A conversation with former hells angel George Christie.

After decades as a leading member of the Hells Angels, George Christie parted ways with the notorious motorcycle club in 2011. Then in 2016, he published a memoir about his experience, Exile on Front Street. Now, the 71-year-old rebel, host of the popular History Channel documentary series Outlaw Chronicles, is taking his show on the road with a one-man play, Outlaw. Penthouse caught up with Christie for a chat.

You felt the pull of rebellion at a young age and got involved with the Question Marks and Satan’s Slaves. What was that like?

It was a lot of freedom, and one of the things that interested me was the “live and let live” attitude that everyone seemed to have. If you could stand up for what you believed in, people were pretty much willing to accept you on that face value.

I initially started out hanging out with the Question Marks, and ultimately they got endorsed by the Hells Angels, becoming an official “one-percenter” club. I was introduced to the Losers, Straight Satans, and then the Satan’s Slaves. At that particular point in my life, I was never off my bike except when I was working. I started gravitating toward the Slaves and hanging out with them a lot. They invited me to one-percenter runs, and I started meeting other people, other clubs, and then I met the Hells Angels.

Tell us about the prestige of the Hells Angels back then.  

The Hells Angels were the biggest and most respected outlaw bike club in the world. They dominated the culture for years. You really weren’t in the big leagues until you got involved with the Hells Angels.

Eventually all these other bike clubs popped up and there were a lot of rivalries. The whole culture seemed to shift from fun, motorcycles, and partying to territorial beefs and issues with egos which turned excessively violent — murders, explosions. In the late seventies there were explosions in downtown Los Angeles. Stop and think about that by today’s standards. It was really a tumultuous time. Things were really shifting in the culture.

You were a Hells Angel for the better part of your life. What did that mean?    

Everywhere we went we had prestige and we had earned it. It opened a lot of doors for me. I met a lot of people in the movie industry, music industry, and got invited to a lot of places where I never would’ve been welcomed at if I wasn’t a member of the Hells Angels.

I met a lot of interesting people — authors, musicians, actors, philosophers. I developed relationships with Dennis Hopper and Timothy Leary. I got to meet Ken Kesey, talk to him and exchange ideas with him. It was a world that was so much different than it is now. Imagine sitting down with Jerry Garcia and talking about war, peace, and where the planet was heading. It’s hard to describe.

People have said Sons of Anarchy is based on you and the Ventura chapter.

I’ve heard those rumors. I know that one of the producers went to Santa Barbara Harley-Davidson and said, “I want ten motorcycles. I want them to look just like the Ventura Hells Angels bikes.” It’s almost like street talk. I’ve never had anybody from Sons of Anarchy approach me about any ideas or my thoughts on anything. I have talked to some of the actors and interacted with them. They were very respectful. We had a good rapport.

I’ve never talked to Kurt Sutter [the show’s creator], but at some point I’d like to. He really impacted the outlaw bike world. During my last trial, one of the questions we asked the jurors was, did they watch Sons of Anarchy and how did it impact them? Just about every juror we talked to had seen it and developed an opinion about the outlaw bike culture. I think that’s a pretty profound statement.

What was it like watching the Hells Angels become international icons? 

The outlaw bike movement kind of started here in Southern California. It was an American original and it bled to all the continents. It’s everywhere now. To be in Southern California and fly to Europe and see all these people that have the same interests and philosophies as you made you feel part of something larger. It’s quite a thing to be part of something that grew into a worldwide phenomenon.

How do you think the outlaw lifestyle has changed since the sixties?

A lot of the people that became members, not just in the Hells Angels but in a lot of the clubs, got in feeling immediately entitled. In the old days, you had to establish yourself.

Part of establishing yourself was the extension of yourself in your machine — what type of machine you were riding. In the old days you could almost tell where an individual was from by their bike, like a geographic accent. If somebody rode up and they were from San Francisco, you could pretty much tell from the style of their motorcycle. If they were from San Diego, same thing. The Satan’s Slaves were some of the best bike builders around. They had some unbelievable motorcycles.

“In the old days you could almost tell where an individual was from by their bike, like a geographic accent.”

