Interview With Hell's Angels | Good Night America (Sep 12th, 1974)

my first guests are both presidents of different charters of the hells angels motorcycle club sitting next to me is sandy alexander he's the president of the new york city charter and next to sandy is deacon proudfoot who is the president of the oakland california chapter uh and deacon the first question is what do the hell's angels mean to you what are the hell's angels to you well it's a family what kind of family well it's a group of people that come together and like to me i interpreted as was raised in the country and uh it's the closest thing in the city that i found the country people how so we all have motorcycles right we have a common denominator our motorcycles and through those motorcycles it brought us all together and love for each other but a lot of people have motorcycles ron ziegler the former president's press secretary has a motorcycle now but he's not a hell's angel what makes the hell's angel hells angels different from other people brotherhood of men households it's a brotherhood of men like uh you know it takes a man to be a hell's angel what is your definition of a man a man somebody that stands up for what he believes in how and when deacon were the hell's angels founded about 26 years ago and uh purdue california san bernardino what was the thing that brought the founders together well i think how it started was like um there was a bomber squadron during world war ii called the hell's angels when i got out when i got when the war was over i got out of service they didn't have nothing to do and they like uh just kind of stayed together and decided to ride motorcycles on the weekends and party and have a good time and it just kind of you know started there and grew the movie the wild ones came shortly after that and there were two prime characters motorcycle writers one was marlon brando the kind of soft-spoken person that most people identified with he was black he was compassionate he was uh he was misunderstood uh he was all the things that uh make for a sympathetic character uh the other uh leading role played by lee marvin was that of the big bad guy uh the the kind of guy he was the leader of his uh his motorcycle pack uh he was well he was definitely the evil four say he's the bad guy you know nobody liked him which do you identify with of those two guys lee marvin why sandy why you know what first of all mom brando was an imitation uh director's belief and dream all he cared about was abroad right he forgot about his people all he you know he and he wrote a triumph we write a harley davidson lee martin was wearing levi's and a dirty shirt or what a shirt you know his shirt something he owned something believed it not uh director's dream to address the modern brand all in black you know and that gave us you know and motorcycle people you know a thought that for everybody that we're all black you know we're in black and you know bad guys his neck but he was a he was a bully he want to bully he was being himself he was had for a good time uh but he was that out for a good time at the expense of a lot of other people i don't think so maybe that's where you interpreted i interviewed completely different he was just being himself you know when he was when he got busted he got busted right and he didn't stubble about it you know and he was worried about his people and like when he got busted he said tell mama send me a case of beer uh there are lots of outlaw motorcycle clubs now besides the hell's angels i mean uh i don't know how many hells angels there are uh i don't know whether it numbers in the hundreds or the thousands maybe you can how many that's classified information fifteen hundred five hundred information okay well what makes the hell's angels different from all these others i mean why are you the most notorious why are you the ones that seem to be the uh the example for the rest of your genre because we believe in what we're doing uh but don't the other outlaws also believe in what they're doing whether they're the storm troopers from north carolina or the breed from ohio wherever they're from or any of these others i think they believe mainly in what you know uh what they've read and what they've seen and see a lot of the movies and stories it falsifies you know it gives uh this person people are wrong impression how's uh well you know like in the years before like let's say in the years of 1966 and in the 60s right a lot of things that we wrote about were true and a lot of them weren't it was the news media just blew everything up and uh a lot of people relate now to what happened then are you saying that the hell's angels have left this uh the their violent path behind them it's not really no you know like if it's time to be violent we can be violent uh can you think of a situation where violence would be appropriate sure excuse me brother like a perfect uh situation that or although the first time i met you for correction right uh when you started wanting to come up with fullness right you didn't come up and give us courtesy to come up and say hey you know what i'm so-and-so i'd like to be into you know introduce such and such when you met you know uh you know uh the president or whatever right then you he would say oh sure you could film it no you took it upon yourself to film right and that's taken upon yourself right i've taken about from our privacy right and you know what if i if it's people but i'd like to be true respect if you don't treat your respect then you know what shame on you then we don't treat jews but that's why we chase you down a block cut your television court uh but is violence uh do you think the solution to problems like that i mean to conflicts like that sometimes words don't you know you can only take words so far but what if everybody thought the same way probably a better world wouldn't it be a completely a complete anarchy wouldn't it be a situation where everybody was fighting everybody and there was no order and no respect in the world if the strong were in charge and the weak words i think you know what if if you treat a man of respect that the man will give respect if you don't treat him with respect it's on you you think that the law enforcement officials are clamping down on you after all the sensational headlines the gang rape arrests the murder arrests right we never had a conviction from rape in a history of hell's angels until