Gonzo

by Corey Seymour

  The next gigs were UCLA and then Berkeley, back-to-back. I flew out to meet Hunter for the first time with about $200 for five days and stayed at a Travelodge. Hunter was staying in the Lauren Bacall Suite at the Westwood Marquis Hotel and had brought one of the Hells Angels, Tiny, with him as a security guard. In the front row at the show, there were ten kids who’d dyed their arms blue, and when he came out onstage, people were running up to the stage bringing him joints and little envelopes with drugs in them. After the gig, he had a party for some students in his hotel room, and after about an hour, Tiny came up to me and said, “Hunter wants you to leave. You’re making him nervous.” I went down to the bar and started ordering drinks on Hunter’s tab, and an hour and a half later, Tiny came down and gave me $500 in cash and said, “Hunter knows you don’t have any money.”

  The next day we had two sold-out shows at Berkeley, and some corporate gig for a computer guy there. I was supposed to meet Hunter at ten a.m. for breakfast, but he didn’t show, and I couldn’t get hold of him all day. Finally I flew to Berkeley on my own and got to the show at eight o’clock . . . no Hunter. Twenty-five hundred kids were howling and barking at the moon, so I walked out and said, “I just got a call from Dr. Thompson, and he’ll be here momentarily”—and then walked backstage thinking, “Where is he?” A few minutes later he showed up and yelled at me. “Never lie for me, goddamn it.”

  ALAN RINZLER

  He got on the stage and was incoherent, just fall-down drunk. It was sort of what everyone expected—that he would show up and be so drunk, or so fucked up in some other way, that he couldn’t speak.

  BILL STANKEY

  For the corporate gig, Hunter showed up late, told a couple stories, and then left—$10,000.

  A couple years later, he did a show at Brown University with G. Gordon Liddy. Hunter decided he was going to sit at the airport bar and drink and wait for Liddy to arrive. Liddy landed, and Hunter went wandering out onto the tarmac with a handgun, yelling, “Gordo! Gordo, it’s good to see you! We’re going to have a lotta fun tonight, Gordo!” Liddy wanted nothing to do with him.

  Hunter was a wreck that night. Liddy was articulate and sober, and the comparison between the two was not in Hunter’s favor. Afterward he held some students hostage in a room, screaming and yelling at them that he needed drugs immediately and demanding that they drive him to find acid.

  BOB BRAUDIS

  Over the years, when he was flush, Hunter would give me nice collectibles. He was very generous. He could spend $5,000 at a truck stop when he had a pocketful. Then there were times between royalties, or when he owed the publishers a book and they wouldn’t give him any money, when he would borrow from a few of us. In my case it was very little money because I don’t have a lot, but other generous patrons like George Stranahan and a few other guys, when Hunter had an IRS bill with penalties and interest mounting, they’d bail him out.

  DEBORAH FULLER

  I lived at Owl Farm, in the cabin about a hundred feet from his house. Living that close was both a curse and a blessing. I was on call twenty-four hours, but it was essential. The cabin was small and very old. It had huge windows and it was a place to sit and watch the deer and elk and the occasional marmot or skunk or porcupine or bobcat or fox or coyote pass by. And the peacocks, of course. We added another cage on to the cabin, so that there was one at Hunter’s house and another at the cabin.

  There were eight to fifteen [peacocks] at any time. It was really important to Hunter to be able to watch the birds, just their sheer beauty. Hunter called it “living art.” The kings always had them, he said. They were watch-birds, and we always knew when anything or anyone approached the house.

  JUAN THOMPSON

  I’ve always been very, very private about acknowledging that I was Hunter Thompson’s son. I wouldn’t volunteer that. But when people did find out—yes, inevitably the first questions would be “What was it like?” “Was he really that crazy?” I might tell a story about him, but I didn’t like answering those types of questions, partially because from as early as I can remember, protecting privacy was paramount. The idea of sitting down with a stranger and giving them the “inside dope” was unthinkable. That was one of Hunter’s prime directives: Maintain the privacy. It was not specific, and it was not talked about. It was implied. Every time I picked up the phone—this was before answering machines—I had to get enough information to find out who it was, but without disclosing anything, and then find out if Hunter wanted to talk to them or not. Physical privacy as well—people were not welcome to just drive up to the door and knock. It was strictly forbidden.

