Bill Hicks

William Melvin Hicks (December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994), better known as Bill Hicks, was an American stand-up comedian, satirist, and social critic. Hicks is often compared to Lenny Bruce and Sam Kinison (the latter a contemporary and friend), and characterized his own performances as "Chomsky with dick jokes".

Biography

Early life

Born in Valdosta, Georgia, Bill was the son of Jim and Mary (Reese) Hicks, and had two elder siblings, Steve and Lynn. The family lived in Florida, Alabama, and New Jersey before settling in Houston, Texas when Bill was seven. Hicks has two school-age stories on the Flying Saucer Tour Vol. 1 album. He said he was raised in the Southern Baptist faith. He was drawn to comedy at an early age, emulating Woody Allen, and writing routines with his friend Dwight Slade. His parents took him to a psychoanalyst at age 17, worried about his behavior, but the psychoanalyst could find little wrong with him. The therapist apparently joked that Bill's parents would probably benefit more from a few sessions than Bill himself.

In 1978, the Comedy Workshop opened in Houston, and friends Hicks, Slade, and Kevin Booth started performing there. At first, Hicks was unable to drive and so young he needed a special work permit. He worked his way up to once every Tuesday night in the autumn of 1978, while still in high school. He was well received and started developing his improvisational skills, although his act at the time was limited. Steve Hicks, Kevin Booth, and Jay Leno reminisce about the Comedy Workshop years in the It's Just A Ride documentary.

1980s

In his senior year of high school, the Hicks family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, but after his graduation, in the spring of 1980, Bill moved to Los Angeles, California, and started performing at the Comedy Store in Hollywood, where Andrew Dice Clay, Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, and Garry Shandling were also performing at the time. He briefly attended Los Angeles Community College, mentioning the unhappy experience on Flying Saucer Tour Vol. 1. He appeared in a pilot for the sitcom, Bulba, before moving back to Houston in 1982. There, he formed the ACE Production Company (Absolute Creative Entertainment), which would later become Sacred Cow Productions, with Kevin Booth. At some point he attended the University of Houston briefly.

In 1983, Hicks started drinking heavily and using drugs, which may have influenced his increasingly disjointed and angry, at times even misanthropic, ranting style on stage. As had become his trademark, he continued attacking the American dream, hypocritical beliefs, and traditional attitudes. At one show, two Vietnam veterans took exception to his statements and sought him out after the show, breaking his leg.

Hicks' success steadily increased (along with his drug use), and in 1984 he got an appearance on the talkshow Late Night with David Letterman, which was engineered by his friend Jay Leno. He made an impression on David Letterman, and ended up doing eleven more broadcast show appearances, all hugely popular, despite being bowdlerized versions of his stage shows.

In 1986, Hicks found himself broke after spending all his money on various drugs, but his career got another upturn as he appeared on Rodney Dangerfield's Young Comedians Special in 1987. The same year, he moved to New York City, and for the next five years he did about 300 performances a year. His reputation suffered from his drug use, however, and in 1988, he quit drugs — including alcohol (Hicks recounts his quitting of alcohol in the One Night Stand special and on Flying Saucer Tour Vol. 1.) He fell back to cigarette smoking as his only vice, a theme that would figure heavily in his performances from then on. (On the album Relentless, he jokes that he quit using psychedelics because "once you've been taken aboard a UFO, it's kind of hard to top that.")

An infamous gig in Chicago during 1989, later released as the bootleg I'm Sorry, Folks, resulted in Hicks screaming possibly his most infamous quote, "Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underachiever" to a heckler shouting "Free Bird" over and over. One should note that Hicks followed this remark by a misanthropic tirade calling for unbiased genocide against the whole of humanity, suggesting that it was not an anti-Semitic comment but rather an expression of his disgust with people in general. Hicks often veered between hope and love for the human race and utter hopelessness.

In 1989 he released his first video, Sane Man, to critical acclaim.

1990s

In 1990, he released his first album, Dangerous, did an HBO special, One Night Stand, and performed at Montreal's Just for laughs festival. He was also part of a group of American stand-up comedians performing in London's West End in November. He was a huge hit in the UK and Ireland and continued touring there in 1991. That year, he also returned to the Just for laughs festival and recorded his second album, Relentless.

Hicks made a brief detour into musical recording with the Marblehead Johnson album in 1992, the same year he met Colleen McGarr, who was to become his girlfriend and fiancee. In November of that year, he toured the UK. On that tour, he recorded the Revelations video for Channel 4 in England and the standup performance that would become Live at Oxford Playhouse and Salvation. He was voted "Hot Standup Comic" by Rolling Stone Magazine, and moved to Los Angeles again in early 1993.

The progressive metal band Tool invited Hicks to open a number of concerts for them on their 1992 Lollapalooza appearances, where Hicks once famously asked the audience to look for a contact lens he'd lost. Thousands of people complied^[1]. Tool singer Maynard James Keenan so enjoyed this joke that he repeated it on a number of occasions.

