The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [169]
That’s one of my proudest achievements. It’s in Random House [and many other dictionaries]. I’m afraid to quote it.
Where did the phrase “fear and loathing” come from?
It came out of my own sense of fear and a perfect description of that situation to me. However, I have been accused of stealing it from Nietzsche or Kafka or something. It seemed like a natural thing.
What was the response when you filed ‘Vegas’?
The staff then was a pretty tight group. We had dinner down at some Mexican restaurant we used to go to a lot, to celebrate the bringing in of the great Salazar saga. That was the event. We sat at a booth—white Formica table—there were four of us in there: Jane [Wenner], Jann, me inside and [former Rolling Stone editor] David Felton. I might have said something to Jann that afternoon like, “I got a little something extra.”
But I remember sitting down there across from Jann—it was just the two of us at first—and I just said, “Hey, try this.” I think the first day it was nine pages—somehow it went in nines. It was just my handwritten notes, which went on and on and on. That was the thing about Rolling Stone in those days: It was logical. Here I’d had one great triumph and said, “Hey, wait a minute, come over here, I got something better.” And I knew somehow it was better. I knew it was special. It was a different voice. Jann read it. He was the one for a real judgment.
He made me an offer. Can you imagine anyone doing things that way now? But it was just entirely natural, and it’s always been that way. It was, “Hey, hot damn, this is good. What else do you have?” I’d say, “This is a large thing; I’m full of energy here,” and that energy meant finishing something. And he went right along with it.
You don’t get that too often.
I’ve always appreciated that moment.
I’ve never been able to decide what makes me most envious of you as a writer, whether it is the “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive” or when Oscar turned to the hitchhiker and said, “We’re your friends. We’re not like the others.”
We happened to pick up this kid on another road, not on the road from L.A. to Las Vegas. I was driving; it was the first time around—the red car. I saw a kid hitchhiking. A tall, gangly kid. I said, “What the hell?” and I pulled over: “Hop in.” “Hot damn,” he said, “I never rode in a convertible before.” And I said, “You’re in the right place.” I was really pleased. That was a true thing. I identified with him. I almost said, “You want to drive?”
Was Ralph Steadman in Las Vegas during any of this?
No, we sent it to him all at once when it was finished. When I went to Las Vegas, one of my jobs was to find physical art: things that we used, cocktail napkins, maybe photos—we didn’t have a photographer. But that concept didn’t work. I rejected it. It was a cold afternoon, Friday, on a deadline in the Rolling Stone offices, when I rejected [Art Director Robert] Kingsbury’s art for the Vegas story. It was a real crisis: “What do we do now?” This is one of those stories that you read in bad books. I said, “What the fuck, let’s get Ralph Steadman. We should have had him there in the first place.”
We’d worked together on the Derby piece and also on the America’s Cup nightmare. It never got published. Scanlan’s had gone under. Ralph and I had become somewhat disaffected, estranged, because of his experience in New York—his one and only experience with psychedelics, with psilocybin. And he swore he’d never come back to this country and I was the worst example of American swine that had ever been born.
If I had had my way, Ralph would have gone with me to Las Vegas. It was some kind of accountant’s thing: “Save on the art,” you know. I didn’t like the cocktail-napkin thing, but it wasn’t that big a story, really. And, you know, Ralph wouldn’t do it unless he was paid $100,000 or something like that. But when the other art was rejected, I think Jann was there: “Let’s call Ralph.” The story was done. It was one of those, “How fast can we get it to him? How fast can we get