  DEBORAH FULLER

  The kitchen was the center of everything, and if Hunter didn’t know you well or didn’t trust you completely, the kitchen was just off the list. And whatever happened in the kitchen was to be kept private.

  There were always notes tacked up to that effect: “What happens in the kitchen stays in the kitchen,” or “Never call 911. Ever. This means you.”

  BILL DIXON

  You had to be polite in the kitchen and you had to be on your best behavior—not to bow down to him, but you had to say something on point. Hunter was a lover of great conversation, and he did not dominate conversations. He was a great listener. You wouldn’t know that from his public persona.

  DEBORAH FULLER

  There was a certain organization to Owl Farm that had to be kept. From Hunter’s perspective sitting in his chair in the kitchen, there was the typewriter right in front of him, and to the right and left of Hunter’s typewriter were two phones that he would often talk on simultaneously. Straight across from Hunter was a big TV in the corner, and to the left of that was the piano, and on the piano there were always books that he wanted access to.

  I always kept an edition of each one of his books there in case we needed to do any research, as well as any other books that he wanted to be able to see: The Reluctant Surgeon, which was about one of his ancestors, along with reference books related to the project of the moment. There was always a storyboard of the working manuscript hanging over the piano. To the right of his typewriter was a window through which he could see out to the bird feeders, or he could look out and see a car come around the circular driveway.

  All the daily newspapers and the latest magazines would be to his right, and the coffeepot was on the counter behind him. Just under that window were various books of his in which he made many corrections over the years.

  The living room had large windows and a door to the front porch. Hunter used to like to have his late-afternoon breakfast on the porch and sit outside in the morning before he went to bed. At the far end was a built-on birdcage. Hunter would lock the peacocks in every night, and there were lights inside the cages for heat and viewing. The birds were active at night, especially when Hunter cranked up the music.

  At the far end of the living room was a large fireplace, which was going most of the time during the winter, and a window to the right of the fireplace that looked out onto the firing range and to the back and the side of the property. To the left inside the room was another storyboard—we always had two storyboards going—and there was a big round table with a marble center that had a lazy Susan on which we could lay out material when we were working. That table was in front of the chair that Hunter always wrote in before he ended up at the counter in the kitchen.

  As you walked into the living room, to your left were all bookshelves—that’s also where the taxidermied owl of Owl Farm was perched, right above the master dictionary—and as you turned right to go out to the porch, there were more floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with a rack of hats hanging over them. Hunter could go straight to where he had put books thirty years ago.

  Downstairs was the War Room, another place where Hunter used to write. This room had all sorts of memorabilia on the walls from as far back as when he was in South America and Puerto Rico, along with things that Ralph Steadman had done. There was another large fireplace right under the living-room
fireplace. When Hunter started writing upstairs, this room turned into archival storage and is where a lot of first editions were kept, as well as collected artwork, guns and ammunition, original manuscripts and their backup materials, all communication . . . It was a large, locked, private room with everything from Hunter’s early days as a writer. And he kept everything.

  I’m not sure why, but there were bullet holes through the window in the Red Room, or the mud room, upstairs, and instead of just replacing the window, Hunter chose to sandwich it in glass. It became another piece of Hunter’s art—as well as a warning to those who came to the door.

  Owl Farm had rules. Various people broke those rules, and those people weren’t invited back. There were a number of people who came for an interview and then decided to just drink with Hunter; they’d think that they had become such good buddies that they would just get their story the next day. And Hunter would say, “Sorry, you had your chance.”

