David Felton began his journalism career at the Los Angeles Times in the mid sixties. A decade later he was writing for Rolling Stone magazine and wrote a five part feature article (with David Dalton) about Charles Manson and his “family” that won a National Magazine Award in 1971. He edited Hunter S. Thompson’s, “Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas,” and later went on to do writing for television. He produced and wrote, "MTV: the Reagan Years" for public television and helped develop the "Beavis and Butt-Head" show for MTV. He is the author of Mindfuckers: a Source Book on the Rise of Acid Fascism in America.

I conducted this interview with David Felton for the Winter, 1998 edition of fishwrap at his office in the MTV building in midtown New York where he was a writer and producer at the time. This interview was part of an oral history I did on the early days of Rolling Stone titled, “The Jann and the Restless.” In the interview David discusses his award-winning feature article and interview that he and David Dalton wrote on Charles Manson, his interview with Jann Wenner before being hired at Rolling Stone, how he got his nickname, “The Stonecutter,” what it was like to edit Hunter S. Thompson and how he was fired three times from the magazine!

Here’s a video of David Felton reading about an adventure he had with Hunter Thompson.

The MP3 files for the interview were digitized from the original cassette tapes by The MP3 files for the interview were digitized from the original cassette tapes by MEDIAHOUSE. Find out more about them by clicking here.