ED.: Cursing?
HST: Oh yes. He was very bitter about it -- having lost his shoes, his dignity, his sanity -- all that sort of thing. . . I put him on the plane to New York, then flew off to Colorado. . . and the next time I heard from him was about a month later, when I got a letter saying he'd never come to this country again, and certainly not as long as I was here.
What had happened was -- I found out later -- there was nobody at the airport in New York City. Nobody met him. He had no shoes, no money, he didn't know anything about New York. The Scanlan's office was closed, he couldn't even get in there, nobody answered the phone. He borrowed ten dollars for the cab from a bartender on Forty-fifth Street. . . By this time his mind was coming apart. I talked to one of the people in the hotel that Scanlan's used and they remembered this strange, wild-eyed Britisher pacing around the lobby, kicking the walls with his bare feet and cursing everybody who came near him. Finally, he remembered some editor -- a friend of a friend, I think -- that he had some connection with. By this time his face and head had turned completely purple, his feet were bleeding. It was about twenty-four hours after he arrived that he finally got to this editor's apartment somehow, in a state of shattered nervous hysteria. She sort of nursed him back to health, and I think he had a return ticket -- he never leaves home unless the money and a ticket are all brought to the house and handed to him. He has no faith in expense reimbursement, which I think is very wise.
ED.: Have all his experiences in America been like that?
HST: Well, he fled Miami after two days. He came over to cover the Democratic Convention, but he couldn't handle Miami.
ED.: He also covered the Republican Convention. . .
HST: No, he watched that on television in London. He refused to come back to Miami, for any reason.
ED.: Why?
HST: He couldn't stand Miami Beach. The shock was too great. There's a drawing in the book that explains why. . .
ED.: Why does he submit himself to this kind of rape?
HST: I think he gets a perverse kind of kick out of it. His best drawings come out of situations where he's been most anguished. So I deliberately put him into shocking situations when I work with him. I've always found that that's when he does his best stuff. . . I took him into the Watergate hearings completely drunk. And then we had to sit down at a press table in an aisle where the senators came in and out during the voting breaks. Ralph leaped up during one of the intermissions with a beer in his hand and knocked Sam Ervin off his feet. He almost got my press pass pulled, almost got us thrown out of the hearings permanently. Sometimes he seems unconscious of the things he's doing. People think he doesn't quite know what's going on. The real trouble he generates comes later, when people realize what he's done.
ED.: When they look at his drawings.
HST: Yes. When they realize they were very nice to him, and then they see themselves horribly caricatured. . . He did that to my brother once.
ED.: Your brother?
HST: Yeah, we were down there at the Derby. Davison went to college on a football scholarship as a linebacker -- he encouraged Ralph to do a sketch of him, sitting in a restaurant in Louisville -- and Ralph did it. I thought we were in serious trouble. At that point, I maced the waiter at the restaurant and we had to leave.
ED.: Mace? You maced him?
HST: Yeah, I maced the waiter. He was a surly bastard, and I figured a shot of Mace would be good for him -- and for us, too.
ED.: What provoked you?
HST: It was just an argument we got into with the waiter. I'm not sure how it developed. I maced him right after Ralph had done this drawing of my brother. All of a sudden we had something new to cope with. In fact, we had to leave the restaurant immediately.
ED.: Ralph's kinda like Clark Kent, you know. He has that mild-mannered disguise.
HST: Yes. I wonder what would show on his chest if we could do a drawing of him ripping back the shirt. . . maybe an adder or an iguana or a Gila monster. . .
ED.: Yes. The kind that sits still for hours and then kills you.
HST: With a flip of the tongue. . . yes, I think a Gila monster would be appropriate. A gila monster with a ballpoint pen for a tongue.
ED.: Ralph works in ball-point?
HST: I'm not sure. . . As I recall, he uses chalk and big, bright pencils; and when he's carrying those big pads around with him, it sets him off from almost anybody he's near.
ED.: Do people go up and look at what he's doing?
HST: No, because he works so fast and he concentrates so intensely. It would be like harassing a TV cameraman. There's something about Steadman that warns people not to interfere with him when he's working.
