Latest / DISGRACELAND / Hunter S. Thompson: Fear, Loathing, and Gonzo Baby Gonzo

Transcript

Hunter S. Thompson: Fear, Loathing, and Gonzo Baby Gonzo · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
0:03
Speaker 1: Please check the show notes for more information.
0:07
Speaker 2: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
0:29
Speaker 2: Hunter S. Thompson are insane. He was nearly beaten to
0:34
Speaker 2: death by Hell's angels. He was almost electrocuted in a
0:37
Speaker 2: bathtub when he pissed off the wrong people. He dropped
0:41
Speaker 2: acid with many people, including the legendary Mary Pranksters, hunted
0:46
Speaker 2: deer with his car, and carried around an alcoholic monkey
0:50
Speaker 2: in his pocket. He was an outcast, a rebel, and
0:54
Speaker 2: a risk taker. It was also a hell raiser, arrested
0:58
Speaker 2: his senior year of high school and denied graduation. He
1:02
Speaker 2: was motivated by anger in a world where he witnessed
1:05
Speaker 2: great injustices and even greater bullshit, and he steamrolled all
1:10
Speaker 2: of these things in his writing. Writing that was so great,
1:15
Speaker 2: so unique that a new word had to be created
1:18
Speaker 2: to describe it. And that great writing was very much
1:22
Speaker 2: unlike that loop I played for you at the top
1:24
Speaker 2: of the show that was not great. That was a
1:28
Speaker 2: preset loop from my melotron called maybe It was Utah
1:32
Speaker 2: MK one. I played you that loop because I can't
1:36
Speaker 2: afford the rights to a clip from We Belonged Together
1:39
Speaker 2: by Mariah Carey, and why would I play you that
1:42
Speaker 2: specific slice of emancipation of Mimi Cheese?
1:46
Speaker 1: Could I afford it?
1:48
Speaker 2: Because that was the number one song in America on
1:52
Speaker 2: August twentieth, two thousand and five, And that was the
1:55
Speaker 2: day that Hunter S. Thompson was given a gonzo farewell
1:59
Speaker 2: as ashes were shot from a cannon atop a giant
2:02
Speaker 2: fist clutching a Paote button.
2:06
Speaker 1: On this episode.
2:07
Speaker 2: Hell's Angels bathtub electrocutions acid Cannon's outcasts.
2:13
Speaker 1: And Hunter S. Thompson, I'm Jake Brennan and this.
2:19
Speaker 2: Is Disgraceland, nineteen sixty six, Mendocino, California. Sonny Barger didn't
2:44
Speaker 2: stop the boys in his motorcycle club from doing whatever
2:47
Speaker 2: they wanted right now. That was kicking the shit out
2:51
Speaker 2: of the writer who'd shadowed them for the past year.
2:54
Speaker 2: Not that Sonny hated the writer like some of the others.
2:57
Speaker 2: If anything, Hunter S. Thompson's take on the Hell's Angels,
3:02
Speaker 2: initially appearing in the Pages of the Nation and now
3:05
Speaker 2: expanded into Hunter's first book, made the country's most notorious
3:10
Speaker 2: biker gang appear more mythical than they actually were. But
3:14
Speaker 2: Hunter Thompson wanted to talk, a big fucking talk. He
3:18
Speaker 2: wanted to take risks, take life to the edge, even
3:22
Speaker 2: and some of the guys in Sunny Barger's club thought
3:25
Speaker 2: that Hunter wanted more than he deserved, taking all that
3:29
Speaker 2: money for his big time publication, while the boys on
3:32
Speaker 2: their bikes got nothing but someone else's mythology.
3:37
Speaker 1: Hunter s.
3:38
Speaker 2: Thompson may have been born angry anger, made worse as
3:42
Speaker 2: a poor kid growing up around Louisville's charmed upper crust.
3:47
Speaker 2: But right now the Hell's angels were angrier. They wanted
3:51
Speaker 2: their cut, and if Hunter Thompson didn't have the cash,
3:55
Speaker 2: his blood would do. The first punch caught Hunter in
3:59
Speaker 2: the and he felt the cartilage in his nose liquefy.
4:03
Speaker 2: His legs went out from under him, and suddenly he
4:06
Speaker 2: was spread out on the rocky coastline, the angels swarming
4:09
Speaker 2: overhead like bats. Hunter didn't kid himself that he could
4:14
Speaker 2: actually join a motorcycle gang, even though he was riding
4:17
Speaker 2: with one for his book, but he did see these
4:20
Speaker 2: guys as kindred spirits. After all, it was Hunter who
4:25
Speaker 2: saw similarities between himself and the Angels and the Mary
4:28
Speaker 2: Pranksters ken Kesey's freak scene that was turning on, tuning in,
4:32
Speaker 2: and dropping out over in La Honda. Hunter brought the
4:36
Speaker 2: opposing camps together, the Angels with their wine and Benny's
4:40
Speaker 2: and the pranksters with their acid tests. Hunter took his
4:44
Speaker 2: first LSD trip along with the motorcycle club at Keisi's place.
4:49
Speaker 1: He knew his life had been changed forever.
