Some people are born to become legends - and Hunter S. Thompson was one of them. The founder of "gonzo journalism," his signature style was full of profanity, humor, and sarcasm, strongly contrasting with the detached, objective reporting of the time.
Hunter Stockton Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1937. At high school, he was a member of the Athenaeum Literary Association, and helped to produce the club's yearbook, The Spectator. In 1955, however, he was dismissed from the club, when he was charged as an accessory to robbery. He was jailed for 60 days, serving 31 days before being released. A week later, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. He falsified his work experience, got a job as a sports editor on the Air Force base newspaper, and continued to work as a journalist after leaving the Air Force, in 1957.
Redefining journalism
Thompson became famous with his book Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1967). He wrote it after infiltrating the biker gang and spending a year with them, taking readers deep inside a subculture that was closed to the outside world. The bikers eventually accused Thompson of exploiting them for personal gain, beat him up, and nearly killed him.
In 1970, Thompson established his unique voice with his article "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved." This loosely written piece focused on his own experience of watching the race rather than the race itself - the style of writing that later became known as gonzo journalism.
By now, Thompson's larger-than-life personality, his abuse of alcohol and illegal narcotics, his love of firearms, and his hatred of authority had turned him into a counterculture icon. As he famously said in Life magazine in 1981: "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
A savage journey
In 1970, Thompson ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado. His mission - to bring about change in society - included relaxing penalties for drug offenses and renaming Aspen "Fat City." Although he lost the election to the mainstream opponent, Thompson's story about the campaign, "The Battle of Aspen," was published in Rolling Stone. Thus began a lifelong relationship with the magazine.
It was his two-part article "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," published in 1971, that became Thompson's most famous work. This started out as a commission from Sports Illustrated magazine to travel to Las Vegas to write a short photo caption on a motorcycle race, the Mint 400.
Sports Illustrated turned down the piece, but Rolling Stone sent him back to Las Vegas to expand on the story and, at the same time, to report on the National District Attorney Association's Conference on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. This developed into what Thompson described as "a savage journey into the heart of the American dream."
Thompson wrote that they loaded the car trunk with drugs for the journey: "We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers … and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls."
Maybe you should drive
Unsurprisingly, the heavy drug consumption soon took effect. "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold," the article began. "I remember saying something like, ‘I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive…' And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about 100 miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas."
The following year, Random House published Thompson's book version of the story. This satirical attack on the American dream was written as a first-person narrative by a journalist named Raoul Duke. He was accompanied by Dr. Gonzo, his 300-pound Samoan attorney. In 1998, the book was made into a film, starring Johnny Depp as Duke and Benicio del Toro as Gonzo, and later became a cult classic.
Meanwhile, Thompson had begun to expand on his political beliefs. He avoided other journalists' flattering approach towards politicians and instead openly wrote about his dislike of U.S. President Richard Nixon. In his 1979 book, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time, he wrote that "it is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise." After Nixon's death, Thompson described him in Rolling Stone as a man who "could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time."
On a downward spiral
Thompson's journalistic brilliance had turned him into a well-known celebrity. But the heady combination of fame and drugs pushed him into a downward spiral, leading to missed deadlines and declining output.
In 1974, he traveled to Africa to cover the world heavyweight boxing match between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. The fight was advertised as "The Rumble in the Jungle." Thompson got so drunk, he missed the match and failed to submit his article. In 1975, he traveled to Saigon to write about the end of the Vietnam War, but again devoted most of his time to drink rather than to work. After conducting revealing interviews with U.S. President Jimmy Carter, he lost the tapes.
Although Thompson's brilliant career was coming to an end, there was still a steady trickle of work. In the late 1980s and early '90s, he regularly wrote as a critic for the San Francisco Examiner. Many of his articles from 1979 to 1994 were collected in a four-volume series of books called The Gonzo Papers. He retained an extraordinary command of the written word and still showed moments of brilliance, such as in his article "The Curse of Lono," about the 1980 Honolulu Marathon. But he was by now largely burned out. In 1980, he and his first wife, Sandy Conklin, divorced, and Thompson retreated to Owl Farm, his cabin in Woody Creek, Colorado.
The black dog of depression
In 2004, Rolling Stone published Thompson's final magazine feature, "The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane: Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004," which covered the 2004 presidential election and appealed to readers to vote for his long-time friend Senator John Kerry.
Thompson's hard living had by now taken a toll on his health. Chronic back pain confined him to a wheelchair and he needed a hip replacement. Worst of all, he was dogged by depression. He found February a gloomy month - it was the middle of winter and the football season was over. What tipped him over the edge was when he almost shot his second wife, Anita Thompson, in the head with a pellet gun during a family gathering.
The couple made up, but the die was cast. Anita phoned him the next day from a nearby health club and they talked. When she heard strange clicking sounds, she hung up, thinking it might be his typewriter or the TV. But Thompson was cocking a gun, which he then placed in his mouth before pulling the trigger. His son, Juan, who was visiting for the weekend, heard the shot and found his father dead in the kitchen.
Rolling Stone published a suicide note written by Thompson to his wife. Called "Football Season is Over," it read: "No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun - for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your age. Relax - This won't hurt."
In August 2005, in line with his last requests, Thompson's ashes were blown into the sky from a cannon at his Colorado home. Around 200 friends - including Johnny Depp, who had starred in the movie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and allegedly paid millions of dollars towards his friend's explosive send-off - gathered to bid their final farewell to the man who had become a legend.