ED.: Why do you like to work with him? Would you rather work with Ralph than a photographer?
HST: Definitely. Photographers generally get in the way of stories. Steadman has a way of becoming part of the story. And I like to see things through his eyes. He gives me a perspective that I wouldn't normally have because he's shocked at things I tend to take for granted. Photographers just run around sucking up anything they can focus on and don't talk much about what they're doing. Photographers don't participate in the story. They all can act, but very few of them think. Steadman thinks more like a writer; I can communicate with him. He comes to grips with a story sort of the same way I do. . . I don't mean that we always agree on what somebody looks like. But we can go to the Watergate hearings, for instance, and he'll be shaken and repulsed by something that happens and once he points it out to me, I'll agree with him.
ED.: What is it about America that you think shocks him most?
HST: I think it's the lack of subtlety and the lack of the traditional British attempt to cover up the warts, or explain them away somehow. In America, we decorate the warts, sell them, cultivate them. . . I'm looking at this drawing he did in Vegas of all those cops standing in the lobby.
ED.: Is it the people who shock him?
HST: Yeah. The extreme types -- cowboys and burr-haired cops, horrible Southern drunkards at the Kentucky Derby and gross degenerates in Miami beach. Of course that's all he's seen on these experiences.
ED.: He's had a one-sided look at things, traveling with you.
HST: That's true. It's been pretty hard for him. . .
ED.: Couldn't be worse.
HST: Only if he'd traveled with Charlie Manson, somebody like that. . . Ralph seems to work much better when he's genuinely offended. And I've learned now I can just kinda chuckle when I see something, and even if it's not worth writing, I'll think, "Ah-hah, this'll really give the bastard a jolt. . ." So I'll make sure he has to confront it.
ED.: He needs to be in jeopardy?
HST: I think that's part of the reason the Vegas book worked so well. That sense of being in jeopardy ran all through it. I think he identified very strongly with it. There's no substitute for that horrified adrenalin rush.
There's a paranoid flash in a lot of his works too. He has a paranoid side to him: "People are lying to me; that cant be true. . . if Thompson says I should turn right here, probably I should turn left. . ." He gets very confused about things like that. But he's fun to work with. I think he deliberately gets himself in situations that I have to get him out of, so I have to worry about him. That thing at the Watergate is a perfect example, although I didn't rescue him then, I knew what was going to happen.
ED.: You didn't rescue him?
HST: Well, I pulled him out after a while -- but not when he jumped up and crashed through a line of marshals around Ervin and knocked him into the TV cameras. It was a narrow aisle between the press table and the TV. . . it was all their machinery really, all the hardware.
ED.: Who would you compare him to in the history of art? What do you think of him, objectively?
HST: George Grosz, I guess. That's who I think of right away. And. . . Hogarth. . . or maybe Pat Oliphant today. . .
ED.: Do you think he's given us an accurat
e portrait of America?
HST: Well, I'm not sure Hogarth was entirely objective but, yes, there's an element of reality, even in Ralph's most grotesque drawings. He catches things. Using a sort of venomous, satirical approach, he exaggerates the two or three things that horrify him in a scene or situation. . . And you can say that these people didn't look exactly like that, but when you can look at them again it seems pretty damn close. All the cops in the Vegas hotel lobby are wearing the same plaid Bermuda shorts, and they're uglier than any group of mutants you'd see at a bad insane asylum -- you know, for the criminally insane. But I look back on that scene and I know they weren't much different, really. They had on different colored shirts and they weren't all crazy and dangerous-looking -- but he caught the one or two distinguishing characteristics among them: the beady eyes, burr haircuts, weasel teeth, beer bellies. If you exaggerate those four characteristics, you get a pretty grizzly drawing. . .
ED.: He is a realist, then. . .
