Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
In 1965, Hunter S. Thompson, who, up to that point (and, well, seemingly every point after), was rarely known for having his shit together, was hired by The Nation to write an article about motorcycle gangs, who were, you guessed it, rarely known for having their shit together. The article, published in May of that year as “The Motorcycle Gangs: Losers and Outsiders,” promptly led to book offers from several publishers. Thompson spent the next year embedded with the Angels, most notably the San Francisco and Oakland chapters, as outlaw biker gangs became one of the most notorious subcultures in the booming ’60s counterculture scene.
Hell’s Angels’ subtitle, originally published as The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, was, in later editions, shortened to A Strange and Terrible Saga, a factoid made entirely less interesting for having written it down, but one that, nevertheless, brings me to my point: A Strange and Terrible Saga is just about right. A Descent Into Nihilism might have been a better choice, but nihilism is both too esoteric and too lacking in scope. As a group (and there are always exceptions within a group), the bikers Thompson hung out with were certainly nihilists—most of them had little going for them and had even less interest in getting anything going (beyond talking about getting anything going)—but nihilism doesn’t adequately capture the élan, the esprit de corps, the wild, untamed, pure howl-at-the-moon (self-)destructive energy that characterized life in a biker gang.
The squares couldn’t make sense of anything happening in the ’60s, and outlaw biker gangs, led by the Hells Angels, rode a brief but mighty wave—and felt used in the process. Despite living on the margins of the margins, and, ostensibly, caring little about the world they claim to have rejected, they were desperate to capitalize on the notoriety, constantly scheming to cash in but, naturally, never managing to do so. Like a blistering, try-to-stay-one-step-ahead-of-the-cops run from San Francisco to Bass Lake, Thompson rode that wave with them. He was no mere voyeur, but he capitalized on the craze in a way the bikers never could, and, in turn, made voyeurs of the rest of us.
In the end, Hell’s Angels often feels more tabloid than gonzo: seemingly exhilarating but ultimately exhausting—just, as the Dude sagely noted, is nihilism itself. Despite 263 pages chronicling the day-in-day-out life of an outlaw biker, it’s hard to see the appeal beyond a self-aware knowingness, the dark thrill of making a conscious, deliberate choice to become a societal outcast. Doing nothing was ever harder. But then there’s the bike, “four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning.” I know that feeling. Nihilism, or no, isn’t that, in one way or another, what we’re all looking for?
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