LIVERMORE, Calif. –
Sonny Barger, the leather-clad fixture of the 1960s counterculture and Hells Angels motorcycle club figurehead who was at the famous Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway, has died. He was 83 years old.
Barger’s death was announced in his Facebook page Wednesday afternoon.
“If you are reading this message, you will know that I am gone. I have requested that this note be published immediately after my passing,” one post read. “I have lived a long and good life full of adventures. And I’ve had the privilege of being part of an incredible club.”
The post read, “Passed away peacefully after a short battle with cancer.”
Barger’s former attorney, Fritz Clapp, told The Associated Press that Barger had liver cancer and died Wednesday night at his home in Livermore, California. Barger composed the post placed on the Facebook page managed by Barger’s wife, Zorana, she said.
Ralph “Sonny” Barger was a founding member of the Oakland, California chapter of the Hells Angels in 1957 and was present at their most infamous moment: the 1969 Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway during which bikers hired as security personnel fatally stabbed a concertgoer. who pointed a gun at one of its members.
The Hells Angels were typically portrayed by the media as the dark fringe of the 1960s counterculture, embracing freedom, drugs, and rock music, but also crime and violence.
But Barger, the unofficial spokesman for the Hells Angels, downplayed their reputation as outlaws.
“They say we’re organized crime, but if you took every Hell’s Angel on the face of the Earth and got rid of them, you wouldn’t reduce the crime rate in the world by one-tenth of one percent,” he said in a statement. release. 2000 interview for Heads magazine. “We are a small drop in the bucket. There are more cops committing crimes than Hells Angels.”
Barger’s own arrest record included charges ranging from drunk driving to attempted murder. He served 13 years in various prisons, according to news reports.
He stated that one of his most satisfying experiences was his acquittal in 1980 on a racketeering charge and a mistrial on a racketeering conspiracy charge.
But in 1988, a jury found Barger guilty of conspiracy to violate federal firearms and explosives laws in plots to kill members of a rival gang. He was sentenced to six years at the Phoenix Federal Correctional Institution and was released in 1992.
Barger capitalized on his notoriety. He wrote three books about his life and his philosophy, including a best-selling autobiography, “The Angel of Hell.” The title of a chapter in one of her books was “Nothing establishes her position more clearly than a punch to the face.” He also wrote two novels.
Sonny Barger Productions operates a website and sells clothing.
Barger, a 16-year-old high school dropout, grew up in Oakland and joined the Army in 1955 on a forged birth certificate. He was discharged with an honorable discharge after the forgery was discovered.
He started Hells Angels with friends and soon learned that there were other Hells Angels clubs in California. Barger helped unify the clubs.
He served as the title character in Hunter Thompson’s 1966 exhibit “Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.”
“He’s smart and cunning and has a kind of wild animal cunning. He was clearly the most competent person he had ever been,” Thompson wrote.
Of the Altamont murder, Barger argued that the Hells Angels acted in self-defense. The club member charged in the incident was acquitted. The stabbing was captured by a camera crew filming the documentary “Gimme Shelter.”
Barger underwent a laryngectomy in the early 1980s for throat cancer, which he attributed to a long-standing habit of smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. Thereafter, she breathed through a plastic valve in her neck and plugged the vent to speak.
“Do you live your life the Sonny Barger way? I do not recommend it,” he wrote in the opening lines of his 2005 book “Freedom: Creeds from the Road”.
Biographical material compiled by former AP reporter Gary Kane.