HST: Oh yes. By way of exaggeration and selective grotesquery. His view of reality is not entirely normal. Ralph sees through the glass very darkly. He doesn't merely render a scene, he interprets it, from his own point of view. For instance, he felt the senators should be on trial at the Watergate hearings. He was convinced that they were totally corrupt. Corruption in its broadest sense seems to be the thing that shocks him and gets him cranked more than anything else. . . congenital corruption. . . on a level far beyond police payoffs or political bribery. . . deeply corrupt people, performing essentially corrupt actions, in the name of law and order.
ED.: Do you plan any further projects together?
HST: The trial of Nixon would be a nice trip for Steadman.
ED.: In the Senate?
HST: Yes. Nixon doesn't have to be in the dock -- according to law -- but it's possible that he might be. . . and I think that would be an ideal story for Ralph. Or maybe a very expensive wedding in the South -- Old, incestuous families, things like that -- or a carnival scene, like a traveling carnival, with sideshows at country fairs. . . and I think he could get off pretty harshly on an L.A. gang rape or a sex orgy on Beekman Place in New York. . . There's a kind of wild theme in his drawings: decadence, corruption, immorality. . . like these horrible people in plastic hats standing outside the Kennedy Memorial in Dallas. Obscenity in its broadest sense is another hallmark of the things that shock him. . . I think he sees all of Dallas and Texas and even all of America as obscene, or at least a mockery of what it should be -- the way it claims to be, from his point of view. He probably thinks it was doomed from the start. He has that King-George-III notion of America.
ED,: Yes, as an Englishman. . . We fucked up from the beginning. We should have stayed with those guys.
HST: Right. A bunch of crude upstarts -- couldn't make it work. Maybe Ralph should spend more time at Shriners conventions. I notice he caught one of those in Dallas. We should lock him in a hotel at the National Shriners Convention in Duluth for a whole week. . . Jesus, that might be a terminal shock. . . or he'd come up with some fantastic drawings. He works best when you put him in a situation where he's bordering on flipping out, but not quite, you know -- where he can still function.
ED.: It's the old edge.
HST: Why not? It's a nice place to work. . . When he's comfortable and not stunned or appalled at what he's seeing, then he doesn't do his best stuff. . . it's not bad, but it doesn't have that. . .
ED.: Doesn't have the bite.
HST: Well, that's probably true, but you can't expect a mind like Ralph's to stay up on the wire all the time; it's too fucking painful, even when you do it in short doses. But Steadman has pretty good sense about that, so I figure he'll keep his edge for a while. . . which is a good thing for me, because there's nobody I'd rather work with.
-- June 1974
America by Ralph Steadman,
San Francisco, Straight Arrow Press, 1974
Strange Rumblings in Aztlan
The. . . Murder. . . and Resurrection of Ruben Salazar by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. . . Savage Polarization & the Making of a Martyr. . . Bad News for the Mexican-American. . . Worse News for the Pig. . . And Now the New Chicano. . . Riding a Grim New Wave. . . The Rise of the Batos Locos. . . Brown Power and a Fistful of Reds. . . Rude Politics in the Barrio. . . Which Side Are You On. . . Brother?. . . There Is No More Middleground. . . No Place to Hide on Whittier Boulevard. . . No Refuge from the Helicopters. . . No Hope in the Courts. . . No Peace with the Man. . . No Leverage Anywhere. . . and No Light at the End of This Tunnel. . . Nada. . .
Morning comes hard to the Hotel Ashmun; this is not a place where the guests spring eagerly out of bed to greet the fresh new day. But on this particular morning everybody in the place is awake at the crack of dawn: There is a terrible pounding and shrieking in the hallway, near room No. 267. Some junkie has ripped the doorknob off the communal bathroom, and now the others can't get in -- so they are trying to kick the door down. The voice of the manager wavers hysterically above the din: "Come on now, fellas -- do I have to call the sheriff?" The reply comes hard and fast: "You filthy gabacho pig! You call the fuckin sheriff and I'll cut your fuckin throat." And now the sound of wood cracking, more screaming, the sound of running feet outside my door, No. 267.
The door is locked, thank Christ -- but how can you say for sure in a place like the Hotel Ashmun? Especially on a morning like this with a mob of wild junkies locked out of the hall bathroom and maybe knowing that No. 267 is the only room within lunging distance that has a private bath. It is the best in the house, at $5.80 a night, and the lock on the door is brand new. The old one was ripped out about 12 hours earlier, just before I checked in.
