Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO CAREY MCWILLIAMS, THE NATION:
The turning point in Thompson’s career came when McWilliams gave him the idea to write about the Hell’s Angels for The Nation.
March 18, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dear Mr. McWilliams:
Your cycle idea came this morning & was a pleasant surprise. I’d just as soon not explain why. No reflection on you or The Nation, but on the press in general. I’m surprised anybody in an editorial slot would be interested in a long look at this action.
I got the report this afternoon and talked a bit with the boys in the Attorney General’s office. None of them has ever made contact with the cycle boys: the report is a compilation of query-answers from various California police chiefs. I could give you—or the Observer—a synopsis of the report, I guess, but I’d rather not fool around with that kind of journalism: “247 police chiefs condemn motorcycle gangs, etc.” So what? Police chiefs will condemn anything that makes noise. Which is not to say these cycle boys aren’t mean and dangerous beyond anything that ever got paroled in the name of high spirits.
Anyway, I like the idea and will do the piece for you or somebody else. It’s one I’ve been following, but with no idea of getting an article out of it. You may or may not know that the Hell’s Angels honchos have appealed to the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] for support. Tomorrow or the next day I’ll try to see some of the cycle people; I can’t imagine doing a story without their point of view. Newsweek is ahead of us on this one and I hope they don’t queer it for any other journalist. I’d hate to be drinking with those boys when one of them showed up with a vicious & double-crossing article by the Newsweek man. [ … ] To my mind, the Hell’s Angels are a very natural product of our society. Just like SNCC or the Peace Corps or the permanent unemployed. But different people. That’s what I’d like to find out: who are they? What kind of man becomes a Hell’s Angel? And why? And how? The mechanics.
I figure on a week’s work on this and certainly some expenses, which I’m not sure you’d be willing to meet. Since I’ve already decided to do the piece, I’d like to know roughly what you might pay for it and what kind of expenses you’d bear. I’m not bargaining, just asking for figures. Given a break or two in the way of contacts this one is right up my alley. As of now it looks good.
The new Berkeley story is not so much a peg as a confirmation. How do you read it? I wouldn’t mind getting into that one now. On Saturday I’m going up to the CDC [California Democratic Council] bash in Sacramento, for good or ill. And FYI. OK for now, & thanks for the idea.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO CHARLES KURALT:
Researching the Hell’s Angels had inherent dangers.
March 26, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dear Charley:
It’s been a wild day here. At 6:30 this morning I finally rooted the last Hell’s Angel out of my living room and went to bed, just as Sandy was getting up to do her four-hour stint at the real estate office. I’m doing a piece on motorcycle gangs for The Nation—no money but plenty of kicks. Before I let them into the house last night I explained that I didn’t go much for fist-fighting, but preferred to settle my beefs with a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun. They seemed to grasp this concept and we got along fine; Sandy’s hysteria abated, I was a gallon of wine and a case of beer poorer, but in the end I think I got the makings of about five fine stories.
That’s what prompts me to write you tonight. I’ve done many more hours of research on this than any Nation article (at $100) deserves and right now I’m wondering what to do with the rest of it. As you know, I guess, both Time & Newsweek did pieces on it this week, but mainly arms-length bullshit, despite the Newsweek claim that their man submerged himself in the action. About half those quotes came out of Chronicle clips: a very funny and colorful series done by my old friend George Draper and my new friend Birney Jarvis.8 He just left. It’s midnight here and we’re going sailing with him tomorrow. He’s a Chronicle police reporter, who lives in Sausalito on a 40-foot sloop and is quitting soon to head for the Caribbean. He’s also an ex–vice president and lifetime member of the Hell’s Angels. A golden contact, as it were: he put me in touch with the Angels and last night I boomed in on one of their meetings at the DePau Hotel bar, near Hunter’s Point. Very tense. Who is this big cat? A fucking reporter! Beat his ass! etc. I made a beautiful speech, awash in five hours of beer, to the effect that I was there to do them the ultimate favor of telling the American people the truth about them; I had come out at midnight to this filthy neighborhood, unarmed, and busted into their meeting in my Montana sheepherder’s jacket, for no other reason than to bring their own weird truth to the attention of an American public so long conned by Time & Newsweek—whose articles I presented as horrifying evidence of what happens when a lazy, ignorant, cliché-laden reporter does an article on rough and ready types like “you guys.”
