Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free: Hell-Raising Motorcycle Stories
Ralph “Sonny” Barger with Keith and Kent Zimmerman
Harper
2002
277 pages
Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free is a collection of fourty-one motorcycle related stories collected by Sonny Barger, the former national president of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, and Keith and Kent Zimmerman, the twin brothers who collaborated with Barger on his 2000 autobiography, Hells Angel
and also worked with John Lydon (also known as Johnny Rotten, the frontman for seminal punk group, The Sex Pistols) on his autobiography, Rotten
. Barger and the Zimmerman brothers present the reader with biker tales from a number of different aspects of motorcycle culture (many of them about 1% bikers) and demonstrate just how varied the subculture of motorcycle enthusiasts can be.
The book begins with the story 'The Wandering Gypsy and The Silver Satin Kid', with photos of the ‘kid’ showing a young Sonny Barger. The story tells how Barger became the leader of the Oakland Hells Angels and thus transitioned motorcycling from a practice to a subculture in the popular imagination. From this story of outlaw genesis, Barger and associates tell a number of stories that shine a light onto a number of lesser-known aspects of the motorcycling subculture, both outlaw and lawful.
Many of the stories contained in Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free are stories of outlaws, some are tales of interaction with celebrities such as actor Steve McQueen, singer David Crosby, and outlaw country musician, Kinky Friedman. Many of them are stories of kindness, done by or for outlaw motorcyclists, in an effort to oppose the stereotype of the maniac biker, however others are stories that detail the outrageous biker behavior we all expect from such a book. ‘Blake’s World Record Whore-House Jump’ for example, describes a biker jumping a motorcycle into a brothel bedroom that was already in use by a fellow brother. ‘On the Lam’ is a story of running from law enforcement personnel. The most interesting stories, however, are those that highlight some aspect of biker culture that is seldom made visible by other media coverage. One of the first stories describes a long running black biker club called the East Bay Dragons, a club that the Zimmermans have recently devoted a full book to, distorting the concept of the 1%ers as a purely white (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) phenomena. Other stories discuss the experiences of women bikers, and another story, 'The Ballad of Rocky's Green Gables,' discusses the conversion of an old biker bar into a Christian ministry and church....for bikers. These stories illustrate how people of all kinds gravitate towards the technology of the motorcycle and make it mean more than a mode of transportation.
Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free is also interesting because it points towards something that simply must exist although its almost completely absent in literature. That is, it points towards a folklore of counterculture. In one sentence in A Secret History of the IRA, Ed Moloney makes a passing reference to IRA folklore, but presents no examples of it. Barger et. al. have created a volume of biker stories that has many similarities to folklore. The authors even using the folklorist term of ‘capturing’ stories, to refer to their transcription of the tails included. The stories of Ridin' High, Livin' Free are all told in what is presumably a outlaw vernacular of rough speech, and while many of the stories are probably based on a kernel of truth (with accompanying photographs of the people who populate them) they also often have a fantastic edge to their tellings that suggests the embellishments that build with repeated oral transmissions.
Ralph “Sonny” Barger with Keith and Kent Zimmerman
Harper
2002
277 pages
Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free is a collection of fourty-one motorcycle related stories collected by Sonny Barger, the former national president of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, and Keith and Kent Zimmerman, the twin brothers who collaborated with Barger on his 2000 autobiography, Hells Angel
and also worked with John Lydon (also known as Johnny Rotten, the frontman for seminal punk group, The Sex Pistols) on his autobiography, Rotten. Barger and the Zimmerman brothers present the reader with biker tales from a number of different aspects of motorcycle culture (many of them about 1% bikers) and demonstrate just how varied the subculture of motorcycle enthusiasts can be.The book begins with the story 'The Wandering Gypsy and The Silver Satin Kid', with photos of the ‘kid’ showing a young Sonny Barger. The story tells how Barger became the leader of the Oakland Hells Angels and thus transitioned motorcycling from a practice to a subculture in the popular imagination. From this story of outlaw genesis, Barger and associates tell a number of stories that shine a light onto a number of lesser-known aspects of the motorcycling subculture, both outlaw and lawful.
Many of the stories contained in Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free are stories of outlaws, some are tales of interaction with celebrities such as actor Steve McQueen, singer David Crosby, and outlaw country musician, Kinky Friedman. Many of them are stories of kindness, done by or for outlaw motorcyclists, in an effort to oppose the stereotype of the maniac biker, however others are stories that detail the outrageous biker behavior we all expect from such a book. ‘Blake’s World Record Whore-House Jump’ for example, describes a biker jumping a motorcycle into a brothel bedroom that was already in use by a fellow brother. ‘On the Lam’ is a story of running from law enforcement personnel. The most interesting stories, however, are those that highlight some aspect of biker culture that is seldom made visible by other media coverage. One of the first stories describes a long running black biker club called the East Bay Dragons, a club that the Zimmermans have recently devoted a full book to, distorting the concept of the 1%ers as a purely white (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) phenomena. Other stories discuss the experiences of women bikers, and another story, 'The Ballad of Rocky's Green Gables,' discusses the conversion of an old biker bar into a Christian ministry and church....for bikers. These stories illustrate how people of all kinds gravitate towards the technology of the motorcycle and make it mean more than a mode of transportation.
Ridin’ High, Livin’ Free is also interesting because it points towards something that simply must exist although its almost completely absent in literature. That is, it points towards a folklore of counterculture. In one sentence in A Secret History of the IRA, Ed Moloney makes a passing reference to IRA folklore, but presents no examples of it. Barger et. al. have created a volume of biker stories that has many similarities to folklore. The authors even using the folklorist term of ‘capturing’ stories, to refer to their transcription of the tails included. The stories of Ridin' High, Livin' Free are all told in what is presumably a outlaw vernacular of rough speech, and while many of the stories are probably based on a kernel of truth (with accompanying photographs of the people who populate them) they also often have a fantastic edge to their tellings that suggests the embellishments that build with repeated oral transmissions.
The book also presents a fuller range of biker activities than other biker books and not the simply criminal that are represented by true crime authors and former undercover infiltrators, not is it bogged down by the rhetoric of a victim of social misconception. Finally, Ridin' High, Livin' Free conveys the appeal of the activity of riding to the reader, an aspect of the subculture that should often be foregrounded but is actually often absent from too many biker books that instead focus on the wild lives of the people who join 1% clubs.
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