Just to show a
bit of balance, a less flattering image of Thomson: done for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by his friend and frequent collaborator English Artist Ralph Steadman (they first met for the very famous Kentucky Derby piece.) Their relationship over the years is fascinating and lovely, with the reckless, acerbic Thompson and the very modest, gentle non drug taking Steadman. Below are excerpts from an interview with Steadman recently this year, it made me laugh anyway:
The Independant: Life in the old bird yet:Ralph Steadman on Hunter S Thompson, Jack Nicholson's buns and his love for extinct " boids".
SUNDAY 13 JANUARY 2013
When I spoke to Ralph recently," Johnny Depp tells me, "he seemed shocked when I told him how much Hunter adored him. But he did. Hunter fucking worshipped Ralph. Of course he was never going to let him know that. Hunter loved him and he thought his work was – as it is – absolute genius."
If you worked at your best when mentally ravaged to the point of collapse, Steadman would discover, then Hunter Thompson's was a useful number to have in your contacts book. When the pair were sent to report on the America's Cup race at Newport, Rhode Island, the artist began to feel seasick aboard their yacht, and asked if he could have one of the tablets of psilocybin (a hallucinogen similar in effect to LSD) that Thompson had been swallowing "like Smarties". An hour later, Percy V Bradshaw's former pupil was in a rowing boat with an aerosol in his hand, seeing red dogs in the ocean, urging Thompson, whose shoes had gone overboard, to row faster so that he could spray the words "Fuck the Pope" on the hull of the Australian challenger, a 12m racing yacht named Gretel II.
Challenged by a police launch, Thompson detonated his stash of naval flares, setting fire to several boats in the harbour, and the two journalists escaped.
The following day, Steadman landed at New York's LaGuardia airport, where he entered the baggage hall still hallucinating, with no shirt, shoes or socks. ("I told him it was common for people to wander around New York barefoot," Thompson wrote later. "How would he know? He was British. I told him the really fastidious ones wore black socks. Maybe he didn't believe me, but by then I had his shoes on my feet.")