I was dead serious, and after a bad half-hour they came around. Their normal action, of course, is to steer way clear of any news media, or else confront any news type with their drunk-nazi, enemy-of-the-people act. The simple fact that I brought them back to the apartment—five, out of some thirty at the meeting—should be enough to tell you they’re human and, in fact, peculiarly decent when they’re off guard and relaxed. Even so, I’d like to know what my neighbors thought when they looked out their windows and saw those Hell’s Angels jackets filing into my apartment.
Anyway, why don’t you do a special on it? I can guarantee you a cut-off-from-everybody-else contact situation, plus all my research and prior knowledge. As far as I know I’m the only person in the world right now who could assemble Frenchy, Filthy Phil, Puff, Okie Ray, Crazy Rock, and some twenty others for a filming situation. Believe me, that meeting last night would have knocked your eyes and ears off. It made that Indian thing9 seem like a Rotary meeting; this is great stuff for film and my words can’t touch what it really looks and feels like to be in the midst of it.
Two guys I know on The Wall Street Journal are trying to do a piece for True on this thing, but they can’t get anywhere near the action. Twice in the past week I was inside situations that they tried to crash and got turned away from. Until yesterday Jarvis was the only guy who could talk to the Hell’s Angels on anything like human & realistic terms. Today, it’s me, too. When my article comes out I may be stomped—I promised to send them a few copies—so if you want to do a film story on this action it will have to be fast. Contacts like these last only until you say the wrong thing. As it happens, my speech last night created a situation wherein I’m the hero-translator. Anybody with a camera would be more difficult to put across because a lot of these guys are running from the cops, but of the five mentioned above, only Okie Ray is currently wanted. He’s a burglar; a wild-looking guy, with long blond hair, a fine Edwardian mustache and a gold earring in one ear. Filthy Phil weighs 300 pounds and could not be allowed near a sound camera. The odd thing is that these guys are like wild children, extremely volatile, genuinely dangerous in a wrong situation, but very open, curious and even moral when they figure they’re talking to a straight person. You should have heard Frenchy last night when I played a Bob Dylan record for him. That’s the angle I’m working for The Nation and it could also be a good film thing. [ … ]
I happen to know these guys are busted (the club treasury) because the current sec-treasurer has blown all the funds, so they’d be tremendously amenable to any small but not too small (say, $200, more or less) contribution to the treasury; they’re in deep hock to their bondsman and none of them has much money. It would take two days of talk & argument to convince them to cooperate on a film bit, but the natural ham in them would inevitably prevail over their eminently justifiable fear of press and publicity. They’ve been stung every time they’ve cooperated. I’ve assured them my Natio
n piece will be an exception; I haven’t written it yet and can only hope it will be. If not, I might find myself dealing with them en masse some night—but as long as I have the 12-gauge here I don’t worry. With that long hallway, I’m just about invulnerable.
Enclosed is the Newsweek clip, FYI. Also, for no particular reason, is a copy of something I just finished writing in an odd, off moment. Send it back whenever you can.
In all this I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that Hell’s Angels in general aren’t a badass ugly bunch to deal with. The gimmick here is that they can be reached, but probably not for long. It could be a damn good TV special—half-hour or even an hour if we could go with them on a run. I’m an old cycle hand myself, so you could ride with me if it came to that. We could rent a cycle. A big one, and run the bastards into the ground. Burn ’em out. Dazzle ’em with the Rio spinout.
