Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution

The thing is, Bill could have done or been almost anything. Here is a guy who could have had an enormous career in athletics. He was already great in 8th grade – a phenomenal athlete. He could have evolved through high school and won a college scholarship. Who knows where he could have gone. In track he was always the anchor leg of the relays. The 200, the 400 metres. It is weird even to talk about Bill running because he was such a pie-faced smoker. It’s not how people think about him, but he was phenomenal.

Then he turns to music. Gifted guitarist; definitely had song-writing talent. Easily could have focused on that, especially because he started young in high school. Clearly could have had a career at it. Where does it end with this fucker?

Not to detour, but what Bill really wanted was to be a rock ‘n’ roll star. He loved the showmanship of Kiss, the charisma of them. He just loved the personality that was in rock ‘n’ roll. It’s what attracted him. You look at the Revelations special, it starts out like a rock concert. A lot of critics made the observation: this is a guy who took comedy and made it rock ‘n’ roll. That’s valid. He wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star, and became more and more attracted to it.

But when you are that good at so many things, you spend a lot of time in the grey areas. Bill understood what he wanted, and he knew it long before you or I or anyone else would. And you can imagine the impatience he would have had at being treated as a 16-year-old high-school student when he knew inside that he was going to be a great artist. How frustrating that must be.

To move to LA when you are 18, what does that take? It takes a bug inside that drives you. And I think that bug was never dormant in his life; it was always burrowing.

I didn’t realize until now, when I look back on it, how rare a relationship it was that I had with Bill. We knew what we were doing, the life we were living, the position we were in. Being 14 and having headshots and going to auditions – we knew something was going on that was special. We just figured we must be guided by some greater force.

What I realize now is that I was caught up in Bill’s destiny. I was fortunate enough to be right in the midst of the inferno. When you were with him, you just felt this momentum. Even though he had ups and downs, there was always this great charge of energy and purpose about him. Anything was possible.

Bill was also a serial monogamist, which meant he had these very intense personal relationships, one after another. Me, Laurie Mango, Kevin, David Johndrow. There were periods of time when there was just one person he focused on. It was an amazing experience to be that person because he was such an intense guy.

The thing you recognized about Bill is that he had an addictive, obsessive personality. Whether it was drugs or video games or food or a subject matter or pornography; he picked at it until there was nothing left. Then he moved on. Relationships were the same thing. He’d call you and, fuck, you’d be the person. Constantly. Then he’d move on.

I eventually realized that he got something different from each person. It didn’t matter, he was so generous about his friends. He had something he wrote in Dr. Donovan’s office when he was going through chemo. I think he was reading The One Minute Manager and he was making a list of priorities. Number one was his friends.

He wasn’t married, he didn’t have a lot of relationships with women, but he really enjoyed his friends. He got so much from them. He did have a lot of best friends: you don’t meet people like Bill very often, so people would want to hang out with him.

I learned a lot from being Bill’s friend. The influence is obviously in me. I’m not going to try to analyze it. You don’t spend that much time with another human being and not come away influenced.

I try to avoid talking about him as much as possible. I just enjoy my memories of him, which didn’t have that much to do with comedy. We didn’t talk about comedy a lot. We never talked about work or anything.

CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_c2eabc1b-bc97-5538-b136-a76e0bcd971a)

On the last day of school, 10th grade, Bill went up to Laurie Mango and asked her out on a date. Tall and dark, striking features: she was Bill’s type. His weakness was Italian women; they didn’t necessarily have to be Italian; just looking it was sufficient. The Mangos had come to Texas from California and, like a disproportionate number of families whose kids lived in the area, her dad (a geologist) worked for an oil company.

Although she hardly knew Bill at the time, Laurie agreed to go out with him. “He was unlike anyone our age I had ever met and I was immediately attracted to him,” recalls Mango. Bill opened up to Laurie, and shared all of his passions with her: books, movies, music. Bill also showed Laurie the Sane Man comic he had created. Sane Man was a superhero of sorts, a character Bill created that could defeat all of the injustices of the world with the twin powers of reason and logic.

