Who Killed Jaco Pastorius?

By Pat Jordan GQ April 1988 He was just another bum bleeding to death in an alleyway at four o’clock in the morning. He lay motionless on the concrete, as if sleeping, his tangled shoulder-length hair ringed by a halo of blood. He lay there peacefully for a while, in...

Never Play Poker with James Garner

By Robert Ward GQ March 1984 As I walk into James Garner’s suite at the Palisades Hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia, I suddenly feel as though I’m the Dude From the East accidentally strolling into the back room in Black Bart’s Saloon. There, sitting around a table...

Redneck Lust

By Allison Glock GQ December 1995 I grew up in a house that had butter on the table and a pitcher of sweet tea in the fridge. The trees were filled with cicadas and Spanish moss, the heat was wet enough to bubble paint, and every young man strutted a worn white ring...

The Gospel According to Hicks

By Mike Sager GQ September 1994 “Good evening, folks,” says the comic, freeing the microphone from its stand, charting a course across the stage, his shadow following. His right hand searches the pocket of his baggy pants, puddled atop weary moccasins. The cool mesh...

Slug it: Royko

By John Schulian GQ March 1985 They were drinking their dinner in a joint outside Chicago. It was just Mike Royko and his pal, Big Shack, and whatever their bleary musings happened to be that night three years ago. They probably never even gave a thought to the fact...

The Most Powerful Man on Broadway

By Chip Brown GQ June 1990 Nobody would care about a damaged boy were the child not the father of the man—the source of his passions, his venom, his appetite for power. Frank Rich, chief drama critic of The New York Times, is the most powerful critic in the country....

Inside Marilyn Chambers

By Pat Jordan GQ September 1987 The constable who arrested her stands in the witness box, his eyes lowered to his notebook, and in a monotonous voice describes her act for the Provincial Court of Windsor, Ontario. “She pushed her breasts together and pulled them out...

Hopper’s World

By Peter Richmond GQ It’s not that a ’70 BMW 2800 CS Coupe isn’t the most magnificent machine ever designed by man. It is. Or that I wouldn’t orchestrate a major drug deal to own one—or even drive one, just once, along an autumnal Vermont mountain road, en route...

The Last Swinger

By Tom Junod GQ April 1996 So there’s this tree outside Spago, the restaurant in Los Angeles where Tony Curtis eats almost every night of the week. It’s a lemon tree, or a lime tree, something like that, with dark, shiny leaves and a peppery smell that softens...

Touch of Knievel

By Allison Glock GQ 2000 Even though Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, borders majestic Lake Superior, the Kewadin Casino and Hotel slumps pitiably just off Shunk Road on an arid lot boxed by an RV park, a rehab center, a Head Start facility and a convenience store....