Relentless
At 0:15, applause pushes the opening howling winds aside.
At 0:27, common pleasantries hush the clapping.
By 1:01 and "good evening", the man with the microphone has made clear both his disdain for the audience and, I can only assume, his neutered-mullet.
Relentless is the last of Bill Hicks’ stand-up albums to be released in his lifetime, and it stands as his signature performance: shameless, loud, truthful, vulgar, antagonistic...and absolutely hilarious.
Cancer got Hicks in 1994 at the age of 32, and his legend stands as that of a pro-drug, anti-authoritarian Molotov-cocktail who was more than likely to explode on stage at some point during a performance; to say that Hicks didn’t "suffer fools gladly" is like saying the sun is "hot".
Relentless was originally released in 1992, and Hicks’ brilliant but obviously now-dated material still holds up:
The Gulf War becomes the "Persian Gulf Distraction", and he ponders whether war machines couldn’t "more feasibly be used to shoot food at hungry people?"
The disparity in gun-related homicides, England compared to the States, and their opposing views on handgun-bans:
"There’s no connection between having a gun and shooting someone with it...and not having a gun and not shooting someone."
After watching Terminator 2, he decides that the only way to top the movie’s special-effects would be to use terminally-ill people as stuntmen; the crowd makes some noises of discomfort, to which Hicks replies:
"What? Do you want your grandmother dying like a little bird in some hospital room, her translucent skin so thin you can see her last heartbeat work its way down her blue veins...or do you want her to meet Chuck Norris?"
The Clarence Thomas sexual-harassment hearings got the ball rolling on the topic of pornography, causing Hicks to ruminate further:
"Supreme Court says pornography is any act that has no artistic merit and causes sexual thoughts, that’s their definition, essentially. No artistic merit, causes sexual thoughts: hmm...sounds like every commercial on television, doesn’t it?"
A three-track set, respectively "Great Times On Drugs", "Drugs Have Done Good Things" (recognizable to most as the opening-quote from Tool’s "Third Eye"), and "Rockers Against Drugs Suck", fights against the common-perception and anti-drug advertising...
"I had a great time doing drugs...sorry. Never murdered anyone, never robbed anyone, never raped anyone, never beat anyone, never lost a job, a car, a house, a wife or kids...laughed my ass off, and went about my day. Now, where’s my commercial?"
...and musicians-as-puppets for the government:
"We’re rock against drugs 'cause that’s what George Bush wants!"
"That’s what we want, isn’t it? Government-approved rock n’ roll? Don’t you want to be at a concert one night, look to your right and see Dan fucking Quayle right next to you? You know you’re partying then, you know you’re on the edge!"
He marvels at Christians wearing crosses, and Christians in general:
"You think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a fucking cross? Kinda like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle-pendant on - 'just thinking of John, Jackie.'"
"I did that joke in Alabama, in Fife, and these three rednecks met me after the show - 'Hey buddy, c’mere! Mr. Funnyman, c’mere! Hey buddy, we’re Christians and we don’t like what you said.' I said, 'then forgive me.'"
As for smoking ("I smoke for simply one reason, and that is...spite"), he was even quite prescient: "I’m Bill Hicks and I’m dead now," he says, echoing the Yul Brenner anti-smoking commercial that was released after his death, and it’s as eerie as the above-mentioned commercial itself, hearing a dead man pronounce his own tragic demise.
Bill Hicks is seen by many an admirer now as a martyr, someone who suffered because of an unwillingness to conform, to "sell-out", and whose untimely death cemented that resolve. Relentless was, sadly, only a peak in what should have been an ongoing climb over higher and bigger mountains.
Brazil
I was finally able to procure a copy of Brazil after wading through a fanatical-throng of worshippers, elbowing through true-believers crying "Gilliam is God", without giving away that I hadn’t, as of yet, actually seen the film. After purchase, I managed to dodge various amateur reenactments with nary a scratch, nor a public lynching, to show for it.
Once the initial shock of how dated it looked during the opening scenes passed, I fell into amazement that the movie more than held-up against the barrage of hype surrounding it, that it still seemed relevant despite being birthed more than 20 years earlier. I can only imagine the reactions of Terry Gilliam’s one-time Monty Python crew after this bit of directorial-brilliance was released in 1985; I’m seeing John Cleese and Eric Idle sitting in stunned silence, trying to be nonchalant in respectively reaching for the phone to call ol’ Terry up for a part in his next picture...
