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Hunter S. Thompson, UC Davis
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, father of gono
journalism and self-proclaimed raving freak
in his own time, sparred with the witty and
idolatrous among 300 wildly enthusiastic
aggies who packed UC Davis' Freeborn
Hall.
Running the gamut of trendy issues (from
his role in electing Jimmy Carter president
to his opinion of reality), the gx)d doctor
expanded on his txxks (Hell's Angels, Fear
and Loathing in Ims Vegas, Fear and loathing on
the Campaign Trail) and delivered a brief
diatribe against cartoonist G. B. Trudeau
and his Dounesbury comic strip, in which a
character remarkably like Thompson ap
pears regularly. "I've never met the bas
tard," the Gonz said of Trudeau. "First time
I do 1 intend to light him on fire. That may
sound weird, but the first time I met Hamil
ton Jordon, I lit Am on fire . . . it's easy."
More highlights:
Thompson: I'm not exactly sure what we're
going to talk about . . . I've always tried
to make it clear to everybody involved in
this thing that I have nothing to say, noth
ing to sell, and I can't imagine why any
body would pay . . . But what I can do is
argue with you.
(Thompson received S2200 for his ap
pearance, one of many this past year; these
appearances may be his only source of in
come, since his relationship with Rolling
Stone editor Jann Wenner cooled.)
Question: Do you suppose that people on
other planets are into drugs?
T: If there's intelligent life, yes, I would
think so. They probably have better dope
than we do.
Q: What happened to the Brown Buffalo
(Oscar Acosta, lawyer, author and fellow
Gonzo)?
T: All the evidence suggests that he is no
longer with us. However, I've never been a
great believer in evidence and would bet
even money that he is still with us, in
some form. I don't like to blow my
friends' covers, so as far as I'm concerned,
he's dead. Until he tells me differently.
Q: What was the greatest rush you ever
had?
T: I would say, just right off the top of my
head . . . and in partial response to the
gentleman here who wanted to know the
meaning of life . . . going down Highway
1, at night, wearing nothing but a pair of
shorts and a T shirt, with the lights out,
120 miles an hour ... is about as high as
you can get.
At one point someone in the audiejice
stood up and said "I want to compliment
you on being so coherent." We'd all heard
reports that Thompson tends to leave his
body on occasion, but this evening he was
May, 1978
on top of everything full of drugs (he im
bibed nitrous oxide, ether, freon gas and
whisky before and during his "lecture") but
handling them well.
Thompson didn't always wait for ques
tions, but his random soliloquies were perti
nent and pithy:
"What I was counting on with Carter was
his egomania guaranteeing sort of a
minimum performance level. I thought lie
would be ashamed to fail, whereas Nixon
gloried in it.
"If there is any central characteristic of
Gonzo Journalism it is participation in the
story. And when you're backing ofTand talk
ing about it, you're not participating in any
way. You're touching it. So that almost pre
cludes the gonzo approach. Unless of course
you want to play with the Rolling Stones . . .
I could play drums with the Stones, and
then write a review of the album. That'd be
gonzo all the way. But the participation fac
tor is major, and primary.
"New Journalism, whatever that means
... is people trying to break out of this
wretched mold. The stupid relaying of al
leged facts. New journalism is a better form
of what journalism should have been all
along. Reporting the truth, or somehow try
ing to get at the truth,"
Q: Do you have a role, a cultural role, to
uphold in your work?
T: Well, it worries me that you'd ask that
question, but ... no. If I worried about
that I'd go totally crazy.
Joel Patterson
Lou Reed,
Old Waldorf, San Francisco
When they called Lou Reed's seamy brand
of New York underground rock songs
about drug addiction, violence and kinky
sex "depraved" and "demonic," you
could almost imagine him crouched below
manhole covers on a dark night, trading
lyrics with the devils beneath the pavement.
He was street-tough and defiant, a kind of
urban James Dean, singing first with
Andy Warhol's Velvet Underground and
later alone with a rough, sometimes
passionate swagger. His music was raw
city-rock, and it grated like the growl of a
garbage truck at four AM.
His fans in San Francisco who made all
eight shows at the Old Waldorf sellouts
found him true to form when he played there
last month. After the commercial success of a
hit single ("Walk on the Wild Side") a few
years back and the addition of a seven-piece
backup band, including a saxophonist and
two female vocalists, Reed is still rough and
raunchy. On opening night the audience
gave him a rousing welcome, and kept their
enthusiasm throughout the set.
They were a cleaner, more respectable
looking crowd than you'd expect for the man
some call "the odd father of punk," which
might have had as much to do with the high
($9.50) ticket price as with changing styles.
The leather and heavy makeup boys were
absent, and nary a safety pin was seen.
Reed avoided much of his older material,
working chiefly from his newest album Street
Hassle, and aside from an occasional shout
for Velvet Underground's classic "Heroin,"
the audience seemed content.
Opening for Reed was England's Ian
Drury, an inventive and irreverent
singersongwriter whose music is several
cuts above the usual bawdy punk-rock
material. He used cockney slang, clever
wordplays and driving rhythms to keep his
five-piece band rumbling along.
Jayson Q. Wechter