Sonny Barger

2022 - 6 - 30

Post cover — Image courtesy of "Sky News"

Hells Angels founding member Sonny Barger dies aged 83 after ... (Sky News)

Hells Angels is a worldwide club for motorcyclists that was founded in California in 1948. It has an infamous reputation and has been accused of criminal ...

Following his diagnosis, he started publicly advocating against smoking using the message: "Want to be a rebel? He has also been in trouble with the law. Hells Angels is a worldwide club for motorcyclists that was founded in California in 1948.

Hells Angels founder Sonny Barger dies at 83 (NBC News)

The founder of the Hells Angels Sonny Barger has died at 83 after a battle with cancer, according to a social media statement and his former attorney.

In it, he shed light on the history and evolution of the Hells Angels and included stories about their run-ins with the law. Although I’ve had a public persona for decades, i’ve mostly enjoyed special time with my club brothers, my family, and close friends. “I’ve lived a long and good life filled with adventure.

Sonny Barger, Face of the Hells Angels, Dies at 83 (The New York Times)

Mr. Barger cultivated the motorcycle club's outlaw image and was a pivotal figure in its rise from obscurity into a countercultural phenomenon in the 1960s.

But the group’s rise came in spite of law enforcement’s efforts to tame it, with the authorities seeing it as a dangerous menace. In 2013, at 75, he described in a sworn deposition what he would do if he saw someone wearing an unofficial shirt bearing Hells Angels trademarks. Ralph Barger was born in Modesto, Calif., on Oct. 8, 1938. Soon after, he took over as the club’s national president when Otto Friedli, the founder of the original chapter, went to prison. Chased by the law for decades, he spent time in prison on drug charges but beat several other charges. He was 83.

Hells Angels motorcycle club leader Sonny Barger dies at age 83 (The Guardian)

Barger founded the Oakland chapter in 1957 and became the group's US president, bringing them to international notoriety.

Barger also appeared as an actor, including in the biker series Sons of Anarchy and film Angels from Hell. The latter depicted “a destructive ex-motorcycle gang leader [returning] home from Vietnam to resume his life. The next decade, Hells Angels evolved into a gang organization, spurring widespread condemnation. Over the following decades, the Hells Angels became known as a violent outlaw gang with outposts spanning the globe. In the 1950s, they came together to ride motorcycles and party. When Barger helmed the Hells Angels, he got into scrapes, took drugs, and raced his Harley-Davidson, Sweet Cocaine, along California’s expansive freeways. And I’ve had the privilege to be part of an amazing club.

Hells Angels figurehead Sonny Barger dies at 83 (NPR)

Sonny Barger, the leather-clad figurehead of the notorious Hells Angels motorcycle club, has died. He was 83. Barger's death was announced on his Facebook ...

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Hells Angels leader Sonny Barger dies at 83 (Reuters)

Ralph "Sonny" Barger, the Hells Angels motorcycle club leader who became the rough-hewn face of America's outlaw biker culture and the restlessness, ...

In 2010 Barger appeared on the television series "Sons of Anarchy" as a murderous biker known as Lenny the Pimp. "The way we were depicted, we were Vikings on acid, raping our way across sunny California on motorcycles forged in the furnaces of hell," he wrote in a 2001 autobiography. Barger was diagnosed with throat cancer at age 44 and smoked one last cigarette on the way to the operating room to have his vocal cords removed. "In any gathering of Hell's Angels ... there is no doubt who is running the show: Ralph 'Sonny' Barger, the Maximum Leader ... the coolest head in the lot, and a tough, quick-thinking dealer when any action starts," Thompson wrote. The Angels were brought in to keep spectators from climbing onstage and brawls frequently broke out. Barger emerged as their chief in part thanks to Hunter S. Thompson's 1966 book "Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs." He later sent a telegram to President Lyndon Johnson volunteering to take Angels to fight in Vietnam. Barger was born Oct. 8, 1938, in Modesto, California, and raised by his hard-drinking father and grandmother after his mother abandoned the family. The club would become a long-running target of law enforcement, which considered it a crime syndicate deeply involved in multi-million-dollar drug-dealing operations, gun running, witness intimidation and murder. Then he found kindred spirits under the Hells Angels umbrella. Much of that 99 percent was genuinely fearful of the Angels with their menacing appearance, rumbling Harley Davidson motorcycles, violent no-limits lifestyle and black leather wardrobe adorned with the club's sacred winged skull patch. Barger asked that the announcement be published, "immediately after my passing."