Graham:
Yeah. They’re getting the cart before the horse there, really.
Juan: Yeah, I mean, he was an alcoholic, for god’s sakes! He’d been drinking since he was probably fourteen or something, I don’t think he decided every day “I think I’m gonna drink another fifth of whiskey today, because that’s a good idea,” I think he did it because he had to.
Graham: Yeah, self-medicating.
Juan: Yeah, yeah.
Graham: Music was really important to your dad. If your book was a band or album, who or what would it be?
Juan: (Laughing) God! Oh good Lord, I think you got me on that one, I have no idea.
Graham: Excellent! Another mind-blanker.
Juan: (Laughing loudly) Yeah!
Graham: Well, it’s a kind of oblique, slightly surreal question, so here’s a question you’ll obviously have more of an answer to: I’m curious to know what your own family, including your mother, think of your book.
Juan: Funny, a lot of people have asked, “So what does your mom think of this book?” And she hasn’t read it yet! She intends to, and a year or two ago I talked to her about what was going to be in the book, and what I had said about her, so…it’s not going to be a surprise, I don’t think. I don’t think she’s going to be offended by anything I’ve said about her. But it really is a very delicate business, writing about people who are alive, y’know. The only way I could be that honest about Hunter is because he was dead. I could not have written that book while he was alive. And if I had, it would have been devastating to him, because then he would have had to personally deal with the consequences of that, and that just would not have been right. But with my mom it’s a lot more difficult, she’s alive, and I don’t want to omit important facts, but nor do I want to cause harm if there’s not a really good reason to. I could unintentionally cause harm by being honest and, y’know, some of the things that happened were important elements to understand the whole story, but that was difficult to decide, what to include and what not to include about people who are living, because that’s a whole different ballgame.
Graham: Absolutely. You said that your father played some Celtic music when your engagement was announced-
Juan: (Laughing) –Yeah.
Graham: - I mean, I understand that his first name came from a Scottish surgeon that was an ancestor on his mother’s side. Is that correct?
Juan: Yeah, umm…what was his name…
Graham: John Hunter.
Juan: John Hunter! Yeah yeah yeah.
Graham: I looked into it. Was he cognisant of any Scottish…did he ever go to Scotland? I know that you said you visited Scotland, but did he ever visit Scotland? Just out of curiosity.
Juan: I don’t think he ever did, really…
Graham: He was meant to.
Juan: He was meant to?
Graham: In 1988 he was meant to go to Scotland and I was all excited, and then “The bastard never turned up!”
Juan: Really?
Graham: Yep.
Juan: I didn’t know that. What was it for, was it sort of a tour or something?
Graham: Was it England, or was it Scotland…it was probably a tour, I think he was meant to go to…what was it called…I think it was for The Observer. You know what? I’ll look it up and I’ll send you a link. Cos what had happened was that he never got there, there was some Hunteresque story about how he never managed to get to Scotland…
Juan: (Laughing) Yeah…
Graham: Something involving a taxi, and some crazed taxi driver, and you thought okay, right, whatever, fair enough. I’ll look that up, because I still…I haven’t read it for a long time, but obviously with me being Scottish, and a Hunter S Thompson admirer-
Juan: - Yes.
Graham: - It was like, “Bastard! What chaos you could have caused over here!” (Juan laughs) Did you enjoy Scotland while you were there?
Juan: I did, I did. I mean, I went there once with my grandmother when I was twelve or something, and that was a tourist experience. But then when I went back as a college student, y’know…and what I would do is go find a hostel, get up in the morning and I’d just get a map and just walk, pick a place in the city and just walk all day for miles and miles and miles…
Graham: Was that Edinburgh?
Juan: Yes! And just seeing all the different parts of Edinburgh, and staying with some friends of a friend, and five people in this little tiny flat, and, y’know, a bunch of writers and artists living on the dole. I really did enjoy that, and I wish I’d been able to spend some more time there.
Graham: Yeah, well, you can always go back, it’s not going anywhere. I would show you around. You know, you said in the book that when you went through your father’s archive, you found a box of Neutrogena soap.
Juan: (Laughing) Yeah.
Graham: That’s got to be the same box of Neutrogena soap he talks about in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, eh?
Juan: It’s got to be, y’know, 300 bars of old, wrinkled Neutrogena soap in a box.
Graham: (Laughing) Brilliant! Why would he want that soap? (Juan chuckles) That makes no sense, it’s marvellous.
Juan: He was a pack rat, a first class pack rat. You know, thank God he’s a famous writer, and there’s still money to purchase and store all of this stuff. And it really was fascinating going through there, finding not just letters and things, but things I had no idea existed. I think I mentioned coming across his press pass for the ’68 Democratic Convention – wow! That is…
Graham: That was in Chicago, wasn’t it?
Juan: Yeah yeah yeah, and that experience, that Convention, really changed his whole political outlook.
Graham: Yeah, he was very angry and disillusioned after it, wasn’t he?
Juan: Yes. But also motivated to try to change things. I think that’s where his running for sheriff came from. “I thought it was bad, but I didn’t realise just how bad it was, and let’s see if it’s possible to get these disillusioned young people to actually get off their ass and vote. Because if they do that, they can really change the direction of this country.” And the sheriff’s race, it wasn’t that he wanted to be sheriff, it was an experiment to see, could it be done, could he do it?
Graham: That’s a fascinating experiment: “I’ll just run for sheriff!” I love that he had the wig, he got his head shaved so he could refer to the sheriff as his “long-haired opponent.” (We both laugh loudly) The lateral thought behind that is absolutely brilliant, man. (Juan continues to laugh.)
Juan: Yeah. And his opponent was completely unprepared to deal with a person like Hunter, with that intelligence, with his complete disregard for authority and convention, tradition. Yeah, he was really…I really think the guy he was running against, and those old-time Aspen folks, that they really thought that Hunter just might be the Devil incarnate set down among them, because he represented everything…he must have been just terrifying. He was strange looking, he said outrageous things, but I think the ideas that he represented were also terrifying. Oddly enough, I think that’s probably one of the reasons why he lost, that people who would not ordinarily have voted were thought well “My God, this man cannot be sheriff! Anybody but this man!”
Graham: “He’ll rename the place Fat City!”
Juan: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, what a brilliant idea. That would have worked, too!
Graham: Yeah, well exactly! That’s the thing about it – your father was never, ever a stupid man. He was as sharp as a bloody tack, his brain could cut glass.
Juan: Yes.
Graham: What was I going to say, umm…I figured something out myself, you may well know about this, but…you know in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where he says to the maid “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the Grange Gorman, baby!” You remember that line?
Juan: (Chuckling in slight confusion) No, I forgot that.
Graham: Well, do you know where that comes from?
Juan: No.
Graham: It comes from the novel The Ginger Man, which is by J.P. Donleavy, one of your dad’s faves.
Juan: (Dawning realisation) Ooh. Yes, it was, yes.
Graham: I decided at one point that I needed to know what the “Grange Gorman” was so I looked it up and “Ah, I see…” It actually made perfect sense to me, and I looked it up tonight just to be sure. But it’s in The Ginger Man, that’s where that comes from. That’s the level of attention I pay to your father’s work, put it that way, I love it.
Juan: I gotta check this out. Actually, I found a copy of The Ginger Man recently. I gotta read that cos, as you say, he makes so many references to it, about his books – “You gotta read this book, you gotta read it.”
Graham: In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas he refers to “It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel,” so, you know…
Juan: (Chuckling)
Graham: I’ll tell you, I liked the photograph that you had of Oscar (Zeta Acosta, the notorious ‘Samoan Attorney’ from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Graham) and Hunter together, that’s only the second ever photo of them together I’ve even seen. I would imagine there are more, but the only other one is the famous one where they’re sitting in Las Vegas, where he’s sitting with (laughing) one black glove on! You met Oscar, didn’t you?
Juan: Uh…I don’t remember him, I must have been like, well, let’s see…five at the time.
Graham: I’m sure you would have remembered him. He seemed like a scary character, to be perfectly honest.
Juan: Oh, I think so. I think he was one of the few men out there who Hunter really respected as an equal, both for his intelligence and his philosophy. Well, you know, and his craziness. And I think that’s why the medallion that Oscar gave him was so important to Hunter, why it shows up in so many photos, because he had a lot of respect for Oscar, and there just weren’t that many people who he really respected.
Graham: I heard…I read this on the internet, I think there’s meant to be some kind of documentary coming out about Oscar Acosta (this refers to the PBS documentary The Rise and Fall of the Brown Buffalo, which came out in 2018 – Graham), and the people that made it, or his family, are trying to say that he co-wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which sounds…
Juan: (Laughs)
Graham: …absolutely fucking nonsensical to me. You know what I mean?
Juan: (Still laughing) I heard that!
Graham: Why haven’t they said this before in forty-five years or something? I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever. Unless it’s a good way to try and get publicity for a documentary.
Juan: Uh, yeah, I’ve heard that rumour, and it’s an absurd idea. I mean, first of all, can you imagine Hunter co-writing anything?
Graham: No, not at all.
