Curated post, originally published Feb 23, 2009. I’ve made some edits to make the reading of it less tied to the original publication date.
William Melvin “Bill” Hicks was not always the most moderate fella.
“If you’re in advertising and marketing…kill yourself. You are fucked and you are fucking us, you are Satan’s spawn, kill yourself. There’s no joke here…I know you advertising folks are like ‘Oh I see what he’s doing, he’s going for that righteous indignation dollar that’s very clever,’ no…STOP PUTTING A GODDAMNED DOLLAR SIGN ON EVERYTHING ON THIS FUCKING PLANET!”
Bill Hicks, “Revelations”
As of the time I’m dragging this (now fifteen year old) post out of the archive, in a few months it will be fully thirty years since the passing of of one of the world’s greatest socio-political analysts, ever.
Consequently, the guy’s been on my mind a lot lately. But then, Bill Hicks has a way of always being on my mind, even when I don’t know it. As I look back through my own writing over the years – I’m allowed, I’m an egomaniac just like almost everyone else – it strikes me sometimes how often what I’ve said unintentionally reflects back to an idea that germinated with or was reinforced or articulated or enhanced by something I heard Hicks say. In much the same way Chris Cornell’s lyrics have followed, almost eerily, the track of my life, so Hicks’ opinions on everything from drugs to God to willful ignorance have, but usually without the melody.
Hicks was a man of contradictions; a walking hypocrisy. I can relate to that as well; on the one hand I really do believe that, fundamentally, whatever nickname our Creator might prefer to be called the ultimate purpose of human life is beauty, love, peace, and hope. I want to spread that love, add to that beauty, give that hope, bring that peace. On the other hand, like Hicks, I often find myself experiencing explosive anger, withering contempt and a heartfelt and passionate disdain for those who choose to live in deliberate ignorance, afraid to consider ideas that fall outside the scope of beliefs that many of them formed or had pushed on to them before they reached puberty. Why don’t people ask questions? Why do people refuse to see reality when it’s standing right there? How can people be so arrogant as to consistently confuse the Will Of The Almighty Creator And Shaper Of Universes with their desire for a Porsche?
I don’t think that Mr. Hicks would be real thrilled about the state of America today; in that, I believe him to be among the greatest of Americans. A friend does not allow you to walk around a party with a feather on your chin; someone who loves you does not leave your errors uncorrected. A friend, a lover, wants the best for you, and I believe that Bill wanted the best for us, and for this country, and for the world…even if it meant kicking our asses and hurting our feelings to get it.
Younger people, for whom Hicks is at best a relic of a previous generation, often underestimate his impact. A very good friend of mine, in her early twenties, remarked to me yesterday that she wasn’t as “in love” with Hicks as I was. I suppose that’s understandable – after all, you’ve got everyone from Denis “Pancreatic Cancer Saved My Career” Leary to Keith Olbermann channelling Hicks on a regular basis all over the place now…not to mention, of course, millions of blogs just like this one written by people who believe themselves to be every bit as witty and insightful as I am. But back then…back then you could count on two hands the number of non-musical performers who had even attempted to say these things. You know how many comedians there were in 1989 who would freely and openly admit to having not only done illegal drugs, but enjoyed them? Five. Carlin, Pryor, Williams, Hicks, and Kinison. Even today, how many comedians could get away with this bit:
“‘We have nothing against America, we just want to see George Bush beheaded and his head kicked down the road like a soccer ball.’ Gee, thats what I want to see, who’d’a thunk it, me and Saddam, we’re like this! *crosses his fingers*…”
Bill Hicks, “Me and Saddam”
If any comedian had said something like that on a stage between 2002 and 2006 or so he or she would be living in legitimate fear for their life. Hicks was the guy who said he was “for the war…but against the troops.” These days that kind of sentiment could get you shot. As it was, Hicks dodged at least one pissed-off redneck with a loaded gun, and had his leg broken by a pair of others, for routines like this and his scathing takes on Christianity. Then he turned the broken leg incident into one of his best bits…
“I did that routine about Jesus at some club in Fyffe, Alabama…after the show these two guys come up to me back stage:
‘Hey buddy – come here (shoves Bill away – beautiful subtlety there)! Hey Mr. Comedian, Come here (another shove)! Hey, buddy, we’re Christians and we dont like what you said about Jesus!’
