[Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas] Rolling Stone No. 95 [&] No. 96.

The first appearance in print of Hunter S Thompson's great work, complete as issued (Nos. 95 and 96) in Rolling Stone. The importance of its appearance at this time and in this context cannot be stressed strongly enough; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas both heralded and defined the decade of decadence that filled the vacuum left by the passing of the preceding decade of idealism, and Rolling Stone was the very magazine that was providing a frame for the cultural and conceptual realignment necessary in the confusing aftermath of such millennial moments as Chicago '68 (the "Festival of Life" that, as Jann Wenner states in his Fourth Anniversary Issue editorial, "the cops turned into a Dance of Death"), the failed consummation of Woodstock in '69, and the infamous (and this time self inflicted) violence of the Rolling Stones "free concert" at Altamont that closed the decade for good. Time demands continuance, however, and both Thompson and Rolling Stone found a way to carry on through pioneering a reinvented approach to journalism and writing which disposed of heady idealism, strapped itself in, and cut straight into the "savage heart" of reality. As Jann Wenner's lengthy and serious editorial letter, which constitutes an important contextual preface to Thompson's work, states, "As attractive as it looks or may have looked, as lucrative and egoistic as the illusion is, we again disclaim for Rolling Stone the role as spokesman for anybody other than the people who write it and get it off the presses and onto the counters. We speak only for ourselves, hoping only that we do well in our own terms, as businessmen and journalists - that people will be interested in the same things we are, and at least respect our point of view." Not only a crucial piece of Americana and the first appearance of a literary classic, these issues of Rolling Stone magazine are also a vital document of the beginnings of a cultural paradigm that is recognizable, in a way that the dream that held sway in the 60s no longer is, to citizens of the 21st century.