Hell Hasn’t Frozen Over Yet

Noel Barger had two words of advice when I left to accompany her husband on a trip across Arizona: “Full throttle.” For Sonny Barger, the leader of America’s most notorious outlaw motorcycle club, that’s as much a philosophy for life as it is a style of riding.

The 61-year-old Barger averages 5,000 miles a month at full throttle. My trip with him, which he allowed to promote his new book, “Hell’s Angel” (William Morrow, $24), was no exception. Side by side, we sped down the road, Barger on the left, fringe flying as he rode his navy-blue Harley-Davidson Road King, and me on the right, following his lead on a yellow Heritage Softail.

The $30,000 bike he rides today is a far cry from his Indian, the motorcycle he bought for $125 in 1956 when he helped form the group’s Oakland chapter. But that’s not all that has changed for Barger, who transformed an innocuous, eight-member riding club into a legendary international organization with thousands of members, many of whom have been prosecuted for drug dealing, money laundering, murder and prostitution, among other things.

Eighteen months ago, Barger moved to Arizona with his third wife, Noel, 33, and 10-year-old stepdaughter. Now, instead of a garage full of motorcycles, he has a stable with five horses. His ranch-style home is just a few miles off Highway 17, one exit away from the Phoenix Federal Correctional Institution, where, in 1992, he finished serving the last of several prison sentences--a six-year term for conspiracy to blow up a rival club’s headquarters.

“Tryin’ to be a cowboy and a Hells Angel, you ain’t got time to be a crook,” Barger said of his present life, speaking by pressing a thumb to the gauze bandage at his throat. His vocal cords were removed 18 years ago after doctors discovered he had laryngitic cancer. Until then, he smoked three packs a day and couldn’t sleep through the night without waking up at least once for a cigarette.

Just as cancer has deadened his desire to smoke, a four-year prison sentence for heroin possession in the mid-’70s has tempered his taste for drugs. What remains strong is Barger’s passion for motorcycles and riding fast (he said he averages 90 mph). On our day trip, he logged 800 miles on his way to Oakland and then San Francisco, where he planned to sign photographs at the Dudley Perkins Harley-Davidson dealership and “goof off with friends.”

The hole in Barger’s throat forces him to ride with a full-face helmet, a bit of protection most hard-core riders are not inclined to don. Hanging from his belt in a leather sheath right next to his cell phone is the knife he carries, as do all Hells Angels. He also wears his “colors”--a black cloth vest with the infamous “death head” emblem and a “Hells Angels Arizona” patch embroidered on the back. Many of the group’s members, as well as their enemies, have died or served time to defend that name and logo, each of which is protected by a trademark.

More than anything, the Hells Angels is a brotherhood, requiring each initiate to pledge his life to the group.

“Everybody is loyal to each other,” Barger explained. “We try to become a family. You either wanna be part of that family, or you don’t. We don’t have a halfway.”

The book is Barger’s story as the undisputed, if unofficial, leader for years of the notorious bikers, and a favorable chronicle of the birth and development of an organization widely condemned as a violent gang. Twin brothers Keith and Kent Zimmerman, with Barger, wrote the book, much like their British bestseller about the Sex Pistols, written with the help of band member John Lydon. Barger said he plans to pay the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corp. $100,000, from his profits, to use the group’s name and emblem.

At a rest stop, Barger pulled off the black sweatshirt he’d been wearing under his vest. His back, shoulders, arms and chest are covered in the faded tattoos that chronicle his life story. There is a dagger on his chest, a cross on his arm and a death head on his back. His right shoulder reads “Hell’s Angels Oakland,” as does his back, where there is an even larger death head.

“If you don’t want to mark your body, you don’t really want to be a Hells Angel,” he said.

The Angels have an all-for-one, one-for-all, eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth mentality. He said it is understood that any member would fight or die for another in the group, and that anyone who messes with an Angel will have to defend himself against the entire organization.

“I treat everybody the way I want to be treated until they treat me different. And if they treat me different, I treat them accordingly,” Barger said. “People can say I’m a bad guy or a good guy, but I am to them what they are to me first.”

Searching for a Place to Belong

He was born Ralph Barger in Oakland in 1938. He grew up with an older sister and his father, an alcoholic. His mother deserted the family when he was 4 months old. Growing up, he was a poor student. He preferred fighting to studying and eventually flunked out. As for his interest in motorcycles, he said, “It probably all started back when I was little kid. Every time we went somewhere in a car, I’d puke.”

He said he felt a yearning to belong.

“I wanted to go somewhere with a group--have a good time with a group,” said Barger, who started the Oakland chapter when his friend Boots found a patch with the words “Hells Angels.” Their purpose at the time was simple: Get together and ride.

