Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution?
By Kent Daniel Bentkowski
“Always question authority, and demand
the truth.”
--- Bill Hicks – October 31, 1993
The inquisitive nature of American society compels
us to find a reason that justifies why a person may have been
robbed of what could very well have been a promising future,
at such time as that individual faces an early, unexpected death.
The life story of the remarkable genius and free-thinking comedian
and political philosopher Bill Hicks makes a strong
argument for the idea that each of us leaves this world if
and only when we have completed all the spiritual work that
we were sent here to accomplish. If this is in fact true,
then Bill Hicks was able to accomplish much more in his thirty-two
years, than most people accomplish in their entire lives.
I place Bill Hicks (1961-1994) among the short
list of people who have made the most impact on me as a person,
on my life in general, and my spiritual mission in particular.
Bill Hicks is not only on this list, but he is actually at the
very top of such a list, and this is the reason why this issue
of the Maybe Quarterly has been dedicated to him. The truths
that Bill Hicks revealed in his standup comedy routines led to
other deeper truths, which in turn led the portion of his audience
that was spiritually awake to the discovery of an even greater
spiritual knowledge and insight. Allow me to say that in the
nearly two decades of his stand-up career, this was a very small
part of his audience.
His sharp acerbic wit cut to the bone on subjects
such as drugs, and the drug war in particular. One of his funniest
drug bits involved God and the invention of marijuana:
“Why is marijuana against the law? It
grows naturally upon our planet. Doesn’t the idea of
making nature against the law seem to you a bit … paranoid?
You know what I mean? It’s nature. How do you make nature
against the fucking law? It grows everywhere. Serves a thousand
different functions, all of them positive. To make marijuana
against the law is like saying God made a mistake. You know
what I mean? It’s like God, on the seventh day, looking
down on his creation:
‘There it is, my creation, perfect and
holy in all ways. Now, I can rest …’
Oh my me! I left fucking pot everywhere. I
never should have smoked that joint on the third day. Shit.
That was the day I created possums. If I leave pot everywhere,
that’s going to give humans the impression they’re
supposed to use it. Now I have to create Republicans!”
This bit, as with the rest of Hicks’ material, looked
upon the issues central to all our lives with a fresh voice and
a deadly wit. He represented the section of society that resented
being looked down upon as children, which was actually larger
than anyone cared to acknowledge. The manner in which our society
has been structured, is to make certain groups of people feel
like they are isolated and out of touch with the lockstep of
society. This is certainly reinforced throughout the structure
of public education, where conformity and group-think are not
only desired, but are actually encouraged. However, anyone who
chooses the path of non-conformity will have a rough time in
school, as well as when they graduate to adult life.
This societal structure seemed to fuel some of Bill’s
anger, which occasionally exploded on stage. For a description
of his most infamous on-stage moment, please see pages 137-140
of Cynthia True’s biography entitled American Scream.
This was an incident in which Bill verbally laid into a drunken
woman who kept repeating everything Bill said. “My little
echo,” he called her, and this is the extent in which I
can repeat what he actually said from the stage to this woman.
Just as Bill’s verbal ballistics had reached a fever pitch,
some idiot in the audience yelled out the infamous battle cry
of the late 1970’s:
“Free Bird!”
The thing that angered Bill Hicks the most was an apathetic
audience.
Granted, he was talking about subjects that most people have
been conditioned to reject, and never considered as being a possibility,
let alone a very real possibility that they actually are true.
When Bill was in front of a crowd full of slumbering sheep, he
could get downright testy with the audience or perhaps a single
member of the audience. This was the Sagittarian frustration
rearing its’ head. As a fellow Sagittarian, I have been
told that I too have this tendency, particularly when I am confronted
with someone with whom I am having difficulty communicating.
This is also the frustration of a person with high-intelligence,
or an ascended spiritual being trapped within a dumbed-down society.
