Hell's Trademark Attorneys

Sept. 21, 2000 — -- You know the world has changed when the foremost member of the Hell’s Angels barnstorms across the country with a cell phone on his Harley.

In the 1960s, if a nonmember presumed to ride his motorcycle with the Angels’ notorious winged skull insignia, he could look forward a good beating and a lifetime of eating corn on the cob with no teeth.

These days, the Angels’ logo is trademarked, and if you cross them, their hotshot intellectual property lawyer will dash off a vicious cease-and-desist letter to exact a different sort of pain.

Yes, the famed outlaw bikers now have lawyers. But if you think that’s ironic, Ralph “Sonny” Barger will tell you that the Hell’s Angels aren’t a motorcycle gang. “It’s a club. It’s always been a club,” he says. “The cops and the press might tell you something else.”

And this club is very protective of its image.

“In the 1960s, if you ripped us off like that, we’d bust your head,” Barger says. “But these days, we need lawyers.

“We can’t reach the corporate types who make phony Hell’s Angels patches and paraphernalia. You could go to a building, beat up a security guard, but what’s the point? You never get to the suits who rip us off.”

Quiet Life in Arizona

Wisdom comes with age, even as the tattoos along Barger’s beefy arms fade. Barger now croaks his replies, having lost a larynx to cancer. Like a typical retiree, he moved to sunny Arizona, having left Oakland — the California city where he helped found the Angels 42 years ago.

One can only imagine Barger lining up for the earlybird special with other silver-haired Phoenix transplants. Barger served nearly 13 years in prison and has been charged with gun possession, income tax evasion, kidnapping, drug possession and conspiracy.

But Barger still works — operating a local bike shop.

And yes, Barger has a story to tell. More precisely, a book and movie to sell: Hell’s Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club (William Morrow). A film is also in the works, with Barger and the Angels splitting the booty 50-50.

Fox has signed a production deal with Barger. Director Tony Scott (Top Gun, Crimson Tide, Beverly Hills Cop 2) has been connected with the project for more than a year.

Debunking Hunter Thompson

Sonny does a bit of myth-busting in his book. Yeah, some bad stuff went down at the Rolling Stones’ free concert at Altamont Speedway in California’s Bay Area in 1969, when the rockers hired the Angels to work security for the show. A man was stabbed to death.

But the Angels shouldn’t have been held responsible, Barger says. And they never put a contract out for Mick’s life. “Don’t you think Jagger would be dead by now if we did?” he says.

Barger also claims his conviction on charges of planning to blow up a rival gang’s headquarters inKentucky was all bunk. He ended up serving four years in a federal prison. Among the hundreds supporting his early release in 1992 was Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

The lawmaker, a motorcycle aficionado, told a local newspaper. “These clubs are much different now. They’re very respectable.”

That’s a far cry from the description of the Angels in Hunter S. Thompson’s landmark book, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (Ballantine Books):

“The Menace is loose again, the Hell’s Angels, the hundred-carat headline, running fast and loud … low in the saddle, nobody smiles, jamming crazy through traffic and ninety miles an hour down the center stripe … like Genghis Khan on an iron horse, a monster steed with a fiery anus.”

Thompson claims he was beaten when the Angels found out he was writing his book, and that’s documented in the postscript. Barger says Thompson exaggerates.

“He tells a good story. But he doesn’t stick to the facts.”

Case in point: Thompson describes Barger as “a six-foot, 170-pound warehouseman from East Oakland, the coolest head in the lot, and a tough, quick-thinking dealer.”

Barger never denies messing with drugs. However, “I’m 5-foot-9. Where does he get 6-foot? And the Hell’s Angels don’t have a leader. I’m just one guy with a big mouth.”

Kicks on Route 66

These days, he and his third wife, 30 years his junior, live the quiet life with his 10-year-old stepdaughter. “I live by the same motto I always lived by, I treat people the way I want to be treated,” Barger says. “But if you treat me bad, I’ll treat you worse.”

The Angels aren’t violent, he says. It’s just that the police are always making trouble for them. But they still don’t take any guff.

“In Texas a cop asked me, ‘Excuse me, partner, but … why do you and your friends carry those big knives?’” he writes in his book.

“I told him, ‘Because we’re all felons and we can’t carry a big gun like you.’”

The Hell’s Angels don’t say how many members they have. But they have chapters across North America and Europe. Each club has four or five mandatory runs per year and 15 to 20 parties and smaller runs.

“If you multiply that by the 40 years the Oakland club has been around,” Barger says, “that’s a lot of riding.”

Barger says he still averages 5,000 miles a month on his bike, even though back problems have set in.

As for his 13 years in prison, he says, “That’s not bad, considering all the fun I’ve had.”

In September, Barger did his own version of a book tour, biking down Route 66 and hitting book stores along the way, seeing no contradiction between this PR tour and his past reputation as an outlaw biker.

“It’s a publicity tour,” he says. “Hell’s Angels style.” The cell phone, the phalanx of reporters writing about him, the public relations folks at his side, they’re all just part of the show.

Buck Wolf is a producer at ABCNEWS.com. The Wolf Files is a weekly feature of the U.S. Section. If you want to receive weekly notice when a new column is published, join the e-mail list.