4:53
Speaker 2: After the seventy two hour marathon of sex, drugs, and
4:56
Speaker 2: violence came to an end. Long after Neil Cassid naked
5:00
Speaker 2: stood on the side of the road with a pair
5:02
Speaker 2: of binoculars, telling the cops watching them from a distance
5:06
Speaker 2: to fuck off, while his ex wife was being passed
5:09
Speaker 2: around by bearded bikers somewhere inside those leather clad pillagers
5:13
Speaker 2: and their eyes like saucers. And now the acid had
5:18
Speaker 2: worn off, but the angel's eyes that were bearing down
5:20
Speaker 2: on Hunter bleeding out on the Mendocino Coast still looked
5:24
Speaker 2: like saucers. Hunter knew that look the look of an outcast,
5:29
Speaker 2: a rebel. Sunny Bargerie's gang were wrist takers out there
5:34
Speaker 2: on the open road, pushing it all the way to
5:36
Speaker 2: the edge, just like Hunter himself, and just like the angels,
5:41
Speaker 2: Hunter did.
5:42
Speaker 1: It angry, angry. Nineteen fifty five, seventeen year old Hunter S.
5:51
Speaker 1: Thompson was a known.
5:52
Speaker 2: Quantity in Louisville, Kentucky, a hell raising hoodlum whose dead
5:56
Speaker 2: father was no longer around to keep them in line.
6:00
Speaker 2: He shot up mailboxes, robbed liquor stores, dumped a truckload
6:04
Speaker 2: of pumpkins in a hotel lobby, and the flooded the school.
6:07
Speaker 1: Petty arson, petty theft.
6:10
Speaker 2: A shrink would call all this acting out a cry
6:12
Speaker 2: for attention, spurred on by the people who surrounded him,
6:16
Speaker 2: the haves in Louisville's polite society, rich kids who led
6:20
Speaker 2: him into their literary club, real fancy stuff, fancy clothes,
6:24
Speaker 2: fancy books. But just because Hunter was a member of
6:27
Speaker 2: the prestigious at kny and Literary Association didn't mean he
6:31
Speaker 2: was an equal. He had no money and no father,
6:35
Speaker 2: no future in writing. At least that's what the.
6:38
Speaker 1: Other kids told him Hunter.
6:40
Speaker 2: They asked him, why the hell are you typing out
6:42
Speaker 2: the Great Gatsby word for word to get the rhythm
6:46
Speaker 2: of the language, He told him, Could they not understand?
6:49
Speaker 2: Holy Jesus not even out of high school, and already
6:52
Speaker 2: there were bonehead pigfuckers to contend with. Some of those
6:55
Speaker 2: pigfuckers liked him, even carried out his childish pranks with him,
6:59
Speaker 2: but not enough for her to retain membership in their
7:01
Speaker 2: elite club. Senior year, he was voted out, disgraced, and
7:07
Speaker 2: then not long after, arrested along with two classmates, accused
7:12
Speaker 2: of mugging some other kids for cigarettes. Once again, Hunter
7:16
Speaker 2: was reminded of his place in Louisville's social hierarchy. No
7:21
Speaker 2: family lawyer to call, all he had was a record,
7:24
Speaker 2: banned from graduation, expelled, jailed. His sentence lasted only a month,
7:30
Speaker 2: and the judge made sure Hunter understood that he was
7:33
Speaker 2: not being released on probation. In fact, until he turned
7:36
Speaker 2: twenty one he would remain under the watchful eye of
7:39
Speaker 2: the Kentucky law. But until then the Air Force would
7:43
Speaker 2: do him some good. Maybe he even teach him a
7:46
Speaker 2: lesson or too. What all the Air Force did for
7:49
Speaker 2: Hunter s. Thompson was reinforced a deep seated distrust, downright
7:54
Speaker 2: hatred even for authority.
7:57
Speaker 1: Trapped under Uncle.
7:58
Speaker 2: Sam's thumb for two years, he fantasized about leaving and
8:02
Speaker 2: when the time came, he'd do it in style. A
8:07
Speaker 2: Cadillac idling like a ward hog's fart on account of
8:10
Speaker 2: the fact that it had no muffler. It had no
8:13
Speaker 2: brakes either, which met Hunter had one pedal to press
8:16
Speaker 2: and one option to.
8:17
Speaker 1: Exercise full speed ahead he.
8:21
Speaker 2: Was hauling asked on the wrong side of the street,
8:24
Speaker 2: exiting the military campus as offensively as humanly possible. The caddies,
8:28
Speaker 2: spewing black smoke, tires squealing, topped down Hunter with one
8:31
Speaker 2: hand on the wheel, the other holding an unopened bottle
8:34
Speaker 2: of wine.
8:35
Speaker 1: Good Vintage Better Legs.
8:37
Speaker 2: He tossed the bottle at the Air Force base his
8:39
Speaker 2: gatehouse as the Cadillac went screaming by, like.
8:43
Speaker 1: A Malotov cocktail launched in the enemy territory.
8:48
Speaker 2: The biker's fist pulverizing his nose reminded Hunter that this
8:53
Speaker 2: was no fantasy.
8:55
Speaker 1: The angels beating him into a pulp were all too real.
8:59
Speaker 2: His battered body still splayed along the Mendocino shoreline, fully
9:03
Speaker 2: at the mercy of the Hell's angels who had made
9:04
Speaker 2: it their mission to break him. One angel in particular
9:08
Speaker 2: was hoisting a giant rock in the air preparing to
9:11
Speaker 2: bring it down on Hunter's head and end him for good.
9:15
Speaker 2: Hunter was thinking of his wife, now his young son.
