Ralph Steadman on Art, Poetry, and Hunter S. Thompson’s Mean Streak

Illustration for ‘The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved,’ 1970

Print on paper, 27 x 21 cm

Well apparently, I wasn’t the bloke that was supposed to meet [Hunter S. Thompson] at the Kentucky Derby at all. It was supposed to be Pat Oliphant. I’d never heard of Hunter Thompson, but I remember when we met, he said to me, “What’s that weird growth on your chin, Ralph?” I had a little beard at the time. I told him it was a beard, and he said, “Well, I wouldn’t leave it there. You look like a matted haired geek with string warts. I’d take that off if I were you.”

He was a year younger than me. He was the strangest man. He literally said, “I’d feel real trapped in this life, Ralph, if I didn’t know I could commit suicide at any moment,” which of course he did. And that sort of hung around for years, that possibility that he would do it sometime. 

Anyway, [the Kentucky Derby assignment] was an odd kind of exercise or education for me because I’d never met anyone like him before. I noticed right away he was different. He just was saying things that were oddly centered. And his use to language was quite good. So I thought that he was somebody of interest that I might well be able to get on with. And so it worked.

I used to make little sketches in a notebook or sketchbook, and he quite liked to see what we were doing. It was something that intrigued him as well. I wasn’t writing words. I was writing scribbles, notes, and things like that.

There were a lot of people around trying to sell you horse tips. He wanted me to keep away from that.