Hells Angels in the Wind: Bill Ray’s 1965 Bakersfield Run
In the spring of 1965, LIFE photographer Bill Ray and writer Joe Bride spent more than a month hanging around the San Bernardino Hells Angels. Most of it was weekends. Then came the Bakersfield run: three days and nights on the road, in bars and around motorcycles with a group that LIFE's average reader would normally have crossed the street to avoid.
The trip from San Bernardino to Bakersfield is only about 130 miles. The Hells Angels managed to turn it into an assignment big enough that Ray later remembered sleeping on the floor of the Blackboard Cafe. That tells you more about the pace of the run than a mileage chart ever will.
Joe Bride Gets Blindfolded
The whole thing started with Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Bride had been working on a LIFE story about Roth, whose hot-rod art and Rat Fink empire put him in the middle of Southern California custom culture. The Angels were making news, Roth knew some of them, and Bride asked for an introduction.
Roth eventually called back with a message: they would meet, but on their terms. Bride left Roth's shop with two Angels and spent the drive blindfolded. When they stopped at a mountain bar with motorcycles packed outside, the blindfold came off and the interview turned into a game of nine-ball.
Bride won two games out of three, drank a few beers and came away with permission for himself and Ray to follow the club. It is difficult to imagine a modern magazine's legal department approving that reporting plan.
Three Days to Bakersfield
Ray and Bride followed the San Bernardino riders north. The photographs catch the parts of a motorcycle run that are usually forgotten once the story gets polished: waiting, fueling, standing around, packing gear, watching somebody work on a bike and getting everybody moving again.
The Bakersfield run went around the clock for three days and nights. The Blackboard Cafe became the temporary headquarters, and Ray slept on the floor. LIFE's later captions place Angels, women traveling with them, locals and law enforcement around the bar and through Bakersfield.
Ray had already spent enough time around the club to earn a strange sort of protection. He remembered another biker threatening him in a bar because he was taking pictures. A Hells Angel stepped in and made it clear that Ray was off limits. Ray did not call himself safe after that. He said it felt more like he had passed a test.
Harleys Built to Get There
These bikes are my favorite part of the road photographs because they are caught doing the job. They are not show bikes sitting behind ropes. They have passengers, luggage, road grime and whatever had to be tied on before leaving town.
Harley-Davidson dominates the run. You can see the custom scene moving from the postwar bobber toward the chopper without reaching the stretched movie-bike look that would come later. Front ends are getting longer, bars taller, fenders smaller and pipes higher.
The donor bikes span several Harley families, and they had already been mixed and modified enough that I would not try to put a factory model tag on every engine from these photographs. The point is simpler: these were customized motorcycles that still had to make Bakersfield. Function had not been thrown away just because somebody owned a hacksaw.
Bakersfield Becomes a Stage
A pack of Hells Angels arriving in Bakersfield in 1965 was public entertainment whether the riders intended it or not. People watched. Teenagers drifted toward the motorcycles. Police stayed close. Ray kept photographing all of it.
The LIFE archive identifies a sheriff's officer watching outside the bar the Angels used as their temporary headquarters. It also catches the other side of the attention: townspeople looking over the bikes and riders doing exactly the sort of things guaranteed to keep the crowd watching. Sonny, identified by LIFE as the San Bernardino leader, ended up with stitches in his head after crashing his motorcycle during the assignment. The road was doing some of the policing on its own.
One of the wider assignment photographs shows a Hells Angel pulling a wheelie in downtown Bakersfield with a passenger hanging on. Another shows a rider being frisked while police searched for marijuana they did not find because, according to Bride's notes, it was hidden inside the motorcycle's seat pad. There was some thought put into these bikes beyond rake and paint.
They Invite Themselves to a Hillclimb
Somewhere along the run the Angels came across a motorcycle hillclimb and decided they wanted in. The organizers initially said no. The Angels kept discussing the matter until the answer changed.
LIFE's later caption describes Hambone arguing with organizers while sheriff's officers listened. Bride's notes added that men on the organizers' side were carrying shortened baseball bats weighted with lead. Nobody needed a committee meeting to understand the mood.
The Angels were eventually allowed to participate. That little detour fits the whole trip: arrive somewhere uninvited, make the place adjust, then get back on the motorcycles.
The Story LIFE Killed
Ray and Bride finished the assignment. LIFE still never ran it.
Bride later said managing editor George Hunt simply did not want a story about “those smelly bastards.” Ray remembered it as the kind of decision an editor could make with one remark. Weeks of access, risk and photographs disappeared into the files.
The pictures finally received the audience they missed in 1965 when LIFE/TIME put the assignment online decades later. Ray had already published the material himself in Hells Angels of San Berdoo '65, describing it exactly for what it was: a LIFE assignment with the mother charter that LIFE never published.
The longer Bill Ray selection gets deeper into the people and club life. These photographs belong on the road. Three days and nights, 130 miles, and somehow Bakersfield still looks a long way from San Bernardino.