9:19
Speaker 2: He couldn't die here, not like some gutless swine left
9:23
Speaker 2: to shrivel up in the salt there. The birds would
9:25
Speaker 2: get him soon enough. It's goddamn flying rats, ridden with
9:29
Speaker 2: disease pecking out his eyes. After the last of the
9:32
Speaker 2: biker gang had jumped on his Harley and disappeared into
9:34
Speaker 2: the California night, That's when he saw Tiny, a biker
9:38
Speaker 2: who had shown Hunter some compassion in the past, standing
9:41
Speaker 2: at arm's length behind the group of guys now attacking him.
9:46
Speaker 2: All right, come on, Tiny was saying, that's enough. So
9:52
Speaker 2: Tiny escorted Hunter to his car, told him to leave immediately.
9:56
Speaker 2: Hunter wasted no time. He threw the shipbox into fur,
10:00
Speaker 2: struggled to navigate with the one good eye he now had.
10:04
Speaker 2: It was midnight dark. Any fear Hunter experienced down on
10:08
Speaker 2: the beach had morphed into anger. He was angry about
10:12
Speaker 2: the excruciating pain he was in, that he was spitting
10:15
Speaker 2: up blood all over the dash and Jesus Christ his nose.
10:19
Speaker 2: If he didn't do something about it now, tomorrow would
10:21
Speaker 2: be hard as the rock that that psycho biker tried
10:24
Speaker 2: to brain him with. He pulled the car over to
10:27
Speaker 2: the side of the road and went to help with
10:29
Speaker 2: the car's overhead light in the rear view mirror, performed emergency.
10:34
Speaker 1: Surgery on his aching schnaus. But Hunter S. Thompson wasn't
10:39
Speaker 1: a surgeon. He was a writer.
10:42
Speaker 2: Then it would be a while before he could breathe
10:44
Speaker 2: correctly again. People who met him and saw his fucked
10:47
Speaker 2: up nose during this stretch of time assumed he was
10:50
Speaker 2: a coke addict, which was funny to Hunter because cocaine
10:54
Speaker 2: wasn't his thing. Coke wasn't like mescaline, mushrooms, psilocybin. Subsence
11:00
Speaker 2: is that at the time were still legal in the
11:02
Speaker 2: United States. And the best thing about those the thing
11:05
Speaker 2: that made them better than anything else, was that they
11:08
Speaker 2: took Hunter to that place where all the outcasts, rebels
11:11
Speaker 2: and risk takers went, the place he wrote about at
11:14
Speaker 2: the end of this Hell's Angels book, the dividing line
11:17
Speaker 2: between sanity and insanity, life and death. Like a biker
11:21
Speaker 2: taking a corner way too fast and sliding into the
11:24
Speaker 2: curve of aka going over the high side, a classic
11:28
Speaker 2: get off as the MC called it, and the place
11:31
Speaker 2: where you got off was the edge. Vegas, Saigon, Miami,
12:07
Speaker 2: New Hampshire. Football kickoffs, rumbles in the jungle, fear and
12:12
Speaker 2: loathing the only constant until that inevitable million pounds shitthammer
12:15
Speaker 2: comes crashing down. Wherever he was and whatever he was
12:19
Speaker 2: writing about.
12:21
Speaker 1: Hunter S.
12:21
Speaker 2: Thompson inserted himself into his journalism, if he could call
12:25
Speaker 2: what he did journalism, just as he inserted himself into
12:29
Speaker 2: the most feared motorcycle gang in the world when he
12:32
Speaker 2: rode with the Hell's Angels for a year. By making
12:36
Speaker 2: himself part of the story, Hunter was making himself seen
12:39
Speaker 2: and heard.
12:40
Speaker 1: That he always did.
12:41
Speaker 2: Instead of setting fires and knocking over liquor stores like
12:44
Speaker 2: he did as a kid, now as an adult, he
12:47
Speaker 2: dosed the unsuspecting with lsd set off roaming candles in
12:51
Speaker 2: close quarters, stuck a severed boar's head, and a toilet,
12:54
Speaker 2: all gags, all for attention. He wrote as he lived
12:59
Speaker 2: wild feral, one moment bleeding into the next, some moments
13:03
Speaker 2: deliberately exaggerated to ensure that his audience's eyeballs stayed glued
13:07
Speaker 2: to the page, and others so saturated with truth.
13:11
Speaker 1: That you could hardly believe what you were reading.
13:14
Speaker 2: His style, which in its infancy didn't have a name,
13:18
Speaker 2: was the product of his lifestyle and big Sir Hunter
13:25
Speaker 2: whipped his car through the twists and turns of Route
13:28
Speaker 2: one hunting deer at night alongside a whip it with
13:31
Speaker 2: balls the size of California oranges. Forty nine attempts, the
13:36
Speaker 2: fiftieth being the charm only because the dumb animal found
13:39
Speaker 2: itself caught like a well a deer in the headlights
13:42
Speaker 2: and ran headfirst into Hunter's vehicle. The dog was better
13:47
Speaker 2: at catching cats anyway. The hunter simply had to issue
13:50
Speaker 2: the nonverbal command and the whipp it with the mega
13:52
Speaker 2: nuts sprang into action. Hunter didn't make friends with the
13:55
Speaker 2: folksinger Joe Bias on that particular evening, seeing it was
13:58
Speaker 2: her cat on the wrong end of the whip's job.
14:02
Speaker 2: In South America, hunters struggled to maintain a steady byline
14:06
Speaker 2: while simultaneously struggling with dysentery while some fucking bell told
14:10
Speaker 2: NonStop outside of his room, the National Observer refusing.
14:14
Speaker 1: To pay him.