OK, do me the quick favor of saying how this looks to you. I wouldn’t be writing this many pages if I wasn’t sure it was a good thing for us all. I figure the least [Fred] Friendly can do is hire me as a consultant at $300 a day, which seems a fair price for the risks I took last night. If I had lost control of that thing for an instant the result might have been Sandy raped, me badly beaten and the apartment destroyed. Because of all this I was in an extremely high, hypersensitive condition all afternoon—which I spent with them at a garage—and all night, at the DePau bar, which they commandeered for their meeting, and then here at the apartment. When it was all over I had a wild, exhilarated feeling that still prevails. I feel like a badass. With a shotgun, and that’s a big factor. They can’t top my act. (One of these days I’ll speak with Gene Burdick about this; he drives an XKE and says guns are a sick sublimation.)
Oh yeah, Pageant finally wrote to say that they were buying that L.A. piece you read, for $350, and the editor is said to be overwhelmed by my “research” zeal. I could easily sell them a cycle gang piece, but for the moment I want to try it on other, fatter markets. This is too good a story to shrug off on Pageant for $350 or $400. Esquire is a possibility, I think, and maybe the [Saturday Evening] Post.
And that’s that. I have to get out on the Bay in three hours and right now it’s raining like hell. Hello to Petey and send word when I can watch for your Conservation thing. It wasn’t listed here on either the 22nd or 23rd. I guess this Gemini bullshit pushed everything else out of the way. The worst thing about TV news is that it tends to be narrow-minded, stampeded to the obvious, the Big Story, while the meat of reality goes ignored. I’ve lost interest in the evening TV news because it’s so goddamn dull and narrow, like reading Pravda must be, all three networks saying the same predictable things about the same few stories. I know you have a penchant for the other stuff and that’s why I thought of you on this Hell’s Angels thing. This could be a hell of a weird documentary. Let me know how it strikes you. Christ, I haven’t written a five-page letter in years. I must be boiling over. Send word.
Sincerely,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO CLIFFORD RIDLEY, NATIONAL OBSERVER:
Thompson revealed his journalistic technique for striking a “balance of terror” with the Hell’s Angels.
March 27, 1965
San Francisco
Cliff:
Assume you’ve seen current Time & Newsweek, re: Hell’s Angels, Calif, outlaw motorcycle club; rape, violence, etc. Carey McWilliams at The Nation asked me to do a behind-the-scenes kind of piece on that action and I consequently went out of my head and invested six—no, seven days’ worth of research in it. Last night I busted into a H.A. meeting at the DePau Hotel bar near the waterfront and survived the ejection sentiment by dint of my size, reckless half-drunk attitude and a beautifully wasted speech on the function of the outlaw press. Me. I showed them the Time & Newsweek articles, then told them I was there to get the real picture. I also said I was going to write the story anyway, so they might as well cooperate. A concept they finally grasped, but not until we had some bad and hairy moments.
Whatever I write for The Nation will consume a small part of my “research”—like, I had five Hell’s Angels here in the apartment until 6:30 this morning—and it strikes me you might want a first-person bit on the same subject. You know, “Me and the Hell’s Angels,” or “A Tough Night at the DePau Hotel.” Yeah, that sort of thing. I’m doing a sociology-type piece for The Nation. I know you don’t dig my sociology, but it occurred to me you might like some of the other, color-action humor sort of thing. I dare say I’m the only reporter in the history of the world who ever got wound up in a story to the point of going to a Hell’s Angels meeting and then taking five of them home for a drinking bout. After all this rape/beating publicity, you can imagine how Sandy felt when we showed up; she was quietly hysterical for five hours. Before I let them in, I explained that I wasn’t in the habit of settling my beefs with my fists, but with a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun. Which was obvious to them upon entry. This seemed to strike a balance of terror that eventually dissolved into a very pleasant evening. These guys are the ultimate rejects from our half-born Great Society; they aren’t half as mean and rough as they seem to be. They can be vicious as hell at times, but last night they struck me—after we leveled out—as a fairly straight bunch with very primitive concepts and honestly puzzled about whatever it is that makes them a source of trouble wherever they go. Like Goldwater, as it were, with all that energy and no socially acceptable place to put it.
