In Dr. Hunter S Thompson’s “Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72” he describes a bunch of young McGovern interns (possibly Ed Muskie’s interns?) singing a song called "The Hound And The Whore (“O the hound chased the whore over the mountain…”) which he called frightening and savage, as a kind of a war-cry to psych themselves up for working the campaign trail.
Is this an actual folk song?
Anyone know how I can find the lyrics?
Also, for anyone familiar with the book, do you have any idea what ever happened to Peter Sheridan (also know in the book as “The Boohoo”) after he and activist Jerry Rubin drunkenly heckled and shit-sassed candidate Ed Muskie in front of the entire press corps, after sneaking on the campaign train (which was called The Sunshine Special) that Muskie chartered for his whistle-stop tour of Florida?
Sheridan was given a Rolling Stone press pass from HST and then boarded the train incognito, where he immediately got screaming drunk and proceeded to terrorize dozens of aides and political assistants before humiliating Ed Muskie in front of a large rally (held in Muskie’s honor) in Miami.
Peter Sheridan supposedly was a friend of Timothy Leary and other members of the 60’s counter-culture, but I wonder if anyone knows what became of him after the events described above.
By all accounts a truly wilde and crazy motherfucker, (if Hunter Thompson thinks you are too out of control…) I wonder if this was The Boohoo’s only 15 minutes of fame, or if he continued to make waves after the fiasco in Florida.
According to 'Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson," The BooHoo died in a motorcycle accident. Incidentally, Thompson writes "…my alleged friend, calling himself “Peter Sheridan…”; that implies that Sheridan wasn’t his real name, though with Gonzo you never can tell.
Oh, and given how much of his reportage was made-up shit, I wouldn’t be the least surprised to learn that Thompson made up the song, along with the people singing it.
There is no doubt that Hunter S Thompson made up/hallucinated a lot of the things that he wrote about, and for his style of writing, I don’t really have too much of a problem with that, but do you have any info about any specifics that he was found to have fabricated, aside from the obvious drug-frenzy stuff in “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas” or similar pseudo-journalism that was not actually meant to be taken at face value?
How was “Hell’s Angels” for accuracy? Did HST really experience/witness the outrageous things he claimed when riding with the Angels in the mid-60’s?
Peter Sheridan wound up in Austin, Texas, where he became a familiar and intimidating figure in the music scene there. Eventually he befriended Willie Nelson, who employed him as his driver (not the bus, but his car). However, Willie was often seen in those days driving around in his old Mercedes himself with Peter passed out in the backseat. He also served as muscle for Willie in a few occasions. Peter was not someone to mess around with; in some circles in Austin he was called “The Pistol Whipper” for obvious reasons. He also became associated with Frances Carr, her brother, and former Rolling Stones road manager Sam Cutler – the Carrs and Cutler founded an Austin horse race track called Manor Downs; Peter could often be found out there. He was known by members of the larger Grateful Dead family and was sort of on the fringes of that group as well. He began spending more time in California and befriended, among others, Rodney Crowell and Roseanne Cash, who were living there at the time. He was a guest at their wedding reception. It is widely speculated that Peter was a member of the Hells Angels, but it seems unlikely that he was an actual member. But he was friendly with some members and rode with them. Peter was killed in a motorcycle accident in California in the 1980s. Many people believe Willie wrote “Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground” about him. Willie has never confirmed it.
That sounds very likely to me. Hounds and hares figure in many old folk songs - which are often very dark indeed - and it would be a small matter to substitute the word “whore” in a song like that’s lyrics for your own bawdy purposes. Probably it was the singers who made the substitution rather than Thompson himself.
Steve Barclay of the folk band SignalEleven mentions an old Irish folk tale which may be relevant in this SoundCloud introduction to his tune The Black Pig Jig:
“It is said that a druid from Drogheda in Co. Louth was a powerful magician and teacher, who used to turn his pupils into animals for his own amusement. He changed one child into a hare and his brother into a hound. The hound chased the hare, which got killed when it fell into a dyke. The boys’ furious mother then changed the teacher into a Black Pig, who was shunned by his other fellow pigs. The Black Pig burrowed into the ground and fled toward Carrick on Shannon.”
Folk tales like this often had a parallel life as folk songs. I haven’t been able to find a specific folk song with the line “the hound chased the hare over the mountains” in it, but that’s not to say the Black Pig legend or or another similar tale didn’t inspire one.