called, I was just thinking about you, He said “on March 1st you are interviewing Hunter, I’ll be in touch with the time.” Unfortunately, Hunter shot himself nine days before that in- terview. That was a weird professional mo- ment there, and he was another big influence. That is how close I was, and I later wrote for his wife’s magazine called the Woody Creeker. I sorta became friends with his widow. I wrote for them,so that was an- other big literary influence.
That’s one of the things you and I have in common. I’ve been a huge fan of Dr. Thompson, starting with Rolling Stone, back when it was really, really good magazine. Yeah, before it was owned by the Chinese.
Before it became so political, there is nothing fun in it anymore. As we know, Thompson did the political beat, but he sure made it interesting. Fear and Lathing all that kind of stuff, I just ac- tually love his style and writing. Campaign Trail ‘72. . . Unfortunately, he is no longer here. More than half of the people that are trying to imitate him fall really short.
He can't be imitated. Just like you know you might get as good as Rich Lit- tle doing the impressions, but there will never be another Hunter Thomp- son. We knowthat. No one should be foolish enough to try to imi- tate anyone, you can certainly learn their chops and their licks, but ultimately you have to be original.
You don’t want to be a tribute band, man. No, not at all, and if there is anything that I learned from any of these guys, you have to be original and it’s not going to be easy be- cause people will steal from you and they will
copy you but ultimately they can’t replicate it.You have to just keep doing your thing no matter what.
James with Billy Bob Thornton at the Big House in Macon.
One should never go into writing or music to be a star or to be a million- aire. You think that way, you’ve failed to start with. I absolutely agree, the joy of being able to ac- tually write a decent error-free English sen- tence, most people don't care about
that.They just want the attention. I think Joseph Con- rad, another influence, said something to the effect of the “the work is long and hard and the applause is far away.” For writers, usually death is a great career move, then everybody is a fan. Look at Sam Shepard, for two years nobody had said anything except me and a few other people, and then he dies and of course, everyone is a fan.
Not only that, there were so many peo- ple that are suddenly close personal
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