Adventures with bikers - Pt. 1

Oh yeah, then there was this time my band, the Bluestars, was playing at this biker hangout in Seattle called the Fremont Tavern. This would have been in the late '80s. The Fremont was owned by this great guy that had been a flight engineer on Chinook helicopters in Vietnam. There was always at least two or three handguns of various calibers in the drawer underneath the till at the Fremont.

The Fremont Tavern - Seattle, 1987

The only audience members during the first set this night were three bikers (members of a well known gang - not the chaps-wearing accountants we are so familiar with these days) sitting at the end of the bar. Come to think of it, Uncle Ray might have been there that night also.

For some reason, two very drunk frat boys came into the bar and decided that it would be amusing to sit next to Turtle John and repeatedly knock the baseball hat off of his head and onto the floor. In a tremendous show of restraint, Turtle John told the idiots to stop it TWICE. When the hat was knocked off for the third time, the bikers stomped the closest poor fool near to death (including pounding his testicles with a hammer that appeared from somewhere), then thoughtfully dragged his limp body out to the sidewalk - sort of an example for any other geniuses that might be lurking around, I guess. His pal was a gone Johnson - he was running down the street so fast that his feet weren't touching the ground.

The band immediately called it quits, and I had to call 911, as the bar (and the whole corner, come to think of it) was suddenly deserted. Even the bartender was gone. You could've heard a pin drop...