When Welsh illustrator Ralph Steadman bade farewell to Kentucky after covering the 1970 Derby with skinhead ex-Hell’s Angel Hunter S Thompson, it was as a beaten man. Savage bingeing, wild recriminations and sundry mace attacks had been the staples of that first brutal encounter. Yet Steadman would go on to accompany the good Doctor on such odysseys as the ’72 Presidential campaign trail, Zaire for the Ali-Foreman fight and to a storm-tossed Hawaii where, delving into ‘The Curse of Lono’, they scraped the bottom of something far deeper and darker than political goading or drug-fuelled mythomania.
A testament to this partnership is that even when Steadman wasn’t a first-person witness to events, he illustrated HST’s words with such despicable clarity that one felt he must surely have lived them. ‘The Joke’s Over’ recounts their long and brittle friendship. Thompson comes across as an infuriating man, by turns kind and thoughtless. Steadman is left to question the worth of his input to their twisted vision, and what he brought to a party so full of hangers-on, phonies and poseurs.
Thompson was one of nature’s true originals, a genetic accident who was sick enough to be totally confident. Steadman added modesty and steadfastness to that mix, but was nonetheless as close to the spirit of the great gonzo notion as any mortal is likely to get.