14:14
Speaker 2: Those weaseled dicks, then stung by some poisonous insect, now
14:18
Speaker 2: forced to spend this beer money on cortizone and antibiotics,
14:22
Speaker 2: which many had to steal the beers two at a
14:24
Speaker 2: time so that the monkey living in his pocket wouldn't
14:26
Speaker 2: go without. I'm serious, this is one hundred percent true.
14:29
Speaker 1: Look it up.
14:31
Speaker 2: The monkey's thirst for alcohol was as unquenchable as Hunter's,
14:35
Speaker 2: so unquenchable in fact, that he, the monkey that is
14:38
Speaker 2: suffering from a bad bout of the DTS, jumped from
14:41
Speaker 2: a tenth floor window, ending it all, just as Hunter
14:43
Speaker 2: would end it some forty years later, not by leaping
14:46
Speaker 2: from great heights, but with the great power of a
14:48
Speaker 2: forty five but I digress. In Chicago, Hunter found the
14:52
Speaker 2: true meeting of America in a Cops nightstick Mayor Daily's
14:56
Speaker 2: horde of bloodthirsty thugs committing acts of brutality, of innocenceivila
15:00
Speaker 2: millions that would have made the Angels blush. Far more
15:03
Speaker 2: civil was Hunter's one and only meeting with his nemesis,
15:07
Speaker 2: Richard Nixon in the back of a car as the
15:09
Speaker 2: presidential hopeful was driven to a lear jet waiting for
15:12
Speaker 2: him in New Hampshire.
15:14
Speaker 1: The one stipulation politics were off the table.
15:18
Speaker 2: Nixon wanted to talk football, which was all the same
15:23
Speaker 2: the Hunter, because he already knew he hated Nixon's politics,
15:26
Speaker 2: and he gladly talked football for hours with anyone, even
15:29
Speaker 2: his enemies. Hunter assumed the feeling was mutual that he
15:33
Speaker 2: was on Nixon's infamous enemies list, a list that had
15:36
Speaker 2: grown to include Jane Fonda, Paul Newman, The Black Panthers,
15:40
Speaker 2: and Scanlon's, the anti authority magazine that hired Hunter to
15:43
Speaker 2: cover the Kentucky Derby. Hunter took the Kentucky Derby gig
15:48
Speaker 2: without a second thought. He'd cover anything if there was
15:51
Speaker 2: a paycheck attached, even better if his expenses were paid.
15:55
Speaker 2: He had a wife and a young son. He needed
15:58
Speaker 2: the money. But when it came aimed to the Derby,
16:00
Speaker 2: to Kentucky, his home state, the state that rejected him
16:04
Speaker 2: years earlier, locked him up, kicked him out, publicly humiliated him,
16:07
Speaker 2: all the other want to be fuck ups ran home
16:09
Speaker 2: to their rich daddies. Hunter wasn't just writing an assignment.
16:14
Speaker 2: He was settling a score, or so said Ralph Stedman,
16:19
Speaker 2: the Welsh artist hired to cover the Derby alongside Hunter
16:23
Speaker 2: for Scamlets nineteen seventy Churchhill Downs. Ralph Stedman had never
16:30
Speaker 2: met Hunter S. Thompson before, but he was easy to
16:33
Speaker 2: spot in the Derby crowd. He was the one in
16:36
Speaker 2: the striped polo tinted sunglasses, his watch threaded through a
16:40
Speaker 2: leather biker bracelet, white tube socks pulled up to his
16:43
Speaker 2: knees just below his short shorts, sitting at the bar,
16:46
Speaker 2: starting a rumor that the Black Panthers were on their
16:49
Speaker 2: way to protest, anything to rile up the greed heads,
16:53
Speaker 2: spilling bourbon all over themselves and pretending as though Jackie
16:56
Speaker 2: Robinson had never put on that Dodger's jersey. Hunter had
17:00
Speaker 2: more than his fair share of wisdom concerning Louisville's high
17:03
Speaker 2: society to impart to Ralph, as well as a few
17:07
Speaker 2: extra doses of psilocybin. Ralph had never done anything like
17:12
Speaker 2: that before.
17:13
Speaker 1: It didn't matter.
17:14
Speaker 2: He was working with Hunter now, so he had to
17:16
Speaker 2: get on Hunter's level. The drug was a truth serrem
17:20
Speaker 2: for your eyes. And when you were on this stuff,
17:23
Speaker 2: you were able to see who these Southern gentlemen, these
17:25
Speaker 2: Southern bells, truly were beneath. The veneer of respectability was
17:31
Speaker 2: the underbelly, and I do mean bellies, bloated bellies, shouting, crying, puking,
17:36
Speaker 2: and pissing themselves, losing more money than Hunter or Ralph
17:40
Speaker 2: wouldever see in their lives. How the horses rounded the
17:42
Speaker 2: track down below. Hunter didn't care about what was happening
17:46
Speaker 2: on the track. That's not why he was here. He
17:49
Speaker 2: was here for the slabber on some old fat man's cigar.