Juan: No, that would be completely antithetical to his whole character. And secondly, either Hunter did a really good job of imitating Oscar’s style for the rest of his life, or…
Graham: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. (Juan laughs) Cos I mean…
Juan: (Laughing) Or maybe he wrote it!
Graham: Oscar tried to be a writer, but I don’t think he ever…I’ve never actually read any of his books, I think I read a passage out of one of them that was in a collection of Chicago writing. I’d be interested, but no, he was not the writer in the team.
Juan: Yes! I agree. He was definitely a, umm, what’s the word they use, dammit…a fellow traveller like in communism. I think there are two books, but I don’t know that writing meant the same thing to Oscar as it did to Hunter.
Graham: No, no, most definitely not. I think he was just confused about his identity after Fear and Loathing came out, y’know. Didn’t he demand to have his name and photograph put on the cover of the book when it came out?
Juan: Oh gosh, I’m trying to remember that story. Yeah, there was…ah, I don’t remember, but I do remember that there was some skirmish about Oscar being properly represented. Not unlike Hunter’s feuds with Ralph Steadman, another brilliant co-conspirator.
Graham: Do you still talk to him?
Juan: I do! He’s eighty now.
Graham: I met him a couple of times in Edinburgh.
(My copy of The Curse of Lono, autographed by Steadman in Edinburgh. I got him to use an anti-drug pen - "For Graham, where's the whisky? Ralph Steadman, 17 August 95")
Juan: I haven’t talked to him in several years. But he and Hunter had an incredibly close friendship, and they understood each other so well. But they clashed a lot, and Hunter could just be…nasty. I don’t know why he was, but he just beat on Ralph, y’know, verbally.
Graham: (Impersonating Hunter) “Teddible! Teddible! You worthless pigfucker!” (Laughing) And he’s just walking round drunk doing drawings of people, “You’re gonna get us killed!” You know, The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved is one of my all-time favourite pieces of comedic writing, it’s just amazing.
Juan: Oh, yes!
Graham: See when he takes him and they’re gonnae spraypaint (laughing) “Fuck the Pope” on the boat-
Juan: (Laughing hard) Yeah! That is a great story.
Graham: It is amazing. He rattles the can and they hear him (Juan is laughing hard), he shoots off a flare: “We must flee, Ralph! We must flee!” (Juan is still laughing) And he gives him drugs and he turns up kicking the walls thirty-odd hours later, ranting insanely at people. (We both are still laughing) But those illustrations that Ralph did are amazing, though.
Juan: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, Ralph’s brilliant, he’s just a brilliant, brilliant artist.
Graham: The documentary about Ralph Steadman was good…I can’t remember what the fuck it’s called now, that’s how much of an impact it made on me! Oh what the Hell was it called…I can’t remember…did you see it?
Juan: No.
Graham: It came out last year. Johnny Depp’s in it. I’ll send you a link to that, too. I saw it at the cinema last year. When they talked about Hunter it made me cry a little bit, I must admit, sentimental soul that I am. (The doc is called For No Good Reason - Graham)
Juan: (Gently chuckling) This is a perfect example of Hunter’s…how he could be so funny and so cruel, you know. Ralph must have sent Hunter one of his books, and Hunter replied “Don’t write Ralph! You will bring shame upon your family.” (We both laugh hard) It’s so funny, and yet, oh my God, that’s so, so…biting.
Graham: Yeah, he did that…only last week I saw a letter that he wrote to Anthony Burgess, you know, who wrote A Clockwork Orange…
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/hunter-s-thompson-writes-a-blistering-over-the-top-letter-to-anthony-burgess-1973.html
Juan: Really? Oh, of course, yeah.
Graham: The letter, I (chuckling) can’t quote it verbatim, but I’ll send it to you as well, and it’s just…apparently Burgess was meant to do some investigative think piece of Rolling Stone, and he made this feeble attempt to try and pass off this novella in lieu of it. Jann Wenner (publisher of Rolling Stone – Graham) just passed the letter on to your dad for a laugh, and he just tears Burgess to shreds, “You limey cocksucker!” (Juan laughs) Your father was the maestro of cruel, humourous insults.
Juan: Oh my gosh, yeah. (Chuckling)
Graham: I’ll send it you. I mean, that man, Burgess, was genius with language as well, I mean A Clockwork Orange-
Juan: - Yes, yes he was, absolutely.
Graham: -A Clockwork Orange, that’s just like porn on the page, man, amaaaazing, I fucking love it.
Juan: Yes, Yeah.
Graham: You wouldn’t forget…(laughing) I can only imagine the think piece coming in five minutes after the letter has arrived (we both laugh) “You swine! You limey scum!” “Limey,” that’s the (we are both laughing) best expression ever, “limey.” I only saw it last week.
Juan: Where was it, is it in one of the books, or…
Graham: I dunno, I think it’s from a book called Letters Worth Reading or something. I can’t quite remember if it’s published in a book, I’ll have to look it up for you, but it was really just stunning…I mean, it’s your father on top vicious form. Even in the letters book (The Proud Highway) when he’s saying to old ladies that he’s going to send Hell’s Angels to their house and everything. (Juan laughs) He had a vicious sense of humour, but I mean…he was on a different wavelength that man.
Juan: Yeah. Yeah.
Graham: When I was in Edinburgh, if I ever had time to kill I would just steal a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and just read it, y’know, from some bookstore. But they did away with all that.
Juan: So that’s your favourite book of his?
Graham: Fear and Loathing? Yeah. I really like The Great Shark Hunt. Hell’s Angels was a pretty damned good book. I haven’t read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 for a long time. Curse of Lono I really enjoyed, the guy with the blue arm: “You degenerate scum!” (Laughing)
Juan: (Laughing) Yes.
Graham: You know, it’s funny, but I was thinking about this. It’s only after I came to America that I realised that there’s almost a crazed quasi-religious…it’s almost like a Sermon on the Mount that the guy was giving half the time, the words he was using, you know what I mean? “These swine must be fucked and broken.” (Juan chuckles) Basically he’s saying in really simple terms what needs to be done, and he’s not hiding it, you know what I mean?
Juan: (Laughing in acknowledgement) Yes.
Graham: It was always swine or pigs. And there’s all these weird allusions to insects, “Like a pack of leeches and cockroaches fighting on the ground.” I mean, what the fuck? What are you going on aboot, Hunter? But it was brilliant!
Juan: Oh yeah. Or the descriptions of Nixon, or aldermen, and in the Campaign Trail, I mean…who does that? Who describes the sitting president of the United States as a “werewolf with bleeding string warts?” (We both laugh loudly.) It was brilliant, but my God, what balls, to publish that!
Graham: Do you still talk to Jann Wenner, as well? He’s got a quote on the cover of your book.
Juan: Yeah. Although it was really funny, I noticed he didn’t get a title, it was just ‘Jann Wenner,” everyone’s supposed to know who Jann Wenner is. But yeah, I stay in touch with him, and it’s not any kind of business relationship, it’s just, an old…he’s kind of part of my family, and for all of their intense disputes, always about money, you know, Hunter and Jann really had a lot of respect for each other, and Jann cares very much for Hunter.
Graham: It did take a lot of balls to publish Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, cos it’s like…the book is just totally illegal, (quoting from the text) “a fraud on its face,” “charge it to the St. Louis Browns.” (Juan laughs) You may know the answer to this, right?
Juan: Yeah.
Graham: I’ve seen two separate accounts of this. Douglas Brinkley (Hunter’s literary executor – Graham) and Johnny Depp, I believe, both have claimed to have found the manuscript for The Rum Diary. Do you know who really found it?
Juan: (Pausing) No…I don’t. Either one of them plausibly could have. I mean, Doug spent a lot of time with Hunter on those first and second letters books, and Johnny lived with him for maybe four months in the basement. I didn’t meet Johnny until after that. But that must have been quite an experience, to meet two Hunter Thompsons, because he was just trying to get every little mannerism, which he did really well in the movie. You know, and the sounds Hunter would make, the way he walked, the hand gestures. I mean, he’s got that down, and you can see from photos that he started dressing like him, and they’d drive into town… (laughs at the thought.)
Graham: That would be scary.
Juan: Yeah! And Johnny’s trying to get this down. So that would really have been something, two Hunter Thompsons at the same time, yeah.
Graham: I must admit, I really like Johnny Depp. I mean, he’s done…some of the performances are just…I really loved him in Ed Wood, I really loved him in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. To me it seemed like he was Hunter. The voice, he had the voice and everything down. I really enjoyed that movie, y’know? I was pleasantly surprised.
Juan: Yeah, I thought Johnny did an outstanding job of capturing Hunter. I’m ambivalent about the movie itself, but I think Johnny’s performance…it’s eerie. Especially when I shut my eyes, I go “That’s Hunter right there.”
Graham: That must be really strange to have that. It’s funny…I’ve got a few writers I’ve kind of obsessed over the years, William S Burroughs and stuff, ummm…did you ever meet Burroughs?
Juan: No, that was a little after my son was born, and…I don’t think Burroughs ever came out to see Hunter, and it’s pretty remarkable-
Graham: -No, he did.
Hunter: -That he never made a trip out to see Burroughs. (Just catching my reply) Oh did he?
