Here’s a vari­a­tion on the par­lor game ques­tion, “what famous per­son would you most like to have din­ner with, and why?” What two famous peo­ple would you like to stick in a room togeth­er for ten min­utes, and why? I imag­ine a fair num­ber of read­ers might think of Hunter S. Thomp­son and Kei­th Richards, and the why is pret­ty obvi­ous. Both impress us, writes Fla­vor­wire, for “hav­ing remained alive” for oh so many years “after all those drugs” and crazed exploits. If Thomp­son was gonzo, Thomp­son plus Richards equals “dou­ble gonzo.”

Well, your wish is grant­ed, in the almost ten-minute video above, in which Thomp­son and Richards have a mum­ble-off, dis­cussing such sub­jects as J. Edgar Hoover’s rein­car­na­tion (he would return as “a fart,” Kei­th says), the Hel­l’s Angels, The Bea­t­les, drugs, blood trans­fu­sions, and that Alta­mont inci­dent.

In the first minute of tape, we have a ram­bling solo intro­duc­tion from Thomp­son, and he assures us that he and Kei­th “have a sense of his­to­ry you don’t.” Hav­ing put the view­er in their place (or the cameraman—more on that anon), Thomp­son prompt­ly segues to the inter­view, which took place at the Ritz Car­leton in Aspen.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, no one has thought to add sub­ti­tles to this bizarre exchange, which has cir­cu­lat­ed on Youtube for some time now. That was where the man who shot the inter­view, Wayne Ewing, first saw the grainy video of footage he shot for a 1993 ABC series called “In Con­cert.” The project was fraught from the begin­ning. The orig­i­nal plan was to have the two meet in New York, then have MTV shoot the inter­view and Ewing shoot the whole scene with a third cam­era “while Kei­th and Hunter emp­tied the mini-bar and chat­ted.” Instead, Thomp­son “came down with a vir­u­lent flu,” and the pro­duc­ers had to lat­er lure Richards to Col­orado.

So remem­bers Ewing in a 2009 intro­duc­tion to notes he took down the day after the March 15th shoot. The jour­nal reveals Thomp­son’s agi­tat­ed state of mind in the week lead­ing up to the shoot, as he lashed out at his staff, at Ewing, and at “col­lege sopho­mores on ski vaca­tions demand­ing auto­graphs… hold­ing out soiled nap­kins with pens for a record of their momen­tary brush with fame.” He’s clear­ly ner­vous about Richards’ arrival, obsess­ing over the state of the local shoot­ing range, and when Ewing sug­gest­ed “goofy ideas for the video with Kei­th,” Thomp­son growled, “it’s not your movie! It’s Kei­th’s!” Ewing’s notes are both amus­ing and a lit­tle dis­tress­ing, giv­en the posi­tion of Thomp­son’s belea­guered assis­tants.

Both of these fig­ures rep­re­sent the epit­o­me of our ten­den­cy to roman­ti­cize writer/­mu­si­cian-addicts, but the effects on those around them don’t gen­er­al­ly make for great sto­ries (just ask their kids). And in Thomp­son’s case espe­cial­ly here, we can see the toll his drink­ing had tak­en on him at this stage in his life. But Richards is sur­pris­ing­ly lucid, as he con­tin­ues to often­times be, remem­ber­ing spe­cif­ic dates and details, and the whole inter­view is an inter­est­ing exer­cise in fol­low­ing the free-asso­cia­tive log­ic of two addled, but still bril­liant and always enter­tain­ing per­son­al­i­ties. No need to say more. Watch the tape.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels (1967)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

Hear Demos of Kei­th Richards Singing Lead Vocals on Rolling Stones Clas­sics: “Gimme Shel­ter,” “Wild Hors­es” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

There are few things in life that I can enjoy uncritically—totally sur­ren­der to—and yet also appre­ci­ate as intel­lec­tu­al­ly com­plex, fine­ly-wrought works of art. The music of Kate Bush is one of those things. Her preter­nat­ur­al voice, sub­lime­ly ridicu­lous cos­tumes, dance, and ges­ture, and haunt­ing, lit­er­ary lyri­cism imme­di­ate­ly cap­ti­vate the ear and eye—and work their mag­ic on the mind not long after. It’s an unusual—I’d say extreme­ly rare—set of qual­i­ties that set her apart from every pop star in the era of her prime and in our own. At the risk of draw­ing a per­haps too-easy com­par­i­son, but I think an apt one: as a solo artist she rivals maybe only David Bowie in her abil­i­ty to own the spot­light and remain in total con­trol of her sound and image. (Both of them, in fact, trained with the same dance teacher, Lind­say Kemp.)

