Hells Angels by Hunter Thompson

“The hard core, the outlaw élite, were the Hell’s Angels… wearing the winged death’s-head on the back of their sleeveless jackets and packing their ‘mamas’ behind them on big ‘chopped hogs.’ They rode with a fine unwashed arrogance, secure in their reputation as the rottenest motor­cycle gang in the whole history of Christendom.”

Anyone even vaguely inter­ested in the written word and the world outside our windows cannot ignore the work of Hunter S Thompson. And if there’s even a smidgin of petrol in your veins, then his work is not to be missed.

Making a scandalous name for himself for his lysergic dispatches for Rolling Stone in the mid sixties that culminated in the fabled ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’  – a work of insane anti-​​narrative based loosely on a magazine assignment to cover a dune buggy race in the Nevada desert – Thompson’s real journ­al­istic opus – on the Angels – was published in 1966.

Hells Angels was the result of an extended sojourn into the notorious biker gang’s counter­cul­tural way of being – and though never taking the vows and ascribing his name in Angel blood – the narcotic-​​obsessed arch observer of humanity got as close as possible to the subject matter without becoming the subject itself.

But ultimately the creed of Gonzo journ­alism Hunter S Thompson initiated and espoused was built on that blurring of the edges of observer and observed.

‘Hell’s Angels’ is required reading for anyone inter­ested in the history of the biker cult. Check out, though, the video below of the author being dragged across the coals by a less-​​than-​​impressed Angel.