‘Yeah?’ I said, ‘Well, then…forgive me.’”
Bill Hicks, “One Night Stand” and other recordings
Hicks never flinched from putting himself under the same microscope as he did everyone else. Although he cloaked himself in the trappings of stand-up comedy, he was much more akin to a motivational speaker or the ancient Greek philosophers; observing and reporting the world as he understood it, in the hopes that those listening would understand, learn, grow, and propagate.
[When I originally wrote this article in 2009] 15 years after his death, as I look around this country and this world, I question how successful he was in that regard. After all, we had to elect another Bush – TWICE! – before we clued in to the game of hate and fear that the hardcore conservative contingent in this country represents and embraces. But then, you know, there’s this whole Obama election thing, which on the one hand definitely has a tinge of that “cult of personality” and mindless groupthink that has worked against us before, but also has an aftertaste of Joe Public being sick of the status quo. I think that Nancy Pelosi and other hard-core left-wing politicians may be surprised to find that they didn’t actually win in November of last year; I think there’s finally a substantial portion of the populace who actually voted the “I have had enough of this shit” ticket. maybe not a majority, maybe not even a majority of those who voted for the eventual victor…but it’s there.
And it’s building, and getting bigger, and more cohesive, and the radical fringe is being moved out of the way and dismissed while those with more carefully-considered opinions seem to finally be stepping up to the plate.
Maybe it’s too much to hope for…but this week, a decade and a half after the death of Bill Hicks…maybe someone finally gets it.
Bill Hicks
1961-1994
[2023: All things considered…it was definitely too much to hope for. Indeed, reading this back fifteen years later it seems almost hopelessly naïve and starry-eyed. After the uplift of the Obama years, the Trump presidency dragged all the cockroaches and scum out into the light and made them the mainstream, and we probably won’t get back to even the pitiful level of social progress we’d reached in 1993 before my grandkids are my age.
Then we have the problem of the people who have attached themselves to Hicks over the last fifteen years. Rather than a group of people deeply into spirituality and the turning of disappointed idealism into raging, scathing, razor-sharp wit that pushes boundaries, expanding the mind beyond its usual, culturally imposed boundaries and seeking new truth, most of the people I run into these days who claim an affinity for Hicks are raging little incels, gibbering conspiracy theorists, misogynist dough-faced egomaniacs falling short of being career domestic abusers only because they can’t get close enough to having a partner to become abusive toward them.
They’ve taken the shadiest bits of Hicks’ routines – some of which frankly don’t hold up well three decades later – and make it a personality, while ignoring the fundamental, abiding love and concern for humanity that fueled all of it…which retroactively makes Hicks start looking like the pasty, bitter, anaerobic losers who have begun attaching themselves to him, rather than simply someone who was incredibly funny in his time and whose humor often carried perspectives that we have – and he undoubtedly would have – grown out of and rejected
In the end they’ve largely reduced him to “do drugs, Elmer Dinkley, conspiracy theories.”
Like so many of the people who informed and elevated my own perspective as a teenager and young man in the 80s and 90s, I really wish he’d have stayed obscure after he died. Not like he’s getting anything out of the attention now, and most of the people giving it to him clearly weren’t listening to anything he said other than the little bits that gratified their own frail and unwarranted egos.
They’ve taken a complex and beautiful set of philosophies and turned it into an hour of dick jokes, and I pretty much hate them for that. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity over the years to end up getting to know, a little bit, over the internet, so many of the ‘Texas Outlaw Comics’ who were Hicks’ friends and colleagues. It helps mitigate the sting of watching him and his work be co-opted by the same losers he was trying to make take a look at themselves by dragging his own least flattering thoughts and impulses out onto a stage. Pisses me off.]