There was this urgency in his performances, and this was because
Bill knew that his time would be short. He frequently made reference
to this in his comedy, in his writing, in his correspondence,
and even in his song lyrics. One of Bill’s early song lyrics,
entitled New Happiness and written on January 28, 1986,
contain the following: “I’m done with excuses,
I’ve run out of time …” (Love All The
People, pg. 6)
While on stage, Bill would talk about the events of the day
in a manner which we will never see in the controlled American
mass media. This was actually proven to be quite true when in
July 1992, Bill and his good friend and fellow comedian Fallon
Woodland, came up with the idea of a Victorian Salon talk-show
called Counts of the Netherworld. Both the show’s
script treatment and a second document entitled simply Manifesto
can be found in the recently published book Bill Hicks: Love
All The People, pgs. 101-110. This was actually purchased by
Channel Four in the U.K., and the sad thing is that Counts
of the Netherworld was sold as a one-hour television pilot
episode shortly after Bill Hicks was diagnosed with pancreatic
cancer, and sadly, was scheduled to go into production the month
after he died.
Even on Comedy Central, Bill’s routines were edited for
television. As he would be later told by Robert Morton, the producer
for David Letterman, “some of the material was unsuitable
for broadcast.” Oddly enough, the thing for which
Bill is most well-known, was his being censored from the David
Letterman show on October 1, 1993. This was right after Letterman
had moved to CBS, where the show was then filmed at the legendary
Ed Sullivan Theatre. This was his twelfth and what would be his
final appearance on the Letterman show:
“So there you have it --- not since Elvis was censored
from the waist down has a performer, a comic, performing on
the very same stage, been so censored --- now from the neck
up, in 1993. In America. For telling jokes.” (Love
All The People, pg. 261)
This above quote was found within Bill’s legendary thirty-two
page handwritten letter to New Yorker theatre critic John Lahr,
of which I had searched for a copy for years, to no avail. I
am happy to report that the entire letter can be read in Love
All The People (pgs. 249-271). Bill was so upset by this incident,
that he wrote two additional letters, one to David Letterman
(pgs. 272-273) and a second to Jay Leno, who at one time was
a comedic hero, but that was before he lowered himself to the
crappy jokes he was then telling nightly on The Tonight Show
(pgs. 274-275). This Letterman-CBS censorship incident spawned
a number of commentary pieces. The aforementioned John Lahr published
a piece in The New Yorker entitled The Goat Boy Rises, which
he included in his book Light Fantastic: Adventures In Theatre
(pgs. 3-15). This same essay (with a new extended ending) can
be found in Love All The People (pgs. vii-xxvi), where it serves
as the book’s foreword.
The censorship incident also lead to a Trio network documentary
entitled The Censoring of Bill Hicks, which was broadcast
on the now-defunct cable television network in June 2003. This
documentary examined the Letterman censorship incident in detail,
and was narrated by Janeane Garafalo, who also happened to write
the foreword to Cynthia True’s biography entitled American
Scream: The Bill Hicks Story (pg. ix): “His talent and
presence were so overwhelming that I could find no more good
reasons not to try stand-up comedy myself.” As for me,
I am very interested in what Kevin Booth has to say about this
incident in his book, a matter of which, he discusses in my June
26, 2003 interview with him.
For a personal look at the Letterman censorship incident, we
turn to the Bill Hicks documentary entitled It’s Just
A Ride, which was released shortly after his death. This
can be found on the Bill Hicks Live DVD, which was released in
October 2004. On the DVD chapter entitled No Compromise, the
following quote by David Letterman can be found (ch. 10 – 34:56
to 35:28):
“Well, our relationship with Bill Hicks came to kind of
a peculiar ending, made all the more peculiar by the man’s
death. I have personal regrets about how our relationship developed
prior to his death. So, it makes me doubly sad that he’s
now not around so that we can, I think, correct mistakes that
were made on his behalf. I feel a personal sense of regret regarding
that.”
This statement and the circumstances behind it, appeared to
have bothered Mr. Letterman a great deal. To those hanging onto
the desperate fantasy that America is still truly free society
with free speech, I have to ask, if we have true freedom of speech,
in action and not merely in words, then why was Bill Hicks censored
at all? The transcript of a few of the major hot-points that
were offensive to CBS’ corporate advertisers can be found
in Love All The People (pgs. 249-255), but the entire censored
act and a lengthy discussion of the incident can be found on
the last-ever television interview Bill had ever done, which
was on October 24, 1993 on the Austin-Public Access television
program entitled CapZeyeZ (pronounced: capsize). It was released
publicly by Kevin Booth and Sacred Cow Productions as a VHS tape,
and it has now been deleted as a VHS entitled United States
of Advertising, and should be released as a DVD at some
point in the future.
