channel hunter
real life
filed: 2005 Feb 22
illustrations: RalphSteadman
In summer 1992, I was an intern in Rolling Stone’s editorial department and worked on the magazine’s 25th Anniversary issue. Before 2day’s meganet, where everything tries to be “just like you,” RS was in that space where you sought “just like you.” And the phone & fax (email’s tin cans & wire) were 2 of only few means for a person of average means to talk to someone immediately. No IMs. No chat (short for “chatter,” btw). No Palms, but palm readers, of course. “Cash for clairvoyance” is a spincash old as sentience.
The rule was to challenge interns. We were never left alone. Every editor was given free reign to duff off some gruntage to the freshlings. But I was okay for that. Where RS and great rock and roll intersect(ed) is in work ethic. “You have to work to be great” is the loudest of what I took away, though, on the quiet side, the job also taught me the line between criticism and art when applied to music. Because there is a line. You can’t always be your own best critic – only your own loudest critic. So, fast forward, sometime in late June, I was “challenged” with getting hold of Hunter S. Thompson to remind him of a deadline…
“Westy,” said Bob, the Managing Editor, all of a sudden hovering over my desk, “we need to find out where Hunter’s piece is for the 25th.”
“Maybe I could write a piece about calling him for his article?” I tried to answer like I’d been there. Bob perfuncted a laugh as he saw through the act, though, and cut me off.
“Interns don’t write. Remember ‘Orientation?’ ”
Bob had whip-crack memory that went back decades. Mine was shorter.
“Yeah, I do” I said. “ ‘Be here to help.’ ”
“So just get it done. I’m off to lunch. Hunter’s number’s on the sheet.”
