Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone Page 5

  None of us even knew Joe Edwards. For weeks we had joked about our “ghost candidate” who emerged from time to time to insist that he was the helpless creature of some mysterious Political Machine that had caused his phone to ring one Saturday at midnight, and told him he was running for mayor.

  Which was more or less true. I had called him in a frenzy, full of booze and resentment at a rumor that a gaggle of local powermongers had already met and decided who Aspen’s next mayor would be—a giddy old lady would run unopposed behind some kind of lunatic obscenity they called a “united front,” or “progressive solidarity”—endorsed by Leon Uris, who is Aspen’s leading stag movie fan, and who writes books, like Exodus, to pay his bills. I was sitting in Peggy Clifford’s living room when I heard about it, and, as I recall, we both agreed that the fuckers had gone too far this time.

  Someone suggested Ross Griffin, a retired ski bum and lifelong mountain beatnik who was going half straight at the time and talking about running for the city council ... but a dozen or so trial-balloon calls convinced us that Ross wasn’t quite weird enough to galvanize the street vote, which we felt would be absolutely necessary. (As it turned out, we were wrong: Griffin ran for the council and won by a huge margin in a ward full of Heads.)

  But at the time it seemed necessary to come up with a candidate whose Strange Tastes and Para-Legal Behavior were absolutely beyond question ... a man whose candidacy would torture the outer limits of political gall, whose name would strike fear and shock in the heart of every burgher, and whose massive unsuitability for the job would cause even the most apolitical drug-child in the town’s most degenerate commune to shout, “Yes! I must vote for that man!”

  Joe Edwards didn’t quite fill that bill. He was a bit too straight for the acid-people, and a little too strange for the liberals—but he was the only candidate even marginally acceptable on both ends of our untried coalition spectrum. And twenty-four hours after our first jangled phone talk about “running for mayor,” he said, “Fuck it, why not?”

  The next day was Sunday, and The Battle of Algiers was playing at the Wheeler Opera House. We agreed to meet afterward, on the street, but the hookup was difficult, because I didn’t know what he looked like. So we ended up milling around for a while, casting sidelong glances at each other, and I remember thinking, Jesus, could that be him over there? That scurvy-looking geek with the shifty eyes? Shit, he’ll never win anything . . .

  Finally, after awkward introductions, we walked down to the old Jerome Hotel and ordered some beers sent out to the lobby, where we could talk privately. Our campaign juggernaut, that night, consisted of me, Jim Salter, and Mike Solheim—but we all assured Edwards that we were only the tip of the iceberg that was going to float him straight into the sea-lanes of big-time power politics. In fact, I sensed that both Solheim and Salter were embarrassed to find themselves there—assuring some total stranger that all he had to do was say the word and we would make him mayor of Aspen.

  None of us had even a beginner’s knowledge of how to run a political campaign. Salter writes screenplays (Downhill Racer) and books (A Sport and a Pastime). Solheim used to own an elegant bar called Leadville, in Ketchum, Idaho, and his Aspen gig is housepainting. For my part, I had lived about ten miles out of town for two years, doing everything possible to avoid Aspen’s feverish reality. My lifestyle, I felt, was not entirely suited for doing battle with any small-town political establishment. They had left me alone, not hassled my friends (with two unavoidable exceptions—both lawyers), and consistently ignored all rumors of madness and violence in my area. In return, I had consciously avoided writing about Aspen ... and in my very limited congress with the local authorities I was treated like some kind of half-mad cross between a hermit and a wolverine, a thing best left alone as long as possible.

  So the ’69 campaign was perhaps a longer step for me than it was for Joe Edwards. He had already tasted political conflict and he seemed to dig it. But my own involvement amounted to the willful shattering of what had been, until then, a very comfortable truce ... and looking back, I’m still not sure what launched me. Probably it was Chicago—that brain-raping week in August of ’68. I went to the Democratic Convention as a journalist, and returned a raving beast.

  For me, that week in Chicago was far worse than the worst bad acid trip I’d even heard rumors about. It permanently altered my brain chemistry, and my first new idea—when I finally calmed down—was an absolute conviction there was no possibility for any personal truce, for me, in a nation that could hatch and be proud of a malignant monster like Chicago. Suddenly, it seemed imperative to get a grip on those who had somehow slipped into power and caused the thing to happen.