It is perhaps bitter irony that Bill’s last-ever video
interview was broadcast on Lucifer’s Dream Box, which was
how Bill referred to the television (American Scream, pg. 269).
On this very page of American Scream is the following thought
Bill had about television, an assessment with which I agree 1,000%,
by the way:
“The elite ruling class wants us asleep so we’ll
remain a docile, apathetic, passive herd of consumers, and non-participants
in the true agenda of our governments --- which is to keep us
separate, and present an image of a world filled with unresolvable
problems, that they, and only they might one day, somewhere in
the never-arriving future, be able to solve. Just stay asleep
America, keep watching TV.”
Theatre critic John Lahr, had the following to say about Bill
Hicks and Lucifer’s Dream Box, in the Bill Hicks documentary It’s
Just A Ride (ch. 10 – 35:29 to 35:49):
“What [the Letterman-CBS censorship incident] did
also do was give him more material for his belief, correct
in my view, that television worked to control the society,
to keep the culture credulous, to keep it from thinking, to
enchant it, to literally spellbind it. And his job, as he saw
it, was to break that spell.”
The ironic, yet ultimately intriguing, aspect of Bill Hicks
was that he was able to present such universal truisms within
the context of standup comedy. He was much more than simply a joke-blower,
as he himself so often said of other comedians. He often described
what a joke-blower was --- that type of comedian who was still
telling lame jokes about how bad the food was on airplanes. Some
have called him a political philosopher, and that is
something to which I wholeheartedly agree. He was a direct comedic
descendant of Lenny Bruce (1925-1966), and Lenny’s brand
of “real truth is often confrontational” humor.
Just as with Lenny Bruce during the early to mid 1960’s,
Bill Hicks was labeled a trouble-maker by those who
were either offended by his in-your-face approach, or who weren’t
intelligent enough to have been able to connect the dots as Hicks
performed his act in front of oft-times unappreciative audiences.
It would be at times like this, when Bill would launch into
something like the following (American Scream, pg. 147), when
he would march around the stage, barking in a halting, robotic
voice:
“But. Bill. Malls. Are. Good. Malls allow us to shop three-hundred
and sixty-five days of the year at seventy-two degrees. That
must be good. We are happy consumers!”
For Bill Hicks, there was no sacred cow so holy that
he could not attack --- no matter how he often he tried
to refer to himself as “Noam Chomsky with dick jokes.” (American
Scream, pg. 153)
The foundation for the trouble-maker accusations was
laid early on, when in high school Bill found himself in the
principal’s office an average of twice a week (American
Scream pg. 23), which was usually because of a given teacher’s
complete frustration in trying to deal with a student that was
much more intelligent than the teacher was. In my own high school
years, I brought home a request for a parent-teacher conference
with every single report card of the entire six years of junior
high and high school. They did not know how to deal with a student
that consistently questioned all levels of authority, as I often
corrected factual errors the teachers made during the course
of their lessons. I got myself into huge amounts of trouble for
doing this, and the more trouble I got into, the more I fought
back against the oppression.
Bill Hicks and I were born three weeks apart in the Sagittarian
cycle of 1961, a circumstance that provided us with similar spiritual
temperaments. We shared very similar views of the world and politics,
similar tastes in music, and we both found ourselves with both
a sense of urgency and a general lack of patience. It is said
that people who are born under the same astrological sign share
many common bonds. The trait that I shared most with Hicks was
his constant and passionate thirst for knowledge and quest for
the ultimate truth of who and what we really are. Throughout
my many years of research into matters such as these, I believe
that the key to unlocking our true spiritual nature will be found
within the ultimate truths that have been hidden away from all
of us common people. Finally, Bill Hicks used to joke
that he graduated as number 417 in his senior class (American
Scream, pg. 40). I found that to be another link between us as
fellow Sagittarians, in regards to the meaning of these numbers
in my own life.