Graham: Burroughs came out to see Hunter. (Checking in transcribing this, I see it was the other way around – Thompson visited Burroughs in Lawrence, Kansas – Graham.) Because they were shooting together-
Juan: - Okay.
Graham: And it was target practice and your dad shouted to Burroughs when he was going to shoot the target, “Think of Joan!” (Burroughs shot and killed his wife Joan Vollmer in Mexico in 1951 – Graham.) And it’s like “Oooooh, fucking Hell!”
Juan: (Laughing at how obnoxious it is) Jesus Christ!
Graham: (Chuckling) Well, exactly! I mean, it’s humourous, but it’s just so horrible! (We both laugh slightly nervously.)
Juan: That is…wow. But if there was somebody who had a darker sense of humour than Hunter, it was probably Burroughs.
Graham: Where I am right now (referring to the apartment I lived in at the time in Edgewater – Graham) is actually just under three miles from where Burroughs lived in Chicago in 1942. I got kind of Burroughs-obsessed and I did all this research on him, I found rare photographs that nobody had seen. (Sardonically) My high school education came in useful.
Juan: (Laughs)
Graham: Three years ago I did a lecture on Burroughs on January 25th, which is National Robert Burns Day in Scotland-
Juan: -Oh yeah, sure.
Graham: -And I was thinking “What better way to (laughing) pay tribute to an American gay icon (Juan laughs) than giving a talk on Robert Burns Night! (Juan laughs a bit louder) It made no sense, it was great fun! There was actually two performances, we showed a documentary about Burroughs (Burroughs: The Movie, at the Mayne Stage in East Rogers Park – Graham) and they gave us free beer, so I don’t really remember the second performance (Juan laughs knowingly), but apparently it was alright. So there you go, (wryly), just toasting old Willie. Cos he was at the ’68 Democratic Convention, along with Ginsberg-
Juan: -Burroughs was?
Graham: - Yes.
Juan: I didn’t know that, no!
Graham: Allen Ginsberg, Jean Genet and William S Burroughs-
Juan: -Jean Genet?
Graham: -Yeah. There’s a crazy story about it. They were all there, at the Democratic Convention. Jean Genet (laughing) wrote this piece aboot the “Fine, strong arms of the police officers” as they were beating young people. (Juan laughs) It was for Esquire magazine, and Jean Genet was running from the police and he battered on a door. It was a student that opened the door: “I’m Jean Genet!” And the student says “I was just writing my thesis on you, mister Genet.” (Juan laughs loudly) How bizarre is that? Burroughs was totally shocked as well by the violence of the Chicago police. I’m in Chicago right now and the police apparently don’t even want to get out of their cars anymore, cos they’re so demoralised with all the police shootings and the furore over Laquan McDonald (a young black teenager shot and killed by the Chicago police in 2014 – Graham), y’know? All these horribly bloody stories-
Juan: -Yeah.
Graham: -Oh, I mean, it’s madness. It’s like the police have got a licence to kill. Horrifying.
Juan: (Flatly, saddened) Yeah. I think it’s been a long time coming, and it’s finally getting the media attention on the abuses of the police around the country. The whole St. Louis, Ferguson story (riots that occurred because of the shooting of black teenager Michael Brown, Jr by a police officer – Graham) is that that was by no means an exception, that was the norm, and it was more shocking that it actually became news. But from what I’ve read, that whole area, things like that happen all the time. Not just in Ferguson but in all those surrounding cities. That’s, I mean, that’s horrifying.
Graham: That’s the same here in Chicago. They had the kid, Laquan McDonald, and the cop just shot him sixteen times. He was walking away from the cop, and the cop just shot him sixteen times. There was a video came out, and there’s people calling for Rahm Emmanuel’s – that’s the Chicago mayor-
Juan: -Yeah.
Graham: -They’re calling for Emmanuel’s resignation because he sat on the video until after he was elected, y’know? He’s a reptile, man. (Sighing) See, that’s why the world now…I mean, in America at least, it needs more people like Hunter who’re gonna stand up at tell the truth, tell these people to go fuck themselves.
Juan: (Sighing) Yes. And say it clearly and powerfully with no, y’know…not trying to be careful or nice or objective or fair.
Graham: No.
Juan: Just using…going back to the phrase you used earlier, “righteous anger.” Hunter was able to convey that so powerfully and clearly, and beautifully too. But underlying that was that…that rage.
Graham: Um-hum. He was a very angry man. You said he didn’t turn up for your high school graduation, right?
Juan: Right.
Graham: Did he actually make his own high school graduation?
Juan: (Laughing) Probably not.
Graham: Well, that’s what I thought, maybe it would have brought back some bad memories for him of that time.
Juan: (Slightly surprised) Oh, that’s interesting. That’s interesting. I mean, I know that he did not enjoy high school. As you can imagine, it was like being in jail, a really boring jail. I can’t imagine that he would have taken part in the graduation if he didn’t have to. And yet, as you know from the letters books, he was pretty much all the way through the air force, he was going to apply to Vanderbilt (a university in Nashville – Graham) and get a scholarship. He did assume he was gonna go to college. Then he got out of the air force, kept writing, started his career, and I think he just never…he just…(laughs) it became less and less important: “What’s the point? Why would I do that?”
Graham: What age was Hunter when – Hunter, note the first-name terms with somebody I’ve never met – was he about nineteen when he was working in the newspaper in the air force?
Juan: Let’s see…he had to choose jail or the air force, and then they sent him off to train as a radio technician. Which is just (laughs)…the idea of Hunter in the Arctic, fixing radios for three years is just…(laughs)
Graham: -It’s a crazy thought, yeah.
Juan: -That would never have worked. So I think he must have been in for, I dunno, six months, something like that, and then he managed to lie his way into being the editor for the newspaper. So yeah, he was probably eighteen, nineteen.
Graham: Cos that was something that struck me in the book, that you were talking about how, at eighteen, nineteen, wanting to work in a newspaper, and saying “I dunno where that came from.” Cos I wondered if it maybe came from the back of your own head, cos that’s what your dad was doing at that age, so...you talk about how words mean more to you than you maybe…
Juan: (Bemused) Oh, that’s interesting…But see, these are things that…I hadn’t even thought about that, about those parallels. Yeah! Yeah! Interesting! That’s right though.
Graham: You said that you discovered how much words meant to you, it was obvious that you had words in your head, even at that age. But I don’t think that you could have…your dad cast too huge a literary shadow for you to easily get out of. Which you’ve done now, you’ve stepped out into your own right as a writer. I mean, your book’s excellent! I mean, I wouldn’t bullshit you just for the sake of it…
Juan: No, I don’t think you would.
Graham: I mean, I’m unfortunately one of those obsessed writer types, you’re talking about crafting words.
Juan: Oh yeah, I’m sure you get it. By the time it was 2013, I was just sick of it, I just couldn’t stand to go through it one more time. And actually at that point I reached out to Jann and said “Hey, would you read the book and, y’know, gimme some feedback?” “No, but lemme give you the name of a guy here who’s a really good editor.” And it was Paul Scanlon, he worked as a writer and editor for Rolling Stone back in the early ‘70s with Hunter-
Graham: -Yeah, I remember his name.
Juan: -That was a godsend, to have an experienced editor to go through the book and say, y’know, “This works, these five pages, they can go, you need some transitions here, you need to tell a little bit more here.” I didn’t have the energy, nor did I have the objectivity to do that.
Graham: You don’t have the distance from it.
Juan: Exactly, exactly. And it’s just exhausting, going through it over and over and over it again, to find out what it needs, and at some point I just said “I can’t do it anymore.” And that’s where having Paul was just a godsend. It wouldn’t have been anywhere near as a good a book without his help, and I really got an appreciation for…alright (chuckling) here’s what editors can do, here’s what a good editor can do for ya. I mean, how have you dealt with that, have you, uh…
Graham: I’ve just edited it myself. I taught myself to write. When I was…what age was I…twenty-eight, I decided I was gonnae go and study English. I went to Aberdeen University-
Juan: -Yes!
Graham: (Chuckling) –I went for one lesson (Juan chuckles), they were teaching An Occurrence at Own Creek Bridge (by Ambrose Bierce – Graham), I went “Fuck this!”
Juan: (Laughing) Oh yes!
Graham: I just walked right out and I never went back and I just thought “This is gonna ruin reading for me.” (Juan laughs) So anything on that page is just totally subjective, I have no idea. It’s not like it’s written in the Scottish vernacular, cos to me, I just wanted to do something that was completely different. I’ve ended up writing a book about a Chicago band, and then I somehow end up moving to Chicago. The whole thing’s just totally bizarre. (Juan laughs) I mean, my car, on Monday, gave out four hundred yards from where I first lived in America, so I thought “I literally cannot go any further on this trip, so I’m gonna hafta leave.” There’s a strange…I’m not really…I mean, you’re talking about superstition and all these things in the book…I mean, the fact that I live less than three miles from where William S Burroughs lived when he was in Chicago is just totally bizarre to me. Anyway...I’m curious to know, what kind of music do you listen to?
