Uploaded July 2015 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago

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“I keep my mouth shut now. I’ve turned into a professional coward.”
- Hunter S. Thompson in 1967

As told to Studs Terkel (http://studsterkel.org)

Hear more from this rare interview: blankonblank.org/hunter-thompson

In the 1960s, Hunter S. Thompson spent more than a year living and drinking with members of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club, riding up and down the California coast. What he saw alongside this group of renegades on Harleys, these hairy outlaws who rampaged and faced charges of attempted murder, assault and battery, and destruction of property along the way--all of this became the heart of Thompson’s first book: Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga. Shortly after the book came out, Thompson sat down for a radio interview with the one and only Studs Terkel.

CHOICE QUOTES
“I can't remember ever winning a fight.”
"I used to take it out at night on the Coast Highway, just drunk out of my mind, ride it for 20 and 30 miles in just short pants and a t-shirt. It's a beautiful feeling.”
“ I tried to keep my eyes on him because I didn't want to have my skull fractured.”
“They want to get back at the people who put them in this terrible, this dead end, tunnel.”
“ The people who are most affected by this technological obsolescence are the ones least capable of understanding the reason for it, so the venom builds up much quicker. It feeds on their ignorance.”

Get more on Thompson and the Hell’s Angels, gonzo journalism, the full, unedited interview and GIFs from the episode:
blankonblank.org/hunter-thompson

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