The desk clerk had gone to a lot of trouble to get me into this room. His key wouldn't fit the new lock. "Jesus Christ!" he kept muttering. "This key has to fit! This is a brand new Yale lock." He stared balefully at the bright new key in his hand.
"Yeah," I said. "But that key is for a Webster lock."
"By God you're right!" he exclaimed. And he rushed off, leaving us standing there in the hallway with big chunks of ice in our hands. "What's wrong with that guy?" I asked. "He seems out of control -- all this sweating and grappling and jabbering. . ."
Benny Luna laughed. "Man, he's nervous! You think it's normal for him to be lettin four nasty lookin Chicanos into his best room at three in the morning? With all of us carryin chunks of ice and funny-lookin leather bags?" He was staggering around the hall, convulsed with laughter. "Man, this guy is freaked! He doesn't know what's goin on!"
"Three Chicanos," said Oscar. "And one hillbilly."
"You didn't tell him I was a writer, did you?" I asked. I'd noticed Oscar talking to the man, a tall sort of defeated looking Germanic type, but I hadn't paid much attention.
"No, but he recognized me," Oscar replied. "He said, 'You're the lawyer, aren't you?' So I said 'That's right, and I want your best room for this gabacho friend of mine.'" He grinned. "Yeah, he knows something's wrong with this scene, but he doesn't know what. These guys are scared of everything now. Every merchant on Whittier Boulevard is sure he's living on borrowed time, so they go all to pieces at the first sign of anything strange going on. It's been this way ever since Salazar."
The room clerk/manager/keeper/etc, suddenly rounded the hallway corner with the right key, and let us into the room. It was a winner -- a run-down echo of a place I stayed in a few years ago in the slums of Lima, Peru. I can't recall the name of that place, but I remember that all the room keys were attached to big wooden knobs about the size of grapefruits, too big to fit in a pocket. I thought about suggesting this to our man in the Hotel Ashmun, but he didn't wait around for tips or small-talk. He was gone in a flash, leaving us alone to deal with a quart of rum and God only knows what else. . . We put the ice in a basin next to the bed and chopped it up with a huge rigging knife. The only music was a tape cassette of Let It Bleed.
What better music for a hot night
on Whittier Boulevard in 1971? This has not been a peaceful street, of late. And in truth it was never peaceful. Whittier is to the vast Chicano barrio in East Los Angeles what the Sunset Strip is to Hollywood. This is where the street action lives: The bars, the hustlers, the drug market, the whores -- and also the riots, the trashings, killings, gassings, the sporadic bloody clashes with the hated, common enemy: The cops, the Pigs, the Man, that blue-crusted army of fearsome gabacho troops from the East L.A. Sheriff's Department.
The Hotel Ashmun is a good place to stay if you want to get next to whatever's happening on Whittier Boulevard. The window of No. 267 is about 15 feet above the sidewalk and just a few blocks west on the Silver Dollar Cafe, a nondescript tavern that is not much different from any of the others nearby. There is a pool table in the rear, a pitcher of beer sells for a dollar, and the faded Chicano barmaid rolls dice with the patrons to keep the jukebox going. Low number pays, and nobody seems to care who selects the music.
We had been in there earlier, when not much was happening. It was my first visit in six months, since early September when the place was still rancid with the stench of CS gas and fresh varnish. But now, six months later, the Silver Dollar had aired out nicely. No blood on the floor, no ominous holes in the ceiling. The only reminder of my other visit was a thing hanging over the cash register that we all noticed immediately. It was a black gas mask, staring blindly out at the room-- and below the gas mask was a stark handprinted sign that said: "In memory of August 29, 1970."
Nothing else, no explanation. But no explanation was necessary -- at least not to anybody likely to be found drinking in the Silver Dollar. The customers are locals: Chicanos and barrio people -- and every one of them is acutely aware of what happened in the Silver Dollar Cafe on August 29, 1970.