Juan: Ummm…let’s see. I kind of go through phases, I’m just so thrilled that there’s a thing like Pandora, because it’s a way to hear music that I would normally never hear, not that anybody listens to the radio anymore. So, let’s see, what’s on my playlist. I’m a big fan of LCD Soundsystem, that…it’s sort of electronic. I really like indie female singers like Fiona Apple. I think she’s just brilliant. Let’s see…some favourites like Jeff Buckley. Then I get a kick out of R&B like Estelle, and also…uh…what’s her name…
Graham: (Chuckling) Please don’t say Adele, don’t say Adele…
Juan: You know what? There are actually two songs by Adele that I think are actually damned good songs. I don’t like anything else, I like two of her songs.
Graham: (Chuckling)
Juan: I mean I love this, you have access to this massive catalogue so I see a reference to Siouxsie and the Banshes and I think “Oh yeah, I need to check that out. Hey, this is some good stuff!”
Graham: Here’s a question for you. When you are listening to a song…now, when I wrote my book, it starts and ends with the word ‘silence.’ The whole thing’s meant to be a music concert, just playing, y’know. And I put the words as lyrics, it’s a weird style, I don’t know what the Hell it is. When you listen to songs, do the words have to be good, or does that not concern you so much? You pay attention to lyrics?
Juan: (Sighing) Definitely, yeah. It’s gotta be both, though. And with this selection of music that’s now available to us, I’m really picky, if I don’t like a song in the first thirty seconds I’m just like “Alright, forget it, I have no interest in listening to that.” But that’s why Fiona Apple is definitely the top of my list right now, because her music’s so interesting, they’re good melodies, and her lyrics are, y’know, it’s poetry. A friend of mine was talking about Big Star the other day, and I thought “What’s the big deal about Big Star.” Well, they had some catchy melodies, but their lyrics were just pathetic. So it’s really hard for me to listen to Big Star now, and think “Oh god, the lyrics are terrible, they’re terrible!” (Laughs) It’s really gotta be both to make it worth listening to, unless it’s just for, it’s a song for, just a groove, like Mary J Blige. Great songs, and they just move, just a great groove, the lyrics are perhaps not so important, but most of the time, yes, the lyrics matter.
Graham: (Coughing dryly) Sorry, I dunno why I’m coughing here. “TB or not TB, that is the question.” I really like this one guy called JG Thirlwell, the Australian guy, and some of his albums have the most incredible lyrics that you will ever come across.
Juan: Yeah, I mean, he was an alcoholic, for god’s sakes! He’d been drinking since he was probably fourteen or something, I don’t think he decided every day “I think I’m gonna drink another fifth of whiskey today, because that’s a good idea,” I think he did it because he had to.
Graham: Yeah, self-medicating.
Juan: Yeah, yeah.
Graham: Music was really important to your dad. If your book was a band or album, who or what would it be?
Juan: (Laughing) God! Oh good Lord, I think you got me on that one, I have no idea.
Graham: Excellent! Another mind-blanker.
Juan: (Laughing loudly) Yeah!
Graham: Well, it’s a kind of oblique, slightly surreal question, so here’s a question you’ll obviously have more of an answer to: I’m curious to know what your own family, including your mother, think of your book.
Juan: Funny, a lot of people have asked, “So what does your mom think of this book?” And she hasn’t read it yet! She intends to, and a year or two ago I talked to her about what was going to be in the book, and what I had said about her, so…it’s not going to be a surprise, I don’t think. I don’t think she’s going to be offended by anything I’ve said about her. But it really is a very delicate business, writing about people who are alive, y’know. The only way I could be that honest about Hunter is because he was dead. I could not have written that book while he was alive. And if I had, it would have been devastating to him, because then he would have had to personally deal with the consequences of that, and that just would not have been right. But with my mom it’s a lot more difficult, she’s alive, and I don’t want to omit important facts, but nor do I want to cause harm if there’s not a really good reason to. I could unintentionally cause harm by being honest and, y’know, some of the things that happened were important elements to understand the whole story, but that was difficult to decide, what to include and what not to include about people who are living, because that’s a whole different ballgame.
Graham: Absolutely. You said that your father played some Celtic music when your engagement was announced-
Juan: (Laughing) –Yeah.
Graham: - I mean, I understand that his first name came from a Scottish surgeon that was an ancestor on his mother’s side. Is that correct?
Juan: Yeah, umm…what was his name…
Graham: John Hunter.
Juan: John Hunter! Yeah yeah yeah.
Graham: I looked into it. Was he cognisant of any Scottish…did he ever go to Scotland? I know that you said you visited Scotland, but did he ever visit Scotland? Just out of curiosity.
Juan: I don’t think he ever did, really…
Graham: He was meant to.
Juan: He was meant to?
Graham: In 1988 he was meant to go to Scotland and I was all excited, and then “The bastard never turned up!”
Juan: Really?
Graham: Yep.
Juan: I didn’t know that. What was it for, was it sort of a tour or something?
Graham: Was it England, or was it Scotland…it was probably a tour, I think he was meant to go to…what was it called…I think it was for The Observer. You know what? I’ll look it up and I’ll send you a link. Cos what had happened was that he never got there, there was some Hunteresque story about how he never managed to get to Scotland…
Juan: (Laughing) Yeah…
Graham: Something involving a taxi, and some crazed taxi driver, and you thought okay, right, whatever, fair enough. I’ll look that up, because I still…I haven’t read it for a long time, but obviously with me being Scottish, and a Hunter S Thompson admirer-
Juan: - Yes.
Graham: - It was like, “Bastard! What chaos you could have caused over here!” (Juan laughs) Did you enjoy Scotland while you were there?
Juan: I did, I did. I mean, I went there once with my grandmother when I was twelve or something, and that was a tourist experience. But then when I went back as a college student, y’know…and what I would do is go find a hostel, get up in the morning and I’d just get a map and just walk, pick a place in the city and just walk all day for miles and miles and miles…
Graham: Was that Edinburgh?
Juan: Yes! And just seeing all the different parts of Edinburgh, and staying with some friends of a friend, and five people in this little tiny flat, and, y’know, a bunch of writers and artists living on the dole. I really did enjoy that, and I wish I’d been able to spend some more time there.
Graham: Yeah, well, you can always go back, it’s not going anywhere. I would show you around. You know, you said in the book that when you went through your father’s archive, you found a box of Neutrogena soap.
Juan: (Laughing) Yeah.
Graham: That’s got to be the same box of Neutrogena soap he talks about in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, eh?
Juan: It’s got to be, y’know, 300 bars of old, wrinkled Neutrogena soap in a box.
Graham: (Laughing) Brilliant! Why would he want that soap? (Juan chuckles) That makes no sense, it’s marvellous.
Juan: He was a pack rat, a first class pack rat. You know, thank God he’s a famous writer, and there’s still money to purchase and store all of this stuff. And it really was fascinating going through there, finding not just letters and things, but things I had no idea existed. I think I mentioned coming across his press pass for the ’68 Democratic Convention – wow! That is…
Graham: That was in Chicago, wasn’t it?
Juan: Yeah yeah yeah, and that experience, that Convention, really changed his whole political outlook.
Graham: Yeah, he was very angry and disillusioned after it, wasn’t he?
Juan: Yes. But also motivated to try to change things. I think that’s where his running for sheriff came from. “I thought it was bad, but I didn’t realise just how bad it was, and let’s see if it’s possible to get these disillusioned young people to actually get off their ass and vote. Because if they do that, they can really change the direction of this country.” And the sheriff’s race, it wasn’t that he wanted to be sheriff, it was an experiment to see, could it be done, could he do it?
Graham: That’s a fascinating experiment: “I’ll just run for sheriff!” I love that he had the wig, he got his head shaved so he could refer to the sheriff as his “long-haired opponent.” (We both laugh loudly) The lateral thought behind that is absolutely brilliant, man. (Juan continues to laugh.)
Juan: Yeah. And his opponent was completely unprepared to deal with a person like Hunter, with that intelligence, with his complete disregard for authority and convention, tradition. Yeah, he was really…I really think the guy he was running against, and those old-time Aspen folks, that they really thought that Hunter just might be the Devil incarnate set down among them, because he represented everything…he must have been just terrifying. He was strange looking, he said outrageous things, but I think the ideas that he represented were also terrifying. Oddly enough, I think that’s probably one of the reasons why he lost, that people who would not ordinarily have voted were thought well “My God, this man cannot be sheriff! Anybody but this man!”
Graham: “He’ll rename the place Fat City!”
Juan: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, what a brilliant idea. That would have worked, too!
Graham: Yeah, well exactly! That’s the thing about it – your father was never, ever a stupid man. He was as sharp as a bloody tack, his brain could cut glass.
Juan: Yes.
Graham: What was I going to say, umm…I figured something out myself, you may well know about this, but…you know in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where he says to the maid “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the Grange Gorman, baby!” You remember that line?
Juan: (Chuckling in slight confusion) No, I forgot that.
Graham: Well, do you know where that comes from?
Juan: No.
Graham: It comes from the novel The Ginger Man, which is by J.P. Donleavy, one of your dad’s faves.
Juan: (Dawning realisation) Ooh. Yes, it was, yes.
Graham: I decided at one point that I needed to know what the “Grange Gorman” was so I looked it up and “Ah, I see…” It actually made perfect sense to me, and I looked it up tonight just to be sure. But it’s in The Ginger Man, that’s where that comes from. That’s the level of attention I pay to your father’s work, put it that way, I love it.
