Nude Beach
Alison Mosshart on Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson died twenty years ago today. To honor his work and introduce it to a new generation of readers, Simon & Schuster has spent the last few years repackaging many of his books with new introductions from a varied group of artists and writers including Rachel Kushner, Lars Ulrich, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Sturgill Simpson, Johnny Knoxville, Ryen Russillo, Tim Heidecker and Alison Mosshart—whose introduction to Generation of Swine is excerpted below.
I have two muscle cars. I’ve done enough free promotion for Dodge, so I don’t feel super inclined to scream about it for the 4000th time, but both are Challengers of ferocious stock. One’s called the Black Shark and the other is the White Shark. I named them, of course, after Hunter S. Thompson’s Red Shark, the 1973 cherry-flavored Chevy Caprice convertible that I’ve always wanted to get my paws on. Yes, I want to touch that car. Sure, I’d love to drive it. But I’d settle for just one kiss.
A few years back, my pal Tim and I were in Aspen, and we decided to drive over to Woody Creek and try to find Hunter’s house. I’d read he had a fifty-foot satellite dish installed in his backyard in the ’80s that could hoover up TV signals from as far away as Australia. Getting rid of one of those behemoths is next to impossible so it still had to be there. The dish was our best bet. I figured due to its big wide-open gullet, it was spending its retirement years reflecting the hot rays of the sun like an angry laser beam, melting crosses off the nearby churches, spontaneously combusting bushes, and wreaking all sorts of havoc. All we had to do was follow the smoke. Follow the smoke. Find the car. We rolled down the windows and stuck our noses out.
But the plan fell apart when black clouds rolled in, rumbling and hissing with ugly wind and freezing rain. Our mission derailed. We wound up in the Woody Creek Tavern, propped up at the bar where Hunter used to sit, the Mecum auto auction on TV. We hadn’t intended to throw the towel in totally, but the girl behind the bar kept ’em comin’ and the rain kept pouring ’til sundown. And so it goes. That was as close as I ever got to the Red Shark. I pray there is still time.
Hunter was America’s misfit fortune-teller, roaming the country and relaying to us the future. Here, in this book full of his Gonzo-style reporting—short pieces that could almost be considered lucid bad dreams—the truth is batshit and the venom is strong. You will find that he was right, and most everyone else was . . . wah wah (insert sad trombone).
If you were a kid in the ’80s and you wondered why your neighbors were lunatics and everyone sold questionable merchandise out of the trunks of leased Corvettes, why the beach was crawling with rats and your average housewife was foaming at the mouth, or why you had this itch you couldn’t scratch, a burning scab of a hunch that you may have been born purely for the purpose of an insurance scam? Look here.
If you were a kid in the ’90s and you wondered why sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll meant you’d go straight to hell on a church bus to the equator, why you had no lock on your bedroom door and your teenage idols were coined Satan worshipers on the nightly news, why cops hung around the lockers at school toting Rottweilers trained to devour teenage legs, or why everyone and everything seemed so unhinged and uptight at the same time, it was like trying to breathe with a bag over your head? Look here.
And if you’re a kid right now and you wonder why you’re trying to survive the inferno of a Suicidal Capitalist Greed Cult but the water coming from your tap is florescent orange and stinks of fried scampi, why despite taking all your vitamins you’re failing the science project, but you can’t stop, you can’t stop licking the lollipop, why your retinas are burning, and there’s a phone stuck up your nose, why you’re anxious and nervous and hate all your clothes, or why the good guys are bad guys, and the bad guys are monsters, and you need glasses and crutches and downers and uppers? Look here.
Hunter tried to warn us that no, silly, Jesus ain’t coming ’round the mountain when he comes. The devil built a wall and set dynamite to the tracks. He’s not wearing sheep’s clothing anymore, he’s wearing flip-flops. Every major city, small town, shopping mall, lost holler, corn patch, and parking lot is one big fat nude beach these days. Alas, there’s no hiding the grotesque flesh-eating rash that has spread from foot to forehead. You’ve seen ’em, those vampires hanging off the backs of Ford F-150s sipping spiked fruit punch with their willies out. Traffic has lurched to a halt. Jammed! The highways littered with selfie sticks and bad vibes. Your brain fries, it’s hot out there. Poop emoji. Praying hands emoji. This helicopter’s flying upside-down now. The capitalist suicide cult has stockpiled their weapons and the politicians that are its fat perverted mascots are all singing hoo-yah, kumbaya! as they suck the last beautiful star out of the night sky.
Do you remember that day George Washington went cross-eyed on the one-dollar bill? It was like so weird, right? Totally!
It’s only a matter of time before they slice up the White House into small, trailer-size chunks, load it on trucks moving west on Highway 40, and relocate the blasted thing to Las Vegas where it belongs. The great casino will have come home to roost, and they’ll finally be able to stick a roller coaster on the roof and play craps in the war room without anyone sniveling. But shit, who doesn’t love a roller coaster?
Alison Mosshart is a writer, visual artist, musician and member of the bands Discount, The Kills and The Dead Weather.
photo credit: Paul Harris/Getty Images