  But who were they? Was Mayor Daley a cause, or a symptom? Lyndon Johnson was finished, Hubert Humphrey was doomed, McCarthy was broken, Kennedy was dead, and that left only Nixon, that pompous, plastic little fart who would soon be our president. I went to Washington for his inauguration, hoping for a terrible shitrain that would pound the White House to splinters. But it didn’t happen; no shitrain, no justice ... and Nixon was finally in charge.

  So in truth it was probably a sense of impending doom, of horror at politics in general, that goaded me into my role in the Edwards campaign. The reasons came later, and even now they seem hazy. Some people call politics fun, and maybe it is when you’re winning. But even then it’s a mean kind of fun, and more like the rising edge of a speed trip than anything peaceful or pleasant. Real happiness, in politics, is a wide-open hammer shot on some poor bastard who knows he’s been trapped, but can’t flee.

  The Edwards campaign was more an uprising than a movement. We had nothing to lose: we were like a bunch of wild-eyed amateur mechanics rolling a homemade racing car onto the track at Indianapolis and watching it overtake a brace of big Offenhausers at the 450 pole. There were two distinct phases in the monthlong Edwards campaign. For the first two weeks we made a lot of radical noise and embarrassed our friends and discovered that most of the people we had counted on were absolutely useless.

  So nobody was ready for the second phase, when the thing began coming together like a conquered jigsaw puzzle. Our evening strategy meetings in the Jerome Bar were suddenly crowded with people demanding a piece of the action. We were inundated with $5 and $10 contributions from people whom none of us knew. From Bob Krueger’s tiny darkroom and Bill Noonan’s angry efforts to collect enough money to pay for a full-page ad in Bill Dunaway’s liberal Aspen Times, we suddenly inherited all the facilities of the “Center of the Eye” Photography School and an unlimited credit-line (after Dunaway fled to the Bahamas) from Steve Herron at the Times-owned radio station, then the only one in town. (Several months after the election a twenty-four-hour FM station began broadcasting—with daytime Muzak balanced off against a late-night freak-rock gig as heavy as anything in S.F. or L.A.) With no local television, the radio was our equivalent of a high-powered TV campaign. And it provoked the same kind of surly reaction that has been shrugged off, on both coasts, by U.S. Senate candidates such as Ottinger (N.Y.) and Tunney (Calif.).

  That comparison is purely technical. The radio spots we ran in Aspen would have terrified political eunuchs like Tunney and Ottinger. Our theme song was Herbie Mann’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which we ran over and over again—as a doleful background to very heavy raps and evil mockery of the retrograde opposition. They bitched and groaned, accusing us in their ignorance of “using Madison Avenue techniques,” while in truth it was pure Lenny Bruce. But they didn’t know Lenny; their humor was still Bob Hope, with a tangent taste for Don Rickles here and there among the handful of swingers who didn’t mind admitting that they dug the stag movies on weekends at Leon Uris’ home on Red Mountain.

  We enjoyed skewering those bastards. Our radio wizard, an ex-nightclub comic, Phil Clark, made several spots that caused people to foam at the mouth and chase their tails in impotent rage. There was a thread of high, wild humor in the Edwards campaign, and that was what kept us
all sane. There was a definite satisfaction in knowing that, even if we lost, whoever beat us would never get rid of the scars. It was necessary, we felt, to thoroughly terrify our opponents, so that even in hollow victory, they would learn to fear every sunrise until the next election.

  This worked out nicely—or at least effectively, and by the spring of 1970 it was clear on all fronts that Aspen’s traditional power structure was no longer in command of the town. The new city council quickly broke down to a permanent 3–4 split, with Ned Vare as the spokesman for one side and a Bircher-style dentist named Comcowich taking care of the other. This left Eve Homeyer, who had campaigned with the idea that the mayor was “only a figurehead,” in the nasty position of having to cast a tie-breaking vote on every controversial issue. The first few were minor, and she voted her Agnew-style convictions in each case ... but the public reaction was ugly, and after a while the council lapsed into a kind of nervous stalemate, with neither side anxious to bring anything to a vote. The realities of small-town politics are so close to the bone that there is no way to avoid getting cursed in the streets, by somebody, for any vote you cast. An alderman in Chicago can insulate himself almost completely from the people he votes against, but there is no escape in a place the size of Aspen.

