Fifteen years ago, when I...
Fifteen years ago, when I was an editorial assistant at Rolling Stone, Jann gave me the slightly extracurricular assignment (which I never for a moment considered turning down) of being Hunter's assistant, errand-boy, and aide de camp whenever he was in New York. It started out with me picking up Hunter at LaGuardia Airport and taking him to the Carlyle Hotel; from that point on, my specific instructions from Jann were, in toto, "see what happens."
Two-and-a-half years ago, just after Hunter's suicide, Jann directed me to compile Hunter's life story for this book.
Thankfully, the process of building the book involved slightly less mayhem than-day-to-day dealings with Hunter, though my first interview - with former Hells Angels Maximum Leader Sonny Barger at his ranch north of Phoenix - had me continually scanning Sonny's house and property for the nearest available immediate exit. In fact, Sonny greeted me warmly from his lawn chair as I pulled into his driveway, answered my questions gratefully if gruffly as we sipped iced tea at his kitchen table, and then gave me a charming tour of his house and proudly showed off his horses - though I was trailed everywhere I went by a large Angel friend of his.
After that, the scores and scores of interviews flew by mostly fast and furious, with occasional stops and starts along the way: L.A., San Francisco, Washington, D.C., the Twin Cities, Aspen and Denver and back and back, Boston, more West Coast, Louisville, upstate New York, back to the city, etc. etc. . . I was quite openly and obviously looking for answers to a lot of questions I had about Hunter; I was also acting as a human conduit with a digital recorder simply receiving stories I'd heard about Hunter and both his wild and not-so-wild life.
Two particular places, and the people there I visited with, lent an absolutely massive insight into both background and influence. Hunter's childhood friends in Louisville - particularly Gerald and Betsy Tyrrell - had me wondering why he ever left his old hometown. Also, many people know about Hunter's 1970 run for sheriff in Aspen, though it's usually seen, from a casual point of view, as some sort of wild-hair, one-off stunt. Hunter's legions of friends, associates, conspirators, and partners-in-crime (and law enforcement) in Aspen -particularly Bob Braudis, Gerry Goldstein, Michael Solheim, Tom Benton, Joe Edwards and George and Patti Stranahan - made me understand both why Hunter moved there in the first place and how he changed the area for the better in an absolutely vital and real way.
What really makes any oral history worthwhile, of course, is the quality of the people telling the stories - and in this case, the sheer quantity of friends didn't hurt either. A few of Hunter's closest friends and family, both current and former, truly made this book by talking about the good times as well as the boring times - and answering difficult questions about the bad times and the dark times. My heartfelt thanks to Sondi Wright, Juan Thompson, Deborah Fuller, Laila Nabulsi, Terry and Cat Sabonis and a number of others for handling them with grace and equanimity.
Sometimes the people I was interviewing - among them Hunter's closest friends - would ask me for the answers to Hunter: What in the hell made him the way he was? What really happened on such-and-such a date? Did Hunter really do this or that? And, of course, why do you think Hunter killed himself? At times, I became a sort of ad hoc grief counselor, though it was only after all the interviews were completed that I could even hazard something approaching a working hypothesis about this question. I'll leave it up to the reader to decide the answer.
Copyright © Corey Seymour