Set "Somewhere in the 20th Century", Brazil follows Sam Lowry through a sometimes hilarious, sometimes harrowing journey of widespread, neo-futuristic bureaucracy in which he combats his idealistic/romanticized dreams against the steadfast-logic of his oppressive reality. Lowry gradually becomes a man of unrelenting rebellion masquerading as a worker-bee through chance meetings with both Harry Tuttle and the literal angel of his dreams, Jill Layton.
Jonathan Pryce is the would-be everyman Lowry, and displays fright, determination, fleeting joy, and lunacy all so vividly that you want to grab him and tell him that it’s just a movie; Robert DeNiro is the cigar-smoking, gun-toting vigilante repair-man who steals scenes just as quickly as he escapes from them; Michael Palin is Lowry’s icy former-acquaintance who serves the totalitarian-regime with such coldness that even when friendly he sounds menacing; Kim Greist as Jill left me gobsmacked as to why I don’t recall seeing her in anything after Brazil, so good was she as the eventual strong yang to Lowry’s shaky yin.
The visual-style of the movie, from Lowry’s dreamscape-battles with a monstrous samurai warrior to his penultimate, mind-bending escape from authorities, could only have been the work of Gilliam; the climax is even more remarkable, flooring me despite my knowledge beforehand of the ending, especially when wedged historically between Back to the Future and The Breakfast Club - if Fight Club was met with disdain during its theatrical-run in 1999, Brazil in the mid-eighties must have seemed like a punch in the face to those who wanted to see Christopher Lloyd as a real-life cartoon-character.
The fan-boys I leapfrogged earlier to get the DVD applauded my choice of the Criterion Collection, "Terry Gilliam Approved", ultimate version, but became downcast once they realized I had eyes only for the "single-disc" package; the über-package contains an infamous "happy ending" cut of the film, of which I have absolutely no desire to watch.
The Brazil I saw was just about perfect as was.
Vs.
"Go" did it for me; from the opening chaotic instrumentation, through the nefarious bass-line, into the soaring chorus, and ending with shrieks of punctuation, I sat on my parent’s coffee-table and stared at the speakers, overjoyed and giggling like every other 17-year-old the day Vs. came out. Unlike their superlative debut Ten, chock-full of all the Pearl Jam hits we know and love, this second effort was free of the rock-reverb, the echo that marked eighties-style production value, instead replaced with a crispness that felt like they moved the microphones a little bit closer to the band - if Ten made Pearl Jam, Vs. WAS Pearl Jam.
"Animal" followed with a wave of a rhythmic power-chords that broke to allow Eddie Vedder to scream his metaphorical distaste for humanity (a theme later echoed in "Rats"), and by the time the immediate acoustic-loveliness of "Daughter" darted through the speakers, I was so glued to my seat that anything short of the apocalypse wouldn’t have moved me.
Just about every song in the Pearl Jam catalogue sounds better in a live setting than on record (a statement not meant as a detriment to their albums, but as a credit to their live show), with the exception of one: "Rearviewmirror", or track 8 to those who are strictly number-based. Live, this tune breaks in the middle to allow for some obviously-unnecessary noodling, and is usually confined to its role as Act I closer, the pre-encore pseudo-epic that allows the band to get off-stage in a rush of energy to prepare for Act II; on record, however, the song sounds like a car driven off the edge of a cliff, erupting into a fiery supernova and disintegrating instead of falling into the gorge. Vedder has never duplicated his explosive roar at the apex of the recorded-version of "Rearviewmirror", and it reverberates as an aftershock of how powerful the band was at its height.
I blame "Blood" for this; the song itself is pure viscera, metallic-guitars doused in fuzz and slammed into an already-pounding drum, Vedder howling to the point where his voice comes apart like a meteorite entering the atmosphere. Listening to the track, you can almost hear his vocal-chords shredding and splintering towards the end...and though the song kicks the ass out of my pants when I hear it, there’s no doubt that live renditions of it have done irreparable damage to his throat.
Chronologically, though, Vs. is no worse the wear after "Blood": "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter In a Small Town" is almost unfathomably catchy, and the sparse, haunting "Indifference" sounds like they recorded it in a church surrounded by candles - not usually an image I would use as praise, but for this, the final song of the album, it’s perfect.