Bill unleashed the full force of his personality on Laurie. He wrote her long, ten-and fifteen-page love letters. Bill wasn’t just smitten: this was the be-all and end-all. At times it was a little too much for Laurie. This was high school. Laurie would get embarrassed about public displays of affection, holding hands, and kissing. Still, even if a little lopsided, they had a true teen romance.

For the next year-plus of high school, Bill’s primary occupations – Laurie, Stress, etc. – were anything but school. School was just something he used to facilitate participation in his other interests, including comedy.

Bill also started taking guitar lessons. He was a natural, of sorts. Despite the fact he was lacking in musicianship, he was fast and had the coordination to run his finger up and down the fretboard quickly enough to sound cool. But Stress had pimped itself into a corner. They had told so many stories and passed around so many action shots of themselves, that everyone at Stratford thought they were not only legit but fully functional as a rock ‘n’ roll outfit.

The reality was they had parts of songs – chord progressions, melodies, lyrics – but nothing to get from “One, two, three, four …” to “Thank you, goodnight.” It was far too freeform, if you can even use such a word to describe their proto-punk.

Still, everyone at school assumed the band would play the Stratford Senior Follies, one of the school’s annual talent shows, so Stress now had to put up and perform or look like complete morons. Dwight had long since escaped to Oregon. The floating in and out of Bruce Salmon, and other guys wasn’t conducive to being able to put together consistent performances.

So Bill and Kevin took on honor student Charles Lloyd as a drummer and later added Dave DeBesse as a singer and as a ringer. DeBesse was everything Bill wasn’t: he was good-looking and popular. Having Dave as the frontman was a way to ensure the girls in high school would take a greater interest in Stress, if only for the eye-candy aspect of it.

For, as punk rock as they wanted to be in attitude, they were really just a rock band. After opening the Senior Follies set with an original instrumental called “Globe,” they played covers of Alvin Lee’s “Help Me” and the Beatles’ “Slow Down.” Not exactly the choices of someone wanting to be anarchy. Stress played somewhere in the middle of the Follies line-up and, after the remaining acts had performed, also got to close the show. They opted for classic rock staples, first with Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll,” then Hendrix’s “Hey Joe.”

The joke was that Bill would play a guitar solo out of “Hey Joe” until they shut the band down. He did around twenty minutes of high-speed noodling until finally the principal got someone to go around the side of the stage and literally unplug them. It sounded like a broken record with the same bass riff over and over while Bill maniacally ran his fingers up and down the guitar neck.

But it legitimized Stress. They were a band in myth alone no longer. They played several more gigs during Bill’s junior year. There was a courtyard near the Stratford where people would hang out on weekends; on a few occasions the band set up there and played for anyone who cared to listen, and even those who probably didn’t care to, for that matter. They had amplification, after all. They also played a few keg parties, putting Bill squarely in the drunken teen environment he dreaded.

Stratford had an unofficial student group called the Stratford Senior Party Team, the function of which was to throw parties. They would rent houses, clubhouses, or even apartments for a night, then buy kegs and sell tickets to friends at school. Anybody who wanted to could get drunk, a few people made a bit of cash, and everyone went home happy. Because Booth was a member of the Team, he had the “in” to arrange Stress as the live entertainment. They scored a few more gigs that way, but Bill was ambivalent. The upside: he was playing live music in front of people. The downside: he was surrounded by the party people he ruthlessly ridiculed.

The summer before Bill’s senior year started, Comedy Workshop owner Paul Menzel opened the Comedy Annex, a ninety-seat club converted from a strip bar right around the corner from the Workshop.

Live comedy suddenly became one of the hip things to do and Houston, Texas, had the only live comedy venue in the South. It started drawing people from around the region: Sam Kinison came from Oklahoma, Jimmy Pineapple (real name James Ladmirault) came from neighboring Louisiana. These people moved to Houston to pursue comedy as a career.