Don’t take this as an apologia because for the past week I’ve spent enough time with these guys to know how bad and ugly they can be, and have been. In addition, my original contact on the story is a former Hell’s Angel who is now a Chronicle police reporter. In about three hours we are going sailing with him on the bay; he lives on a boat in Sausalito. I say this only to show you the scope, depth, and irregularity of my sources on this thing. Without this guy I would never have come close to actually talking with these people.
Anyway, I’m doing a piece for The Nation. I don’t know if you figure them to be competition in the realm of circulation, but I thought it would be worth a query—especially since I’ve been working on this stuff in lieu of the Wino piece for the past week. If any angle on this story interests you, send a quick line before I lose interest and re-focus to something else. It’s a good story, with three or four possible pegs and approaches. No photos, however; my camera is hocked.
Send word, ASAP.
Sincerely,
HST
TO CAREY MCWILLIAMS, THE NATION:
The article Thompson sent with this note would become the centerpiece of his first book, Hell’s Angels.
April 9, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dear Mr. McWilliams:
Your gram arrived this afternoon and spared me the awful toil of another rewrite. This thing is pretty well out of control as it is, and doing more work would probably have caused me to destroy the manuscript altogether and cease communicating with you.
As it stands, I can only hope it makes sense. It is probably too long, but my main feeling is that too much has been left out. A one hundred page piece would have been much easier. This one is pocked with a number of footnotes, FYI as much as for publication.
As for sources for my seemingly authoritative but frequently unsupported remarks, I depended almost entirely for general (true) background on one Birney Jarvis, a charter member of the Frisco Hell’s Angels and now a police reporter on the Chronicle. It was his briefing that enabled me to fend off bullshit from the Angels on one hand, and the police on the other. As far as I know, I am the only journalist besides Jarvis whom the Angels have ever dealt with on a friendly social basis. Jarvis wasn’t with me when I went to the meeting and subsequently had five of the wildest ones over to the apartment for a drink-out. He did, in fact, advise me against putting myself in such vulnerable positions with people he knew to be mean drinkers, sunday-punchers and chain-whippers.
I say all this only to empha
size my efforts to find out what this thing really is, and to support any statements of mine that might seem wild or presumptuous. I trust, of course, that what I’ve written is as clear to you as it is to me after several weeks of hashing and re-hashing. If nothing else, I enjoyed dealing with it.
Let me know ASAP how this strikes you.
Thanks,
Hunter S. Thompson
TO PAUL SEMONIN:
After a long sojourn overseas, Semonin was planning to return to New York to study Marxist theory at Columbia University.
April 18, 1965
318 Parnassus
San Francisco
Dear Ph.D.:
I think you’d better stick with the foundation boys and take that Columbia offer; the other action is getting real ugly. Get a degree of some respectable kind and dip into teaching somewhere; that is what everybody else is doing—that, or writing Hip & Camp books for fun and profit. Or pop art.
I envy your illusions but not what you face when you come back here and start dealing with the machine. Along these lines I’ve been watching the slow, day by day action over at Berkeley. About all I can see finally coming off it is the drafting of Mario Savio10; he missed court the other day to take his physical, and supposedly passed with flying colors. The reason the whole thing came to a publicity head in the first place was a giant Establishment fuckup by a Chancellor named Strong, who has since resigned under pressure—not for doing what he did, but for doing it so blatantly … like the difference between Goldwater and Johnson. But the end result has been the same: constant pressure, penalties & restrictions. If you get arrested once, for instance, a sympathetic friend or liberal benefactor might be happy to make bail. The second time, maybe—depending on what kind of publicity is involved. But then on the third try when the reporters are tired of the story & besides it has since been brought out that you have two convictions for lice-carrying, then bail is a hell of a lot harder to make and you wind up paying a bondsman, which is non-refundable. And then it starts hurting, especially if you don’t have the money or have to piss people off to get it. That’s what’s happening now—not just the bail business, but other small & ugly harassments, like being drafted. You think Savio’s name popped out of a hat?