  The same kind of tension began popping up on other fronts: the local high school principal tried to fire a young teacher for voicing a left-wing political bias in the classroom, but her students went on strike and not only forced the teacher’s reinstatement but very nearly got the principal fired. Shortly after that, Ned Vare and a local lawyer named Shellman savaged the State Highway Department so badly that all plans to bring the four-lane highway through town were completely de-funded. This drove the county commissioners into a filthy funk; the highway had been their pet project, but suddenly it was screwed, doomed ... by the same gang of bastards who had caused all the trouble last fall.

  We began organizing in mid-August—six weeks earlier than last time—and unless we can pace the thing perfectly we might find ourselves limp and burned out two weeks before the election. I have a nightmare vision of our whole act coming to a massive orgiastic climax on October 25: two thousand costumed freaks doing the schottische, in perfect unison, in front of the County Courthouse ... sweating, weeping, chanting ... “Vote NOW! Vote NOW!” Demanding the ballot at once, completely stoned on politics, too high and strung out to even recognize their candidate, Ned Vare, when he appears on the courthouse steps and shouts for them all to back off: “Go back to your homes! You can’t vote for ten more days!” The mob responds with a terrible roar, then surges forward . . . Vare disappears . . .

  I turn to flee, but the sheriff is there with a huge rubber sack that he quickly flips over my head and places me under arrest for felony conspiracy. The elections are canceled and J. Sterling Baxter places the town under martial law, with himself in total command . . .

  Baxter is both the symbol and the reality of the Old/Ugly/Corrupt political machine that we hope to crack in November. He will be working from a formidable power base: a coalition of Buggsy’s “Taxpayers” and Comcowich’s right-wing suburbanites—along with heavy institutional support from both banks, the Contractors’ Association, and the all-powerful Aspen Ski Corporation. He will also have the financing and organizing resources of the local GOP, which outnumbers the Democrats more than two to one in registrations.

  The Democrats, with an eye on the probability of another Edwards-style uprising on the Left, are running a political transvestite, a middle-aged realtor whom they will try to promote as a “sensible alternative” to the menacing “extremes” posed by Baxter and Ned Vare. The incumbent sheriff is also a Democrat.

  Vare is running as an Independent, and his campaign symbol, he says, will be “a tree.” For the sheriff’s campaign, my symbol will be either a horribly deformed cyclops owl, or a double-thumbed fist, clutching a peyote button, which is also the symbol of our general strategy and organizing cabal, the Meat Possum Athletic Club. At the moment I am registered as an Independent, but there is still the possibility—pending the outcome of current negotiations for campaign financing—that I may file for office as a Communist. It will make no difference which label I adopt; the die is already cast in my race—and the only remaining question is how many Freaks, Heads, criminals, anarchists, beatniks, poachers, Wobblies, bikers, and Persons of Weird Persuasion will come out of their holes and vote for me. The alternatives are depressingly obvious: my opponents are hopeless bums who would be more at home on the Mississippi State Highway Patrol ... and, if elected, I promise to recommend them both for the kind of jobs they deserve.

  Ned Vare’s race is both more complex and far more important than mine. He is going after the dragon. Jay Baxter is the most powerful political figure in the county. He is the county commissioner; the other two are echoes. If Vare can beat Baxter, that will snap the spine of the local/money/politics establishment ... and if Freak Power can do that in Aspen, it can also do it in other places. But if it can’t be done here, one of the few places in America where we can work off a proven power base—then it is hard to imagine it working in any other place with fewer natural advantages. Last fall we came within six votes, and it will probably be close again this time. Memories of the Edwards campaign will guarantee a heavy turnout, with a dangerous backlash factor that could wipe us out completely unless the Head population can get itself together and actually vote. Last year perhaps the Heads voted; this year we will need them all. The ramifications of this election go far beyond any local issues or candidates. It is an experiment with a totally new kind of political muscle ... and the results, either way, will definitely be worth pondering.