We got a lot of influence from Dick Woods, who was leader of the Question Marks. We were getting influenced by guys like Dick and Von Dutch. If you didn’t build your own bike you weren’t accepted. Harley-Davidson used to cringe when we walked in, but eventually they started embracing the outlaw lifestyle. [The company] made this transition were you could walk right in to a Harley dealer and buy a custom-built motorcycle. It lost the purity of the lifestyle. In the past, you had to build them. Now you can ride out on a custom-made-looking Harley, buy a leather cutoff, some leather pants, and you’re an outlaw.

You eventually walked away from the Hells Angels and wrote a book. Why did you decide to document your life with the club?

We had a particular protocol if you wanted to walk away. I didn’t like all the violence. I was interacting with other bike clubs that we were at war with and I kept getting undermined.

There were people in all the clubs, not just ours, who liked that posturing of violence and it just got to be a burden for me. I didn’t feel that’s what the culture was about. I went and said, “We’re fighting wars on five fronts. I feel like we’ve become the people we rebel against. I don’t want to do this anymore.” And then, two to three weeks later, they put me on trial. They didn’t even give me the respect to have me come there and defend myself. They changed my status to “out bad.”

People started saying things — I was a coward; rumors started that I was an informant. I wasn’t going to let somebody else rewrite the history that I lived. I wanted to document it. I did it on the Outlaw Chronicles, and I did it even deeper with Exile on Front Street. I wrote my fiction book, Marked, and that was really based on all my life experiences — how I watched the outlaw bike world make a transition into kind of an urban army. There’s a lot of things in it that people will relate to if they are interested in the outlaw biker lifestyle.

Outlaw Chronicles remains in heavy rotation on the History Channel. How did that come about, and what was it like making the show?

Only in America can you go to prison, come home, and get a television show. I was in La Tuna prison in Texas and started getting information from my daughter, who’s also my criminal lawyer, that the History Channel was petitioning her to talk to me. I kind of thought, I’m not going to pay much attention to this. I’m just gonna do my time and come home. And then my counselor called me in. He started in on me. He said, “What’s the deal with the History Channel?”

The History Channel had called these guys. They wanted to come and interview me, but the warden didn’t want anything to do with it. The first day I got out of the halfway house they started getting a hold of my daughter again. They showed up and it just kind of grew from there. There were some things that I couldn’t talk about, [which is] why I wrote Exile on Front Street. It was interesting. Now I get mail from all over the world. People have watched that show worldwide.

“Getting on a stage and doing a live show. It’s a big challenge. Guys like Henry Rollins, I take my hat off to them.”

You’re taking your new one-man stage show, Outlaw, across the country. What can fans expect?

This show is based on my book and my life. I start in the recent past, in a courtroom, and go back to 1955. That was the first time I saw an outlaw bike rider. I talk about all my adventures, my triumphs, my failures. It’s a real look at myself. It’s something I have control of and it’s the message I want to get out about my journey and where I’m at now in my life. This is something Richard La Plante, a very good writer, and I developed. My manager has a lot of faith in me. He’s put on a lot of one-person shows and represented a lot of prominent people in the business. It’s different from sitting in a studio and getting filmed or doing interviews on television — 60 Minutes or whatever it may be. You’re talking about 90 minutes of dialogue. Getting on a stage and doing a live show. It’s a big challenge. Guys like Henry Rollins, I take my hat off to them.

How much contact do you have with your former comrades?

Club members are not allowed to talk to me. Messages I get are secondhand. There’s everything from support to people saying I’m a sellout, but I can name other Hells Angels figures — leaders that have written books, gone on television, appeared in movies about the lifestyle, appeared on Sons of Anarchy — and I don’t think it’s any different for them than for me to be able to tell my story in that manner.

When you joined the Hells Angels, did you ever think it would turn into all this?  

You know what’s interesting is, I jumped into the outlaw life with both feet. Really enjoying the lifestyle and then it makes this dramatic turn when there’s a war in Southern California. People are getting murdered and shot off their bikes.

I didn’t want to get out of the lifestyle. I saw myself doing nothing else the rest of my life. Ultimately, I decided people weren’t sharing my vision anymore and I walked away. I don’t know if I see myself as a celebrity. I don’t think I’ve quite wrapped my arms around that yet. I get positive mail and I even get hate mail. I answer all the mail I get. I even answer the hate mail if it’s entertaining enough. Maybe that’s what’s happening. I don’t know.