Despite the lone misstep that is "Glorified G", a pop-driven track that sounds as though it’s about a "glorified version of a pelican", this album isn’t just a reminder of my own adolescent excitement, but also stands as a mountainous high-point that few bands can stand in the shadow of, much less scale.
Home Movies
Almost entirely improvisational and dialogue-driven, Home Movies is a classic sitcom that just happens to also be a cartoon...a cartoon that died well before its time. The show likely began as a sort of spin-off from Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist (note the early episodes in "Squigglevision"), and progressed in quality, if not in viewership, until its ignominious end.
Brendan Small stars as an eponymous 8-year-old film-auteur, steadfastly making video-tape-movies in his basement with his cohorts Melissa & Jason; rounding out the regular cast is Brendan’s mother Paula and soccer-coach John McGuirk, who knows little to nothing about soccer.
Jon Benjamin is the juicy chunk of honeydew melon at the heart of the fruit-salad that is Home Movies; as McGuirk & Jason, among others, he can make you laugh with his diction alone (see his pronunciations of "idiotic" and "awful"), and if it’s a memorable line, more than likely it’s his...but if Benjamin is the melon, Brendan Small is the yogurt that holds it all together (assuming, of course, that your fruit salad contains yogurt, which mine frequently doesn’t). In real life, Small is a "ripper": a guitar-freak who writes the bulk of the music for the show, and finds his alter-ego in Duane, the fifteen-year-old mumbling guitar-hero who makes the music for Brendan’s movies. Small’s an enabler for Benjamin to improv, allowing the latter to "riff" and create plot-points out of thin air that are then incorporated into the show (the character-designs didn’t include a pencil-thin moustache for teacher-cum-interim principal Mr. Lynch until McGuirk made mention of it in passing during a take); when there is interplay between Small & Benjamin, especially if it’s Brendan & McGuirk, there is hilarity.
I’m going to not-so-humbly lay down the five best episodes, in order of import, for you to find and watch at your leisure so you can fall in love with this doomed show and join me in the tragedy of its finality:
"Camp" - Season 4
Camp Campingston Falls is the setting for Brendan, Melissa & Jason to attend "Performing Arts Camp", where they are summarily rejected by their respective counselors for stinking, both in terms of their creative abilities (they lack "form") and because none of them brought a change of clothes for their week-long stay. Nearby, Coach McGuirk’s "camping trip" turns out to be an unwitting introduction into a cowl-wearing sensitive-man’s group called The Crywalkers, and a desperately-frightened McGuirk responds by fleeing into the forest alone...until he’s discovered by Melissa and brought to Camp Campingston Falls.
Watch for McGuirk’s wish list of items once "saved" by the kids, the ending musical-number Welcome 2 Hell which emancipates the kids from their crappy camp and serenades Melissa as she overcomes her fear of water, and McGuirk’s insane ramblings in the forest whilst running scared that birthed the name of this site.
"Renaissance" - Season 3
The kids are professionally-involved in a renaissance fair (they will be performing a play entitled "King Arthur Meets Robin Hood" with music provided by Duane’s band Scäb) that is going on right next door to a sci-fi convention. McGuirk is the blacksmith, incredibly hung-over, and incapable of pretending he is supposed to be in medieval times.
Enjoy the boisterous, if physically-impossible, climax, Patton Oswalt’s turn as Helmet, an obnoxious, too-eager renaissance-nerd who wages war on the sci-fi conventioneers, and the musical itself, which will leave you humming, "Robin Hood crossed the line/stole Arthur’s concubine/from him" incessantly.
"Bye, Bye Greasy" - Season 4
Brendan casts and directs the school play, which turns into, as McGuirk says, "an historic disaster", a follow up to his earlier statement that "this play is completely sucking."
So many things are great about this one: Emo Phillips’ resurrection as Shannon, the bully who steals the show after stealing the part away from Brendan; obnoxious kid Fenton’s unwavering enthusiasm and the absolute seriousness with which he takes his job as "light-guy"; Jason dying on stage and resorting to Brazilian crooning; and, especially, McGuirk’s dream of driving his car on stage muted by having to perform his musical-number through his window that won’t roll down.