Juan: I gotta check this out. Actually, I found a copy of The Ginger Man recently. I gotta read that cos, as you say, he makes so many references to it, about his books – “You gotta read this book, you gotta read it.”
Graham: In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas he refers to “It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel,” so, you know…
Juan: (Chuckling)
Graham: I’ll tell you, I liked the photograph that you had of Oscar (Zeta Acosta, the notorious ‘Samoan Attorney’ from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Graham) and Hunter together, that’s only the second ever photo of them together I’ve even seen. I would imagine there are more, but the only other one is the famous one where they’re sitting in Las Vegas, where he’s sitting with (laughing) one black glove on! You met Oscar, didn’t you?
Juan: Uh…I don’t remember him, I must have been like, well, let’s see…five at the time.
Graham: I’m sure you would have remembered him. He seemed like a scary character, to be perfectly honest.
Juan: Oh, I think so. I think he was one of the few men out there who Hunter really respected as an equal, both for his intelligence and his philosophy. Well, you know, and his craziness. And I think that’s why the medallion that Oscar gave him was so important to Hunter, why it shows up in so many photos, because he had a lot of respect for Oscar, and there just weren’t that many people who he really respected.
Graham: I heard…I read this on the internet, I think there’s meant to be some kind of documentary coming out about Oscar Acosta (this refers to the PBS documentary The Rise and Fall of the Brown Buffalo, which came out in 2018 – Graham), and the people that made it, or his family, are trying to say that he co-wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which sounds…
Juan: (Laughs)
Graham: …absolutely fucking nonsensical to me. You know what I mean?
Juan: (Still laughing) I heard that!
Graham: Why haven’t they said this before in forty-five years or something? I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever. Unless it’s a good way to try and get publicity for a documentary.
Juan: Uh, yeah, I’ve heard that rumour, and it’s an absurd idea. I mean, first of all, can you imagine Hunter co-writing anything?
Graham: No, not at all.
Juan: No, that would be completely antithetical to his whole character. And secondly, either Hunter did a really good job of imitating Oscar’s style for the rest of his life, or…
Graham: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. (Juan laughs) Cos I mean…
Juan: (Laughing) Or maybe he wrote it!
Graham: Oscar tried to be a writer, but I don’t think he ever…I’ve never actually read any of his books, I think I read a passage out of one of them that was in a collection of Chicago writing. I’d be interested, but no, he was not the writer in the team.
Juan: Yes! I agree. He was definitely a, umm, what’s the word they use, dammit…a fellow traveller like in communism. I think there are two books, but I don’t know that writing meant the same thing to Oscar as it did to Hunter.
Graham: No, no, most definitely not. I think he was just confused about his identity after Fear and Loathing came out, y’know. Didn’t he demand to have his name and photograph put on the cover of the book when it came out?
Juan: Oh gosh, I’m trying to remember that story. Yeah, there was…ah, I don’t remember, but I do remember that there was some skirmish about Oscar being properly represented. Not unlike Hunter’s feuds with Ralph Steadman, another brilliant co-conspirator.
Graham: Do you still talk to him?
Juan: I do! He’s eighty now.
Graham: I met him a couple of times in Edinburgh.
Juan: I haven’t talked to him in several years. But he and Hunter had an incredibly close friendship, and they understood each other so well. But they clashed a lot, and Hunter could just be…nasty. I don’t know why he was, but he just beat on Ralph, y’know, verbally.
Graham: (Impersonating Hunter) “Teddible! Teddible! You worthless pigfucker!” (Laughing) And he’s just walking round drunk doing drawings of people, “You’re gonna get us killed!” You know, The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved is one of my all-time favourite pieces of comedic writing, it’s just amazing.
Juan: Oh, yes!
Graham: See when he takes him and they’re gonnae spraypaint (laughing) “Fuck the Pope” on the boat-
Juan: (Laughing hard) Yeah! That is a great story.
Graham: It is amazing. He rattles the can and they hear him (Juan is laughing hard), he shoots off a flare: “We must flee, Ralph! We must flee!” (Juan is still laughing) And he gives him drugs and he turns up kicking the walls thirty-odd hours later, ranting insanely at people. (We both are still laughing) But those illustrations that Ralph did are amazing, though.
Juan: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, Ralph’s brilliant, he’s just a brilliant, brilliant artist.
Graham: The documentary about Ralph Steadman was good…I can’t remember what the fuck it’s called now, that’s how much of an impact it made on me! Oh what the Hell was it called…I can’t remember…did you see it?
Juan: No.
Graham: It came out last year. Johnny Depp’s in it. I’ll send you a link to that, too. I saw it at the cinema last year. When they talked about Hunter it made me cry a little bit, I must admit, sentimental soul that I am. (The doc is called For No Good Reason - Graham)
Juan: (Gently chuckling) This is a perfect example of Hunter’s…how he could be so funny and so cruel, you know. Ralph must have sent Hunter one of his books, and Hunter replied “Don’t write Ralph! You will bring shame upon your family.” (We both laugh hard) It’s so funny, and yet, oh my God, that’s so, so…biting.
Graham: Yeah, he did that…only last week I saw a letter that he wrote to Anthony Burgess, you know, who wrote A Clockwork Orange…
http://www.openculture.com/2016/05/hunter-s-thompson-writes-a-blistering-over-the-top-letter-to-anthony-burgess-1973.html
Juan: Really? Oh, of course, yeah.
Graham: The letter, I (chuckling) can’t quote it verbatim, but I’ll send it to you as well, and it’s just…apparently Burgess was meant to do some investigative think piece of Rolling Stone, and he made this feeble attempt to try and pass off this novella in lieu of it. Jann Wenner (publisher of Rolling Stone – Graham) just passed the letter on to your dad for a laugh, and he just tears Burgess to shreds, “You limey cocksucker!” (Juan laughs) Your father was the maestro of cruel, humourous insults.
Juan: Oh my gosh, yeah. (Chuckling)
Graham: I’ll send it you. I mean, that man, Burgess, was genius with language as well, I mean A Clockwork Orange-
Juan: - Yes, yes he was, absolutely.
Graham: -A Clockwork Orange, that’s just like porn on the page, man, amaaaazing, I fucking love it.
Juan: Yes, Yeah.
Graham: You wouldn’t forget…(laughing) I can only imagine the think piece coming in five minutes after the letter has arrived (we both laugh) “You swine! You limey scum!” “Limey,” that’s the (we are both laughing) best expression ever, “limey.” I only saw it last week.
Juan: Where was it, is it in one of the books, or…
Graham: I dunno, I think it’s from a book called Letters Worth Reading or something. I can’t quite remember if it’s published in a book, I’ll have to look it up for you, but it was really just stunning…I mean, it’s your father on top vicious form. Even in the letters book (The Proud Highway) when he’s saying to old ladies that he’s going to send Hell’s Angels to their house and everything. (Juan laughs) He had a vicious sense of humour, but I mean…he was on a different wavelength that man.
Juan: Yeah. Yeah.
Graham: When I was in Edinburgh, if I ever had time to kill I would just steal a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and just read it, y’know, from some bookstore. But they did away with all that.
Juan: So that’s your favourite book of his?
Graham: Fear and Loathing? Yeah. I really like The Great Shark Hunt. Hell’s Angels was a pretty damned good book. I haven’t read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 for a long time. Curse of Lono I really enjoyed, the guy with the blue arm: “You degenerate scum!” (Laughing)
Juan: (Laughing) Yes.
Graham: You know, it’s funny, but I was thinking about this. It’s only after I came to America that I realised that there’s almost a crazed quasi-religious…it’s almost like a Sermon on the Mount that the guy was giving half the time, the words he was using, you know what I mean? “These swine must be fucked and broken.” (Juan chuckles) Basically he’s saying in really simple terms what needs to be done, and he’s not hiding it, you know what I mean?
Juan: (Laughing in acknowledgement) Yes.
Graham: It was always swine or pigs. And there’s all these weird allusions to insects, “Like a pack of leeches and cockroaches fighting on the ground.” I mean, what the fuck? What are you going on aboot, Hunter? But it was brilliant!
Juan: Oh yeah. Or the descriptions of Nixon, or aldermen, and in the Campaign Trail, I mean…who does that? Who describes the sitting president of the United States as a “werewolf with bleeding string warts?” (We both laugh loudly.) It was brilliant, but my God, what balls, to publish that!
Graham: Do you still talk to Jann Wenner, as well? He’s got a quote on the cover of your book.
Juan: Yeah. Although it was really funny, I noticed he didn’t get a title, it was just ‘Jann Wenner,” everyone’s supposed to know who Jann Wenner is. But yeah, I stay in touch with him, and it’s not any kind of business relationship, it’s just, an old…he’s kind of part of my family, and for all of their intense disputes, always about money, you know, Hunter and Jann really had a lot of respect for each other, and Jann cares very much for Hunter.
Graham: It did take a lot of balls to publish Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, cos it’s like…the book is just totally illegal, (quoting from the text) “a fraud on its face,” “charge it to the St. Louis Browns.” (Juan laughs) You may know the answer to this, right?