Just as it was reported of Bill Hicks’ life, in my own
younger days, I read as many books as I could get my hands on;
anything intelligent, and the more introspective and thought
provoking, the better. This was a constant in my early life,
and it was almost to the exclusion of any semblance of a social
life. While I eschewed outright dogmatic religious texts, I was
always intrigued by and immersed myself in anything and everything
that was spiritual in nature and content. Somehow, I always knew that
religion was something that existed only to control me,
but spirituality was a part of innate and instinctual knowledge
--- it was something that I just knew was true and correct.
Therefore, I sought out spiritual texts over religious texts.
As Bill Hicks felt an affinity to Shiva the Destroyer, one of
my own spiritual mentors has been Buddha Shakyamuni. The name
Shakyamuni is Sanskrit for “the sage of the Shakya
clan, the enlightened one.” (Footnote: http://www.tibetart.com/image.cfm/456.html.)
As I have explained to many over the years, I have studied Tibetan
Buddhism. In that system, the purpose of life is enlightenment,
and not the accumulation of money or material comforts.
I keep a beautiful grey marbled onyx Buddha and a framed copy
of the Shakyamuni Thangka, on the nightstand right next to my
bed. I keep these items next to my bed, so I may collect the
wisdom of enlightenment for my waking life, during such time
as I am asleep. Bill Hicks and I certainly agreed on one thing;
the path to enlightenment is also shown to us through many other
forms of consciousness --- which could occur during sleep, dreams, lucid
dreams, meditation, tripping on hallucinogenics
and psychedelics --- just to name a few of the other states
of consciousness beyond every day waking life.
My first exposure to Bill Hicks was on a cable TV comedy special
that was broadcast on HBO during 1989, which was called Comedy’s
Dirtiest Dozen. It was hosted by Andrew Dice Clay,
and featured, along with Bill Hicks ---Tim Allen, Jackie “The
Joke Man” Martling (formerly of the Howard Stern radio
show), and Chris Rock, who was about as young as Eddie
Murphy when Eddie first rose to fame. As part of this program,
Bill Hicks did a seven-minute rant, which was one of the most
brilliant and thought-provoking comedy routines I had ever seen
by a comedian of my own generation. (American Scream, pgs. 129-130.)
To refer to Bill Hicks as merely a standup comedian would almost
be an insult --- and that is because he was much more than just
a joke man. He was truly an enlightened being, and his life’s
mission was to turn-on as many people as he could onto the larger
truths that certain institutions try to keep hidden from public
view. He was a genius at slipping in profound bits of philosophy
in and around the jokes --- which by themselves, were awash in
sidesplitting hilarity.
One of his most infamous routines involved the possibility of
just one positive drug story on the evening’s news. He
then starts talking about the only news story any of us have
ever heard on television --- the story about the moron who believed
he could fly while he was on acid, jumping off a tall building
to his death. The bit ended with the following profundity:
“Today, a young man on acid realized 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 but a dream, and we are the imagination
of ourselves.
Here’s Tom with the weather.”
Even though he started out very young, Bill released only two
full-length comedy albums in his lifetime --- Dangerous (1990)
and Relentless (1992), both on the small independent Invasion
Records label from the U.K. These two albums were first
released on compact disc near the third anniversary of Bill’s
death from pancreatic cancer. On February 25, 1997, Rykodisc
released four Bill Hicks comedy compact discs, in conjunction
with Kevin Booth, Bill’s best-friend, producer,
and co-founder of Sacred Cow Productions. The
third and fourth discs, Arizona Bay and Rant In
E-Minor, were prepared by Kevin Booth and Bill himself for
posthumous release as Bill grew ill from terminal pancreatic
cancer. Possessing a work-ethic similar to that of personal hero
Jimi Hendrix, Bill worked right up until the very end of his
life.
