Bill Hicks

William Melvin Hicks (December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994) was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and musician. His material—encompassing a wide range of social issues including religion, politics, and philosophy—was controversial and often steeped in dark comedy.

At the age of 16, while still in high school, Hicks began performing at the Comedy Workshop in Houston, Texas. During the 1980s, he toured the U.S. extensively and made a number of high-profile television appearances, but it was in the UK that he amassed a significant fan base, filling large venues during his 1991 tour. He also achieved some recognition as a guitarist and songwriter.

Hicks died of pancreatic cancer on February 26, 1994, at the age of 32. In subsequent years, his work gained significant acclaim in creative circles—particularly after a series of posthumous album releases—and he developed a substantial cult following. In 2007, he was No. 6 on Channel 4's list of the "100 Greatest Stand-Up Comics", and rose to No. 4 on the 2010 list. In 2017, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine ranked him No. 13 on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time.

Early life

Hicks was born in Valdosta, Georgia, the son of James Melvin "Jim" Hicks (1923–2006) and Mary (Reese) Hicks. He had an older sister, Lynn, and an older brother, Steve. The family lived in Alabama, Florida, and New Jersey, before settling in Houston, Texas when Hicks was seven years old.''Bill Hicks: Love All the People'' (Robinson Publishing, 2005), , page #s? He was drawn to comedy at an early age, emulating Woody Allen and Richard Pryor, and would write routines with his friend Dwight Slade. While attending Stratford High School, he began performing comedy (mostly derivations of Woody Allen material) for his classmates. At home, he would write his own one-liners and slide them under the bedroom door of Steve, who he thought was a genius, for critical analysis. Steve told him, "Keep it up. You're really good at this."

Early on, Hicks began to mock his family's Southern Baptist religious beliefs. He joked to the ''Houston Post'' in 1987, "We were Yuppie Baptists. We worried about things like, 'If you scratch your neighbor's Subaru, should you leave a note?'" Biographer Cynthia True described a typical argument with his father:

However, he was close with his family his whole life and he did not reject spiritual ideology itself, and throughout his life he sought various alternative methods of experiencing it. Kevin Slade, elder brother of Dwight, introduced him to Transcendental Meditation and other forms of spirituality. Over one Thanksgiving weekend, he took Hicks and Dwight to a Transcendental Meditation residence course in Galveston. Worried about his rebellious behavior, his parents took him to a psychoanalyst at age 17. According to Hicks, the analyst took him aside after the first group session and told him, "You can continue coming if you want to, but it's them, not you."

Career

Beginnings

Hicks was associated with the Texas Outlaw Comics group developed at the Comedy Workshop in Houston in the 1980s.Staff report (April 18, 1991). 'Texas outlaw' fires from the lip. ''Washington Times''

California and New York

By January 1986, Hicks was using recreational drugs and his financial resources had dwindled. However his career received another upturn in 1987, when he appeared on Rodney Dangerfield's ''Young Comedians Special''. The same year, he moved to New York City, and for the next five years performed about 300 times a year. On the album ''Relentless'', he jokes that he quit using drugs because "once you've been taken aboard a UFO, it's kind of hard to top that", although in his performances, he continued to enthusiastically praise the virtues of LSD, marijuana, and psychedelic mushrooms.

He eventually fell back to chain smoking, a theme that figured heavily in his performances from then on. His nicotine addiction, love of smoking, and occasional attempts to quit became a recurring theme in his act throughout his later years.

In 1988, Hicks signed with his first professional business manager, Jack Mondrus.

On the track "Modern Bummer" of his 1990 album '' Dangerous'', Hicks says he quit drinking alcohol in 1988.

In 1989, he released his first video, ''Sane Man''; a remastered version with 30 minutes of extra footage was released in 1999.

Early fame

In 1990, Hicks released his first album, ''Dangerous'', performed on the 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. Hicks was a huge hit in the UK and Ireland and continued touring there throughout 1991. That year, he returned to ''Just for Laughs'' and filmed his second video, ''Relentless.''

Hicks made a brief detour into musical recording with the ''Marble Head Johnson'' album in 1992 collaborating with Houston high school friend Kevin Booth and Austin Texas drummer Pat Brown. During the same year he toured the UK, where he recorded the ''Revelations'' video for Britain's Channel 4. He closed the show with his soon-to become-famous philosophy regarding life, "It's Just a Ride." Also in that tour he recorded the stand-up performance released in its entirety on a double CD titled ''Salvation.'' Hicks was voted "Hot Standup Comic" by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine in 1993. He moved to Los Angeles in 1992.

Hicks and Tool

Progressive metal band Tool invited Hicks to open a number of concerts in its 1993 Lollapalooza appearances, where Hicks once asked the audience to look for a contact lens he had lost. Thousands of people complied.

