HST ‘Gonzo Tapes’ Will Hunt You Down & Slit Your Throat

It seems like just yesterday that I arrived at work to find a young editorial assistant wide-eyed and shaken. "Someone called for you," she gasped. "He said he was going to slit your throat." Not a normal Monday-morning message in the mag business. "He said something about hunting and demanded a Porsche or something." Ah, now it made sense. It was my friend Hunter S. Thompson. I'd been trying to convince Porsche to drive a new all-road model from Los Angeles to Woody Creek, Colorado, for Hunter to test drive and me to write up for the San Francisco Examiner Magazine. She played the message, and that familiar staccato baritone filled the conference room. "I want that Porsche. And I want it now. If I don't get it, I will hunt you down like an animal and slit your throat." Such love.

I’ve got lots of tapes of our chats. But I’m pretty sure none of them come close to his own personal stash of queer thoughts and bent logic of his halcyon days. Thankfully, Shout Factory is releasing The Gonzo Tapes, a five-disc audio dose of Hunter’s notes recorded between 1965 and 1975, documenting his hard ride with the Hell’s Angels to his tear through La Vegas to his fearful tour in Saigon. And this just reminds me that he’s gone. These days, 4 a.m. phone calls only mean bad news.