Some readers may not realize that Bill Hicks was an extremely
proficient musician, which he played guitar, sang,
and wrote the lyrics to music that both he and Kevin
performed and recorded together under the name of Marble
Head Johnson. This name merits mention. It was both the
name of the biggest fish in the pond at the Booth ranch, with
Bill turning it into a dick joke (American Scream, pgs. 160 and
177-178). Recorded in 1991, this set of eight songs are actually
quite good. The most outstanding track was also included on Rant
In E-Minor, it is a song called Wizards Have Landed. This track
contains a lyric that fits in with the spiritual message that
Bill was putting forth in every performance:
Wizards Have Landed
© 1991 Bill Hicks and Marble Head Johnson
The wizards have landed, with plans for a perfect world
A new beginning, for all you boys and girls
They bring with them, the wisdom of the ages
Directly from the lips of the sages
You may think you’ve heard this information before
Prepare to open up a brand-new door!
Shout!
© 1991 Bill Hicks and Marble Head Johnson
This is a tight minute and three-quarters rocker, with a wonderful
message besides. Following this on Rant In E-Minor is a short
track entitled Lift Me Lord, in which Bill Hicks solemnly speaks
the following words, which represented the last moments of the
last release prepared before his death:
Lift Me Lord
© 1993 Bill Hicks
Spoken:
“Oh my God!
Lift me up out of this illusion, Lord
Heal my perception that I may
know only reality and only you . . .”
© 1993 Bill Hicks
After these lines are spoken, the album and Bill’s last
words fade into a swirling wind that slowly fades into
the silent void. It is something that chokes me up, no matter
how many times I hear it. Also on Marble Head Johnson,
is a song where Bill and Kevin mimic the Rolling Stones,
entitled Look at Her Move. These songs are legitimate
pieces of music, and coupled with the song interludes from Arizona
Bay, means double sorrow for the loss of Bill Hicks, the comedian and
the musician.
On June 26, 2003, I had an opportunity to sit down with Kevin
Booth, who very graciously granted me an exclusive one hour interview
on the subject of Bill Hicks, and his growing sphere of influence,
which sadly, is completely posthumous. During the course of this
interview, Kevin Booth touched upon several areas of his life
knowing Bill Hicks, as well as some of the problems that are
involved in dealing with the haunting what-if’s that
are certain to arise in the management of a dead celebrity’s
career.
Note: You can read the transcript from the
interview I conducted with Kevin Booth, where we talked about
Bill Hicks, elsewhere in this Vernal Equinox 2005 issue of the
Maybe Quarterly.
One of the most interesting aspects of Bill Hicks, was his level
of spiritual enlightenment. “We were dabbling and reading
a lot of spiritual books, doing flotation tanks, and experimenting
by taking a lot of mushrooms and acid,” Kevin Booth
began, talking about the different methods he and Bill used to
explore the other side of reality. Kevin then told me
of a shared telepathic experience that he and Bill had that took
place during the Harmonic Convergence of the summer of 1987. “Bill
and I were able to tune into this one exact level, we broke through
some barriers, and we were able to be right inside each others’ mind
for a long time . . . the whole thing was this huge shared experience.
This was a major profound experience, and I know it was profound
to Bill --- he talked about it in his act all the time.”
This is but one of many stories about which you can expect to
read in Kevin Booth’s book about his life knowing Bill
Hicks, entitled Agent of Evolution, and will be released
in the U.K. on March 21, 2005 by HarperCollins Publishers. For
more information about this book, please check the bibliography
section at the end of this essay. The Summer Solstice 2005 issue
of the Maybe Quarterly, will feature a lengthy review of Kevin’s
book. Kevin has promised me an autographed copy, which I will
dig into the moment it arrives.
There were large parts of Bill Hicks’ act, where he discussed
the illusions that separate us, as well as the ties that bind
us to these initial illusions. He stressed that love and
truth will one day reign victorious over the evil forces
that rule nations from behind the veil. Bill discussed subjects
in his act that our society usually reserves for whom they refer
to as kooky conspiracy theorists. This included such
taboo subjects as the JFK assassination, drugs that
facilitate evolution and spiritual ascension, mind control,
and the horrors of religious dogma. Sometimes, the laughter
from the audience was nervous laughter, as some people simply
weren’t evolved enough to see things they way they really
were.
In February 2002, an authorized biography was published, chronicling
the fast life and early death of Bill Hicks. The author was given
access to many people who were important parts of Bill’s
life, and their love of the man was reflected in the touching
and funny stories they all told. The book describes Bill as “the
most outspoken, uncompromising, and famous unknown comic of all
time,” and places him in a small group of comic geniuses,
with Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and Andy
Kaufman. The book contains a foreword by Janeane Garofalo.
