A-Z of Hunter S Thompson

Gonzo Man

A is for Muhammad Ali

Though commissioned by Rolling Stone to cover The Rumble in the Jungle [Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s iconic battle in Zaire], Thompson didn’t attend the fight. He only learnt about the incredible unfoldings on the telly the next morning. It’s cited as one of the things that started Thompson journalistic demise and depression.

B is for Bill Murray

Murray lived with Thompson for several months to research his role in Where The Buffalos Roam. Apparently, during his stay he was tied to a chair by Thompson, blindfolded and tossed into a pool. He survived and they went on to become lifelong friends.

C is for Bill Cardoso

Boston Globe magazine editor Bill Cardoso first coined the phrase “Gonzo” (see “G”) in 1970 when he described Thompson's The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved (see “K”) as ‘pure Gonzo journalism’. Cardoso claimed that the term "gonzo" was actually South Boston Irish slang describing the last man standing after a booze session.

D is for Drugs

Serving on the advisory board for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws for over 30 years, Thompson advocated legalisation of all drugs, famously stating, ‘It might be a little rough on some people for a while, but I think it’s the only way to deal with drugs. Look at Prohibition: all it did was make a lot of criminals rich.’

E is for ESPN

Thompson both began and ended his career writing about sport. His weekly column on ESPN.com’s “Page 2” called "Hey, Rube" ran from 2000 to shortly before his death in 2005. (Read them all in the compilation book entitled Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness - Modern History from the Sports Desk.)

F is for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

A first-person narrative of two men’s trip to cover a narcotics officers' convention and the "fabulous Mint 400" [a free- for-all biker's race in the heart of the Nevada desert] which descends into a manic, drug-infested exploration of the American Dream. It first appeared in Rolling Stone in 1971 as a two-part series, and later became Thompson’s most famous book.

G is for Gonzo

A nightmare for copy editors and magazine fact-checkers, Gonzo was a style cornerstoned by Thompson which had a rather loose mix of fact and fiction, sarcasm and humour, and the article’s writer at its very heart.

H is for Hell’s Angels

Thompson’s first published book saw him spending a year living and riding with the Hell’s Angels. Although largely accepted by the gang at first due to his love of motorbikes and excessive drug and alcohol consumption, he eventually wore out his welcome and was given a severe ‘stomping’.

I is for Iconoclasm

Totally fearless in his writing, Thompson was happy to slaughter a few sacred cows, including the president: he famously (and proudly) described himself as ‘the first journalist to go on record comparing Nixon to Hitler’.

J is for Johnny Depp

There was a room in the basement of Hunter’s house called Johnny’s Room. It’s where he lived for a month prior to making the film, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He also financed Thompson’s private funeral ceremony.

K is for Kentucky Derby

In 1970, Hunter S Thompson wrote a seminal sports article entitled The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved. Although it was not widely read at the time [it was published in short-lived new journalism magazine Scanlan's Monthly] the article is the first of Thompson's to use techniques of Gonzo journalism. It was also his first collaboration with the artist Ralph Steadman who helped create the Gonzo image. It was later reprinted in The Great Shark Hunt (1979), a collection several of Thompson’s earlier works.

L is for Lono

One of Thompson’s lesser-known books, The Curse Of Lono, sees Thompson and Steadman trying to cover the 1980 Honolulu Marathon, rapidly losing the plot and ending with Thompson beating a huge Marlin to death with a Samoan war club, while yelling, ‘I am Lono!’ (Lono was an ancient Hawaiian god).

M is for Mr Tambourine Man

The song Thompson apparently “most respected”, it was played at his funeral as his ashes were exploded out of a cannon atop a 47m high tower which he designed himself (it comprised a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button).

N is for NRA

A long-time member of the National Rifle Association, Thompson’s love of guns is legendary, especially after wounding an assistant with a shotgun after trying to scare off a bear.

O is for Owl Farm

The official name of Thompson’s home, although it’s more commonly referred to as a ‘fortified compound’.

P is for Prison

Charged as an accessory to an armed robbery in the mid-1950s, he served 30 days of a 60-day prison sentence.

Q is for Quotes

One of the most quotable writers of all time, these are some of his classics:

‘When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro’.

‘The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side’.

‘I feel the same way about disco as I do about herpes’.

‘I wouldn’t recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they’re always worked for me’. 

‘I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours’.

‘We can’t stop here…this is bat country’.

R is for Rolling Stone

Although he’d often send illegible material to the magazine's San Francisco offices, Thompson was instrumental in expanding the focus of the magazine past music criticism. He covered the election campaigns of President Richard Nixon and his unsuccessful opponent, Senator George McGovern, who he was a supporter of. It’s believed Thompson’s covrage helped the nomination of McGovern. Despite a marked drop in his output towards the end, Thompson was kept on the Rolling Stone masthead as chief of the "National Affairs Desk," until his death.

S is for Sheriff

Thompson ran for sheriff in Colorado in 1970, famously shaving his head and then referring to his Republican opponent – who had a military-style crew cut – as ‘my long-haired opponent’. He narrowly lost after the Republicans and Democrats joined forces to beat him.

T is for The Great Gatsby

During his early days in the publishing industry, thompson used a typewriter to copy F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms in an attempt to learn more about the writing styles of the authors

U is for U.S.A.F

Thompson joined the Air Force immediately after being released from jail. Not permitted to be a pilot, he joined the base newspaper as sports editor and was later given an honourable discharge after commanding officers found him to be ‘totally unclassifiable’.

V is for Violence

Not afraid to get his hands dirty, his hands-on approach saw him in a few scrapes over the years, including an arrest for drunk driving (after he ‘raved’ at the trooper who pulled him over) and an 11-hour police raid on his house that turned up several sticks of dynamite.

W is for Watergate

One of Thompson’s greatest regrets was that he was unable to attend the Watergate hearings and witness Nixon’s downfall in person. The reason? A diving accident led to him being incarcerated in a decompression chamber for several weeks, where he held scrawled notes up against the window, demanding for a TV to be held up so he could follow the proceedings.

X is for NiXon

Thompson absolutely reviled Richard Nixon. After Nixon's death in 1994, he famously described him in Rolling Stone as a man who "could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time" and continued "his casket [should] have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. [He] was an evil man—evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it."

Y is for ‘You’re getting greedy’

Thompson’s suicide note was just 52 words long: ‘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 old age. Relax - this won’t hurt’.

Z is for Oscar Zeta Acosta

The real-life Mexican-American lawyer that Fear and Loathing’s ‘300-pound Samoan attorney’ was based on, Thompson described him as, ‘One of God’s own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.’