The scene was exploding, and with it the crowds. With the larger crowds there was more opportunity for the comedians. When Bill first started coming to the Workshop, the open mic nights were just Mondays, then it progressed to Mondays and Tuesdays. It built and built. Originally there was no cover, but as the crowds got larger, they also got rowdier. So the comics eventually insisted the club not only start charging cover but also start paying the performers a cut.

Steve Epstein recalls: “Even though we didn’t have much material, other than borrowed – I was borrowing a lot – the energy was really cool and the audiences were great, very supportive.” Many of the comedians had been pushing Menzel to expand, but he was happy with the status quo. Epstein and Mike Vance decided that, if Menzel wasn’t going to open up another room, then they were just going to open up their own club.

They went out and got backing from renowned Houston sports-writer Mickey Herskowitz, whose son had been performing; and from a prominent lawyer whose daughter was also at the club. Once this was in play, Menzel approached Epstein and Vance and said, “Listen if you’ll drop your plans to open a club, I’ll open one.” He converted the strip joint around the corner and the Annex was born. And now the comedians were really starting to get good because they could go at it every day.

Before the start of Bill’s senior year, his dad was getting sent to Little Rock by General Motors. The original plan was for Jim and Mary to go to Arkansas, have Bill stay behind in Houston for the first half of his school year, then move up at Christmas to join his parents. Logistically things ended up not being that simple; the end result was that Bill got to stay the year. In Houston. By himself.

A better scenario young Bill could not have designed for himself. The biggest source of tension in his life — his family – would have a much more difficult time annoying him from 500 miles away. And with the Annex open, there were slots to fill. Bill was free to perform whenever he wanted. There was no parental guidance to hinder his development as a comedian. He was also making a few bucks.

He was still a teen, barely old enough to drive, but Bill was a wunderkind in an adult world. He was already as good as the guys twice his age playing the same stage. And they knew it.

One weekend home from college, Steve got an invite from baby brother Bill. “I knew [Bill] was writing these jokes,” says Steve, “but I did not know what that meant, and one time … he said, ‘Come down to the Comedy Workshop.’ And I said, ‘Well, why?’ I’d never been to a comedy club, it just wasn’t a big thing. And he said, ‘Just come down there tonight.’ So I went down that night, and I couldn’t believe it, he was a superstar already. There was a sold-out show, lines waiting to get in, and that was my brother, I couldn’t believe it.”

Bill wasn’t just the pet apprentice at the Annex and he wasn’t the socially awkward kid at school any more. During his senior year, he scheduled himself to a lunchtime performance at one of the athletic fields adjacent to the school. About 200 students showed for the impromptu set. When a member of the audience told Hicks, “You have the sense of humor of a third grader,” Bill replied, “Then you must have the comprehension of a second grader.”

The son of a Pentecostal preacher, Sam Kinison survived being hit by a truck at the age of three. After leaving a broken home, he and his brother started off following in their father’s footsteps, as they headed up religious revivals across the Bible Belt of the south.

Failing first at the ministry, then at marriage, Kinison traded one pulpit for another and stepped into stand-up. He was ruthless. “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” Sam took that to a level comedy hadn’t seen before. With Sam the key to comedy wasn’t timing but screaming. Kinison would get his break on a Rodney Dangerfield special where he explained why people starve in Africa: “See this? See this? It’s SAND. YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT … GO TO WHERE THE FOOD IS. ARGHHH. ARGHHH.”

To say Sam lived fast is a mild understatement. His brother once found him snorting cocaine off the back cover of John Belushi’s biography, Wired.

Even though Bill had started (i.e. done his first gig) before Kinison, Sam was able to spend more time on stage; to make a commitment to comedy as a career. So he quickly established a reputation not just in Houston but in the whole state, being named Funniest Man in Texas by the Dallas Morning News in both 1979 and 1980.

