it's only rock and roll but I like it

On You Tube there is an 8-minute live performance of "Gold Dust Woman" from 1981 -- at the end Stevie Nicks while saying "thank you" and "good night" to the audience, bursts out with enthusiasm:  "They never let me play Gold Dust Woman that long...!  Thank you!..."  She's all sort of exuberant.  Just very happy to do the song for the audience:  to give it to them.

Each member of Fleetwood Mac (and I'm referring to the standard-5 from 1975 on -- Mick F., Stevie, Lindsey, and 2 McVies) appears to be -- really -- all about the work.  The music.  Different from the "it's-me-and-my-body-parts" theme of some entertainers we encounter....

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I got the book Fear And Loathing:  On The Campaign Trail '72 in the 1990s -- maybe 96, or 8 or 9.  I know I had it by '99 because that summer I had it with me at a Bob Dylan concert (no time to read, though but thought there might be, since waited 9 hours to get space near stage in the evening).

Cannot remember how the topic of that book originally came up, in my existence -- somehow, during lobbying at state capital (in the Capitol in the capital) the subject arose.  The "fear-and-loathing" phrase, as the title of something, was not unfamiliar to me -- I'd heard of it somewhere, and I knew the name "Hunter Thompson" as well, but had read nothing by him.

And a lobbyist who was my age told me his dad had known Hunter Thompson on George McGovern's campaign in 1972.

The dad was also a lobbyist whom I saw every year -- I was like, Wow, that's interesting!

And his dad was in the book.
The son told me this information, not in a boasting way, but just because he could see that I was interested.  And -- he thought his dad was cool, I think -- and that was nice.
I was sort of -- "I gotta get that book."

Went to the State Library to borrow it -- didn't have a Library Card, and so had to do paperwork to get that.  Finally got the hard-cover book from them.  (When I purchased a copy through Barnes & Noble, got the paperback.)

Began with the borrowed Library-copy, flipping pages at a furious pace, to find our lobbying colleague -- looking, looking, looking for his name.  Found it -- several spots.  It was pretty wild.  (Besides being on the McGovern campaign and knowing Hunter Thompson, he was also lieutenant governor at that time.)

And then backing off my quest for one name, started to take in the book's text and found it -- startling.  At that point in time, I did not often hear "the f-word" and it was in there...and
 -- and -- there were all these off-the-wall drug references and thoughts going here and there, and strong language...exaggerated language.  I was going, "W-w-hh-a-a-t??"

I told the son that I had the book and found it to be kind of like Bob Dylan's music.  (Why? I ask self, now -- because the telling and talking and typing and writing seem to roll forward at a pace that's exciting and with content that's beguiling in spite of parts you might not like -- like Dylan's style:  alternately rumbling, stomping, crooning....I was kind of scared of Hunter Thompson's book, but I also started to really like it.)

And I told the dad -- the guy in the book -- that I was reading it, & I said, "this guy (the author) goes on about drugs a lot -- I don't see how he could physically follow a campaign for a year and write about it if he was high that much."  Bill turned to me on the stairs and said with a smile, "Oh, he -- exaggerated a lot of that stuff." 

Well duh -- why was I taking it so literally?  Well I just didn't really know what to make of it.  And in that time in my life I think I was less skeptical, and took more things literally, or at face value.

Fear and Loathing's words, and phrases:

...this is the end of the line, for buses and everything else, the western edge of America.

...as it became obvious that dope fiends, anarchists, and Big-Beat dropouts were not the only people who read the political coverage in Rolling Stone.

...when I straggled into Washington just ahead of the rush-hour, government-worker car-pool traffic boiling up from the Maryland suburbs...

traffic boiling up

Live steady.  don't f--k around.

Every time I go to Chicago I come away with scars.  (OK, I thought -- that refers to the 1968 Democrat nominating Convention in Chicago when there was a riot -- I know that. 
Mr. Thompson gonna have to get up pret-ty ear-ly in the morning to put that over my head. ...)

When you move across the country these days you have to learn about nineteen different handshakes between Berkeley and Boston.

Ah-h-h.

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