17:53
Speaker 2: The decorum circling the urinal drain, ordorous lizards, all of them,
17:58
Speaker 2: their eyes blacked, their tongues forked, hissing, screeching, chanting, My
18:02
Speaker 2: old Kentucky home like a coven, circling a pentagram etched
18:06
Speaker 2: on the floor, And on that floor in the middle
18:09
Speaker 2: of it, all bloodied and defiled, lay the Derby crowd,
18:12
Speaker 2: sacrifice the American dream. When it was all said and done,
18:20
Speaker 2: Hunter scrambled to make sense of it all. He was
18:23
Speaker 2: barely able to submit his article under deadline. He felt
18:27
Speaker 2: like he had failed, so stoned on hallucinogens, just like
18:31
Speaker 2: his genteel subjects were stoned on their own bullshit, that
18:34
Speaker 2: his final draft didn't even mention the race itself, which
18:38
Speaker 2: is what Scanlon's paid him for in the first place.
18:41
Speaker 2: But when the magazine published Hunter's article, the Kentucky Derby
18:44
Speaker 2: is Decaded and Depraved in their June nineteen seventy issue.
18:48
Speaker 2: It hit a nerve, It felt new, daring, a singular
18:53
Speaker 2: work from a unique mind. The phone at Scanlon's rang
18:57
Speaker 2: off the hook, and people really responded to it. A
19:00
Speaker 2: writer at The Boston Globe sent word to Hunter that
19:02
Speaker 2: his article read like a missive from the only man
19:05
Speaker 2: to make it through an all night drinking session with
19:07
Speaker 2: his wits.
19:07
Speaker 1: Still about him.
19:09
Speaker 2: The town he's in, South Boston had a word for
19:11
Speaker 2: that kind of guy. Gonzo Hunter soon put his Gonzo's
19:18
Speaker 2: stamp on other American events Marty Gras New Orleans, the
19:23
Speaker 2: super Bowl in Houston, America's Cup in Newport, New Year's,
19:27
Speaker 2: even Times Square, or wherever the American dream was supposedly thriving.
19:32
Speaker 2: Hunter knew better the American dream was not thriving anywhere.
19:36
Speaker 2: In fact, the American dream was fucked. It was fucked
19:41
Speaker 2: in Chicago in sixty eight, fucked the minute Nixon stepped
19:44
Speaker 2: off that Lear Jet in New Hampshire. Fucked when Hunter
19:47
Speaker 2: ran himself for Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, on a ticket
19:50
Speaker 2: that promised to legalize grass. Publicly shamed dishonest drug dealers
19:54
Speaker 2: and disarmed the entire police force. Hunter's bid for sheriff
19:59
Speaker 2: terrified the ste at his quote so much that the
20:01
Speaker 2: opposition brought people on stretchers from the hospitals to.
20:05
Speaker 1: Go vote in the tolls. They made sure Hunter lost
20:08
Speaker 1: by a wide margin.
20:10
Speaker 2: It was a political failure that now seemed to mirror
20:13
Speaker 2: what he was seeing as his imminent professional failure, because
20:17
Speaker 2: even though he'd managed to coin a new style of
20:19
Speaker 2: journalism with his Kentucky Derby article, that didn't mean his
20:23
Speaker 2: life had suddenly changed. If anything, the attention really gave
20:28
Speaker 2: way to more hustling for bylines and paychecks. Add to
20:32
Speaker 2: that the fact that it was the dawn of the
20:34
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies and the United States was coming apart at
20:37
Speaker 2: the seams. Kids were being murdered at Kent State. Nixon
20:41
Speaker 2: was sending troops into Cambodia. On the home front, Hunter's
20:45
Speaker 2: wife suffered a string of miscarriages.
20:48
Speaker 1: The going was getting tougher by the day.
20:51
Speaker 2: But this as Hunter s Thompson were talking about, which
20:55
Speaker 2: meant that the going didn't just get tough, the going
20:58
Speaker 2: got weird. And when the going got weird, that's when
21:03
Speaker 2: the weird turned.
21:04
Speaker 1: Pro we'll be right back after this.
21:12
Speaker 2: We're we're where. He was somewhere between his hotel room
21:23
Speaker 2: and the lobby when the drugs began to take hold.
21:26
Speaker 2: He remembered saying something like, Oscar, Oscar, where the hell
21:30
Speaker 2: did you get off to man? All around him, the
21:33
Speaker 2: sights and sounds of a casino at four point thirty
21:35
Speaker 2: in the morning assaulted his senses.
21:39
Speaker 1: Suddenly he realized that Oscar.
21:41
Speaker 2: Wasn't there, not in the hotel, and not in Vegas,
21:45
Speaker 2: not even in Nevada. Oscar was gone, and he was
21:51
Speaker 2: left behind, stuck carrying Oscar's briefcase, which at last glance
21:55
Speaker 2: contained about a pound of weed, a loaded three fifty
21:58
Speaker 2: seven magnum and some extra bullets. And if they caught
22:02
Speaker 2: him with this stuff, it was all over Christ. They'd
22:05
Speaker 2: feed him to the wolves, maybe to the lions that
22:07
Speaker 2: did that act over at the Tropicana. Not because they
22:11
Speaker 2: knew what was inside his suitcase. You'd have to have
22:14
Speaker 2: X ray vision for that, but because he had no
22:17
Speaker 2: money left and thus was unable to pay the bill
22:19
Speaker 2: for his room. It was why he was here now,
22:23
Speaker 2: broke high and skipping out on his tab like some reprobate.
22:28
Speaker 2: He had to move fast, well, not too fast. He
22:32
Speaker 2: didn't want to raise any eyebrows, not that the red
22:35
Speaker 2: Cadillac convertible waiting for him outside was doing him any favors.