last year in california which we got six brothers got set up by an attorney uh attorney general in california to get a position for a political position to give uh to get you know and get himself ahead in politics uh how many times have you been arrested sandy oh several how many do you remember i don't know i haven't looked at my yoshi deacon what if you i don't have any idea uh how many hell's angels are in jail right now a lot um doesn't that at any time give you second thoughts and maybe say that you should moderate your image and the way you work harder to get them out one hell's angel in the joint now in sunny barger the past president of the oakland charter i went to the prison in folsom uh prison at folsom repressa california and spoke with sonny and with james griffin who's called foo another member of the hells angels and we have their interview california they call this place the end of the line we're 25 miles northeast of sacramento here in this fortress-like stockade behind me built almost 100 years ago by convict labor's folsom prison this is where they keep the hard cases there are two thousand men here all of them convicted felons two of the members of the hell's angels i was escorted into the prison by officer max price but once inside i had a difficult time convincing the warden that i was a legitimate newsman and not an undercover outlaw trying to smuggle drugs or women into his prison the other hells angels james griffin called foo as i said he's been in jail for 13 of the last 14 years for possession of drugs and the violation of parole ralph sunny barger is not in prison for murder as is widely assumed he's serving 15 years to lie for the possession of drugs i asked him are you still involved in the operation of the motorcycle club i haven't seen a member or my old lady or anybody since i've been in this prison but sonny you're not suggesting that the hell's angels are like the 4-h club with the boys i'm saying we're not guilty of everything that people read about us i'll give you an example of it my murder trial for nine weeks of trial plus eight or nine months before that of probably once a week front page or headline articles about barger and his group in a murder trial right then the day the trial started for nine weeks we had a headline every day on the on the newspapers about the trial and then the trial ended with an acquittal not guilty one day it says barger found innocent now how do you think one sentence of bargainer found innocent compares with nine solid weeks of bartering trial the people forget all about they know bart is in jail they don't know whether he's in jail behind possession of an ounce of heroin or possess or of a murder beef but they know i went to trial for nine weeks on a murder beef and now they think i'm a murderer we have civil rights uh like american citizens we are american citizens we're probably as american as anybody could ever get what about the comparisons that are made so frequently now maybe because of the swat stickers and the stormtrooper helmets uh of hell's angels to uh to the ss to the nazis how do you react to that that you are in fact uh militant uh and almost fascist in your approach to life and your approach to other people i'd say that that reaction there is a jewish propaganda tell me more about that uh you know what uh they're still uh beating the war drum uh over uh what happened in in europe in in the second world war uh this uh gets an attention uh to that situation over there in no way can i see us away relating to what happened in in germany during the second world war do you remember the lynch report yes i remember the links report uh when the attorney general of california promised as a campaign platform that the hells angels would be absolutely eradicated from the state of california how did you respond when you heard about that i sort of laughed why well were they going to do kill us how did the hell's angels support themselves uh now deacon do you have a job or do any of the hells angels have jobs you know what like uh you know and when you go to school right i always heard you got adequacy right you know adequacy there are certain questions you're never supposed to ask anybody right you never asked an individual well how much money you make or you're not supposed to ask an individual well you know what do you do or then so because other people you know that's courtesy right you know what like it was told you earlier you know you know haraldo that we all work right and like uh and someone's got jobs and some have old ladies work you know i mean uh i i really believe in etiquette sandy it's just a question that people are curious about because well i don't go after asking everybody else how they work how much money they make you can ask everyone know about us for because people are curious about you because you have made yourselves different uh and people are curious about people who are we made ourselves different everybody else is changing too let's take a look at an interview i did uh with jerry garcia the lead guitarist of the grateful dead uh in california in northern california [Applause] [Music] sierra garcia met the hell's angels in the middle sixties when writer and counter culture hero ken keezy had them all over to his place for a party but not too many people you mean that you can like say wow there's somebody who's like you know real really serious about what they're doing whatever they're doing you know like there's a lot of people who are doing doing things halfway or doing them talking about doing things but hell's angels are people who are real serious about what they're doing they're doing it for whatever yeah but what about if what they're doing is is anti-social you know the general image well what is an anti-social man let's start from there you know i think this is an anti-social society and i think the world is anti-social the oakland tribune headlines from the year that that sonny barger went to went to prison the horror stories they told about the hells angels on an almost daily basis wild allegations some kind sometimes sensationalism other times uh but some residue of truth at least at some level they aren't the 4-h club and they aren't the boy scouts of america the hells angels are uh a motorcycle club that is generally known as an outlaw motorcycle club and that has had numerous brushes with the law does any of those kinds of things affect the way you feel about