George Harrison posing on a Triumph motorcycle in 1972.
 
Beatle George Harrison was a profoundly fascinating cat and a mass of contradictions. Despite being known as the “quiet Beatle,” Harrison could prove to be anything but. A deeply spiritual man, Harrison believed he had led a previous life. He brought his Beatle bandmates to Northern India to become better acquainted with transcendental meditation in 1968. Later that same year, gentle George invited members of the Hells Angels to the offices of Apple after meeting a few of them getting high on Haight Street in San Francisco.

Rolling Stone founding editor David Dalton wrote about the entire affair. When Harrison met two Angels, Bill “Sweet Willie Tumbleweed” Fritch, the leader of the SF Hells Angels in the mid-60s, and Frisco Pete (Pete Knell), he extended an invitation for them to visit him in London, and attend a Christmas party at Apple Corps headquarters. Since you can’t ride a chopper all the way to London from San Francisco, the Angels’ spiritual advisor (yep), Peter “Monk” Zimmels (formerly a Buddhist monk on the run after deserting his gig with the U.S. Navy), went to concert promoter Bill Graham for travel cash.

Graham was already in deep with the Hells Angels and had received four death threats (noted in the book The Zapple Diaries: The Rise and Fall of the Last Beatles Label) including bullets fired into his office at the SF Fillmore by the infamous motorcycle gang. So when Peter the Monk arrived at the Fillmore to talk to Graham, his negotiation tactics revolved around the promise to “remove” the bullets in exchange for a $1,000 bucks so the Angels could go party with the Beatles in London. Graham coughed up the cash quickly, and a bunch of Hells Angels and two of their motorcycles would soon be on their way to see their pal, George. In anticipation of their visit, Harrison sent out a memo on December 4th to Apple Corps, letting them know a dozen members of the Hells Angels would be guests at Apple Corps’ Savile Row offices:
 

 

Now the notion Harrison was concerned about the Hells Angels visit is pretty apparent, as he ominously reminds Apple staff to not allow the bikers to “take control” of Savile Row—to say nothing of their plans for Czechoslovakia, which is over 800 miles away from London. Once they arrived, only two of the Angels actually made it through customs, Frisco Pete and Tumbleweed, along with an assorted group of hangers-on. When they arrived at the party, they were expecting to hook up with George, who would later whisk them away to his massive mansion. Once Harrison showed up, he gave the motley group a tour of Apple and then vanished, leaving the staff at Apple to deal with his guests. At the party, John and Yoko were dressed as Ma and Pa Christmas while a giant 43-pound turkey took its time cooking. All the while, Hells Angels, being Hells Angels, along with their jet-lagged entourage, consumed tons of booze and smoked hash. A completely blotto Frisco Pete, blind from drink and suddenly hungry, lurched into the main party room and screamed at John Lennon, “What the FUCK is going on in this place? We wanna eat!”

Pete’s announcement sucked all the air out of the room as everyone waited to see what was going to happen next. This is the part of the story when fists start flying. Because it ain’t the holidays until someone gets punched.

According to The Zapple Diaries, journalist Alan Smith responded to Pete’s demand for grub, politely asking the biker to “have a little consideration.” This got Smith punched in the face by the angry, drunk, high and hungry biker, sending him across the room where he crumbled into a pile on the floor. Now Pete turned to Santa Lennon and screamed the following:

“You got more fucking food in that kitchen than there are people, and it’s all locked up, and those two fucking broads upstairs tell me I’ve gotta wait until 7:00 just like everybody else! There’s a forty-three-pound turkey in that kitchen, and I want some of it now!!!”

 

A photo of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Apple artist Mary Hopkin at the Apple Corps Christmas Party in 1968.
 
After Lennon told Pete it wasn’t “cool” to be hungry, Peter Coyote (Frisco Pete’s multi-talented actor/director/friend, who had spent the flight from California to London injecting himself with methamphetamine and B12 to help “cure” his hepatitis), intervened telling Lennon to take a seat. It was now time for Apple’s administrative director Peter Brown to materialize and deliver this soliloquy (via The Zapple Diaries) to Frisco Pete in an effort to chill out the volatile situation:

“Now listen, Pete, we have every intention of feeding you, and I apologize for the delay, but I was hoping you could appreciate the kitchen staff have been working since 9:00 am, and they’ve been under considerable pressure. We’re waiting for the caterers to finish laying the tables, and it shouldn’t take more than another ten minutes, and then we can all go downstairs and gorge ourselves to death, but please, I beg you, be patient.”

Amazingly, Brown’s very English entreaty didn’t get him whomped in the face; it instead, quite surprisingly, sent Frisco Pete back to his clan, who were still imbibing and salivating in the other room. As promised, ten minutes later, the downstairs boardroom opened, and because he was hungry and presumably all out of fucks to give, Frisco Pete grabbed a turkey leg and started eating it caveman-style. The rest of his entourage invaded the room and devoured the entire dinner, including the fancy wine it was served with. Then, since it ain’t really a party until somebody pukes, several of Harrison’s not-so-angelic guests barfed on the carpets due to overindulgence. The bikers would stick around Apple, sleeping wherever they wanted, including George’s office, until, a few days into their invasion, Harrison finally asked if they would be “moving all of their stuff” out tonight. The biker contingency was caught off guard, still thinking Harrison was their buddy, causing someone in the group to ask George if he “dug them or not.” Harrison’s very “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” response was allegedly as follows:

“Yin and yang, heads and tails, yes and no.”

