Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone Read Online Free PDF Page A

Derby & recovering from a massive fuck-around—with Wallposter #4 due at the (Denver) printer in 4 days, and nothing written. Not even a cover—and my art partner, Tom Benton, is in the hospital for a shoulder operation. So things are jangled here. Selah.
    On the Aspen/politics piece, I’ll aim at getting it to you around mid/late June. One of the main problems is that anything I write in
RS
is going to get back here pretty quick, so I have toconsider that aspect before I get it on. Our county commissioner candidate hasn’t been told, yet, that he’s it ... and I want to get him solidly committed before I announce for sheriff. Otherwise, he—and our whole liberal/money gang—will freak right out and leave me running a straight Freak-Power shot; and that won’t work. The dropout Head mentality is a maddening thing to work with; they don’t know Kent State from Kent cigarettes, and frankly they don’t give a fuck. But I’ll get a decent piece out of this scene—for good or ill. Let’s look at June 20 or so.
    As for photographs, we have some competent locals but they don’t give a fuck either—but let’s wait a while until you send somebody out. July 4 is always a bitch here: Violence, bombs, bikers, posses with shotguns, etc. So if I can’t root up a batch of good photos by July 1, maybe you should send somebody out who can do this scene with a fresh eye. There are one or two local photogs who could get the stuff pretty easily, but if I can’t prod them out of their lethargy we’d be better off with somebody interested. I’ll let you know.
    But frankly I’d just as soon have one of your people come out. Otherwise, I’ll have to ride herd on the local fuckers & do everything for them except push the button. (And in fact I might do that. I used to take pictures for half a living. No reason why I shouldn’t make a run at it this time ... and if my own stuff bombs we can always use one of your people.)
    Anyway, the thing is cooking. My only real problem is how to write it without screwing myself to the floor in November. We’ll see . . .
    Sincerely,
    Hunter

The Battle of Aspen:
Freak Power in the Rockies
    October 1, 1970
    Two hours before the polls closed we realized that we had no headquarters—no hole or Great Hall where the faithful could gather for the awful election-night deathwatch. Or to celebrate the Great Victory that suddenly seemed very possible.
    We had run the whole campaign from a long oaken table in the Jerome Tavern on Main Street, working flat out in public so anyone could see or even join if they felt ready ... but now, in these final hours, we wanted a bit of privacy; some clean, well-lighted place, as it were, to hunker down and wait . . .
    We also needed vast quantities of ice and rum—and a satchel of brain-rattling drugs for those who wanted to finish the campaign on the highest possible note, regardless of the outcome. But the main thing we needed, with dusk coming down and the polls due to close at seven o’clock, was an office with several phone lines, for a blizzard of last-minute calls to those who hadn’t yet voted. We’d collected the voting lists just before five—from our poll-watcher teams who’d been checking them off since dawn—and it was obvious, from a very quick count, that the critical Freak Power vote had turned out in force.
    Joe Edwards, a twenty-nine-year-old head, lawyer, and bike-racer from Texas, looked like he might, in the waning hours of Election Day in November 1969, be the next mayor of Aspen, Colorado.
    The retiring mayor, Dr. Robert “Buggsy” Barnard, had been broadcasting vicious radio warnings for the previous forty-eight hours, raving about long prison terms for vote-fraud and threatening violent harassment by “phalanxes of poll watchers” for any strange or freaky-looking scum whomight dare to show up at the polls. We checked the laws and found that Barnard’s radio warnings were a violation of the “voter intimidation” statutes, so