- It was just like the motorcycle.

Anybody who has any kind of sensuality in them at all

would get a tremendous boot out of just

what the Angels call "screwing it on",

just getting a big bike and just running it flat out

as fast as it will go.

I used to take it out at night on the Coast Highway,

just drunk out of my mind,

ride it for 20 and 30 miles

in just short pants and a t-shirt.

It's a beautiful feeling.

("Come and Get It")

I recognize it as an illusion and a fantasy.

But for somebody who has nothing else to go back to,

this is maybe one of the happiest minutes of his life.

And you can imagine if that's true,

just how powerful he'd feel if he could

give you one of these, you know,

kind of, yeah, in the head with a karate,

it's not a chop.

It's a head snap.

The Angels, a lot of the Angels are big on karate.

("Come and Get It")

- Hunter Thompson, our guest,

is a new kind of journalist.

The journalist who is not detached,

who becomes involved,

and in fact, he was almost an honorary member,

or a dishonored member,

of the Oakland Hells Angels.

You were with them for about a year or so?

- [Hunter] About a year, yeah.

They claim, the Angels anyway,

claim that they don't look for trouble.

You know, they just try to live peaceful lives

and be left alone.

But on the other hand, they go out

and put themselves into situations

deliberately and constantly,

that are either gonna humiliate somebody else,

or cause them to avoid humiliation by fighting.

- [Studs] You speak of foul fighting.

They stomp someone,

you were stomped,

in which there's no question of rules involved here,

just beating, violence for the sake of violence.

- [Hunter] Well they have a rule,

it's bylaw either number 10 or 11,

that says, "When an Angel punches a non-Angel

"all other Angels will participate."

So I was a victim of bylaw number 10 or 11.

I should have known that though.

It's a lapse of caution.

("Four by Nine (Bed Version)")

All during this stomping

I could see the guy who'd originally

teed off on me just out of, you know, nowhere

with no warning, circling around with a rock about,

must have weighed about 20 pounds.

I tried to keep my eyes on him

because I didn't wanna get my skull fractured.

("Four by Nine (Bed Version)")

- [Studs] Your observations are more than about the Angels,

they're about our society.

And it's since World War Two pretty much, isn't it,

this phenomenon has come to be?

- [Hunter] I think the Angels came out of World War Two,

and this whole kind of alienated, violent subculture

of people wandering around looking for, you know,

either an opportunity, or if not an opportunity,

then vengeance for not getting an opportunity.

Then they get to be 30, and suddenly they wake up

one morning and they realize, you know,

there are no more chances.

It's all gone.

It makes them meaner, you know,

and maybe they want to get back at the people

who put them in this terrible,

this dead end tunnel.

- [Studs] Now who are these people

they want to get back at?

- [Hunter] Oh, they don't know.

It's kind of "they", paranoid.

You know, it's you, it's me,

it's whoever might come too close to them on the highway

in a car.

It's somebody that makes a remark in a bar to them.

They call them the citizens,

anybody who looks respectable

and looks like he isn't doomed, you know,

like he has some kind of option, or money,

or a home, or all the things they don't have.

("Another Man's Treasure")

- [Studs] What do you see for us, for everything?

- Christ, it's bad.

I mean, I'm not very optimistic.

I think one of the most important things is to recognize

that we do have this mounting violence in us,

and then to find the reasons.

And once you find that, it's like curing a boil.

And if people insist on saying,

"I am a very gentle person

"and only these little bad gang of hoodlums

"over there is ugly and mean,"

then it's just putting off the recognition

that the same venom that the Angels are spewing

around in public,

a lot of people are just keeping bottled up in private.

I think this technological,

the science of obsolescence,

or the fact that people are becoming obsolete.

The people who are most affected by this

are the ones least capable of understanding

the reasons for it,

so the venom builds up much quicker.

It feeds on their ignorance.

Until you recognize what's happening,

you know, what makes you do these wild things.

Christ, I used to throw beer bottles into bar mirrors

and stuff like that, and get stomped, always.

I can't remember ever winning a fight.

I don't do it anymore because I finally caught onto

what was happening.

Until you recognize it,

it's like an albatross around your neck.

("Another Man's Treasure")

Yeah, I learned a lot about myself

just writing about the Angels.

I was seeing a very ugly side of myself a lot of times.

I'm much more conscious of the kind of anger

that lurks everywhere.

I don't do any, you know,

I keep my mouth shut now.

I've turned into a professional coward.

("Unfiltered")

I wouldn't just call the Hells Angels in Oakland

the only violent part of our society.

I think Lyndon Johnson is, you know,

would be a good Hells Angel.

The Angels reflect not only the lower segments

of the society, but the higher and, you know,

where violence takes a much more sophisticated

and respectable form.

("Unfiltered")