One night, as Sam was beginning to take off, and Bill was still starting and showing when he could, Sam gave Bill his initiation. He did a bit where he was “Mr. Lonely,” using the Bobby Vinton song. Sam would get up on a barstool and start singing, “I’m lonely. I’m Mr. Lonely. I have nobody …” and he’d be taking off his clothes as he sang. “I’m a soldier. A lonely soldier.” As he got near the end of the song he’d be taking down his pants. Then he’d drop his voice from that of a romantic crooner to a mischievous screamer. “But I see my boy now, and I ain’t lonely no more.” Then he’d jump off the stool, into the audience, wrestle someone to the ground and pretend to anally rape him or her with his clothes on. “I’ve got my boy. I’ve got my boy. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.”

One night Bill just happened to be sitting there at the corner of the stage when Sam made Bill his catamite. Welcome to the family. Bill liked to hang around the guys as much as possible, and the guys liked him. Moreover, pretty much everyone recognized that Bill was supremely talented, even as a teen; but age and lifestyle kept him at arm’s length. When the other comics went out late after the club closed to take the party somewhere else, or even just to go eat, Bill often went home. He had school the next day.

Plus, despite the general camaraderie, not everybody at this point was a Musketeer. According to fellow Houston comic Jimmy Pineapple, “I don’t think Kinison was ever Bill’s favorite person. They had a connection in that they were the two most famous people to come out of the Houston comics, but Sam wasn’t going to do anything for anybody except Sam. He always used to set people against each other. He used to pull one of us aside: ‘It’s you and I, Pineapple. You and I are the best ones here. Everybody else sucks. So and so is a piece of shit. You and I are the only ones…’ Then he’d pull Bill aside,

‘Bill, it’s you and I. You and I are the best ones here…’ Then he would do it with someone else.”

In April of 1980, Sam first got banned from the Workshop. He had a self-explanatory bit he called “Barstool Rodeo,” where he once broke the barstool while riding it. So when they repaired the stool, Menzel had the bar manager write, “If you break this, you owe $20” on the bottom of the seat. A few nights later, Sam, who tipped the scales at about 250 pounds, is on stage when he simply sits on the stool and it breaks. He is a little upset by this, but more upset by how much the other comics are laughing at him. Naturally he wants to know what the deal is, and they tell him to look at the bottom of the stool. He reads it. Ha, ha. “Oh, twenty dollars? That’s no problem.” He takes twenty dollars and tosses it onto the stage.

Then he went off. “And here’s what I think of your fucking rules. So cheap you can’t pay for a stool. You can’t pay for the props.” Kinison started smashing the remnants of the barstool. Another one of the comics, incited by Kinison’s display of insolence, picked up a chair and, thinking he was going to break it on a beam, ended up putting it through a wall. They were both tossed out and banned from the club for a couple of weeks.

Sam’s second excommunication from the Houston comedy community came from doing “Baby Jesus and His Pal Nigger Dog.” He would just ad-lib: “I’m Baby Jesus, I can do anything I want. What you gonna do? I’ll turn you into a leper. I’m Baby Jesus, I’ll drink your drink. You can’t stop me.” One night this mutated into the Adventures of Baby Jesus and His Pal Nigger Dog. Management would let comics get away with most things. Apparently, though, that was too inappropriate. Sam was gone. Steve Moore, the club art director (and a comic himself), was given the job of breaking the news to Sam.

The next day, according to Epstein: “I came to the club and there were a few guys sitting at the store across from the club. They were talking about going to LA and we were like, ‘Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. It’s time to move on.’ Sam goes, ‘Let’s go.’ And I thought he meant, ‘Let’s go right now.’ I’m saying, ‘Great. I love sponteneity. Shit yeah. Let’s do it right now.’

“What I had missed before I got there was them talking about beating the shit out of Steve Moore, who had fired Sam. That’s what he meant by ‘Let’s go.'”

Sam led the vigilantes, who proceeded to start a fight in which Moore broke his leg. That was it for Kinison. He put together a fundraiser for his favorite cause – himself. He headed up the movement to go west, borrowed money, promised favors, and put together a show with Bill, Carl LaBove and Riley Barber. Sam also recruited Argus Hamilton to come out from LA and be the headlining draw. They rented out the Tower Theater for a mid-September gig, and promoted the show as “The Outlaw Comics on the Lam.”