Re: Sonny Barger trades hogs for horsesHells Angel trades hogs for horses
BY JOSH MAX
Tuesday, April 8th 2008, 4:00 AM
http :// www .nydailynews,com /autos/2008/04/08/2008-04-08 hells angel trades hogs for horses.html
http :// www .nydailynews,com /img/2008/04/07/amd ralph-barger.jpg
Sonny Barger
As patriarch of the Hells Angels, Sonny Barger is equal parts myth and
for-real living legend. But though the 70-year-old spends as much time
riding his horse as he once did on his motorcycles on his modest ranch
close to Phoenix and no longer holds any formal position in the club, he
has become the best-selling author of five books, including two novels.
His autobiography is due to be made into a movie later this year, he says.
He also rides with the local Cave Creek Charter in Arizona, clocking
25,000 miles a year, about half of what he used to ride.
"I wouldn't say I've mellowed, but I've changed with time," he says,
looking back on a lifetime spent first around motorcycles, and now
shared with horses. "Everybody does."
Barger was once suspended from school for slapping a teacher. He
enlisted in the U.S. Army at 16 after forging his birth certificate,
then was kicked out, but with an honorable discharge, in 1956 when his
deception was discovered. He was drawn to the oil-stained world of the
so-called "one-percenters" - a term coined by the American Motorcycle
Association to describe the tiny minority of bikers they deemed
troublemakers.
Trading his first motorcycle, an Indian, for a Harley-Davidson - widely
known as "hogs" for the firm's one-time pig mascot - he swiftly became
leader of the Hells Angels Oakland charter and oversaw the formation of
independent charters, or branches, across the U.S. and worldwide.
Their hell-raising activities shocked America in the 1960s, when, among
other exploits, Barger offered the services of club members to President
Lyndon B. Johnson as a "crack group of trained guerrillas" to drop
behind enemy lines in the Vietnam War. His offer was turned down flat.
In another notorious incident, he allegedly forced the Rolling Stones to
play at gunpoint in 1969 at Altamont Speedway, after the band had
threatened to pull the plug on a concert.
An FBI agent recently said in a documentary that bad blood from the
incident lingered for years, and the Hells Angels later plotted to kill
Stones frontman Mick Jagger.
"I have no recollection of it ever happening, and why it showed up 35
years later, I don't know," Barger says.
Now, with the Hells Angels turning 60 in an increasingly regulated
world, he sees less room for rugged American individualism.
"We're the last of the free Americans in the United States," he says.
"There's very few of us left."
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