EN: Kirk Silsbee interviewed Harry “the Hipster” in his Santa Monica apartment on July 3, 1976. Years later, while working on another project together, Kirk had mentioned the interview, and offered it to me. After listening to this 3 hour interview, I was bowled over. Harry the Hipster always fascinated me, and this career interview was full of unfiltered insight, and huge amounts of humor. I thought it would be a delight and interesting to turn it into a fully illustrated book strictly devoted to Harry “the Hipster” Gibson. Don McGlynn: Maybe you can tell us about the time you interviewed him. You told me this interesting thing that he was sort of a hyperactive, even as a baby. Kirk Silsbee: Yes, Harry the Hipster was hyperkinetic. His grandmother used to put liquor in his milk, to try and calm him down. When I met him in 1976, I went to interview him at his home in Santa Monica. Now everyone else I’ve interviewed, we’d sit down, fix some kind of audio situation, and we’d start talking. That would not work for Harry. Harry took my cassettes, slammed them into his machine, and ran a microphone cord off of his sound system, and did the interview on his feet. Harry not only answered my questions and told his stories, he walked around the room and acted them out as he spritzed them. He was working the room—recounting his history, stalking and jumping around the room, and capping his yarns with loud vocal punctuations of BAM! I was his one-man audience. This wiry, ponytailed ball of energy was 61 years old. This man who looked to be in his late seventies was on his feet, acting out stories, telling stories, spritzing me, going nuts. Don McGlynn: Yeah. I love him so much. EN: And I wish I could have been there. Doing this book has been a blast. And what a wild life story!