Juan: Yeah.
Graham: I’ve seen two separate accounts of this. Douglas Brinkley (Hunter’s literary executor – Graham) and Johnny Depp, I believe, both have claimed to have found the manuscript for The Rum Diary. Do you know who really found it?
Juan: (Pausing) No…I don’t. Either one of them plausibly could have. I mean, Doug spent a lot of time with Hunter on those first and second letters books, and Johnny lived with him for maybe four months in the basement. I didn’t meet Johnny until after that. But that must have been quite an experience, to meet two Hunter Thompsons, because he was just trying to get every little mannerism, which he did really well in the movie. You know, and the sounds Hunter would make, the way he walked, the hand gestures. I mean, he’s got that down, and you can see from photos that he started dressing like him, and they’d drive into town… (laughs at the thought.)
Graham: That would be scary.
Juan: Yeah! And Johnny’s trying to get this down. So that would really have been something, two Hunter Thompsons at the same time, yeah.
Graham: I must admit, I really like Johnny Depp. I mean, he’s done…some of the performances are just…I really loved him in Ed Wood, I really loved him in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. To me it seemed like he was Hunter. The voice, he had the voice and everything down. I really enjoyed that movie, y’know? I was pleasantly surprised.
Juan: Yeah, I thought Johnny did an outstanding job of capturing Hunter. I’m ambivalent about the movie itself, but I think Johnny’s performance…it’s eerie. Especially when I shut my eyes, I go “That’s Hunter right there.”
Graham: That must be really strange to have that. It’s funny…I’ve got a few writers I’ve kind of obsessed over the years, William S Burroughs and stuff, ummm…did you ever meet Burroughs?
Juan: No, that was a little after my son was born, and…I don’t think Burroughs ever came out to see Hunter, and it’s pretty remarkable-
Graham: -No, he did.
Hunter: -That he never made a trip out to see Burroughs. (Just catching my reply) Oh did he?
Graham: Burroughs came out to see Hunter. (Checking in transcribing this, I see it was the other way around – Thompson visited Burroughs in Lawrence, Kansas – Graham.) Because they were shooting together-
Juan: - Okay.
Graham: And it was target practice and your dad shouted to Burroughs when he was going to shoot the target, “Think of Joan!” (Burroughs shot and killed his wife Joan Vollmer in Mexico in 1951 – Graham.) And it’s like “Oooooh, fucking Hell!”
Juan: (Laughing at how obnoxious it is) Jesus Christ!
Graham: (Chuckling) Well, exactly! I mean, it’s humourous, but it’s just so horrible! (We both laugh slightly nervously.)
Juan: That is…wow. But if there was somebody who had a darker sense of humour than Hunter, it was probably Burroughs.
Graham: Where I am right now (referring to the apartment I lived in at the time in Edgewater – Graham) is actually just under three miles from where Burroughs lived in Chicago in 1942. I got kind of Burroughs-obsessed and I did all this research on him, I found rare photographs that nobody had seen. (Sardonically) My high school education came in useful.
Juan: (Laughs)
Graham: Three years ago I did a lecture on Burroughs on January 25th, which is National Robert Burns Day in Scotland-
Juan: -Oh yeah, sure.
Graham: -And I was thinking “What better way to (laughing) pay tribute to an American gay icon (Juan laughs) than giving a talk on Robert Burns Night! (Juan laughs a bit louder) It made no sense, it was great fun! There was actually two performances, we showed a documentary about Burroughs (Burroughs: The Movie, at the Mayne Stage in East Rogers Park – Graham) and they gave us free beer, so I don’t really remember the second performance (Juan laughs knowingly), but apparently it was alright. So there you go, (wryly), just toasting old Willie. Cos he was at the ’68 Democratic Convention, along with Ginsberg-
Juan: -Burroughs was?
Graham: - Yes.
Juan: I didn’t know that, no!
Graham: Allen Ginsberg, Jean Genet and William S Burroughs-
Graham: -Yeah. There’s a crazy story about it. They were all there, at the Democratic Convention. Jean Genet (laughing) wrote this piece aboot the “Fine, strong arms of the police officers” as they were beating young people. (Juan laughs) It was for Esquire magazine, and Jean Genet was running from the police and he battered on a door. It was a student that opened the door: “I’m Jean Genet!” And the student says “I was just writing my thesis on you, mister Genet.” (Juan laughs loudly) How bizarre is that? Burroughs was totally shocked as well by the violence of the Chicago police. I’m in Chicago right now and the police apparently don’t even want to get out of their cars anymore, cos they’re so demoralised with all the police shootings and the furore over Laquan McDonald (a young black teenager shot and killed by the Chicago police in 2014 – Graham), y’know? All these horribly bloody stories-
Juan: -Yeah.
Graham: -Oh, I mean, it’s madness. It’s like the police have got a licence to kill. Horrifying.
Juan: (Flatly, saddened) Yeah. I think it’s been a long time coming, and it’s finally getting the media attention on the abuses of the police around the country. The whole St. Louis, Ferguson story (riots that occurred because of the shooting of black teenager Michael Brown, Jr by a police officer – Graham) is that that was by no means an exception, that was the norm, and it was more shocking that it actually became news. But from what I’ve read, that whole area, things like that happen all the time. Not just in Ferguson but in all those surrounding cities. That’s, I mean, that’s horrifying.
Graham: That’s the same here in Chicago. They had the kid, Laquan McDonald, and the cop just shot him sixteen times. He was walking away from the cop, and the cop just shot him sixteen times. There was a video came out, and there’s people calling for Rahm Emmanuel’s – that’s the Chicago mayor-
Juan: -Yeah.
Graham: -They’re calling for Emmanuel’s resignation because he sat on the video until after he was elected, y’know? He’s a reptile, man. (Sighing) See, that’s why the world now…I mean, in America at least, it needs more people like Hunter who’re gonna stand up at tell the truth, tell these people to go fuck themselves.
Juan: (Sighing) Yes. And say it clearly and powerfully with no, y’know…not trying to be careful or nice or objective or fair.
Graham: No.
Juan: Just using…going back to the phrase you used earlier, “righteous anger.” Hunter was able to convey that so powerfully and clearly, and beautifully too. But underlying that was that…that rage.
Graham: Um-hum. He was a very angry man. You said he didn’t turn up for your high school graduation, right?
Juan: Right.
Graham: Did he actually make his own high school graduation?
Juan: (Laughing) Probably not.
Graham: Well, that’s what I thought, maybe it would have brought back some bad memories for him of that time.
Juan: (Slightly surprised) Oh, that’s interesting. That’s interesting. I mean, I know that he did not enjoy high school. As you can imagine, it was like being in jail, a really boring jail. I can’t imagine that he would have taken part in the graduation if he didn’t have to. And yet, as you know from the letters books, he was pretty much all the way through the air force, he was going to apply to Vanderbilt (a university in Nashville – Graham) and get a scholarship. He did assume he was gonna go to college. Then he got out of the air force, kept writing, started his career, and I think he just never…he just…(laughs) it became less and less important: “What’s the point? Why would I do that?”
Graham: What age was Hunter when – Hunter, note the first-name terms with somebody I’ve never met – was he about nineteen when he was working in the newspaper in the air force?
Juan: Let’s see…he had to choose jail or the air force, and then they sent him off to train as a radio technician. Which is just (laughs)…the idea of Hunter in the Arctic, fixing radios for three years is just…(laughs)
Graham: -It’s a crazy thought, yeah.
Juan: -That would never have worked. So I think he must have been in for, I dunno, six months, something like that, and then he managed to lie his way into being the editor for the newspaper. So yeah, he was probably eighteen, nineteen.
Graham: Cos that was something that struck me in the book, that you were talking about how, at eighteen, nineteen, wanting to work in a newspaper, and saying “I dunno where that came from.” Cos I wondered if it maybe came from the back of your own head, cos that’s what your dad was doing at that age, so...you talk about how words mean more to you than you maybe…
Juan: (Bemused) Oh, that’s interesting…But see, these are things that…I hadn’t even thought about that, about those parallels. Yeah! Yeah! Interesting! That’s right though.
Graham: You said that you discovered how much words meant to you, it was obvious that you had words in your head, even at that age. But I don’t think that you could have…your dad cast too huge a literary shadow for you to easily get out of. Which you’ve done now, you’ve stepped out into your own right as a writer. I mean, your book’s excellent! I mean, I wouldn’t bullshit you just for the sake of it…
Juan: No, I don’t think you would.
Graham: I mean, I’m unfortunately one of those obsessed writer types, you’re talking about crafting words.
Juan: Oh yeah, I’m sure you get it. By the time it was 2013, I was just sick of it, I just couldn’t stand to go through it one more time. And actually at that point I reached out to Jann and said “Hey, would you read the book and, y’know, gimme some feedback?” “No, but lemme give you the name of a guy here who’s a really good editor.” And it was Paul Scanlon, he worked as a writer and editor for Rolling Stone back in the early ‘70s with Hunter-
Graham: -Yeah, I remember his name.
Juan: -That was a godsend, to have an experienced editor to go through the book and say, y’know, “This works, these five pages, they can go, you need some transitions here, you need to tell a little bit more here.” I didn’t have the energy, nor did I have the objectivity to do that.
