Sonny Barger

Sonny Barger (born October 8, 1938, Modesto, California, U.S.—died June 29, 2022, Livermore, California) was an American outlaw biker credited with turning the Hells Angels motorcycle club into a global brand. Barger, who came to the fore as a founding member of the Oakland, California, chapter of the Hells Angels, was a major figure in the American counterculture of the late 1960s and early ’70s. In the following years he led a massive expansion of the club and was involved in many of its criminal dealings in narcotics.

Upbringing in Oakland

Ralph Hubert Barger, Jr., was born in Modesto, a city in central California, to Ralph and Kathryn (née Ritch) Barger. When Sonny, as he was called, was four months old, his mother deserted the family. He and his older sister were in turn raised by their “hardworking, hard-drinking functioning alcoholic” father (as Barger once described him) and their strict Pentecostal grandmother. Barger’s father worked days loading ships and trucks at the Port of Oakland. Sometimes he brought his young son along to bars by the city’s waterfront.

Barger was an indifferent student who defied authority at every turn. He regularly got into fights and was suspended for hitting his teachers. After the 10th grade Barger dropped out of school and enlisted in the U.S. Army; he was 16 years old. A little over a year later he was honorably discharged after it was discovered that he had forged his birth certificate.

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Taking over the Hells Angels

After being discharged, Barger moved back to Oakland and worked a number of odd jobs. He joined the Oakland Panthers motorcycle club in 1956 but quickly became disappointed with its lack of camaraderie. He explained in his autobiography, “I needed more than a couple of weekender rides. I needed a second family.…I felt no brotherhood.” Then he fell in with a group of heavy-drinking veterans who encouraged him to form a club with them. The following year Barger and a fellow motorcycle enthusiast, Don (“Boots”) Reeves, founded their own chapter of the Hells Angels. Later that year Barger learned about the original Hells Angels chapter near San Bernardino, California, and began attempting to unify the clubs. In 1958, when the San Bernardino chapter’s president was incarcerated, a 20-year-old Barger took the reins and moved the Angels’ headquarters to Oakland.

National notoriety as countercultural outlaws

The 1960s saw the Hells Angels earn national notoriety as they regularly clashed with police, with some members being charged with such offenses as car theft and gang rape. In one incident in 1965, a group of Hells Angels, many of whom were military veterans, attacked peaceful anti-Vietnam War protesters in Berkeley, California. Barger later defended the club’s actions at the protest, writing in his autobiography, “As a vet, I felt we ought to stick up for America.” Barger himself was arrested a number of times in the 1960s, for marijuana possession and assault with a deadly weapon.

The image of the leather-clad, bearded, hypermasculine biker began to solidify during this era. At the same time, the Hells Angels came to symbolize the anti-authority sentiments of the counterculture. In 1965 Ken Kesey, author of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1961) and leader of a band of nonconformists called the Merry Pranksters, invited the Angels to one of his “acid tests,” introducing them to LSD. The wild two-day party between bikers and Pranksters was later chronicled in Tom Wolfe’s book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), in which Barger appears. In 1967 gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson wrote Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga, a groundbreaking book about the Oakland Angels in which he expresses admiration for Barger.

As the Angels’ publicity—and notoriety—increased, Barger recognized their potential as a brand; he incorporated the club in 1966. In the late 1960s he was making most of his money from consulting on a number of B-movies about bikers.

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Barger and the Hells Angels at Altamont

In 1969 the Hells Angels created a national firestorm when one of their members killed a Black teenager, Meredith Hunter, during a free music festival hosted by the Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway in Livermore, California. They had been contracted by the Stones’ road manager, Sam Cutler, to provide security, reportedly for $500 worth of beer as payment. After the event Barger publicly lashed out at the Stones’ Mick Jagger, saying the singer “used [the Angels] for dupes.” He also claimed that the trouble started when the crowd began mishandling the club’s motorcycles. (Barger’s comments are captured in the 1970 documentary Gimme Shelter.)

Trouble with the law, health challenges, and Sons of Anarchy

The disastrous event at Altamont prompted Barger to begin a campaign to soften the public image of his gang through such tactics as charity involvement. However, the group was still engaged in a number of criminal enterprises, particularly the narcotics trade. In 1972 Barger was arrested and charged with killing a drug dealer, but he was acquitted. The following year he was convicted of possession of narcotics and illegal firearms. He was sentenced to 10 years in Folsom State Prison in California, serving a little more four years. In 1979 Barger and 32 other Angels were charged with racketeering under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). He was acquitted, but federal law enforcement continued to track him.

Barger was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1982 and had to have his vocal cords removed, reducing his voice to a hoarse near-whisper. In 1987 he was arrested again on federal charges and charged with providing the Hells Angels chapter in Louisville, Kentucky, with explosives, which they used to destroy a rival gang. He served three-and-a-half years of a four-year sentence.

His health continuing to decline, Barger stepped down from his leadership role in 1998 and moved to Arizona. His autobiography, Hell’s Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club (cowritten by Keith and Kent Zimmerman), was published in 2000. From 2010 to 2012 Barger appeared in several episodes of the biker television drama Sons of Anarchy, playing the role of elder biker Lenny “the Pimp” Janowitz.

Personal life

Barger was married four times. His first wife, Elsie Mae George, died in 1967 from an embolism after a self-induced abortion. He married his second wife, Sharon Gruhlke, during his stint in Folsom. They split up in 1996, and three years later Barger married Beth Noel Black. The two divorced after a domestic dispute in 2003 that ended with Black hospitalized and Barger being convicted of aggravated assault, for which he served eight days in jail. In 2005 he married Zorana Katzakian. That same year he published (with Keith and Kent Zimmerman) Freedom: Credos from the Road, a self-help book infused with bikers’ wisdom.

A Hells Angels send-off

Barger died of liver cancer at age 83. His funeral was held in California at the Stockton 99 Speedway and attracted more than 7,000 mourners.