22:39
Speaker 2: But it was, like he told jan Winner when he
22:40
Speaker 2: asked the editor of Rolling Stone to get him the
22:42
Speaker 2: car specifically for this assignment, you can't cover the American
22:46
Speaker 2: dream and a goddamn Oldsmobile right now, though he'd give
22:52
Speaker 2: anything for an Oldsmobile, anything to look in conspicuous. As
22:56
Speaker 2: he made his escape, lugging a suitcase full of contraband
22:59
Speaker 2: through because seen a lobby as the drugs began to
23:02
Speaker 2: take hold.
23:03
Speaker 1: Who was he kidding? The drugs had taken hold.
23:06
Speaker 2: Hours, days, weeks earlier. He was permanently under their sway
23:09
Speaker 2: at this point. That was the whole point, not of
23:13
Speaker 2: the article he was cooking up for Rolling Stone now,
23:15
Speaker 2: but coming to Vegas in the first place to blow
23:18
Speaker 2: off steam, to avoid yet another deadline, to get the
23:22
Speaker 2: hell out of La. La was all darkness, even on
23:27
Speaker 2: the outskirts as far away as Pasadena and a holiday
23:30
Speaker 2: inn near the Santa Anita Racetrack were weeks earlier, Hunter s.
23:33
Speaker 2: Thompson hold up working on an assignment. The more Hunter investigated,
23:38
Speaker 2: the closer he got to that darkness. Reuben Salazar, a
23:43
Speaker 2: reporter for the La Times, was dead, killed by a
23:46
Speaker 2: tear gas round fired by a sheriff's deputy during the
23:49
Speaker 2: National Chicano Moratorium march against the Vietnam War. The story
23:54
Speaker 2: had all the things that got Hunter's blood pumping, war protests,
23:58
Speaker 2: corruption and the have nots. But when it became clear
24:03
Speaker 2: to Hunter that Salazar's death was likely not an accident,
24:05
Speaker 2: but a premeditated assassination, that's when the darkness metastasized. This
24:11
Speaker 2: was heavier than the stuff Hunter typically covered. This wasn't
24:15
Speaker 2: the derby, or a football game or a campaign trail.
24:18
Speaker 2: This was something else. Blood had been spilled, and blood
24:23
Speaker 2: would be spilled again. Hunter needed to think about his
24:26
Speaker 2: next move. He needed a moment. He needed a shower.
24:30
Speaker 2: He walked into his hotel bathroom, only to find that
24:33
Speaker 2: there was no.
24:33
Speaker 1: Shower to take.
24:35
Speaker 2: It was just a bathtub with a copper wire running
24:38
Speaker 2: across it, a copper wire that was plugged into a socket.
24:42
Speaker 2: He didn't know when they got access to his room,
24:44
Speaker 2: but the message was clear. If Hunter wanted to peer
24:47
Speaker 2: into that darkness, if he wanted to go right to
24:49
Speaker 2: the edge.
24:50
Speaker 1: He was going to fall in and that would be
24:52
Speaker 1: the end. He thought of the beating.
24:54
Speaker 2: He'd endured at the hands of the Angels a few
24:56
Speaker 2: years prior. He didn't want to go through that again.
25:00
Speaker 2: The hell out of Dodge, but not alone. He brought
25:03
Speaker 2: with him Oscar Zeta Ala Coosta, his primary source for
25:06
Speaker 2: the Salazar story, who also just so happened to be
25:09
Speaker 2: Salazar's lawyer, and their agenda was simple get away, blow
25:13
Speaker 2: off steam talk.
25:15
Speaker 1: Where they could be alone.
25:16
Speaker 2: And now Hunter was all alone, abandoned by his traveling companion,
25:22
Speaker 2: carting around a suitcase loaded with drugs and firearms while
25:25
Speaker 2: trying to skip out on his hotel bill at four
25:27
Speaker 2: point thirty in the morning. He was more paranoid than
25:30
Speaker 2: ever before as he made his way outside into the Cadillac,
25:33
Speaker 2: shocked that he hadn't been apprehended, even more so that
25:36
Speaker 2: he was able to haul ass out of Vegas before
25:39
Speaker 2: the sun even came up, and that sun was blinding.
25:43
Speaker 1: Hunter S.
25:44
Speaker 2: Thompson was a night owl, born a night owl, just
25:47
Speaker 2: like he'd been born angry. He let those traits guide
25:52
Speaker 2: him as he furiously typed away, just finishing and filing
25:56
Speaker 2: the Salazar story, and then getting to work on his
25:59
Speaker 2: experience in Las Vegas. But his trip with Oscar Acosta
26:05
Speaker 2: would not be written like any other story. He re
26:08
Speaker 2: christened himself Raoul Duke, Oscar became doctor Gonzo Duke's three
26:13
Speaker 2: hundred pounds samow An attorney. And some things in the
26:16
Speaker 2: story were true, like the Vegas motorcycle race that Hunter
26:20
Speaker 2: covered for Sports illustrated, a piece of the magazine outright rejected,
26:24
Speaker 2: or the National District Attorney's Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which, yes,
26:29
Speaker 2: no shit, Hunter and Oscar attended, presumably under the influence
26:33
Speaker 2: of all the things the conference organizers sought to eradicate.