  Editor’s note: in November 1970, Thompson lost by 465 votes.

  __ __ __ __

  The Next Assignment . . .

  Hunter’s next story for the magazine was an investigation into the Los Angeles Police Department’s involvement in the murder of Ruben Salazar, a Chicano activist and Los Angeles Times columnist. It’s during this time that Hunter first began working with Oscar Zeta Acosta, a local Chicano civil rights lawyer he’d met a few years earlier. Acosta, dubbed the “Brown Buffalo” by Hunter, would soon become better known as Dr. Gonzo in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” (Hunter and Oscar’s first trip together to Las Vegas was taken so the two could discuss the Salazar case in a secure location.) He became Hunter’s attorney and aide de camp, wrote occasionally for Rolling Stone, and cultivated an office presence both feared and respected by other staffers.

  Undated early ’71 letter from JSW to HST

  746 Brannan Street

  San Francisco 94103

  Dear Hunter:

  Thanks for the letter and the rambling unfinished excerpts. Of course I agree with you that nothing should be done with them other than our private inspection. Selah. However, the obvious point is that we should have some sort of propaganda to coincide with the next election, either a pre-election look at the issues and the candidates (!) (did I say that?) or an election-time fire-sucking tract, or an immediate post-election review of the trauma. What are your thoughts on this?

  Finally, Vietnam or the Mexicans versus the L.A.P.D.: Which would you prefer to do? I’d rather have you go to Los Angeles as you’re already backgrounded in it, and I think I can get Michael Herr to Vietnam for us for his final major take.

  Letter from HST to JSW

  Jan 27 ’71

  Owl Farm

  Woody Creek, Colorado

  Dear Jann . . .

  We might be better off using some photos & captions (along with my letter—the one you mentioned running) along with a postscript & forecast (by me) that would tie that last election to the one coming up. I’ve begun to feel very guilty about losing that one—mainly because so many people all over the country were apparently looking to Aspen for a breakthrough. It’s amazing to realize how many completely different kinds of people read that Aspen piece in the 10/1 issue. I’ve had letters from all over the fucking wo
rld. Anyway—we decided just tonight that [Ned] Vare will probably run for Mayor in the Spring & we’ll need at least $2500 to pull it off properly. (At the moment, on the strength of a $250 donation from [RS board member] Arthur Rock’s tall Houston girlfriend, Mary, we’re mounting an eleventh-hour legal maneuver to postpone the election until November) ... but we figure to lose this, so our real point is to mobilize the freaks ahead of the May election, so that when the postponement move fails we’ll have our act together & ready for the showdown. And it will be the showdown, the final act if we lose—or a fine reprieve for Freak Power if we can put Vare over.

  Also, I’d like to get something put together in the way of an Aspen article by then—even if it has to be just that letter. Personally, & especially since I’m still writing about that election, I’d prefer something larger. I think the story is lost unless we can tie it to national politics in some way; and I don’t mean just the article, but the whole Freak Power concept. Oscar Acosta, for instance, was shocked to find that only a handful of the freak-voters in Aspen bothered to vote for the Raza Unida candidates—which was our fault, for not pushing it more, but it blew Oscar’s idea of forging a union of some kind between Chicanos & freak-anglos. What has to be done, I think, is a massive expansion of that “freak” concept—which I spent about half the campaign trying to do (see enc.), but a lot of people refuse to see that to be a freak in Nixon’s America is actually the only honorable way to go . . .

  And so much for that, too. The mention of Acosta brings up your notion of a Chicano story in LA ... and that looks like a natural, I guess, except that I just about used up my white journalist’s credit down there on that Scanlan’s story, which Hinckle eventually killed & replaced with his own lead editorial in the “current” issue. So it might be extremely difficult for me to spend any productive time down there unless I really leaned on Oscar ... and I guess I could do that, but the prospect doesn’t make me real happy. I probably have as much or more access to the story down there as any gabacho journalist, but before I got into it I’d have to know more about what you wanted & it might also be a good idea to lay the whole gig on Oscar before we start—because without him I wouldn’t go near that story. And even with him, it might be a problem.