Tom Forcade

Tom Forcade

Tom Forcade in 1973 for a Boulder, Colorado meeting of the Underground Press
Born (1945-09-11)September 11, 1945
Phoenix, Arizona
Died November 17, 1978(1978-11-17) (aged 33)
New York City
Occupation Underground journalist, activist

Thomas King Forçade (September 11, 1945 – November 17, 1978), aka Gary Goodson,[1] was an American underground journalist and activist in the 1970s. For many years he ran the Underground Press Syndicate (later called the Alternative Press Syndicate), and was the founder in summer 1974 of High Times magazine.[2] High Times ran articles calling marijuana a "medical wonder drug" and ridiculing the US Drug Enforcement Administration. High Times became a huge success with a circulation of more than 500,000 copies a month and revenues approaching $10 million by 1977 and embraced by the young adult market as the bible of the alternative life culture. By 1977 High Times was selling as many copies an issue as Rolling Stone and National Lampoon. Forcade published several other publications such as Stoned, National Weed, Dealer and others that always were laced with some of the best humor, pop culture and a forum for some of the best writers, artists and political savvy mostly veiled as the counter culture entertainment magazine. Many of the writers went on to be published in premiere papers and magazines in North America.

Life and career

He was born in Phoenix, Arizona. His father, engineer and hot rod enthusiast Kenneth Goodson, died in a car crash when Forçade was a child.

Forçade graduated from the University of Utah in 1967 with a degree in business administration. He went into the United States Air Force but was discharged after a few months. He used the skills he learned, however, to fly across the border for several years trafficking drugs from Mexico and Colombia, and used his proceeds to form a hippie commune and underground magazine called Orpheus. After this, he moved to New York City, where he became famous for both founding High Times and bankrolling an ailing Punk Magazine.[3] In 1970, Forcade became one of the first people to use pieing as a form of protest, hitting Chairman Otto Larsen during the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography.[4][5]

According to the 1990 nonfiction book 12 Days on the Road: The Sex Pistols and America, by Noel E. Monk and Jimmy Guterman, Forcade and his film crew followed the Sex Pistols through their chaotic January 1978 concerts of the U.S. South and West, using high-pressure tactics in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the band's management and record company to let him document the tour.

Death

Forçade committed suicide by gunshot to the head in November 1978 in his Greenwich Village apartment after the death of his best friend, Jack Coombs.[6] Forcade had attempted suicide before and bequeathed trusts to benefit High Times and NORML.

References

  1. ↑ Gross, Michael (February 18, 1991). Ivana's avenger. New York Magazine
  2. ↑ Bienenstock, David; and editors of High Times magazine (2008). Chapter 1 HIGHstory. The Official High Times Pot Smokers Handbook: Featuring 420 Things to do When You're Stoned. Chronicle Books. ISBN 0811862054. ISBN 9780811862059.
  3. ↑ Armstrong, David (1981). A trumpet to arms: alternative media in America. J.P. Tarcher, ISBN 978-0-87477-158-9
  4. ↑ Staff report (May 13, 1970). Witness Presents Pornography Commissioner With a Pie (in the Face). New York Times
  5. ↑ Weiner, Rex (April 1, 2014). Here’s Pie in Your Eye. The Paris Review.
  6. ↑ Torgoff, Martin (2004). Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945–2000. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 269. ISBN 978-0-7432-5863-0.
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