"Director's Cut" - Season 1
Squigglevision! VERY distracting, especially after watching the later episodes animated in Flash, but no matter: the story details Duane’s attempt at making a rock-opera based on Franz Kafka and The Metamorphosis and Brendan’s immense jealousy, as well as McGuirk’s similar, though not as strong, feelings towards his new, young assistant coach.
From the opening scene of McGuirk tracing his varicose-veins with a highlighter (naming one of them "Euphrates" and pointing out the "fertile crescent"), through Jason’s freak-out over being told of Duane’s "death", to the song Livin’ Like a Bug Ain’t Easy and the lyric "I got little tiny bug feet/I don’t know what bug’s eat", this was what got me started watching Home Movies in the first place.
"Broken Dreams" - Season 3
The main plot involves Brendan’s belief that Melissa is smarter than he, some test-cramming, and real-and-faked broken arms...but this episode is included strictly for the sub-plot of McGuirk’s desire to become a lifeguard after reading about another lifeguard getting a million dollars for a saving a rich kid’s life.
Paired up with his driving-instructor from a previous episode (who, apparently, also teaches lifeguard instruction), their dialogue in regards to a CPR dummy is priceless, and McGuirk’s behaviour at the library after self-inflicted head-trauma is out-of-control hilarious; watch for the red, Looney Tunes-style lumps sticking out of his swimming-cap, and Brendan’s response to what McGuirk did to the card-catalogue.
Classic sitcom, classic show.
Era Vulgaris
Josh Homme, frontman of Queens of the Stone Age, just seems so comfortable, riding the lightning with a sanguine nonchalance that borders on indifference, singing in a beautiful high-resister that has to be peppered with lip-snarling "huh’s" lest anyone forget that he’s a rock-dude, writing songs that feature more time-changes than a clock-store while making the whole thing look easy...this album is so good that I’m not only going to go through it track by track, but I’m actually distressed in thinking about their future efforts: Era Vulgaris feels like such a peak that I will send a basket of flowers to Homme personally if their next album kicks as much ass.
1. Turnin’ on the Screw
This five-and-a-half-minute toe-tapping masterpiece of psychedelic guitars and cryptic lyrics starts the album off with a bona fide epic to sink your teeth into - like walking into a dark room and then wanting to stay because you’re hallucinating in pretty colours.
2. Sick, Sick, Sick
It’s all about the rhythm: different sequences of the same power-chord feed off a nonstop beat, and it all leads to the killer post-chorus guitar-riff.
3. I’m Designer
A catchy song disguised as an ugly one, this track is as close as Homme gets to revealing himself as "one of a kind/I’m designer". Also, I can’t think of anyone else who could follow "counter proposal: I’ll go home and jerk-off" with such a gorgeous harmonized melody.
4. Into the Hollow
Think caramel twirling in a vat as honeycombs drip and swirl into the mixture; it’s so sweet-sounding my ears have cavities.
5. Misfit Love
This song is so propulsive that it’s always playing, like some audio-perpetual motion machine; the absolute heart of the album, it’s so layered that it almost completely morphs into a different song entirely by the end, and it’s so good that I assumed they blew their wad too early, but...
6. Battery Acid
So begins a three-song set that feels like gold being forged: the metal is heated with a broken riff that somehow both breaks further and sounds more lovely during the chorus (heat, deep breath, MORE HEAT!); the cooling process begins with some intermission-feedback/drizzling water, and then...
7. Make It Wit Chu
Gold that couldn’t be cooler; too cool a track even for Homme, who leaves the chorus to the backup-singers, cooing only "anytime, anywhere/again and again" over the head-bopping smoothness.
8. 3’s & 7’s
What’s next for the cooled gold? You shine that sonofabitch with an immediately-classic rock-song - this song is so catchy that my metaphoric gold is fucking gleaming by the end of it. TRY not to enjoy this tune.
9. Suture Up Your Future
All right, calm it down for a second; take a break. Use this track’s unending harmonies and skipping beat to relax, to take a load off.
10. River in the Road
Sirens! This song plays like a warning, a head-nodding harbinger that dirges nonstop to the end, like they’re preparing you for what’s next...
11. Run, Pig, Run
Plucking feedback into a whipping, messy crunch, memories of hide & seek detailed verbally against a background of quick "c’mere" whistles and noises like an animal biting at the microphone, by the time a giggly "mwah-mwah" riff invades the song it’s too late to make it any stranger...fascinatingly ugly, this track so profoundly juxtaposes Turnin’ on the Screw when played circularly that my brain would have exploded had it not already melted.
