Gonzo journalism isn’t dead.
Yet the profound prose lifestyle that exploded in the Sixties era of decadence in a psychedelic haze of the late Hunter S. Thompson’s mind-blowing brilliance is on life support.
In the end we’re all headed to the end.
But, like the anthem “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” that Bob Dylan wrote and Roger McGuinn sang in the 1969 movie “Easy Rider,” the high voltage human electricity of the moment warns that “he not busy being born is busy dying.”
U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate Ron Whitehead is busy being born again and again, decade after decade, as he continues to receive Hunter’s loud and clear message from the grave.
America’s Gonzo guru and heir to Hunter’s whirlwind spirit recently thought he might have really bought the ticket. But Ron was not yet ready to take that ride. After a stressful yet mind-bending first couple of days as the most celebrated madman about town, master of ceremonies and founding father of the four-day GonzoFest held this year all over New York City to pay tribute to Hunter’s continuing power and cultural influence, the normally high energy 76-year-old blood and guts bouncer of radical ideas and coal minefield phrases felt serious numbness in his arm.
Worried Hunter’s warning that “big darkness soon come” might be headed his way and expecting a massive stroke, he called for assistance. Paramedics quickly diagnosed severe exhaustion. With bright lights flashing in his head Ron soon made flight arrangements home and cut short his crucial GonzoFest role. Wisdom of the ancients guided him back to sacred Kentucky soil and into the strong arms of muse and love of his life Jinn Bug who has nursed him back to health on more than one occasion.
A ragtag guerrilla band of literary friends and magical mystery colleagues helped Ron travel, but he pretty much pulled off this personal mission of mercy by himself. We often need all the help we can get, but the frantic, manic Gonzo drive to create, write, breathe and ride the edge is what makes us Gonzo in the first place.
Either we go Gonzo or we don’t.
Ron Whitehead goes Gonzo.
Gonzo is an honor not bequeathed like a wet paper Burger King crown balanced on the heads of America’s limited-attention span Gen XYZ. Gonzo is a born in the USA privilege received through the disciplined, continuous work of challenging the system through writing. Gonzo is a wrathful fire-breathing god among modern-day beatniks, leftover countercultural hippies and 21st Century philosophical anarchists like myself.
Hunter S. Thompson set the highest bar which, of course, he drank dry.
As an international foreign correspondent, national news reporter, local columnist and intergalactic commentator Hunter wrote far better chronicles of life in the lunatic lane than most of his peers. His work is unique. Despite a plethora of pathological personality disorders, his work defines him. If you only saw “the movie” you saw nothing. If you only read one of his books and not his lengthy essays you missed a ride on the crazy train and a chance to dance with the barbarians.
Hunter burned out on Feb. 20, 2005, sending the blessed cremains of his large life wildly lived exploding into space on Aug. 20, 2005, in the nose cone of a Hollywood-sponsored rocket.
Yet the unbridled spirit of Hunter’s incendiary Gonzo journalism continues.
Sadly, too many wannabe journalists and other writers don’t even talk a good Gonzo game anymore. They’re lazy. They make excuses not to write. Sad to say they’re phonies. Wordless weasels exploit intoxicating Gonzo grace while blaming their weaknesses on everything from professional mental illness to meth and martini abuse to wearing or drinking the wrong brand of cheap aftershave lotion. These frauds are as far from authentic Gonzo as Hunter was from Tricia Nixon asking him to serve as a pall bearer at Richard Nixon’s funeral and to then join her bare butt naked in the hot tub after daddy’s wake.
Not a lot of purebred Gonzo journalists exist anymore in American media. We absolutely need new generations of unholy hell raisers to keep ’er lit and let ’er rip.
Tribal elder Ron Whitehead points the way.
Defiant as a field mouse flipping the bird to an attacking eagle, he calls out the establishment. With the ease of an undefeated Old West high noon gunfighter (“crazy as nine loons” as Hunter himself once described him), Ron draws a bead on an unjust society run amok and lost in the madness of ignorance and technology.
Like the 1971 poem his legendary late San Francisco friend Lawrence Ferlinghetti called “A World Awash in Fascism and Fear” our feckless, reckless and infectious society needs Ron to provoke our increasingly dull culture. Insurgent thinkers must face devils of all ages, zombie citizens in a cruel, cruel world that walk among us trying to eat our brains and seduce writing with stupidity, timidity and self-absorbed impressions of art.
Gonzo must remain real.
Cheap imitators offer imposter self-portraits displayed like vacation photos of lounging lizards flicking obscene tongues and sunning themselves on rocks in the sweltering Mexican afternoon. Keep perpetuating imaginary Gonzo porn and one day Hunter will cast his spell from the great beyond, turning manufactured Gonzo personas into unmentionable personality disorders worse than the brain bugs these repeat offenders already endure.
Fear not.
Viking hillbilly Ron Whitehead remains our Gonzo zookeeper feeding hungry vibes that embolden golden creativity and inspire genuine Gonzo aspirants to knuckle down and get to work. Leading the poetic charge Ron storms establishment castle walls, like a Norse Berserker leader among those of us who tear it up producing original Gonzo journalism on a regular basis. Renegades and proud of it, we rebels refuse to succumb to the fickle status quo of mainstream dullness that stifles revolution.
At 75 I’m forever an outlaw, a decades-long unruly dissident and veteran Gonzo writer.
I look up to very few people.
But I look up to Ron.
When he one day does disappear from our sweet Earth, as we all will, it’s easy to imagine swirling, billowing clouds forming new words, phrases and sick syllables blown together by Ron’s eternal presence, cosmic poems penned by our Gonzo ghost writer in the sky galloping across the endless horizon into an astronomical infinity with no beginning and no end.
You want Gonzo?
You got Gonzo.
Ron Whitehead is 100-proof white lightning Gonzo.