is just a sort of a giant picnic or outing you that's what they gather in one spot in the city and then go to some sort of vacation you know in the mountains or Beach or somewhere all together for a great big three or four day party and that's when they really frighten people because they're all together and they they dress in the wildest way they can and they're all drunk out of their minds you know I'm eating pills and it's like an army of Huns and moved into your town they don't necessarily they don't necessarily go to destroy the place but they work themselves under such a frenzy and there's so many of them and of course the town you know the townspeople are all worried and frightening occurring weapons and locking up their doors locked and their daughters in the basement that sort of thing so it creates a very tense situation the slightest thing can blow into a riot or one attacker and the police can't really handle two or three hundred of them running wild and without a lot of reinforcements sometimes in your book you almost get the impression you're saying that there are no notoriety is overstated yeah that makes up with what I said about explaining them the Hell's Angels themselves aren't as dangerous or they're not nearly as much of a menace as they seem to be but if you just drop it at that and it's going to you know say Well they're not so dangerous ignore them and you missed the whole point uh that I was getting at in the book about the Hell's Angels just being thousands of other losers just by some other name resentment and this resentment builds up and well I'm much more aware of it now after you know this sort of thing I see Hell's Angels everywhere they don't all wear colors New York is full of them sure Chicago are these kind of people hopeless I mean after observing them from for a year and and you say they can't make it in this automated Society is it is it a hopeless cause well they're hopeless as long as they decide to stay Hell's Angels I mean hopeless in the sense that you're talking about they're not hopeless to themselves but as long as they insist on being that obvious uh would you hire somebody with a gold earring and a shoulder length hair and just thinking of all manner of Grace and slime with a police record two feet long they're not really eligible eligible for for good jobs you know if they decided to quit this do many ever decide to quit no but I'm not sure what the percentage would be there are three ways to stop being a Hell's Angel one is to to die and a lot of them do that let's go to prison and like do that and the other is to quit but I guess it'd be about well more quit than go to prison and more go to prison and die but those are the three exits that they can make is it difficult to quit are there any reprisals from the group if you do depends on why you quit sometimes there are but uh and it depends on when you could it's more it gets harder and harder as you get older because you've built up more of a police record and your friends become more of an in-group an outlaw thing I remember one of them saying that he'd like to quit but he didn't have friends anywhere else he didn't know how what usually motivates a man to to just quit well it all depends on how intelligent he is but say if he joins at 21 or something and if he has since quite a few of them have you know enough sense to sort of understand their situation they don't understand how to you know how to handle it but those who who have a sense of options begin to realize it as they approach 30 they're losing all their options you know it's it gets harder to get a job it gets harder to find new friends harder to do almost everything so uh once past 30 that sort of confirmed then it's either jail or a bad crash on a bike or getting shot by somebody the younger ones quit what when was the organization Hells Angels actually originated and how was it originated well it started in 1950 and it's Uncle Fontana or San Bernardino which is near Los Angeles and motorcycles were a big thing after the war that California was full of people who come back to the Pacific War and were all sort of the same age they all had money and motorcycles are sort of caught on and there were all kinds of motorcycle clubs started enough so that 1947 either two three or four thousand descended on his own called Hollister in San Francisco and that was the first really big what they call a motorcycle ride in the movie The Wild one was based on that yeah how much influence did that have on the Hell's Angels hold on was it I gave him an image of themselves you know they identified with Brando instead of Lee Marvin who was really a much more valid to a picture of what the what the Outlaws were Hollister perhaps two or three hundred really Outlaws the others were the same kind of people are riding motorcycles around now sort of what they call respectable types they're always worried that Hell's Angels are going to Blacken their image which they do a lot of people just don't like motorcycles period because of the Hell's Angels makes it hard to ride on the highways and people are trying to run over you and throw beer cans at you I've had that happen what's a relationship between the motorcycle and the personality of the Hell's Angels do you think there is one oh three spot appeals so much to them well obviously yeah it's like carrying a massive gun or bazooka around the streets in a it gives them a tremendous sense of power and freedom and it makes them so makes them very obvious you can't ignore a Hell's Angel on one of his they call chopped Hogs booming up and down the street if the thing rattles windows and frightens pedestrians and that sort of thing so it was at a motorcycle he'd be just another Punk but uh well it's it's a what that what I call an equalizer you pointed out one time in the book that sometimes they get an almost perverse pleasure in being exceedingly nice to crash their image yeah when they go into a situation where people are obviously frightened of them they already have the attention that they're looking for anyway so it is necessary to tear up a place because then it makes it sort of unpleasant you know if you get arrested and somebody might get cut so as long as they get the attention that they they're really looking for then they enjoy it they enjoy the setting up his tense situation and seeing people you know sort of like this and yes sir you want some more coffee that that sort of business but then that it doesn't always hold true they'll take advantage of these things a lot what uh you talked earlier about common sense and you said some of them really do have common sense really want to hold that question we're out huh wait can we cut it a sec you spoke about the intelligence of the Hell's Angels and you said some of them had real common sense would you say that you found any Geniuses among them no unless they were so so disguised that I didn't recognize it you do find people who are Brighter Than You Know Much brighter than average very very few of those but some but at the same time that they might be brighter than average they're also they might be well one of the brightest to the San Francisco Angels uh can't read for instance it didn't go to school beyond the third grade but do you find some who have a very articulate kind of instinct for what's happening but they don't they can't they have a hard time saying it but most of them are not very smart actually well I'm going to do that but that's not very smart nothing compared to the night before he came with police at the at noon female he will take off their clothes and rush around and girls are dragged around and people started motorcycles and do wheel stands around the fire you've got to watch you know where you walk where you stand you likely to be run over or attacked or set on the fire almost anything did they ever try to explain what they get out of an experience like this no I don't bother to explain it it's either self-evident or doesn't matter is there any conclusion at all to be reached about the Hell's Angels uh only that it represents a sort of growing Menace that might or might not be called Hell's Angels they're uh these people are breeding all over the country and the more complicated the job apparatus you know with the more qualified you have to be to get a job the more people are going to be dry you know forced out off the job market and uh well their motorcycle clubs started starting everywhere and existing everywhere for that matter but all these people don't ride motorcycles and they don't know where jackets saying Hells Angels but they're all they're they're around and there's more and more of them you can draw your own conclusions from what's going about what's going to happen when they you know when we get to a certain level I'm not sure what the level would be thank you very much

Channel: MOBFAX

Views: 61,621

Keywords: HellsAngels, MotorcycleGangs, OutlawMC, HunterThompson, SonsOfAnarchy

Id: 0JyXATc3Yf8

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 19 2022