When We Were Kings
I abhor boxing.
These days, corruption is as evident as Evander Holyfield’s ear in Mike Tyson’s mouth, and the general interest-level in the "Sweet Science" is subterranean...but imagine a time when a "world championship boxing match" was bigger than 15 Super Bowls, when the sport itself was a metaphor for all human conflict, when the very definition of the word "charisma" existed in the form of a brash, superlative fighter named first Cassius Clay, then Muhammad Ali.
That time was 1974, and the place was Zaire, Africa.
When We Were Kings documents the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle", and for those who only know the combatants for their Parkinson’s-ravaged face or their eponymous grills, respectively, then this movie might well be a revelation.
In 1974, George Foreman was an absolute beast, with biceps like wrecking-balls and the kind of glare one might expect from an anthropomorphic tank; Muhammad Ali was a poet, a dancer, and a full-blown American hero who was just coming off a suspension for not fighting in the Vietnam War. Ali’s reason, famously?
"I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong...They never called me nigger."
Small wonder, then, that Ali was greeted in Zaire like the walking embodiment of Jesus Christ, while George Foreman was greeted as a man with a dog from America.
The side-acts leading up to the fight, including a fabulous snippet of BB King in fine form, James Brown, despite some SERIOUS facial-hair, knee-deep in his "fat-Elvis" years, and a concert-promoter who looks so constantly-stoned that it’s amazing that they got him on film speaking in complete sentences, are proof of the carnival-like atmosphere surrounding the fight. These scenes are spliced together with interviews from a local African artist, Norman Mailer, Spike Lee, and the hilariously-haughty George Plimpton, who is an absolute delight to listen to; he’s the kind of guy you would roll your eyes at when he talks while still listening to every word he said - the look on Plimpton’s face when he interviews a young and robust Don King, asking him to repeat some quotes from Shakespeare, is hysterical.
The climactic bout is fascinating for even those who detest boxing; the outcome, after a six-week delay and much political intrigue, is somehow both surprising and never in doubt.
Kings is a love-note to Ali, the still-picture montage towards the end a testament to the canonization, and I would say rightly so; to hear stories about "The Greatest" is one thing, but to see the man, seemingly cut from marble, in action with his fists and with his mouth, is another thing entirely. The film is a reminder to everyone that had Muhammad Ali been in his prime during the Michael Jordan-era of commercialization, there would be a statues of him in every city in America, and that the definition of the word "hero" is unnecessarily overused.
Forget the boxing - Ali was King.
Say It Live and Loud
After a brief introduction, the man himself struts out on stage belting "If I Ruled the World", gives some thanks, and sets his stage-persona on "croon" for a gaggle of old-timey hits, the most spectacular of which, "I Guess I’ll Have To Cry, Cry Cry", elicits a fevered applause, the kind of cheering that comes from an audience that has already gotten what they came for...and the show hasn’t even started yet.
This is James Brown in his prime: talent surrounded by talent at the zenith of a career that changed music; an egomaniacal musical powerhouse who created funk and knew how different, how good his funk was. Say It Live and Loud: Live in Dallas 08.26.68 doesn’t have the same praise heaped on it as does Brown’s Live at the Apollo from 1962, but so what? This concert showcased The James Brown Show at their peak, and that peak isn’t evident until the eleventh track. Up to that point, it’s good (especially when the band goes into "Tighten Up" during the intermission, a Maceo Parker-led warm-up/harbinger of jaw-dropping funk), but with "Introduction to Star Time!" the disc explodes; I bought three copies and a secondary stereo in anticipation of this funk-destruction.
"I want to know, do you feel all right?"
The stomping jam of "Licking Stick-Licking Stick" starts it off, followed by a thirteen-minute rendition of "Cold Sweat" that is as epic as a hundred-foot typhoon crashing into an oceanfront volcano: the sizzling lava of the funk cooled by the interjecting waters of "Soul Man", a sing-along countdown that is, on its own, funkier than three locker-rooms of foot-fungus, and a crescendo that cracks the terra and shoots lava & water into a horn-drenched euphoria of fluid afire.