In April of 1993, while touring in Australia, he started complaining of pains in his side, and in the middle of June of that year, he learned he had pancreatic cancer. He started receiving weekly chemotherapy, while still touring and also recording his album, Arizona Bay, with Kevin Booth. He was also working with comedian Fallon Woodland on a pilot episode of a new sitcom, titled Counts of the Netherworld for Channel 4 at the time of his death. The budget and storyboard had been approved, and a pilot was filmed. The Counts of the Netherworld pilot was shown at the various Tenth Anniversary Tribute Night events around the world on February 26, 2004.

On October 1, he was to appear on the David Letterman show for the twelfth time, but his appearance was cancelled somewhat controversially. At the time, Hicks was doing a routine about pro-life organizations, where he encouraged them to "lock arms and block cemeteries" instead of medical clinics, but his routine was cut from the show. Both the show's producers and CBS denied responsibility for the cut, but the reason appeared obvious to many during the following week's Letterman show when a commercial for a pro-life organization was aired. For many fans, this reinforced one of Bill's recurring themes, that America was being sanitized and manipulated in the name of corporate sponsorship.

One political event that became an object of interest and fodder for comedy was the storming of the Waco compound of the Branch Davidians under David Koresh. Hicks became convinced that the government initiated the destruction of the compound by setting it on fire (he pointed to footage of a tank allegedly shooting fire into the compound as evidence) and then covered-up its actions. He also expressed disappointment with the various overseas bombing campaigns ordered by President Clinton and the Warren Commission explanation of the Kennedy assassination.

He played the final show of his career at Caroline's in New York on January 5, 1994. Bill moved back to his parents' house in Little Rock shortly thereafter. He called his friends to say goodbye before he stopped speaking on February 14, and died at 11:20 PM on February 26 of pancreatic cancer. ^[2] Bill was buried on the family plot in Leakesville, Mississippi.

The Arizona Bay album, as well as the album considered his best, Rant in E-Minor, were released posthumously in 1997 by his friend Kevin Booth.

Quotations

"I was told when I grew up I could be anything I wanted: a fireman, a policeman, a doctor—even President, it seemed. And for the first time in the history of mankind, something new, called an astronaut. But like so many kids brought up on a steady diet of Westerns, I always wanted to be the avenging cowboy hero—that lone voice in the wilderness, fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth and justice. And in my heart of hearts I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go, in my endless ride into the setting sun." (Opening voice-over to Hicks's Revelations special, also quoted in the last issue of Preacher)
"I hate patriotism...I can't stand it, man—makes me fuckin' sick. It's a round world last time I checked." (Rant in E-Minor)
"A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. Do you think when Jesus comes back, he's really going to want to see a fucking cross? Ow! Maybe that's why he hasn't shown up yet...it's like going up to Jackie Onassis wearing a sniper rifle pendant... Just thinking of John, Jackie. We love him. Trying to keep that memory alive, baby. [mimes shooting a rifle] I did that routine in Fyffe, Alabama, and after the show these three rednecks came up to me. 'Hey, buddy! C'mere! Hey Mr. Comedian! C'mere! Hey buddy, we're Christians and we don't like what you said!' I said 'Well, then forgive me.' Later, as I was hanging from the tree..." (Relentless)
Speculating on how a television news anchor would deliver a "positive" LSD story: "Today, a young man on acid realised that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves... here's Tom with the weather." (Relentless)
"Yeah you really got my act down good, guys. That'll be great. You know, when I'm done ranting about elite power that rules the planet under a totalitarian govenment that uses the media in order to keep people stupid, my throat gets parched. That's why I drink orange drink." - Bill Hicks, after being asked to do an advertisement for orange drink.

Legacy

File:Bill Hicks The Man in the Trench-Coat'.png

'The Man in the Trench-Coat' - A persona Hicks adopted in the later stage of his career.

Bill Hicks's influence has been far-reaching. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, fellow comedians and comedy insiders voted Hicks amongst the top 20 "Greatest Comedy Acts Ever" at number thirteen.
Likewise, in "Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time" (2004), Hicks was ranked at number nineteen[[1]].
Devotees of Hicks have incorporated his words, image and attitude into their own creations.
Thanks to the technologies which enable audio sampling, fragments of Bill Hicks rants, diatribes, social criticisms & philosophies have found their way into many musical works. His influence on Tool is well documented and the British band Radiohead's seminal 1995 album The Bends was dedicated to his memory.

