"Stumbling across this highly amusing clip of the great Woody Guthrie, we were amazed at how perrenial the car fetish is. The great bard of the American dustbowl knew a bit about the road - and his little ditty in "
Song of the Sausage Creature
In a piece of inspired editorial finagling, American magazine Cycle World somehow managed to parley the godfather of gonzo with the Ducati press office back in the day, and got yer man hopped up and hopped on a 900 SP for the ride.
Not only that, but the art department managed to convince Ralph Steadman to do the illustration. Steadman was a seasoned pensman and creator of the visual side of the experientially engaged hackery to which Hunter S gave birth.
He was an old mate of Thompson and had filed pics for Rolling Stone Magazine that accompanied many of Thompson’s whacked-out but surprisingly lucid and incisive stories.
Looking at the mainstream motorcycle press these days, we reckon there’s room for a little shake-up. Come on editors: get a bit of gonzoish entertainment and creative illustration in your pages!
We humbly submit, dear reader, that Influx is a little haven of the same…
CLICK TO ENLARGE
That was a fun read. “Balls on fire with a silent scream in your throat.”
I don’t know how literally I’m willing to take that, but it’s worth pursuing…
Man was a genius: inevitable that he’d blow his brains out. Do we need more of this? A lot of people tried to copy his style, but few succeeded. I think the truth was that he was stark-staring mad (plus completely out of it when he was “working”), and if you’re not you can’t write like this