Graham: You don’t have the distance from it.
Juan: Exactly, exactly. And it’s just exhausting, going through it over and over and over it again, to find out what it needs, and at some point I just said “I can’t do it anymore.” And that’s where having Paul was just a godsend. It wouldn’t have been anywhere near as a good a book without his help, and I really got an appreciation for…alright (chuckling) here’s what editors can do, here’s what a good editor can do for ya. I mean, how have you dealt with that, have you, uh…
Graham: I’ve just edited it myself. I taught myself to write. When I was…what age was I…twenty-eight, I decided I was gonnae go and study English. I went to Aberdeen University-
Juan: -Yes!
Graham: (Chuckling) –I went for one lesson (Juan chuckles), they were teaching An Occurrence at Own Creek Bridge (by Ambrose Bierce – Graham), I went “Fuck this!”
Juan: (Laughing) Oh yes!
Graham: I just walked right out and I never went back and I just thought “This is gonna ruin reading for me.” (Juan laughs) So anything on that page is just totally subjective, I have no idea. It’s not like it’s written in the Scottish vernacular, cos to me, I just wanted to do something that was completely different. I’ve ended up writing a book about a Chicago band, and then I somehow end up moving to Chicago. The whole thing’s just totally bizarre. (Juan laughs) I mean, my car, on Monday, gave out four hundred yards from where I first lived in America, so I thought “I literally cannot go any further on this trip, so I’m gonna hafta leave.” There’s a strange…I’m not really…I mean, you’re talking about superstition and all these things in the book…I mean, the fact that I live less than three miles from where William S Burroughs lived when he was in Chicago is just totally bizarre to me. Anyway...I’m curious to know, what kind of music do you listen to?
Juan: Ummm…let’s see. I kind of go through phases, I’m just so thrilled that there’s a thing like Pandora, because it’s a way to hear music that I would normally never hear, not that anybody listens to the radio anymore. So, let’s see, what’s on my playlist. I’m a big fan of LCD Soundsystem, that…it’s sort of electronic. I really like indie female singers like Fiona Apple. I think she’s just brilliant. Let’s see…some favourites like Jeff Buckley. Then I get a kick out of R&B like Estelle, and also…uh…what’s her name…
Graham: (Chuckling) Please don’t say Adele, don’t say Adele…
Juan: You know what? There are actually two songs by Adele that I think are actually damned good songs. I don’t like anything else, I like two of her songs.
Graham: (Chuckling)
Juan: I mean I love this, you have access to this massive catalogue so I see a reference to Siouxsie and the Banshes and I think “Oh yeah, I need to check that out. Hey, this is some good stuff!”
Graham: Here’s a question for you. When you are listening to a song…now, when I wrote my book, it starts and ends with the word ‘silence.’ The whole thing’s meant to be a music concert, just playing, y’know. And I put the words as lyrics, it’s a weird style, I don’t know what the Hell it is. When you listen to songs, do the words have to be good, or does that not concern you so much? You pay attention to lyrics?
Juan: (Sighing) Definitely, yeah. It’s gotta be both, though. And with this selection of music that’s now available to us, I’m really picky, if I don’t like a song in the first thirty seconds I’m just like “Alright, forget it, I have no interest in listening to that.” But that’s why Fiona Apple is definitely the top of my list right now, because her music’s so interesting, they’re good melodies, and her lyrics are, y’know, it’s poetry. A friend of mine was talking about Big Star the other day, and I thought “What’s the big deal about Big Star.” Well, they had some catchy melodies, but their lyrics were just pathetic. So it’s really hard for me to listen to Big Star now, and think “Oh god, the lyrics are terrible, they’re terrible!” (Laughs) It’s really gotta be both to make it worth listening to, unless it’s just for, it’s a song for, just a groove, like Mary J Blige. Great songs, and they just move, just a great groove, the lyrics are perhaps not so important, but most of the time, yes, the lyrics matter.
Graham: (Coughing dryly) Sorry, I dunno why I’m coughing here. “TB or not TB, that is the question.” I really like this one guy called JG Thirlwell, the Australian guy, and some of his albums have the most incredible lyrics that you will ever come across.
Juan:
(Sounding interested) Hmmm, what’s his name again?
Graham: JG Thirlwell. I’ll send you a link. He sings about a male/female serial killer team, and he sings “Sharkfins slashin’ at the mission rails/salty liquid diet and rusty nails/shark bite and snake teeth/crawlin’ with maggots, grimy gold leaf/the bladder and bowels of poverty/for a roving cataract to see/five years without an anchor/suitcase full of contraband/making a virtue out of sin/siphoning the sea of the damned/though shalt not stick it out/if you ain’t gonna share it…”
Juan: Wow! Wow!
Graham: It’s really fucking intense. I have to send you a link to that album. Lyrically the whole fucking album is like that, it’s just, oooh, just amazing dark poetry, man, y’know?
Juan: And then what kind of music does he do?
Graham: It’s kind of industrial, basically like banging your head against a wall type music. (Juan laughs) Literally and figuratively he’s banging his head against the walls of his internal cage. He’s got a Scottish mother. All depends if you like that kind of dark…I’ve liked it a bit too much in my life, if you know what I mean. But no, it’s amazing, I’ll send you a link to it. The lyrics are absolutely stunning. He does it with a sense of humour too, though, y’know? “When it’s one man against the world/I shouldn’t have so much time to complain.” (Juan laughs) Listen, I’m just sitting here babbling into your ear, and you’ve given me far more than an hour already (by this point the interview had been going on an hour and forty-one minutes- Graham), I don’t mean to keep you from whatever else you need to be doing.
(We have a brief conversation about Juan’s son that Juan did not want me to put in the interview)
Graham: It’s interesting, cos obviously writing runs in your family. It was very clear to me right from the start of that book, you’re talking about reading, and being a nerd…even if that eighteen-year-old letter I was like, “Oh, this is teen angst, but it’s really well-written teenage angst,” (Juan laughs) “This is fucking great, man, this is really good!” It was obvious even at that age that you were a writer, you just had to eventually admit it to yourself. You’ve stepped out of your dad’s shadow, your book is absolutely brilliant, thank you so much for allowing us that intimate portrait. Cos I’m sure, as I said, that a lot of it must have been painful to write, and it added a different dimension to your father.
Juan: I’m glad, I’m very glad.
Graham: And not just another dimension, another, better dimension. I’m gonna let you off the phone, but while we’re here, I’m gonna open a beer (probably Icehouse or Natural Ice at that fractured point in my life, the crack cocaines of beer – Graham), and I’m gonna toast you and your father, okay? (Foaming pssst and opening beercan crack on recording)
Juan: I’ve gotta drive or I’d do the same. This has been a real pleasure, it’s just so nice to talk with you because you really appreciate Hunter The Writer, and you’re obviously serious about writing, and you’re serious about reading. It’s just really nice to be able to share that appreciation with you. Yeah, he was a helluva writer, goddamn he could write! (Chuckles)
Graham: (Knowingly) Oh yeah. He meant a lot of things to a lot of people, but that was what I always took from him, the clarity, the style, the prose, the purpose, the meaning. I mean, everything behind the man’s work was just correct. So I don’t look upon him as…I really despise these people who look upon him as some sort of Crazy Writer Guy caricature, because they miss…they’ve got a one-dimensional picture of a fifteen-dimensional man. You know, it’s a joke!
Juan: And they’re missing the most important part, y’know? Hunter’s behaviour is not important, it’s his writing that is, that’s what’s worth paying attention to. And that’s what, hopefully, will continue to be passed down.
Graham: Oh, it will be.
Juan: Yes. His crazy antics, y’know, there’s nothing original about that.
Graham: I think he was a man who was in a lot of pain, to be honest.
Juan: Absolutely, he absolutely was.
Graham: I think when his dad died it sent him off somewhere that he couldn’t quite come back from, I don’t know.
Juan: (Sighing) You know, I don’t know if it was that, or if he was just wired that way from the start, I don’t know. But he was never just a regular kid. Losing your dad when you’re fifteen or so, I can’t imagine that, I would think it would be very hard.
Graham: It’s good that your dad had that time with your son, it’s sad. I remember reading that he was looking at photographs of your son on a laptop, and he was embarrassed that he was found doing that. (Juan chuckles) And I was thinking it was strange that he would not want to be seen to be that sentimental, because that man had a really sentimental side to him, y’know?
Juan: Oh, absolutely he did. I mean, romantic, sentimental, absolutely!
Graham: And that was what was really nice about him. He wasn’t just some one-dimensional drunk, druggie character, there was a real love of life and of language, and of America-
Juan: - Yeah.
Graham: - And of humanity in general in the man.
Juan: Oh yeah, yeah. There’s being weird, and there’s being mean.
Graham: Yeah.
Juan: I mean, god bless the weird, but there’s never any excuse for being cruel.
Graham: Well Juan, I’m gonna let you go, pal, cos your son will be back soon, and you’ve got normal human things to do this evening. I will, of course, send you a link to the interview when it goes up online (better late than never! Sorry again, Juan! – Graham) This will be strange, it’ll be the last thing I write in America, about your dad and you.