  I dealt with a lot of “pilgrims” over the years. They wanted to pay homage, and they came from all over the world, usually bearing gifts. Many sat across the road taking pictures, and some walked up the driveway. Usually I had very little trouble with them. People liked to eat acid and come by the house. Some people would leave notes under rocks or taped to the gate. Some people would stay down at the tavern, eating and drinking for four days just in the hope of seeing him.

  TEX WEAVER was a neighbor of Hunter’s in Woody Creek.

  Sometimes I’d get a call from Owl Farm about somebody bothering them, so I’d go up there and try to convince whoever it was that they were lost, maybe by pulling a gun and sticking it in their face and saying, “Get the fuck out of here” or something like that. Let’s just say I shooed people away.

  DEBORAH FULLER

  Tex would do anything for Hunter. Hunter wrote about Tex once in a while; he would use him as a character. He was a friend and a wild boy in the neighborhood. He lived with a guy named Tom, another friend, who fixed Hunter’s cars and motorcycles. I could call on either of them in a second for any kind of help. You wanted Tex on your side—let’s put it that way. You didn’t want to fuck with Tex.

  TEX WEAVER

  I first met Hunter when I was visiting my sister-in-law in San Francisco in the late sixties, and I used to go out to Golden Gate Park on my motorcycle at two or three a.m. and ride through the park as fast as I could possibly fucking go. I was always watching, because if you see some headlights coming, maybe it’s the police, you know. But I see headlights coming at me and I realize it’s a motorcycle, and I realize the son of a bitch is going as fast as I am. So I go to the right, and this guy mirrors it. I go to the left; he mirrors it. All of a sudden I’m thinking, “Oh my—this is a game of chicken.” So I just aim for him and he aims for me, and we barely missed each other; I mean, we could almost smell each other’s breath as we went by each other. I got pissed and wheeled around, thinking I was going to get this son of a bitch, and I chased him down and asked him, “Who the fuck are you?” And he says, “Who the hell are you? I thought I killed you back there.” I started laughing, and he was laughing, and I took out my medicine bottle and dumped a whole bunch of it in his hand, and we ended up in a bar that evening. And that’s how we met.

  I didn’t see him again until three or four years later, when I came out to Aspen and ended up on a bar stool next to him. I said, “Golden Gate Park,” and he looked at me. “Motorcycle.” He said, “Yeah.”

  Both of us were kind of recluses, but we ended up spending more and more time together. We played softball. Jimmy Buffet had a softball team, which was interesting, because I think you had to be a felon to be on it or something. We called ourselves the Down-Valley Doughboys. In those days Hunter still was quite mobile.

  We did all the drugs and the ether and dah-dah-dah. On ether you slobber; you’re a fucking piece of shit. One time we were driving, and I had a tank of it. We were doing acid at the time and drinking and you name it. I had a mask, so you just turn the tank on and you go. You can get that in a liquid form also. One of the things he said in Vegas was that you might as well pour it all over a towel and stick it down by the floorboards and turn the fan on so the fumes would come up. This was us.

  He used to call me the Princess of Darkness because I would dress up in drag. The first time I did it with him was in San Francisco in ’84 or ’85. Hunter had driven his car down one of the main drags there and rammed into the back of a carload of colored people. I got this call from him—“Come get me out of jail. . . .” I put on an old Mexican dress like you might see in a cowboy movie—the ones you can pull down over the shoulder—and I put lipstick on and a little wig and went and bailed him out. He was just in because of a small accident or something, but Hunter’s approach to all that stuff was lots of yelling—you know, he was trying to pull off this weird demeanor—and they sent an 800-pound pacifier into the cell with him. They have guys that do things if someone is unruly.

  I got him out of there, and after that he kept calling me the Princess of Darkness.

  DEBORAH FULLER

  When friends would come over, Hunter would make Biffs, which were a mix of Bailey’s Irish Cream and Irish whiskey, or put out shots of tequila—Hunter loved good tequila. In general, he drank Chivas and Grolsch or Molson and an occasional Bloody Mary or margarita. Later, after he’d been to Cuba, he liked mojitos.