26:37
Speaker 2: When Hunter's larger narrative of these experiences was finally published,
26:42
Speaker 2: first as a series of articles in Rolling Stone Magazine
26:44
Speaker 2: and then as a nineteen seventy two novel, Fear and
26:47
Speaker 2: Loathing in Las Vegas, A Savage Journey to the Heart
26:50
Speaker 2: of the American Dream, it was a revelation Hunter's sense
26:55
Speaker 2: of humor, the way in which his drug soaked narrative
26:58
Speaker 2: commented on the previous decade, on the so called revolution
27:01
Speaker 2: that had failed so spectacularly, not that Hunter was a
27:05
Speaker 2: revolutionary or that he was anti drugs. Quite the contrary,
27:09
Speaker 2: Hunter s Thompson advocated for paying as much for your
27:13
Speaker 2: morning paper as you did for a hit of good mescaline.
27:16
Speaker 2: He also embodied what was coming down the pike, what
27:19
Speaker 2: was already here, the cynical misanthrope who gleefully exposed liars
27:24
Speaker 2: and hypocrites. No matter if they called themselves liberal or conservative,
27:28
Speaker 2: no one was safe. When Hunter s Thompson was around
27:34
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, California, Hunter shifted up a gear and
27:39
Speaker 2: merged into traffic on the pch Rolling Stone. Staffers filled
27:44
Speaker 2: out the rest of his Mustang, including the magazine's chief photographer,
27:47
Speaker 2: Annie Leebolds.
27:49
Speaker 1: Hunter gave the gas pedal no quarter.
27:52
Speaker 2: The California Highway Patrol clocked him easy and the cops
27:55
Speaker 2: black and white Dodge, hit the lights and the Hunter
27:58
Speaker 2: pulled over.
28:00
Speaker 1: One of the fellow staffers was freaking.
28:01
Speaker 2: Out in the backseat, and the Mustang was packed to
28:04
Speaker 2: the gills with weed and acid and they were all
28:06
Speaker 2: going to jail. The cop made his approach on the
28:10
Speaker 2: driver's side, and Hunter told everyone to remain calm, and
28:13
Speaker 2: then told Annie to get her camera ready. The cop
28:18
Speaker 2: ordered Hunter out of the car. He wanted to know
28:21
Speaker 2: if Hunter had been drinking. Hunter didn't answer yes or no,
28:24
Speaker 2: but instead asked the cop.
28:26
Speaker 1: If a drunk man could do this.
28:29
Speaker 2: Standing there on the side of the road, Hunter swung
28:32
Speaker 2: his head back, launching his sunglasses off his face, which
28:35
Speaker 2: he then caught with ease behind his back. His camera flashed,
28:41
Speaker 2: and the cop smiled. He told Hunter to hit the road,
28:44
Speaker 2: but try and.
28:45
Speaker 1: Lay off the gas.
28:45
Speaker 3: A little.
28:50
Speaker 2: Hunter, a cynic, a misin throat, still managed to possess
28:54
Speaker 2: a charm that never failed to work its magic even
28:58
Speaker 2: in the company of authority figures him off, especially the
29:02
Speaker 2: people who truly made him angrier than anything. Richard Nixon,
29:05
Speaker 2: for example, he famously became good friends with Roxanne Pullitzer
29:10
Speaker 2: after describing her in one of his articles as quote
29:13
Speaker 2: a jaded pan am stewardess unquote. This is the kind
29:17
Speaker 2: of person that does not exist anymore, not in the
29:20
Speaker 2: world we live in today. Try going on Instagram or
29:24
Speaker 2: x as a card carrying member of the NRA who
29:27
Speaker 2: also wants to defund the police while tripping balls on
29:30
Speaker 2: the regular.
29:31
Speaker 1: You can't.
29:32
Speaker 2: You can't be all things to all people, not like Hunter.
29:35
Speaker 2: Thompson once was. Now, Unfortunately, there are sides and there
29:42
Speaker 2: are lanes, and you don't cross over to someone else's
29:45
Speaker 2: lane unless you want the rest of the world to
29:47
Speaker 2: drive you off the road. However, this is what Hunter did,
29:52
Speaker 2: and the more he did this, the more he emptied
29:54
Speaker 2: the contents of his brain onto the page and is
29:57
Speaker 2: rapidly evolving Gonzo's style. The bigger he became came John
30:01
Speaker 2: and Yoko C.
30:02
Speaker 3: C R.
30:03
Speaker 2: Little, Richard Elton, John Jimmy Hendricks. They may have been
30:07
Speaker 2: on the cover of Rolling Stone, but there was no
30:10
Speaker 2: question that the words running wild on the pages within
30:13
Speaker 2: were the work of the magazine's real golden god, Hunter S.
30:16
Speaker 1: Thompson, Rolling Stone's one and only rock.
30:20
Speaker 3: Star Foller Feller fer Foller Feller.
30:47
Speaker 1: Hunter S.
30:48
Speaker 2: Thompson chased his breakfast of ham and eggs with a
30:51
Speaker 2: shot of whiskey. Sitting next to him at the kitchen
30:54
Speaker 2: table in his Woody Creek, Colorado home, Hunter's son was
30:57
Speaker 2: eating dinner. It was almost six pm. Hunter's day was
31:02
Speaker 2: just beginning. The knight called to him, as it always
31:06
Speaker 2: did the hours when his creativity was at its peak.
