Hell's Angels

Page added: 1997
Last updated: July 2005

HST and the Hell's Angels both rose to fame, and some believe that they helped or were helped by the film Easy Rider starring Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson (the most well known of biker movies made in those years). The book stemmed from an article, "Losers and Outsiders" that was published in The Nation. It has also been excerpted here and there in some anthologies, and The Great Shark Hunt. Details of the books progress and photographs of the "horde" can be found in The Proud Highway. Hell's Angels was first published in 1966 and has been reprinted over thirty three times in varying editions. Not even the Hell's Angels books by Yves Lavigne (a Canadian btw) can compare to Thompson's. Hell's Angels is a really superb read, no matter how one feels about the factualness of the ending. It has a distinct beginning, middle and end. It is Thompson's wonderfully wicked humour, prophetic conclusions and fast paced writing that makes the book stand out from other muckraking books of its time.

Thompson's year long relationship with the Angels came to a rather bad end. Stories on how the relationship ended vary; some say it was over a keg of beer, others say that the event was staged by Thompson, and or that the Angels felt he had ripped them off somehow. One night, they stomped him:

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