  There were always gatherings at Owl Farm for ball games and for the Kentucky Derby.

  JACK NICHOLSON

  He loved gambling on football. One of the times I definitely impressed him was when he came up to visit when Rafelson and I were shooting The Postman Always Rings Twice in Santa Barbara. The weekend we finished was the Super Bowl. I was a child gambler, but I don’t much care anymore. It’s one of the few vices that I’ve definitely completely defeated. But they started off trying to get me involved until eventually I’d just say, “Well, okay, what about this?” And just by manipulating the room with little tiny dollar bets and so forth—all I was doing was trimming them with the numbers and the spread and preying on their excitements and misunderstandings of the moment—I think I made out of this room with a couple hundred bucks. This was totally impressive to Hunter. He couldn’t believe that I’d hustled everybody in the room with numbers, getting them to bet both ways and back and forth.

  DEBORAH FULLER

  He didn’t like going to big gatherings or big dinners. He preferred one-on-one or small groups. If one of his good friends had a birthday party, it was still a big thing to get Hunter to go. He was notorious for accepting dinner invitations and not going, or showing up late. He’d pop in and out, eat oysters and drink and talk and smoke, but it was hard for him to just sit and eat. There were a few places that he would go regularly: to the Goldsteins’, the Rafelsons’, dinner at Ed Bradley’s over the holidays, and to Jack’s—small gatherings. And he’d throw a few of his own parties: for the Derby, or the Super Bowl, or the Fourth of July; for the lawyers in town for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers conference or the NORML conference.

  People would often ask Hunter if they could bring a friend, or a few friends, with them when they came out. Once in a while Hunter would say okay to this, but sometimes people would just show up with other people, and that was unacceptable. Eventually he put a sign on his fridge that said, “Guests of Guests Are Not Allowed to Invite Guests.”

  BOB BRAUDIS

  Those of us in town recognized that the weeks before and after Christmas we wouldn’t see Hunter much. That was the celebrity period, when all of the high rollers, the Jack Nicholsons, et cetera, would come to Aspen for the Christmas holidays, and Hunter was hanging with them, not with us. But as soon as the Rose Bowl was over, he was back to his local crowd.

  JACK NICHOLSON

  He always liked reading things that he thought might be shocking to me—and almost everything he brought to me was shocking, really. He was always socially pyrotechnical when he talked about things, and he could turn on
a dime. I remember a line he gave me, a fragment of something he’d written that ended with the character contemplating how this dry French kiss that he was getting from his cat was making him feel. The image stuck with me as much as anything he ever wrote. It was spectacular—just three or four words could suddenly stun you.

  He always came over like he was carrying stolen goods when he had these things. There was a lot of paper fumbling, and he was always saying things like, “I don’t know if you’re ready for this.”

  He told me about how this girl had sent him some of her poetry—which I read, and we both agreed that this girl, who was very young, had shocking talent. Apparently this group of young people had taken to breaking into morgues somewhere in Colorado and having parties with dead bodies, and this girl wrote poetry about it. What delighted Hunter in some way was that they called the body of the night “the bride,” for instance.

  Before that he had turned me on to a book called The Hellfire Club, by Daniel Mannix, which was about this secret club that existed when Benjamin Franklin was in England. This one guy, Sir Francis Dashwood, had gone through a lot of different kinds of religious conversion and was apparently a very brilliant man, and at one point he swung back and forth from extreme piety to being insane—things such as this always appealed to Hunter, this kind of behavior. One night Dashwood was fallen upon by demons in the form of two cats fucking that fell through the skylight and this four-eyed glaring monster hurling around his bed. He wound up forming this thing called the Hellfire Club. Sir Francis was the [club’s] pope, and he commissioned a lot of pornographic statues. The members would sail down the Thames wrapped in robes, and the people would line the shoreline to see them going up to this crazy place where they just debauched beyond belief. You kind of get the picture.