them no because i'm sort of an outlaw space myself you know what i mean i'm no heavy duty outlaw but you know i mean i'm a bust i've been busted i've been in jail you know i know all that stuff is that i'm that's and and and i'm doing that because i feel strongly enough about it to do it and i don't care if i have to get popped for it you know there's like might be a point where i would care you know i might not want to die but i would be willing to get popped anyway you know what i mean it's like it depends on how committed you are but hell's angels are committed on a very heavy level i can really appreciate that you know what i mean are you afraid of them ever sure sure why because they're scary man you know they're they're all big you know and strong and and good in in all the violent spaces you know they got that covered you know i mean scary is what one of the things hell's angels are i think that what jerry said about scary is one of the things hell's angels are is true the we invited a lot of people who are the alleged victims of hells angels violence onto the show we promised to protect their identities and everything else but they were just too frightened to come on we asked a lot of law enforcement people to come on but they said that they would also rather not come on fear and the way you generate this aura of fear and make people afraid of you is a real real thing and i think that i personally uh it's the thing that i find most objectionable the fact that you make so many people afraid uh why i think most people are afraid because we're sure of ourselves you know in a physical sense you mean that you could take anybody in a mental sense i mean i think we generate uh i think we generate positive positive uh you know like vibrations and like uh most people can't uh i don't think they're mentally uh capable of handling them why are the women uh you have this terrible reputation i mean in all honesty and i don't understand why they come do they come to be uh uh to be raped and and abused because you know it's you know how do how do they know like how do they know what that you're that you're men and not just sadistic bullies well probably probably part of it they're inquisitive to start with you know and the ones that are inquisitive leave early in the ones that uh come for seriousness to stay for a long time we meet some of your brothers and old ladies and sweeties right over here you're on your own [Laughter] uh this is vinnie who i think has the distinction in the new york charter at least of being uh the biggest are you the biggest one by the way about 320 you know but uh one of my brothers weighs 335. uh which one is that oh he's right there you want to stand up let's see you don't want to uh here he is 325. uh vinnie stand up a second let people see how much do you wave in 320 uh what do you have back here oh my knives you don't mind the fire yeah no but do you help yourself you know i didn't mind you anywhere uh what do you use it for i mean uh peeling bananas um this is your wife over here right man yeah it's my wife right there will you stand up uh i i noticed that you're with child yeah we don't know whose child it is you know we're going to figure it out what what what kind of uh let's say then you really block out the whole uh stranger kind of of life do you think that your child will have with uh with the house angels a good one but if his life expectancy like the rest of the hells angels is only 35 years i mean how are you going to take care of yourself you might be from the united states you know you never know right but i mean what happens to you if something happens to him i'll be taken care of by the other uh fellas well she'll be taking care of you whichever way is going to be taken care of it uh thanks for coming fellas let me go back over here are you really proud of them all sandy of course uh thank you both for coming on thank you for having us uh please send anything you want to and they can say them too you both take a clothing clothing statement okay you know like uh you know sonny's and foose interview you know like we hope a lot of people especially in california and the penal system and the board will realize and be individuals when they see somebody come up in front of a parole board right instead of changing it or being uh influenced by outsiders man if you know what be an individual if you believe somebody is you know not guilty or somebody uh hasn't done some then you know fight for it because that was that's what made america america if you don't if you're not an individual then you let you know pack it in and like uh you know there's a lot of people are forgetting about that that's like don't convict somebody for you know what they are convicted of what they've done okay it's extremely difficult to make a valid comment about the hell's angels especially when a couple of dozen of them are so sitting in your studio but let me try the secret i think lies in something sandy alexander said earlier about the movie the wild ones he said that the angels identify not with the compassionate misunderstood character portrayed by marlon brando but rather with the big bad guy played by lee marvin now marvin's role as we said earlier and as you might recall was that of an arrogant and even sadistic bully in fairness and we must be fair even to the hell's angels it must be pointed out that many if not most of their more notorious exploits have been greatly exaggerated by the media but even excluding these headline cases there's a brutally casual seemingly indiscriminate and almost inevitable violence about them and it's as much a part of the hells angels world as their motorcycles when a group of them get together they seem like barely tamed wild animals at times you can ask them to roll over or jump through hoops and you can even put your head in their mouths but it doesn't take much cause real or imagined for them to abandon this thin veneer of civilization and turn again to the natural state as jerry garcia said scary is what the hell's angels are melba moore's next if good night america continues after this [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Geraldo's Vault

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Keywords: Hells Angels, motorcycles, 60's, 70's, Good Night America, Geraldo Rivera, motorcycle gangs, Easy Rider

Id: STBd2mUQj6Q

Length: 20min 51sec (1251 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020