Then, the volcano crashes...and from the ashes comes "There Was a Time", a propulsive, two-drummer beat-fest that still, almost thirty years later, serves as a disc-jockey wet-dream of beats-per-minute majesty; the line "we all get together, any type of weather, and we'll do...the camel walk" is replaced by, "all get together, any type of weather, and we’ll HAH!" in such a ridiculously-syncopated rhythm that I have to roll the window down in my car if I don’t want to break it. Song-ending drum beats emerge, the crowd sits back and takes their first breath in almost twenty minutes, and...BAM! Right back into it, flawlessly, and those lucky enough to be in attendance go positively apeshit.
Blasting through a string of hits like the audience couldn’t be expected to continue living had they not heard them (I give you blazing versions of "Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag" & "I Got You (I Feel Good)" clocking-in at a collective time of 57 seconds as evidence), the outro of "Please, Please, Please" surely signifies the end of a scorching set...but no: "I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)" leads into rapid-fire reprises of "Cold Sweat", "I Got the Feeling", and the impossible punch-funkiness of "Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)" leaves the doubtlessly over-stimulated crowd giddy & exhausted, I can only assume...I’m tired just writing about it.
Absolutely unstoppable, this record.
The Joke’s Over
The full-scale impact of what Hunter S. Thompson & Ralph Steadman created in the zenith of their Gonzo-reign has been an inspirational kick in the back for me; Thompson’s writing during that period - say, oh, the seventies - is the only writing I’ve ever seen that I wish I’d done.
I’ve always known, however, that unlike others who got caught up in the "bad craziness" of the drugs and relentless lifestyle, I never wanted to be the man...and Steadman’s memoir, The Joke's Over: Ralph Steadman on Hunter S. Thompson, explains why Thompson wasn’t a man to be emulated.
Admired, maybe? Sure; but legions of would-be writers thinking that prying a peyote-button from the flesh of a double-thumbed fist is the key needed to unlock their writing-talent are in the same league as those who can sing "Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag" at karaoke thinking they’re the next James Brown...that ridding one‘s self of inhibition is the same thing as having talent, and there is enough asinine, drug-addled "prose" out in the universe to prove that point a hundred times over.
Despite the small allowances of bitterness, Steadman obviously adored Thompson; this a story written from a man unafraid of his place within the legend, be it good or bad:
"My involvement was nothing more than my own ambition. Quite by chance I became a part of this man’s life, more as an infection than a friend. I fooled myself that there was something in me that he found important."
But before you book a plane-ticket to give ol’ Steadman a hug:
"[I]n his moments of quiet loneliness, I was still there as an integral part of the Gonzo spirit...even as I write now, in my own chosen loneliness, missing the man like a lost leg, I realize our collaboration was one of those venal necessities I cannot brush aside, and neither could he."
Steadman’s not writing any sob-story here - he’s attempting to cast himself in what he considers an appropriate amount of the spotlight surrounding Thompson, and while there are passages showcasing Thompson’s vile egomania, his erstwhile sidekick seems mostly at ease in the retelling.
This is a book about HST, make no mistake, but Steadman thankfully takes the long way around at times, sliding into rants, railing against the political system, giving himself up as a stooge unapologetically...these asides are the perfect beer-chaser to the straight bourbon that is the Hunter S. Thompson story.
I tinker in the filthy garage that is writing, and my brother is an artist; because of this, and because I myself am something of a megalomaniac, I kept calling him as I was reading this book, apologizing in response to the myriad cruelties leveled upon Steadman by Thompson; a transference of guilt based solely on my own mistaken opinion of our dynamic. Thankfully, my brother understands me:
Me:
Sorry about cutting you out of that deal.
Brother:
What deal?
Me:
With Random House; the book isn’t the same without your art, and I nickled & dimed you out of the profits.
Brother:
When did you get a book deal?
Me:
...
Brother:
You’re reading that Steadman book again, aren’t you?
The Fathers of Gonzo left a litany of unfinished work, collaborations that died at the end of Thompson’s pen, that should serve as a cautionary tale against the use of drugs for creative ends; Hunter S. Thompson couldn’t hold up his end of the bargain, long term, and his early belief that Steadman was superfluous slowly became a tether to which Thompson could at least envision future work, even if no such work ever materialized.
A fascinating account of already-legendary stories as seen through the eyes of an accomplice.