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.”

I dug “the sheet” out of my drawer, found Hunter Thompson’s entry (in the
“G”s, under “Gonzo”) and dialed his Colorado number. To my astonishment,
he picked up on the 3rd ring.

“Is that you?” the voice on the other end crackled.

“Hi, Mr. Thompson, Westy calling from Rolling Stone.”

“You should give yourself more credit.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“By ‘Mr. Thompson,’ ” he continued without cutting me off, “do you mean me?”

“That’s you, isn’t it?” I offered.

“Yes. But it’s not my final me. Can I do something for you?”

“Bob told me to call you.”

“Bob?”

“The managing editor.”

“Oh, one of those. Why?”

“To find out when your piece for the 25th anniversary edition is coming.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Goddamn it! I’m trying to be positive here! Just tell Bob I said ‘yes!’ ”

“Just yes?”

“Yes, you little {unintelligible}.”

“The question was when it’s coming, though. Not if –”

“How do you know what the real question was?”

“I’m just relating what Bob asked me to ask you.”

“Is that all you’re worth?”

I closed my eyes, shook my head and breathed in. He confirmed all of my fears about the world in that moment, and I have spent the rest of my writing life equally cursing and exalting him for that question. Maybe, perhaps, he knew it was early enough in my life to serve me a warning. Maybe it was subconscious. Maybe there was nothing to this random 90 second exchange. Maybe he had his other hand on a gun. All I know is as I breathed out, he chuckled with a satisfied deviance.

“So what should I tell Bob?” I asked him, acting non-plussed. The low laugh
stopped.

“Tell him ‘Hunter said, yes.’ My guess is he’ll have Jann call me and I’d
rather talk to Jann anyway. I don’t know you. But it’s been fun.”

{click}

About 45 minutes later, Bob came back from his lunch.“Did you reach Hunter?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Well, what did he say?”

Smoking was still allowed in the ‘zine’s 6th Avenue offices, but only in conference room #1 – the one next to the framed white suit on the wall from The Jerk. I smoked Camel Lights then, and had dangled an unlit smoke from the corner of my mouth just before Bob was respirating again at my desk. I kept it there while answering, like the self-conscious hunter-channeling chain-dragging shitwad intern I was.

“He said, ‘Tell Bob, I said-” {pause} “ ‘yes.’ ’ ”

“Just ‘yes’?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

“I guess I’ll ask Jann to call him.”

I laughed, and related to Bob Mr. Thompson’s final comment.

Bob shook his head and smiled. “Fucking Hunter.”

- 02.22.2005

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