Juan: Well, that’s not a bad way to go out, really.
Graham: No, it’s…oh, I’ll tell you, your dad was so important to me when I was younger, and he still is. Owl Farm (Hunter’s farm – Graham) is a mythic place in my mind, it represents – freedom, absolute freedom-
Juan: (Knowingly) Ah-hah…
Graham: -But not irresponsible freedom. I mean the man could shoot his guns, he could get drunk, he could talk to…I mean, if you think about the calibre of person your dad had around him – he could talk to Bill Clinton’s people, and Ed Bradley, Warren Zevon. These people were top-level people, and they respected your father, you know what I mean?
Juan: Yeah. Yeah.
Graham: Which tells you everything you really need to know. I mean, he could communicate with anybody and everybody. It’s quite incredible.
Juan: Yeah.
Graham: He lived…he lived ten lifetimes, y’know?
Juan: Oh yes. Yes.
Graham: I really have enjoyed speaking to you, Juan, it really has made my day, man.
Juan: Oh, likewise, Graham. This has been great, it really has been.
Graham: I will send you a link to the interview when it goes up and tomorrow – maybe later on tonight – I will send you a link to the Burgess letter-
Juan: -Oh, I would love to see that.
Graham: It’s your dad on top form and you’re thinking (Juan laughs) oh Christ. I mean, I love A Clockwork Orange, but I was ending myself laughing. If you’d stuck the two of them in a boxing ring, you can only imagine what would have happened. (Laughing) “Seconds later, the limey is biting the canvas.” Anyway. To you and your dad I’m having a little drink of beer this evening, well done with your book and I hope you continue to write for a very long time, sir.
Juan: Thank you very much Graham, it’s really been a sincere pleasure and I look forward to seeing the article. And good luck with your book – I hope it accomplishes what you want, and has a lot of readers. Cos I dunno about you, but that’s kind of the point to me, you know, I don’t write for myself, I write for other people. And I look very forward to reading it.
Graham: Thank you for your time, mister Thompson, I do appreciate it.
Juan: Thank you, Graham. Take care. Bye.
THE (VERY BELATED) END.
This writer's Hunter S Thompson collection:
Graham: JG Thirlwell. I’ll send you a link. He sings about a male/female serial killer team, and he sings “Sharkfins slashin’ at the mission rails/salty liquid diet and rusty nails/shark bite and snake teeth/crawlin’ with maggots, grimy gold leaf/the bladder and bowels of poverty/for a roving cataract to see/five years without an anchor/suitcase full of contraband/making a virtue out of sin/siphoning the sea of the damned/though shalt not stick it out/if you ain’t gonna share it…”
Juan: Wow! Wow!
Graham: It’s really fucking intense. I have to send you a link to that album. Lyrically the whole fucking album is like that, it’s just, oooh, just amazing dark poetry, man, y’know?
Juan: And then what kind of music does he do?
Graham: It’s kind of industrial, basically like banging your head against a wall type music. (Juan laughs) Literally and figuratively he’s banging his head against the walls of his internal cage. He’s got a Scottish mother. All depends if you like that kind of dark…I’ve liked it a bit too much in my life, if you know what I mean. But no, it’s amazing, I’ll send you a link to it. The lyrics are absolutely stunning. He does it with a sense of humour too, though, y’know? “When it’s one man against the world/I shouldn’t have so much time to complain.” (Juan laughs) Listen, I’m just sitting here babbling into your ear, and you’ve given me far more than an hour already (by this point the interview had been going on an hour and forty-one minutes- Graham), I don’t mean to keep you from whatever else you need to be doing.
(We have a brief conversation about Juan’s son that Juan did not want me to put in the interview)
Graham: It’s interesting, cos obviously writing runs in your family. It was very clear to me right from the start of that book, you’re talking about reading, and being a nerd…even if that eighteen-year-old letter I was like, “Oh, this is teen angst, but it’s really well-written teenage angst,” (Juan laughs) “This is fucking great, man, this is really good!” It was obvious even at that age that you were a writer, you just had to eventually admit it to yourself. You’ve stepped out of your dad’s shadow, your book is absolutely brilliant, thank you so much for allowing us that intimate portrait. Cos I’m sure, as I said, that a lot of it must have been painful to write, and it added a different dimension to your father.
Juan: I’m glad, I’m very glad.
Graham: And not just another dimension, another, better dimension. I’m gonna let you off the phone, but while we’re here, I’m gonna open a beer (probably Icehouse or Natural Ice at that fractured point in my life, the crack cocaines of beer – Graham), and I’m gonna toast you and your father, okay? (Foaming pssst and opening beercan crack on recording)
Juan: I’ve gotta drive or I’d do the same. This has been a real pleasure, it’s just so nice to talk with you because you really appreciate Hunter The Writer, and you’re obviously serious about writing, and you’re serious about reading. It’s just really nice to be able to share that appreciation with you. Yeah, he was a helluva writer, goddamn he could write! (Chuckles)
Graham: (Knowingly) Oh yeah. He meant a lot of things to a lot of people, but that was what I always took from him, the clarity, the style, the prose, the purpose, the meaning. I mean, everything behind the man’s work was just correct. So I don’t look upon him as…I really despise these people who look upon him as some sort of Crazy Writer Guy caricature, because they miss…they’ve got a one-dimensional picture of a fifteen-dimensional man. You know, it’s a joke!
Juan: And they’re missing the most important part, y’know? Hunter’s behaviour is not important, it’s his writing that is, that’s what’s worth paying attention to. And that’s what, hopefully, will continue to be passed down.
Graham: Oh, it will be.
Juan: Yes. His crazy antics, y’know, there’s nothing original about that.
Graham: I think he was a man who was in a lot of pain, to be honest.
Juan: Absolutely, he absolutely was.
Graham: I think when his dad died it sent him off somewhere that he couldn’t quite come back from, I don’t know.
Juan: (Sighing) You know, I don’t know if it was that, or if he was just wired that way from the start, I don’t know. But he was never just a regular kid. Losing your dad when you’re fifteen or so, I can’t imagine that, I would think it would be very hard.
Graham: It’s good that your dad had that time with your son, it’s sad. I remember reading that he was looking at photographs of your son on a laptop, and he was embarrassed that he was found doing that. (Juan chuckles) And I was thinking it was strange that he would not want to be seen to be that sentimental, because that man had a really sentimental side to him, y’know?
Juan: Oh, absolutely he did. I mean, romantic, sentimental, absolutely!
Graham: And that was what was really nice about him. He wasn’t just some one-dimensional drunk, druggie character, there was a real love of life and of language, and of America-
Juan: - Yeah.
Graham: - And of humanity in general in the man.
Juan: Oh yeah, yeah. There’s being weird, and there’s being mean.
Graham: Yeah.
Juan: I mean, god bless the weird, but there’s never any excuse for being cruel.
Graham: Well Juan, I’m gonna let you go, pal, cos your son will be back soon, and you’ve got normal human things to do this evening. I will, of course, send you a link to the interview when it goes up online (better late than never! Sorry again, Juan! – Graham) This will be strange, it’ll be the last thing I write in America, about your dad and you.
Juan: Well, that’s not a bad way to go out, really.
Graham: No, it’s…oh, I’ll tell you, your dad was so important to me when I was younger, and he still is. Owl Farm (Hunter’s farm – Graham) is a mythic place in my mind, it represents – freedom, absolute freedom-
Juan: (Knowingly) Ah-hah…
Graham: -But not irresponsible freedom. I mean the man could shoot his guns, he could get drunk, he could talk to…I mean, if you think about the calibre of person your dad had around him – he could talk to Bill Clinton’s people, and Ed Bradley, Warren Zevon. These people were top-level people, and they respected your father, you know what I mean?
Juan: Yeah. Yeah.
Graham: Which tells you everything you really need to know. I mean, he could communicate with anybody and everybody. It’s quite incredible.
Juan: Yeah.
Graham: He lived…he lived ten lifetimes, y’know?
Juan: Oh yes. Yes.
Graham: I really have enjoyed speaking to you, Juan, it really has made my day, man.
Juan: Oh, likewise, Graham. This has been great, it really has been.
Graham: I will send you a link to the interview when it goes up and tomorrow – maybe later on tonight – I will send you a link to the Burgess letter-
Juan: -Oh, I would love to see that.
Graham: It’s your dad on top form and you’re thinking (Juan laughs) oh Christ. I mean, I love A Clockwork Orange, but I was ending myself laughing. If you’d stuck the two of them in a boxing ring, you can only imagine what would have happened. (Laughing) “Seconds later, the limey is biting the canvas.” Anyway. To you and your dad I’m having a little drink of beer this evening, well done with your book and I hope you continue to write for a very long time, sir.
Juan: Thank you very much Graham, it’s really been a sincere pleasure and I look forward to seeing the article. And good luck with your book – I hope it accomplishes what you want, and has a lot of readers. Cos I dunno about you, but that’s kind of the point to me, you know, I don’t write for myself, I write for other people. And I look very forward to reading it.
Graham: Thank you for your time, mister Thompson, I do appreciate it.
Juan: Thank you, Graham. Take care. Bye.
THE (VERY BELATED) END.
This writer's Hunter S Thompson collection:
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