Hell’s Angels. A Strange and Terrible. Saga by Hunter S. Thompson

* I was eventually given to understand that not all of them felt this way.

They treated the Los Angels Times man the same way, but he never seemed to get over the feeling that somebody was going to sneak up behind him and scramble his brains with a tire iron. It was a very funny scene. I was hoping Cohen would utter some­thing like, President Barger, I presume? But he was too nervous. He’d been talking to the cops, and his mind was full of atrocity stories; probably he was even then composing the article somebody else would write on his demise: . . . the reporter struggled, but to no avail. The drug-crazed cyclists quickly hacked him into quarters, which they put on a spit. Their orgiastic cries floated across the water. . . he is survived by. . .

The odd truth is that Cohen left Bass Lake with one of the longest and straightest interviews Barger has ever given anybody. The boss Angel was in rare spirits that morning. The sun was warm, his people were secure, and whatever he’d got hold of the night before had obviously been good for him. Cohen’s demeanor was anything but hostile. Most reporters either patronize the out­laws or ask such pointed, opinionated questions that they would do just as well to get their answers from the Lynch report. One night in Oakland I watched a man from one of the East Bay papers make both mistakes at once. He came into the El Adobe and immediately asked to buy some marijuana. Then, before they could decide whether he was a poison toad or a narco agent, he pulled out some grass of his own and offered it around. This didn’t work either, although it might have broken the ice if he’d rolled a joint for himself. Then he offered to buy a round of beers, talking constantly in bop jargon. The Angels tolerated him for a while, but after several beers he began asking questions about Hitler and gang rapes and sodomy. Finally Sonny told him he had thirty seconds to get his ass out of sight and if he showed up again they would work on his head with a chain.

Another journalist was eighty-sixed for being too sympathetic. There’s somethin creepy about that guy, Barger told me. He’s either a cop or he’s crazy — and if it’s neither one of those then he’s usin us for somethin we don’t know nothin about. Which proved to be true. His relationship with the Angels went from uneasy to critical, and the last time I talked to him, he said that they were after him for real. He was so worried that he’d bought a .357 Magnum revolver. You’re damn right I’m scared, he said. If they come around here I’ll shoot to kill. This seemed to sat­isfy the Angels. The nutty sonofabitch was lookin for a scare, said one. Maybe it’ll straighten him out.

Cohen made none of these mistakes. He asked very short gen­eral questions and then stood quietly, sweating and shuffling, while his tape recorder gathered up the answers. I could almost hear the song when Barger led off with, We Angels live in our own world. We just want to be left alone to be individualists.

Here are some of the other jewels that Cohen collected that morning, nearly all from Barger:

Actually we’re conformists. To be an Angel, you have to con­form to the rules of our society, and the Angels’ rules are the toughest anywhere. . . Our bikes are first with us. We can do things with bikes that nobody else can. They can try but they can’t. An Angel can tear a [hog] down and put it back together in two hours. Who else can?. . . This stuff [the Nazi insignia and head­gear] — that’s just to shock people, to let em know we’re individu­alists, to let em know we’re Angels. . . There’d be no trouble if we was left alone. The only violence is when people go after us. Couple of Angels will go into a bar and a few guys gettin drunked up will start a fight, but we get blamed for it. Our two guys will put em down. Any two Angels can take on any other five guys. . . You got to want to be an Angel. We don’t just take anybody in. We watch em. We got to know they’ll stick to our rules. . .