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Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com splattering attempt to capture the feeling I have at that particular time. I like the gonzo logo that HST used for his Sheriff of Aspen campaign. That red fist – by the way it’s got 2 thumbs and 4 fingers. Have you noticed? Hunter always said to me ‘2 thumbs Ralph, don’t forget 2 thumbs!’ It’s the idea of a freak isn’t it? Anyone with 2 thumbs is obviously a freak or a monkey of some kind, a gorilla. And the flower in the middle of the palm, the green flower is a peyote drug plant. Have you taken much peyote in your time? No. Hunter was the one who enjoyed all that shit. I’ve taken coca leaves, I’m very fond of coca leaves but I can’t get them in England. I tried them in Peru, between Cusco and Machu Picchu is a little stop off on the train called Olan Taytambo, and there they sell it to you with wood ash and you roll the leaf around the wood ash like rolling a joint or a cigarette. You put it down the side of your gums and just leave it there and you don’t suffer from mountain sickness, anxiety or anything at such a height which is 13-15,000 feet above sea level. I’ve got a wonderful book which is probably 100 years old called The Divine Plant of the Inca (W. Golden Mortimer, 1901) and it’s all about the coca leaf. Tell me about when you ended up screwed and shoeless in New York City on one of your first assignments with HST… BUY Ralph Steadman books online from and ‘The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved’ was how it all started, the meeting with Hunter for the first time … There’s innocence and experience meeting for the first time! The shoeless episode was the second trip where we went to Rhode Island to cover the Americas Cup and I was shoeless and luckily I’d kept my ticket and passport home. I had my ticket back to New York from Rhode Island (Boston Airport) and then I got a cab and got to 42nd Street where the bar was thankfully still open, the magazine (Scanlan’s Monthly) had closed and I was in a terrible state and coming down from psilocybin. A drug trip, which was the one and only trip I ever had and that was when I said, ‘Right, drugs are out entirely.’ I enjoy a drink. And I was palpitating, so I borrowed a quarter from the Irish barman, cos I had no money in New York, nothing in a hell of a city! I phoned a lady friend called Vendetoce who I knew from the Bologna Bookfair. I made the call and she said “I’m just going out.’ I said ‘Please, don’t go out, stay there till I get there, please!’ She could tell I was losing my voice and she did stay in. When I arrived I was purple with palpitations and she got a doctor right away and he gave me a librium injection that put me out for about 24 hours. The irony of all this was that before this happened I put her in hospital with a fracture in Italy when we went into a ditch via my car. Imagine how mad she was to speak 492 More Spike email RSS Facebook Twitter A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com to me again! Bless her heart. Anyway that proves there are good people in the world… HST once described you as having a paranoid flash within your character. What did he mean? A sudden desperate fear that everything something terrible is about to happen. Because I always thought that my heart would stop beating just like that. Bang! Why? My question was: ‘Why should it keep beating?’ It’s an odd question but at the same time that’s a paranoid flash. Why take it all for granted for Christ’s sake? So I never did, and then of course I kept thinking about the fucking thing all the time you know and now I’ve come to terms with it. Touch wood and touch wood now even. He (HST) gave me a lovely head, which I’ve got on a cord around my neck. Sort of a strange primitive face and a long thin piece of what looks like clay or stone. He said: ‘Wear this Ralph, it’ll ward off evil spirits.’ Do you see an essential beauty or aesthetic in the grotesque? There’s an aesthetic even in watching an operation, there’s an aesthetic in putrefaction. I mean to watch how things breakdown and there’s a kind of aesthetic beauty in that. But it doesn’t mean to say you’re being sick, you do see that but you’d rather not watch it. It’s not ugliness, it’s just a rather unpleasant beauty, because there’s nothing ugly in nature … I’d love to be a fly on the wall or to be a fly on their piece of shit! BUY Ralph Steadman books online from and Hahahaha!!!! How do you get those ideas when you transform people in such frightening animal forms? I see if I can make human beings look like reptiles. I see if I can make them look like hideous creatures that would not come out of anything but perhaps … turn a human inside out … take a human being, supposing you can sort of like a rubber glove, turn him inside out and then look at it. That’s how it’s really like. When I’ve done a drawing like that and I’ve done a few, I tried to make the person look as though they’re completely turned inside out and I called him ‘The Perfect Gentleman.’ What’s your idea of a living hell? Not really being the slightest bit interested in what it is I’ve done all my life. Not wanting to do it and then not knowing what to do next. That would be a living hell. I must have a feeling that: ‘Oooh I’m really excited about this!’ The most depressed times I have is when I just don’t wanna do anything. A living hell is not being creative, being utterly devoid of any creative impulse whatsoever. Does the new political scene make you shudder more than it ever did? I can’t be very interested in what are no more than PR men. That’s all they are – PR men for a policy, or a new sort of: ‘Oh why don’t we try it this way?’ As Hunter said of George Bush: he was a message boy for 493 More Spike email RSS Facebook Twitter A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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