Final ride of the Hells Angel who ‘killed’ the 60s

Biker Barger dies still claiming Stones caused Altamont death riot

The hippy ethos of love and peace was battered out of existence at Altamont in Canada as the Rolling Stone’s gave their free festival answer to Woodstock, in 1969.

Rock’n’roll had descended into drugged decadent anarchy – Morrison wasn’t there, he was about to slam The Doors shut on his band’s future, and Dylan had fallen off his bike and gone home to get somebody to lick his wounds.

Sonny Barger was there though.

And he and his henchmen were about to destroy a naive but potent way of being – the ethos of the hippy… dance, take acid, laugh, create shimmering fantasy. And make love. It was simple but unworkable.

But we must never forget, Barger was probably more responsible than any other for the destruction of that dream.

Let’s at least remember that Meredith Curly Hunter Jr, an African American stabbed and stomped to death to the thunder of music on the stage just above his head.

Hunter had approached the stage and was attacked by members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club who were under the impression they were The Stones’ security guards.

Sonny Barger, who died a few days ago aged 82, was the founder member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. Ans he always said the blame lay at the feet of The Stones.

But the truth is the band were horrified. Mick Jagger looked on at the dying man just a few feet away from him, you could see the shock in his face..

Nobody could claim that Barger was a good man.

But he was an anti-hero, good looking, wild, hard, a drinker and a smoker, a spirit of the road… a man not to be messed with.

He had the charisma of hell.

Journalist Hunter S. Thompson made his name by getting Barger to let him ride with them. Hunter wrote Hell’s Angels: The Strange And Terrible Saga Of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs after spending a year with Barger and his cronies.

But even he fled after he was stomped for asking a biker to stop hitting his girlfriend.

Women expected to be abused and way back then Barger called his girlfriends ‘Old ladies’, or ‘Babes. Chicks. Good-time broads. Can’t live without them, can’t use their bones for soup’.

He believed most women are ‘drawn to wild macho guys. That’s what turns them on.’

In 1982, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, after smoking 60 cigarettes a day since his teens.

He published several books and had a cameo role in Sons Of Anarchy, between 2010 and 2012, as Lenny ‘The Pimp’ Janowitz.

Barger died from cancer on Wednesday at his home. In a statement written to be released after his death, he wrote: ‘Know that in the end, I was surrounded by what really matters: my wife Zorana, as well as my loved ones.’

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