Rock Bottom - The Rise And Fall Of Rolling Stone Magazine, Part 2
The downfall - it began in Africa...
No sooner was James Earl Carter Jr in the White House than Rolling Stone seemed to lose some of its influence. A large part of the problem was that Hunter Thompson, having for so long revelled in the position of writer-at-large, started to believe the many wonderful things that had been written about him. The very definition of a functional alcoholic, Thompson memorably fouled up when he and Ralph Steadman — the Welsh cartoonist responsible for Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas’s crazed illustrations — went to Zaire to cover the Ali/Foreman Rumble In The Jungle.
Up until this point, Thompson had enjoyed great success using events such as the Kentucky Derby and the Mint 400 to comment upon the state of 1970s America in typical acerbic style. When dispatched to Kinshasa, however, Thompson lost the plot. He decided to spend an evening in the swimming pool rather than attending what would become the defining fight of Muhammad Ali’s career.
“That was a strange night,” recalled Ralph Steadman, who’d remain a close friend of Thompson’s up until the writer’s untimely death. “There we were, in Africa with the fight of the era about to take place, and Hunter insisted on swimming laps and listening to the fight on a battered old radio rather than going to the stadium —
I think he even gave our tickets away which was stupid because they were worth a fortune. Naturally I tried to get him out of his trunks but when Hunter sets his mind to something, he’s not quick to change his mind.”
And while its greatest writer was behaving like a spoilt child so Rolling Stone began to over-indulge itself. When the magazine launched, music was experiencing something close to a golden era. The Laurel Canyon scene with Fleetwood Mac and Crosby, Stills & Nash; The Who and The Rolling Stones at the peak of their powers, Led Zeppelin leaving Wolverhampton to conquer the world - it was quite a time. Only problem was, Rolling Stone had a hard time acknowledging what came afterwards as anything other than a pale imitation of the late 1960s and early ‘70s. It became the periodical equivalent of that older sibling who constantly tells you the music of today isn’t a patch on the stuff they grew up listening too.
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