Hunter S. Thompson Talks to Studs Terkel About the Crazy Year He Spent with the Hell’s Angels in a 1967 Interview

The most recent episode of the animated series Blank on Blank features the infamous Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson in 1967 talking with the legendary Studs Terkel about the crazy year or so that he spent with the Hell’s Angels while doing research for his first book Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga.

I think the Angels came out of World War Two. This whole kind of alienated, violent, subculture of people wandering around looking for either an opportunity, or if not an opportunity then vengeance for not getting an opportunity. They get to be 30 and suddenly they wake up one morning and they realize there are no more chances. It’s all gone. It makes them meaner. …It’s kind of “they”, paranoid. It’s you, it’s me, it’s whoever might come too close to them on the highway, a car. It’s somebody that makes a remark in a bar to them. They call them the citizens. Anybody who looks respectable and looks like he isn’t doomed, like he has some kind of option or money or a home, all the things they don’t have.