On 25 February 2004, British MP Stephen Pound tabled an early day motion titled "Anniversary of the Death of Bill Hicks" (EDM 678 of the 2003-04 session), the text of which was as follows:

That this House notes with sadness the 10th anniversary of the death of Bill Hicks, on 26th February 1994, at the age of 33; recalls his assertion that his words would be a bullet in the heart of consumerism, capitalism and the American Dream; and mourns the passing of one of the few people who may be mentioned as being worth of inclusion with Lenny Bruce in any list of unflinching and painfully honest political philosophers. ^[3]

Music

The American band Tool called him "another dead hero" in the inlay of their album Ænima, accompanied by a drawing of the man himself and a dedication. The songs "Ænema" and "Third Eye" are based on his philosophy. While "Ænema"'s lyric "learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona Bay", was inspired by Hicks' distaste for Los Angeles, the latter contains samples of his comedy (which are ambiguously related to the theme of the song, judging by the lyrical references to hallucinogenics). The lenticular casing of Ænema also shows California falling into the sea. They also thanked him on their album Undertow, which led to Tool's singer Maynard James Keenan becoming friends with him.

The UK rap-metal band One Minute Silence named two of their songs, "It's Just A Ride" and "If I Can Change" after some of Hicks' work; the former was taken from a video monologue in which Hicks asserted that life is "just a ride", accompanied by video images of a rollercoaster ride. This monologue also inspired Welsh singer/songwriter Jem's tribute "Just A Ride" and was used in The Kleptones song "Last Words (A Tribute)".

British Band The Bluetones named their EP Marblehead Johnson after the band that was comprised of Bill Hicks, Pat Brown, Kevin Booth and Curt Booth. The song "Chicks Dig Jerks", with Hicks on vocals, is billed as Marblehead Johnson and appears on Relentless and Rant In E-Minor. A collection of songs was available on CD but is currently out of print.

Pitchshifter and Adam Freeland have both sampled the same portion of Hicks' stand-up: "You are free... to do as we tell you." Freeland also used soundbites from Hicks' Rant in E-Minor album, including "Go back to bed America, your government is in control again. Here's American Gladiators, watch this and get fat and stupid." for his 2003 single "We Want Your Soul". Welsh band Super Furry Animals sampled Hicks proclaiming "all governments are liars and murderers" on their live version of "The Man Don't Give A Fuck". Their song "God! Show Me Magic" is about Hicks. Fila Brazillia also sampled a part of Hicks' act regarding marketers and advertisers (similar to the one on his Arizona Bay album) in their song "6 Ft. Wasp" off of their album Maim That Tune. Fila Brazillia also dedicated that album "to the memory of Bill Hicks". The opening lines of the same monologue ("By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising... kill yourself.") appear in the punk rock band Unwritten Law's song "Armageddon Singalong", on the Fat Wreck Chords compilation Short Music for Short People.

The 1994 Radiohead album, The Bends, is dedicated to Bill Hicks who shares this recognition with Indigo.

The Mindless Self Indulgence album, Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy, Bill Hicks is thanked along with many others for helping to push the envelope.

Movies and television

The movie Human Traffic referred to him as the "late, great Bill Hicks," and showed that the main character, Jip, liked to watch a bit of Hicks' stand-up before going out for a night to "remind me not to take life too seriously".

In 1998, on the fourth anniversary of his death, FOX aired The Simpsons episode "The Last Temptation of Krust" with Krusty performing an uncredited homage to him with two Hicks evangelists, Janeane Garofalo and Jay Leno.

Comic book

He appears in the comic book Preacher, in which he is an important influence on the protagonist, Rev. Jesse Custer[[2]].

Discography

Audio

Dangerous (1990)
Relentless (1992)
Arizona Bay (1997)
Rant in E-Minor (1997)
Philosophy: The Best of Bill Hicks (2001)
Love, Laughter and Truth (2002)
Flying Saucer Tour Vol. 1 (2002)
Live at Oxford Playhouse, or Shock and Awe (2003)
Salvation: Oxford November 11, 1992 (2005)
The Lost Hour (October, 1993)

Video

Sane Man (VHS, 1989 / DVD, 2005)
One Night Stand (VHS, 1991 / DVD, 2002)
Ninja Bachelor Party (VHS, 1991)
Relentless (VHS, 1992 / DVD, 2006)
Totally Bill Hicks (VHS, 1994 / DVD, 2002)

Comprises the documentary It's Just A Ride and a live performance, Revelations

Bill Hicks Live: Satirist, Social Critic, Stand Up Comedian (DVD, 2004)

Comprises One Night Stand, Relentless, It's Just A Ride and Revelations

Notes

^ "It's Only a Ride: Bill Hicks". interview with Kevin Booth. Fade To Black. Retrieved 2006-03-03. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
^ O'Neill, Brendan (23 February 2004). "Bill Hicks: Why the fuss, exactly?". BBC News. Retrieved 2006-03-03.
^ "Anniversary of the death of Bill Hicks". Parliamentary Information Management Services. Retrieved 2006-03-03.

External links

[1] "It's Only a Ride: Bill Hicks". interview with Kevin Booth. Fade To Black. Retrieved 2006-03-03. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

[2] O'Neill, Brendan (23 February 2004). "Bill Hicks: Why the fuss, exactly?". BBC News. Retrieved 2006-03-03.

[3] "Anniversary of the death of Bill Hicks". Parliamentary Information Management Services. Retrieved 2006-03-03.

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