Hayes - Hell on wheels: an illustrated history of outlaw motorcycle clubs

The outlaw biker stands apart from the crowd, a beacon of freedom, laughing in the face of authority. While many do everything possible to avoid being marginalized by society, the one-percenter stomps through those margins without fear. Too often he ends up in prison or dead, but the ethos he lives by values freedom over life itself.

BILL HAYES

FOREWORD BY KIM PETERSON

First published in 2014 by Motorbooks, a member of Quayside Publishing Group, 400 First Avenue North, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

2014 Motorbooks

Text Bill Hayes

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Digital edition: 978-1-62788-143-2
Softcover edition: 978-0-76034-579-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hayes, Bill, 1950

Hell on wheels: an illustrated history of outlaw motorcycle clubs / Bill Hayes.

pages cm

Summary: Bill Hayes Hell on Wheels is an illustrated history to many motorcycle clubs histories, including the stories, slogans, insignias, characters, and conflicts that made each club what it is today-- Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-7603-4579-5 (pbk.)

1. Motorcycle gangs--United States--History. 2. Motorcycle clubs--United States--History. I. Title.

HV6439.U5H394 2014

364.1060973--dc23

2013048599

Editor: Darwin Holmstrom

Design Manager: Cindy Samargia Laun

Cover Design: FaceOut Studio

Design and Layout: John Sticha

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

M otorcycles are the glue that bonds the brotherhood of bikers. How else can a person explain why disparate, nonconformist, outside-the-box thinkers are drawn together? Often gathering from opposite geographical ends of the world, economically and intellectually, motorcyclists become not merely like-minded simpleton hobbyists, but cagey blood brothers of the road. Man, the deals all about two wheels. Scooters, choppers, sleds, putts: theyre our rides by any name and are the ties that bind. They are also the reason these words got here.

Bill Hayes and I first met in June of 2007, in the dry, hot rural hills of Calaveras County, California. We were lounging on a couch, preparing for an interview about to be videotaped in a ranch barn posing as the set of a TV talk show and comparing notes. The easygoing Boozefighter MC member/biker journalist and I were two of a hand-picked crew of manic motorcyclists assembled by musician/entrepreneur and displaced ragin Cajun, Goodtime Charlie Brechtel. Charlie was kicking off his Internet-based biker entertainment show the best way he could: by bringing in his extended family of biker friends to the show. Charlie had brainstormed the idea for months and was now calling the shots as producer.

Over the next several hours and deep into the nightfollowed by two more days and nightsthe sole topic on the table was motorcycles and the lifestyle we love.

It was scorching hot outside and the air was plenty steamy inside, as the heavy-duty Klieg lights blew fuses hourly. But the long hours didnt kill the buzz or dull the collective sense of humor (mostly of the gallows variety); instead, it created a connection within the crew. Bill and I were no exceptions, trading quips and barbs and enjoying dueling horror stories of past predicaments wed survived, each yarn gaining in drama. A friendship was built that week and remains solid years later.

As for me, I have melded my love of motorcycles with a lifelong passion for photography, and managed to carve out (eke out?) a career in viewing, editing, collating, and categorizing wild and wacky photos of the zany biker lifestyle. Since 1976, I have shared in the captured experiences of the fearless readers of Easyriders and In the Wind. Thats thirty-seven years worth of viewing, editing, collating, and categorizing. Looking back, the best part has been the unique opportunity to meet the worlds finest folksthose who ride. Bill Hayesbiker/author/brotherfrom Southern California is one of those people. Bill is as adept at being a wordsmith as he would be leading a thundering herd of Harley-powered blacktop barons across the beaten back roads of America and beyond. This book, I believe, bears this out.

So go ahead and devour the pages of Hell On Wheels. Saddle up for an in-depth ride into the brotherhood behind the patch, probing the group history of motorcycling from the rare perspective of one who lives it. Quench your curiosity about outlaw organizations in this remarkable review of a societal niche.

The motorcycle-club genre is one that many in the general public would just as soon ignore, due to decades of media-driven stereotypes creating outdated beliefs. But thats not our bag. So via the magic of bold photographs ripped from real life, coupled with Bills direct, honest narrative that cuts through the mystique, straight to the meat and marrow of motorcycle clubs, Hell On Wheels strives to shed a positive light on a controversial, often-misconstrued corner of the biker lifestyle: clubs. Outlaw and otherwise. May that beam shine respect onto patch holders worldwide.

Ride easy,

Kim Peterson Editor, In The Wind Magazine Motorcycle Enthusiast for Life October 2013

PREFACE

T he terms outlaw and one percenter have held many different meanings for many different people down through the years. They have fired up emotions ranging from pride to anger, from respect to revulsion, from escape to envy, and everything in between. But ultimately, right from the very beginning of this ride, their meaning has always been about not wanting to be just another drone in the dust. Their meaning has been about something special. Something independent and apart. That small percentage that simply cant let the edgier sides of life pass them byespecially on two wheels.

As time has passed and the biker lifestyle has grown, lawmakers have taken these terms and made them into legal definitions and statutory categories that can put people behind bars. They have made them somehow synonymous with things unsavory and even criminal. They have also looked beyond these terms, often condemning the entire biker lifestyle as an existence based solely on mayhem and one hundred percent illegal activity.