THE tape recorder was running, ' and TIME'S team of cover reporters --Mary Cronin, Jonathan Larsen, Jay Cocks--had just about completed their interviews with the three Fondas. Then Peter Fonda started in on something that had been bugging him.

"Well, I think it's bloody b-- s--for somebody from a magazine to come in and sit down--a young cat --and say, 'I identify with you, kid. Come on, let's get it on.' And I say, O.K. . . . And when it comes out in TIME, it's a whole different gig. It's the way your editors wanted me to be shown. That's it. Not the way I was."

Mary Cronin: "Then why are you doing it? You don't have to talk."

Peter: "I talk. I've got diarrhea of the brain when there's somebody there with a pencil or tape recorder. How many chances do I have to get to the butts out there in Omaha and Kansas City? And Topeka? How many times have I got a chance to hit them and say, 'Hey, we're not free.' Not many. But TIME Magazine. They're not gonna get into that. They want to hear how I've got something rotten to say about Jane or Dad. Or how I've smoked grass. Or how I've taken LSD. Or how I've been busted. Or whatever I got to do, you know. Basically, what I'm saying is, why do the editors send all of you people to come with us and be with us and investigate us and interpret us, when they already know what they want to say about us?"

Well, basically, the reason all those cats went out to get it on with the Fondas was that Show Business Editor Peter Bird Martin and the other editors certainly did not know in advance what they wanted to say or, in fact, how it really was with the family. That was also true of Researcher Georgia Harbison, although researchers are notoriously omniscient.

The cover story was written by Stefan Kanfer, TIME'S movie critic. It may not reflect absolutely everything Peter Fonda says or thinks--there's so much of it--but we do believe that it shows him the way he was or is, and that it gets into a great many matters besides grass. In short, we consider it a reasonably complete and not altogether unsympathetic portrait of possibly the first, and certainly the most fascinating family in show business.

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