Hell's Angels (Penguin Modern Classics)

I was surprised to find a Hunter S Thompson book in Eastbourne's Age Uk shop, even more so when it turned out to be his reportage on the mid-sixties rise of the Hell's Angels. For 89p, I gave it a try! Thompson spent the best part of a year living, partying and drinking with Hell's Angels chapters in California. At the beginning of the period about which he writes, they were a small, almost defunct motorcycle gang, but rabid press attention over a few months secured their fame so much that the name is now known world-wide and, indeed, the gangs still exist. The overall impression I have come away with is that Angels life was mostly dull. Few are able to hold down a job and most of their time is spent in the same closed circle of company, half-cut or stoned, and repeating conversations for the nth time. Occasional runs out en masse for weekends 'camping' or bar room brawls relieve the tedium. The surprise is in the outrageous paranoia and hysteria that was whipped up by outwardly respectable newspapers printing exaggerated accounts of Angel activities. It is common these days that news is taken with a hefty pinch of salt, but it would seem that 1965 middle America expected to be able to trust their Press. The moral of this book must be that irresponsible journalism can be more damaging that any topic they choose to highlight. Reading of dozens of small towns right across America being so frightened that they were actually arming themselves against the imminent arrival of thousands of motorcycle hoodlums felt unreal. Especially as only a few hundred Angels and the like even existed at the time! Thompson writes clearly and levelly of both the motorcycle gangs with whom he spent time and also of the police officers who were set against them. The inevitable violence is described and also contextualised and I was interested to read about the right-wing politics of many Angels. Had I considered it, I would have assumed the disenfranchised men to have been more left-leaning so their attacking Vietnam and Civil Rights protesters was unexpected. I'm not sure I will rush to read more Thompson any time soon. Perhaps this was not the best of his to start with but, having heard so much about his work, I expected to be dazzled by the writing and wasn't. Maybe I'm just fifty years too late!

"The Hell's Angels' massive publicity - coming hard on the heels of the widely publicized student rebellion in Berkeley - was interpreted in liberal-radical-intellectual circles as the signal of a natural alliance. Beyond that, the Angels' aggressive, antisocial stance - their alienation, as it were - had a tremendous appeal for the more aesthetic Berkeley temperament. Students who could barely get up the nerve to sign a petition or to shoplift a candy bar were fascinated by tales of the Hell's Angels ripping up towns and taking whatever they wanted. Most important, the Angels had a reputation for defying police, for successfully bucking authority, and to the frustrated student radical this was a powerful image indeed. The Angels didn't masturbate, they raped. They didn't come on with theories and songs and quotations, but with noise and muscle and sheer balls.
The honeymoon lasted about three months and came to a jangled end on October 16, when the Hell's Angels attacked a Get Out of Vietnam demonstration at the Oakland-Berkeley border. The existential heroes who had passed the joint with Berkeley liberals at Kesey's parties suddenly turned into venomous beasts, rushing on the same liberals with flailing fists and shouts of Traitors, Communists, Beatniks! When push came to shove, the Hell's Angels lined up solidly with the cops, the Pentagon and the John Birch Society. And there was no joy that day in Berkeley, for Casey had apparently gone mad.
The attack was an awful shock to those who had seen the Hell's Angels as pioneers of the human spirit, but to anyone who knew them it was entirely logical. The Angels' collective viewpoint has always been fascistic. They insist and seem to believe that their swastika fetish is no more than an antisocial joke, a guaranteed gimmick to bug the squares, the taxpayers - all those they spitefully refer to as citizens. What they really mean is the Middle Class, the Bourgeoisie, the Burghers - but the Angels don't know these terms and they're suspicious of anyone who tries to explain them. If they wanted to be artful about bugging the squares they would drop the swastika and decorate their bikes with the hammer and sickle. That would really raise hell on the freeways... hundreds of Communist thugs roaming the countryside on big motorcycles, looking for trouble."