31:10
Speaker 2: The only hour is that his Gonzo brain would acknowledge
31:13
Speaker 2: the dawn approaching at an alarming rate. Daylight was the
31:17
Speaker 2: great motivator, well that in the drugs, which were beginning
31:21
Speaker 2: to take hold as they always did. The routine got
31:25
Speaker 2: Hunter writing, and that writing gave him what he always wanted, attention,
31:30
Speaker 2: and over the years his legends simply grew larger, even
31:34
Speaker 2: when the quality of his writing began to decline, until,
31:38
Speaker 2: just like the Hell's Angels that he'd written about decades prior,
31:42
Speaker 2: Hunter now appeared more mythical than he actually was. College
31:47
Speaker 2: girls came banging on his door, drug buddies, naked women,
31:51
Speaker 2: autograph hounds, Keith Richards. You never knew it was going
31:54
Speaker 2: to show up at any given time. Truly a rock
31:56
Speaker 2: star life, a life that Hunter lived half the time
32:00
Speaker 2: and while simultaneously living as a family man during the
32:03
Speaker 2: other half.
32:05
Speaker 1: But the halves weren't equal. Hunter's first wife.
32:08
Speaker 2: Grew tired of it all, of not knowing what was
32:11
Speaker 2: truth and what was bullshit, just like the Gray Area
32:14
Speaker 2: and Hunter's writing, and by the nineteen eighties, divorce seemed
32:19
Speaker 2: the logical choice, but she knew the thought of it
32:22
Speaker 2: would anger Hunters, so she called the cops for peace
32:25
Speaker 2: of mind. Does he have a gun?
32:28
Speaker 1: The cops wanted to know.
32:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got a gun. He's got twenty two guns,
32:31
Speaker 2: and they're all loaded. Guns were a fascination. Guns passed
32:37
Speaker 2: the time they broke the tension. Machine guns were cathartic
32:41
Speaker 2: as fuck. Firing those out back was like watering the lawn.
32:45
Speaker 2: As Hunter said, when it came to home security, though,
32:49
Speaker 2: a twelve gage short barreled shotgun was the way to go.
32:53
Speaker 2: Hunter had a couple of those. But today, Hunter didn't
32:57
Speaker 2: have a shotgun in his hand. On this day, decades
33:01
Speaker 2: after his first wife divorced him, on February twentieth, two
33:05
Speaker 2: thousand and five, Hunter was holding his forty five caliber pistol.
33:11
Speaker 2: Hunter had his guns, his booze, food, drugs, fame, attention,
33:15
Speaker 2: but he also still had his anger. He was angry
33:19
Speaker 2: that jan Winner seemed incapable of paying him on time anymore,
33:23
Speaker 2: angry about yet another debacle of a presidential election, and
33:27
Speaker 2: perhaps most of all, angry that once again it was
33:30
Speaker 2: February and that meant football season was over. Football the
33:35
Speaker 2: one thing Hunter could talk to Richard Nixon about, the
33:38
Speaker 2: only place where the American dream was still alive, if
33:42
Speaker 2: only for a few hours on any given Sunday. But
33:46
Speaker 2: now Hunter was staring down months of Sundays with no football,
33:51
Speaker 2: staring down the edge somewhere between sanity and insanity, life
33:56
Speaker 2: and death. The thought was depressed as always, but for
34:01
Speaker 2: some reason this year, right now, at sixty seven years old,
34:06
Speaker 2: it was too much one toke over the.
34:09
Speaker 1: Line, Sweet Jesus, just like the song said. And with that,
34:15
Speaker 1: Hunter S.
34:15
Speaker 2: Thompson, sitting in his favorite chair at the kitchen table
34:18
Speaker 2: of his Woody Creek home, stuck the barrel of his
34:21
Speaker 2: forty five in.
34:21
Speaker 1: His mouth and pulled the trigger.
34:29
Speaker 2: Six months later to the day, at the top of
34:31
Speaker 2: a fifteen story tower shaped like a clenched fist holding
34:35
Speaker 2: a payote button, the.
34:36
Speaker 1: Logo created years earlier when he ran.
34:38
Speaker 2: For sheriff, Hunter S. Thompson's final wish was carried out
34:42
Speaker 2: as his ashes were shot out of a cannon. This
34:46
Speaker 2: was followed by a fireworks display while Norman Greenbaum's song
34:49
Speaker 2: Spirit in the Sky played at maximum volume. Hunter Thompson
34:55
Speaker 2: had gone over the high side like an angel's bike,
34:58
Speaker 2: sliding into the curve.
35:00
Speaker 1: To a place the rest of us have yet to see.
35:03
Speaker 2: A place where as Hunter himself once wrote, there is
35:06
Speaker 2: no honest way to explain it because the only people
35:09
Speaker 2: who really know where it is are the ones who
35:11
Speaker 2: have gone over. Can you imagine how Hunter Thompson would
35:17
Speaker 2: explain the afterlife? That's one piece of gonzo journalism that
35:22
Speaker 2: we'll never get to read, but in that is a disgrace.
35:29
Speaker 2: Jake Brennan to this this Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by
35:48
Speaker 2: Yours Truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.
35:51
Speaker 2: Credits for this episode can be found on the show
35:53
Speaker 2: notes page at disgracelandpod dot com. If you're listening as
35:57
Speaker 2: a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for reporting the show.
36:00
Speaker 2: We really appreciate it, and if not, you can become
36:03
Speaker 2: a member right now by going to disgracelampod dot com
36:06
Speaker 2: Slash Membership. Members can listen to every episode of disgracelaan
36:11
Speaker 2: ad free, Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode
36:15
Speaker 2: every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and
36:19
Speaker 2: early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod dot com
36:24
Speaker 2: slash membership for details, rate and review the show, and
36:27
Speaker 2: follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at disgracelampod
36:31
Speaker 2: and on YouTube at YouTube dot com, slash at disgracelampod,
36:36
Speaker 2: Rock a Roller. He then man