Sonny Barger, biker outlaw and founder of Hells Angels, dies at 83

For decades, the stocky, muscular Mr. Barger stood not only as the founder of the original Oakland, Calif., Angels chapter in 1957, but for decades after that also as the public face of a nationwide counterculture tribe of bearded, denim-clad road warriors memorialized in literature and film — roaring down the open highway and through crossroads towns, shocking the locals with their boisterous, often menacing presence.

It was a rowdy, frequently lawless brotherhood bound, in no particular order, by machismo, tattoos, winged death-head insignia, booze, dope, rides to nowhere on thundering Harley-Davidson hogs and a lust for the unfettered freedom found on the open road.

“Discover your limits by exceeding them,” Mr. Barger urged.

Woven into the Hells Angels history was a tradition of crime and violence — much of it involving Mr. Barger, a fact he boastfully acknowledged. He once referred to himself as belonging to a band of “card-carrying felons.”

He was convicted in 1988 of conspiracy to kill members of a rival club in Kentucky and blow up their headquarters, serving five years in federal prison.

A confessed cocaine addict who supported his habit by selling heroin in the 1960s and 1970s, he served stints totaling eight years for assorted drug and firearms charges.

The Hells Angels — as a corporate entity with chapters from California to New York — faced incessant federal investigation on criminal enterprise and racketeering offenses. In 2013, authorities obtained convictions against 16 members and hangers-on in South Carolina for a conspiracy involving drug distribution, gun­running, money laundering and arson.

In 1979, Mr. Barger and other leaders beat a similar conspiracy rap in which they were accused of running a mammoth methamphetamine (“biker’s coffee”) operation out of Oakland.

Most infamous in Hells Angles lore was their role in the chaotic 1969 Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, Calif., where a pistol-wielding 18-year-old concertgoer, Meredith Hunter, was stabbed to death by a Hells Angel — all captured on film in the 1970 documentary “Gimme Shelter.”

The Angels, hired to provide security, were fighting off fans rushing the stage, according to Mr. Barger, who was present. The drug-fueled crowd pressed against the Angels’ security line, damaging some of their bikes, and Angels waded into the crowd swinging fists and cue sticks.

In his autobiography “Hell’s Angel — The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club,” Mr. Barger accused Stones guitarist Keith Richards of delaying the band’s performance to work up the crowd. He claimed that he pressed a pistol to Richards’s ribs and ordered him to start playing immediately.

Richards complied, but the crowd, including Hunter, kept swarming toward the stage, according to Mr. Barger. Hunter fired a single shot, winging a Hells Angel, Mr. Barger said. Other Angels quickly subdued Hunter, punching and kicking him. One Angel was charged with fatally stabbing him but was acquitted after claiming self-defense.

Over the years, Mr. Barger served as a technical consultant for biker movies and appeared in several, including “Hells Angels on Wheels” (1967), a low-budget exploitation film featuring Jack Nicholson.

For the real-life Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, he drew inspiration from an earlier movie — the 1953 classic “The Wild One,” with Marlon Brando playing a strangely sensitive gang leader. Mr. Barger preferred Lee Marvin’s more aggressive performance as a biker.

Mr. Barger’s rough and anarchic manner belied a disciplined entrepreneurial streak. He promoted his renegade brand, carefully marketing Hells Angels-themed T-shirts, yo-yos, sunglasses and California wines. He registered trademarks on club logos and designs, and retained an intellectual property rights lawyer to sue poachers, a frequent occurrence.

To give the Angels a little gloss, he initiated periodic charity drives for children’s toys and clothes.

“He’s smart and he’s crafty, and he has a kind of wild animal cunning,” author Hunter S. Thompson told The Washington Post in 2000. Hunter spent a year with the Angels researching his seminal book “Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga” (1966).

Ralph Hubert Barger Jr. was born in Modesto, Calif., on Oct. 8, 1938. His mother ran off with a Trailways bus driver when Sonny was 4 months old. His father, a day laborer loading…