A year later, in 1957, the Angels began forging their reputation for violence when two members crested a hill at 100 mph and accidentally ran over and killed another group of bikers during an American Motorcyclist Assn. road rally. The motorcycle group denounced the Hells Angels, saying they represented the 1% of “bad bikers” in the motorcycling community. The Hells Angels took that as a badge of honor, and many began wearing “One-Percenter” patches.

The Angels built on their outlaw reputation through the ‘60s, with each incident bringing them greater national attention. In 1963, 100 Hells Angels went to Porterville, Calif., for a party. They raced through the small town, terrorized its residents and clashed with police. One year later, while in Monterey for a member’s funeral, two Angels were accused of rape.

At a protest against the Vietnam War in 1965, group members fought in the streets with peaceful Berkeley protesters. In 1969, when the Rolling Stones hired the group to work security for a free concert at Altamont Speedway in the Bay Area, Angels stabbed a man to death.

Barger was not implicated in any of those incidents, but he said he has been charged with gun possession, income tax evasion, kidnapping, murder, drug possession and conspiracy. He said he has served 13 years in prison.

Somewhere along the 10 Freeway in Arizona, we passed a prison work crew.

“I was always in max,” Barger told me later.

Today, he is a free man, out of prison and off parole.

Barger has had only one serious accident in more than 40 years of riding hundreds of thousands of miles. A few years ago, he was broadsided by a pickup truck going 70 mph, but he walked away unharmed.

Guardian angel? He doesn’t see it that way.

“It hasn’t been my time,” Barger said. “People stick guns in their mouth, pull the trigger and live. Other people slip on the sidewalk, fall down and die. You can’t kill yourself until it’s your time. When it’s your time, you’re gonna die.

“I’m a very careful rider,” he added. “I like to go fast, but I go fast where it’s safe to go fast. Whether I’m in the right or not, I’m the one that gets hurt, and I ride according to that.”

While refueling, Barger calculated his mileage on a notebook he’d pulled from the bag attached to his bike. He was not pleased. During our trip, he was getting only 30 miles to the gallon.

“I should be getting 42. I usually only get 30 miles per gallon when I’m going over 100 into the wind,” he said.

Just a Member in Good Standing

These days, Barger makes his living as a motorcycle mechanic in Cave Creek, Ariz., near his chapter’s clubhouse. He no longer considers himself the leader of the Angels and does not serve on the group’s board of directors.

“I’m just a member trying to stay in good standing. If anybody needs any advice on anything, I’m an advisor.”

Barger has always denied he was the group’s leader, and, technically, he is correct. The Hells Angels are a corporation with one member from each chapter serving on a board of directors.

“There’s no charter that’s the boss. That’s all cops and newspapers,” Barger said.

He believes he came to be seen as the leader because he has “a loud mouth,” he said. “In the very beginning, when stuff started happening, I was the guy that was yellin’ and screamin’. My name got tossed around a lot, so the cops pegged me as the troublemaker, and then the newspapers did. Whenever the club got publicity, my name was involved.”

In the 44 years Barger’s been involved with the club, no one else in the organization has stepped forward to claim the leadership mantle, though Ventura chapter leader George Christie spoke on behalf of the group while Barger was in prison. Law enforcement officials continue to think of Barger as its hub, but he is ready to hand over the reins to a younger generation.

“I’m too old. It’s time for the kids to start running this. It’s 2000. I grew up in the ‘40s.”

The Hells Angels aren’t going away any time soon. The group has increased from about 900 members and 67 chapters 10 years ago to about 1,600 members in more than 100 chapters today, according to Yves Lavigne, author of three books on the Hells Angels. Around the world, new members, as young as 18 and 19, are joining the ranks and keeping tradition, which is just fine by Barger, who has seen his life come full circle.

“We started the club to have fun as a group. In the ‘60s, we started gettin’ in trouble. The ‘70s, we got into a little bit of crime and stuff, and by the ‘80s we were all in prison,” said Barger, condensing his 259-page book into a 60-second monologue. “In the ‘90s, we were all gettin’ out, and we’re all back on our motorcycles now in 2000 havin’ a lot of fun.”

Out on the road, Barger kept the pace in the upper-left-hand position of the lane we were sharing--the leader position he has held on all group rides, whether it’s two people or 2000.

Putting on his right turn signal, he sped up and pulled in front of me to exit the freeway for our final stop together at a Chevron station.

He filled his tank, rehung the nozzle and computed his mileage.

“That’s more like it,” he said, having eked out a few more miles to the gallon.

He returned his notebook to his bag, then gave me a hug. Without a trace of irony, he told me, “Be good.”

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Susan Carpenter can be reached at susan.carpenter@latimes.com.