Bill Hicks was a passionate and fearless man on a very important
mission --- which was namely, to help humankind break free of
the hidden chains that bind us all, as well as the walls which
keep us separate. As we discover for ourselves that no matter
who we are or where we live, we are all one under GOD, and if
we could ever put aside our petty differences, we could make
this earth a paradise for one and all. I will conclude with the
following by Bill Hicks himself, who could talk about the
evolution of myth in such a powerful way:
“The world appears to us a certain way because we
believe it to be that way. When we change our beliefs, the
world will change as well. Examining existing beliefs, in addition,
presenting other ways to perceive that [which] will appear
alien to our unquestioned and accepted myths.” (American
Scream, pgs. 165-166)
Because Bill Hicks was such a fierce spiritual warrior, several
bands have dedicated entire albums to him and his message. This
list appears at the end of this article, after the Bibliography
section. Finally, the reader might ask whether the material of
a comedian who has been dead for eleven years remains pertinent.
At the height of Bill’s popularity, George Bush was
President of the United States. Today, twelve years later, George
Bush is President of the United States. It is like this
nightmare from which we can never awaken. As Roger Daltrey, vocalist
of The Who, once sang: “Meet the new boss, same as
the old boss.”
“I left in love, in laughter, and in truth,
and wherever
truth, love, and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.”
--- Bill Hicks (1961-1994)
For more information on Bill Hicks:
To find out more about what this truly amazing free spirit was
all about, please feel free to check out the following websites
that are related to his body of work and legacy:
http://www.billhicks.com
http://www.sacredcow.com
Of course, the primary body of work of Bill Hicks consists of
four very funny compact discs that contain both the comedy and
philosophy of this truly unique performer. Bill was the comedian’s
comedian, and he had many fans in the entertainment industry.
People such as David Letterman and Dennis Miller were fans as
well as friends, and they constantly praised his work, encouraging
him to do more.
Bibliography:
All of the following have been consulted during the research
and the writing of this essay:
Bentkowski, Kent Daniel and Kevin Booth – Interview
About Bill Hicks June 26, 2003
Booth, Kevin and Michael Bertin – Bill
Hicks: Agent of Evolution ISBN 0-007-19829-9 (Harper Entertainment – New
York, NY USA) March 21, 2005
Hicks, Bill – Dangerous (Rykodisc CD
RCD 10350) – Originally released in 1990
Hicks, Bill – Relentless (Rykodisc CD
RCD 10351) – Originally released in 1992
Hicks, Bill – Arizona Bay (Rykodisc CD
RCD 10352) – Released in 1997
Hicks, Bill – Rant In E-Minor (Rykodisc
CD RCD 10353) – Released in 1997
Hicks, Bill – Bill Hicks Live (Ryko DVD
RDVD 10691) October 26, 2004
Hicks, Bill – Love All The People: Letters,
Lyrics, Routines ISBN 1-932360-65-4 (Soft Skull Press – Brooklyn,
NY USA) November 9, 2004
Lahr, John – Light Fantastic: Adventures
In Theatre ISBN 0-385-31546-5 (The Dial Press – New York,
NY USA) 1996
True, Cynthia - American Scream: The Bill Hicks
Story ISBN
0-380-80377-1 (Harper Entertainment – New York, NY USA)
February 19, 2002
Discography – Music CD’s Dedicated To Bill
Hicks:
The following is a list of music CD’s that have been dedicated
to Bill Hicks. In the case of two of these bands, it was a single
song instead of an entire compact disc that was dedicated to
Bill:
Radiohead – The Bends (1995)
Rage Against The Machine – Evil Empire
(1996)
Super Furry Animals – Fuzzy Logic (1996)
Tool – Aenemia (1996)
Pitchshifter – You Are Free (To Do
As We Tell You) available only on the Genius CD
Single. (1998)
Bluetones – Marblehead Johnson available
only on Pachinko: The Singles (2002)
© 2005 Kent Daniel Bentkowski
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