Happy Birthday, Hunter S. Thompson: Photo Gallery and Classic Stories

Seventy years ago today, a one-off named Hunter Stockton Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky. Almost from the get-go, he made his presence felt: According to Hunter's first wife Sandy, his mother said that he "shot out of the womb angry." Thirty-three years later, in 1970, Hunter ran for sheriff in Aspen, Colorado, where he based himself for the rest of his peripatetic life -- an experience he chronicled in his first piece for Rolling Stone. The rest, of course, is history: Thompson perfected a new form in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, changed political writing with Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, and became, as Jann Wenner has written, "part of the DNA of Rolling Stone," as well as a singular American legend in both his writing and his life. To borrow one of his own favorite accolades, he stomped terra. Happy Birthday, Hunter.

Click here for a Hunter S. Thompson photo gallery.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: Excerpt
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 2004

And look for the release of Corey Seymour and Jann S. Wenner's "Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson," an oral biography to be published in October by Little, Brown & Co.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

More Song Stories entries »

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