Apple Corps president Neil Aspinall witnessed the showdown, recalling that Harrison’s quizzical comment left the bikers speechless. To illuminate what George was trying to say, he chimed in with, “You know, BUGGER OFF!” which wasn’t lost on Tumbleweed and Frisco Pete, and the group left without further incident.
 

 
The trailer for the 2017 documentary ‘The Beatles, Hippies and Hells Angels: Inside the Crazy World of Apple.’ Narrated by Peter Coyote.
 
With thanks to the wonderful Martin Schneider.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Little Malcolm’: George Harrison’s lost film starring John Hurt and David Warner
‘Wonderwall Music’: George Harrison’s little-known 1968 solo album
George Harrison’s 1966 selfies from India
We’ve been expecting you: George Harrison’s charming ‘Crackerbox Palace’ short directed by Eric Idle
‘My God, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ was so fruity’: George Harrison dishes Beatle dirt, 1977

 
Through their American counterparts, I’m fairly familiar with the skinhead movement of working class Britain (racist, fascist , even anti-racist), but I had no idea there were British Hells Angels.

The documentary itself is fairly removed from the subject matter, but does a decent job at providing some objective insight. While they observe that the self-styled Hells Angels appear to have somewhat limited self-awareness—strange half-hearted adoptions of culture and ritual for which they have no context (these guys weren’t even an officially Hells Angels-sanctioned chapter, that started happening in the UK later in 1969, oddly after George Harrison got involved). But the violent potential of the racist skinheads is treated with gravity. When they interview them one on one, you can see that their relationship with the subculture is based as much in their own young alienation as it is with reactionary politics and working class rage.

What’s at risk of being another youth-culture moral panic piece is actually a fairly nuanced time-capsule look at these then emerging subcultures of disenfranchised youth.
 

 
As they motor off into the neon-lit night, their leader, Mad John can be heard shouting, ‘Hey, if the LSD don’t get us, then the cannabis will.’ It’s part joke, part bravado, a youthful two-fingers up to the world.

Made in 1973, this is a fascinating documentary, if at times funny through its overly sensationalist tone, on the Hells Angels Motor Cycle Club of England - ‘900ccs or over’. It follows the dozen-or-so members of the London Chapter, established in 1969, by a transatlantic decree from the Californian Hells Angels. The London Chapter is run by Mad John (who first appeared in court aged 12, and had 5 other convictions at the time this film was made), and his Sergeant-at-Arms, Karl (who considers himself a psychopath, and was once so violently assaulted his eyes were popped out from their sockets, and were replaced in cross-eyed).

We follow Mad John and Karl as they prepare to take a ride down to the coast. The film tellingly reveals John’s visit to his ex-partner who is unimpressed by the Angels and their juvenile antics. Unable or unwilling to talk to his wife or children, Mad John spends the visit collecting mail and playing with his Alsatian dog Hitler. John has an naive and unhealthy interest in Nazi’s, and towards the end of the film makes an odd analogy between Hitler’s vision for an Aryan Germany with his vision for a Universal Chapter of Hells Angels.

Inadvertent comedy comes from a Python-like interview with one of the Angels’ moms (‘He’s a nice boy, really’), and the Chapter’s failure to make it all the way down to the coast. Instead, they end up on a disused canal barge Katrina, where the Angels spend the night drinking, smoking and er…watching Doctor Who.
 

 
Digging the music. Biker women in San Bernadino, 1965

The girl kneeling by the jukebox is Ruthie and she’s the ‘old lady’ of Harvey, a Diablos member from San Bernardino. Harvey attends Angels’ meetings and rides with them but is not a member. It’s only two in the afternoon but Ruthie has already ‘crashed’ from beer and bennies .”

On assignment for Life Magazine in 1965, photographer Bill Ray spent a month hanging out with the Mother Charter of the Hells Angels (est. 1948) in San Bernadino, California. Life never published the photos, though they’ve recently made them available on their website. Last year Ray’s photographs were collected in book form, Hells Angels Of San Berdoo, that you can buy here.

The photograph of the two biker chicks at the jukebox is one of Bill Ray’s favorites and mine too.

Bill Ray ruminates on the photo:

There’s something kind of sad and at the same time defiant about the atmosphere. Ruthie is probably playing the same 45 over and over and over again. A real music lover.”

 
While all of Ray’s photographs are extraordinarily expressive and strikingly composed, his shots of the women are the ones that really get to me. Badass, beautiful and forlorn. These chicks could eat today’s hipsters for breakfast. I want to know them.
 

 
More photos after the jump…

(via Cynical C)