Members of Tool felt that they and Hicks "were resonating similar concepts". Intending to raise awareness about Hicks's material and ideas, Tool dedicated their triple-platinum album ''Ænima'' (1996) to Hicks. Both the lenticular casing of the ''Ænima'' album packaging as well as the chorus of the title track " Ænema" make reference to a sketch from Hicks's '' Arizona Bay'' album, in which he contemplates the idea of Los Angeles falling into the Pacific Ocean. ''Ænima''s final track, "Third Eye" contains samples from Hicks's ''Dangerous'' and ''Relentless'' albums.

An alternate version of the ''Ænima'' artwork shows a painting of Bill Hicks, calling him "Another Dead Hero", and mentions of Hicks are found both in the liner notes and on the record.

Censorship and aftermath

In 1984, Hicks was invited to appear on '' Late Night with David Letterman'' for the first time. He had a joke that he used frequently in comedy clubs about how he caused a serious accident that left a classmate using a wheelchair. NBC had a policy that no handicapped jokes could be aired on the show, making his stand-up routine difficult to perform without mentioning words such as "wheelchair."

On October 1, 1993, Hicks was scheduled to appear on '' Late Show with David Letterman'' on CBS, where Letterman had recently moved. It was his 12th appearance on a Letterman late-night show, but his entire performance was removed from the broadcast: at that point the only occasion where a comedian's entire routine was cut after taping. Hicks's stand-up routine was removed from the show, Hicks said, because Letterman's producers believed the material, which included jokes involving religion and the anti-abortion movement, was unsuitable for broadcast. Producer Robert Morton initially blamed CBS, which denied responsibility; Morton later conceded it was his decision. Although Letterman later expressed regret at the way Hicks had been handled, Hicks did not appear on the show again. Hicks was undergoing chemotherapy at the time of his final ''Late Show'' appearance, unbeknownst to Letterman, and most others outside of Hicks's family, and died less than four months later.

Letterman finally aired the censored routine in its entirety on January 30, 2009. Hicks's mother, Mary, was present in the studio and appeared on-camera as a guest. Letterman took responsibility for the original decision to remove Hicks's set from the 1993 show. "It says more about me as a guy than it says about Bill," he said, after the set aired, "because there was absolutely nothing wrong with that".

Denis Leary's plagiarism

For many years, Hicks was friends with fellow comedian Denis Leary, but in 1993, he was angered by Leary's album '' No Cure for Cancer'', which featured lines and subject matter similar to his own routine. Outhwaite, Paul (November 2003). One Consciousness: An Analysis of Bill Hicks' Comedy, 3rd edition, D.M. Productions. . According to ''American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story'' by Cynthia True, upon hearing the album Hicks was furious. "All these years, aside from the occasional jibe, he had pretty much shrugged off Leary's lifting. Comedians borrowed, stole stuff, and even bought bits from one another. Milton Berle and Robin Williams were famous for it. This was different. Leary had practically taken line for line huge chunks of Bill's act and ''recorded'' it." The friendship ended abruptly as a result.

At least three stand-up comedians have gone on the record stating they believe Leary stole Hicks's material as well as his persona and attitude. In an interview, when Hicks was asked why he had quit smoking, he answered, "I just wanted to see if Denis would, too." In another interview, Hicks said, "I have a scoop for you. I stole his eary'sact. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and, to really throw people off, I did it before he did." During a 2003 Comedy Central Roast of Denis Leary, comedian Lenny Clarke, a friend of Leary's, said there was a carton of cigarettes backstage from Bill Hicks with the message, "Wish I had gotten these to you sooner." This joke was cut from the final broadcast.

The controversy surrounding plagiarism is also mentioned in ''American Scream'':

Material and style

Hicks's performance style was seen as a play on his audience's emotions. He expressed anger, disgust, and apathy while addressing the audience in a casual and personal manner, which he likened to merely conversing with his friends. He would invite his audiences to challenge authority and the existential nature of "accepted truth." One such message, which he often used in his shows, was delivered in the style of a news report (in order to draw attention to the negative slant news organizations give to any story about drugs):

The American philosopher and ethnomycologist Terence McKenna was a frequent source of Hicks's most controversial psychedelic and philosophical counter-cultural material; he infamously acted out an abridged version of McKenna's " Stoned Ape" model of human evolution as a routine during several of his final shows.

Another of Hicks's most delivered lines was delivered during a gig in Chicago during 1989 (later released as the bootleg ''I'm Sorry, Folks''). After a heckler repeatedly shouted "Free Bird", Hicks screamed, "Hitler had the right idea; he was just an underachiever!" Hicks followed this remark with a misanthropic tirade calling for unbiased genocide against the whole of humanity.

Much of Hicks's routine involved direct attacks on mainstream society, religion, politics, and consumerism. Asked in a BBC
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