But while Bowie made it look easy, and found ways to stay near­ly-ever-present in every decade since the 70s, for Bush that con­trol was hard won, and meant with­drawals from the pub­lic, includ­ing a 12-year break that, writes The Guardian, remind­ed some of “the mytho­log­i­cal res­o­nance of Bob Dylan’s Base­ment Tapes hia­tus.” She has toured only twice: once at the very begin­ning of her career in 1979 and again, 35 years lat­er, in 2014. Crit­ics and die-hard fans have long spec­u­lat­ed about the rea­sons for Bush’s with­draw­al from per­for­mance and her gen­er­al pub­lic ret­i­cence, but state­ments from the artist her­self have made it clear that part of her strug­gle with star­dom had to do with feel­ing exploit­ed in the way so many women are by the music indus­try.

By the end of her lav­ish, 28-night 1979 extrav­a­gan­za, she recalled, “I felt a ter­rif­ic need to retreat as a per­son, because I felt that my sex­u­al­i­ty, which in a way I had­n’t real­ly had a chance to explore myself, was being giv­en to the world in a way which I found imper­son­al.” “Bush,” The Guardian writes, “did every­thing she could to pre­vent her­self being exposed in that way again.”

The move was both a loss and a gain for her fans. While her live shows might have become leg­endary in the way Bowie’s did over the years, her retreat into a pri­vate sphere all her own allowed her to con­tin­ue writ­ing and record­ing con­sis­tent­ly bril­liant, chal­leng­ing music that nev­er became com­pro­mised by indus­try hack­work, as she her­self nev­er became some­one else’s prod­uct.

Her abil­i­ty to assert her­self so ear­ly in her career is also a tes­ta­ment to her cre­ative con­fi­dence. Bush was only 19 years old when she released her first album, The Kick Inside, an age at which many emerg­ing pop stars allow them­selves to be com­man­deered by over­bear­ing man­age­ment. But she has remained rel­e­vant by remain­ing her—odd, enig­mat­ic, total­ly original—self. “Artists should­n’t be made famous,” she once remarked, “it is a forced impor­tance.”

Before launch­ing that first tour, and decid­ing it was­n’t for her, Bush made her first tele­vi­sion appear­ance on a Ger­man pro­gram in 1978—see it at the top of the post. Rather than open­ing with “Wuther­ing Heights,” the song that did make her famous, she instead starts with the B‑side, “Kite.” But then we hear that famil­iar, tin­kling piano intro, and she deliv­ers the big sin­gle, wear­ing the flow­ing red gown she donned in the oft-par­o­died Amer­i­can video for the song (above). The weird and won­der­ful dance moves are a lit­tle sub­dued, but like all of her performances—in very rare stage appear­ances, numer­ous videos, and ten amaz­ing albums—it’s glo­ri­ous.

In her first Amer­i­can TV appear­ance, on Sat­ur­day Night Live lat­er that same year, Bush sang “The Man With the Child in His Eyes” in the gold lamé body­suit she wore in the song’s offi­cial video (above). Just one of the many fash­ion choic­es that, along with those unin­hib­it­ed dance moves—“those weird, spas­tic, fan­tas­tic inter­pre­tive dance moves,” writes Matthew Zuras in an appreciation—later gave us unfor­get­table clas­sics like the “Baboosh­ka” video (below). We have this unique, uncom­pro­mis­ing body of work both because a more adven­tur­ous music indus­try decid­ed to invest in devel­op­ing Bush’s tal­ent in the ear­ly 70s, and because she refused, after all, to accede to that indus­try’s usu­al demands.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

300 Kate Bush Imper­son­ators Pay Trib­ute to Kate Bush’s Icon­ic “Wuther­ing Heights” Video

2009 Kate Bush Doc­u­men­tary Dubs Her “Queen of British Pop”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness