Kevin Booth Talks About Bill Hicks

Introduction

Bill Hicks was one of four people I had never known personally, but seriously mourned their passing upon being notified of each of their deaths. The others were Jimi Hendrix, John Bonham, and George Harrison. When Bill died in February 1994, I felt as if I had lost a kindred spirit --- as I believe in truth just as strongly as he did. This was the case because Bill and I were both born under the sign of Sagittarius. People born under this sign are said to be perpetual students, and are very serious about honesty and truth. Sagittarians are also voracious readers, a subject about which Bill often joked.

I had never known Bill Hicks, and likewise, I never had the chance to see his stand-up act, even though he was a friend of Bob Fiorella, a comedian who lives in my own city of Buffalo, New York USA. Buffalo is the type of city that doesn’t have that big of a night-life, and this is because of the perpetually depressed economy in our area. Because of  my own life experience, I relate to what he discussed in his act on a number of levels.

Kevin Booth was Bill’s closest friend, and partner in many adventures. Kevin was also Bill’s producer and his business partner. Together, they began something called Sacred Cow Productions, which today, can be found at the website listed immediately below. Unfortunately, Bill died before the Internet had become a daily part of many of our lives --- and because of this, Bill never had the chance to see Sacred Cow become an online force for truth in comedy:

www.sacredcow.com

I had contacted Kevin Booth by e-mail and asked him for an interview. Thankfully, he accepted. I was able to speak with him by telephone for a full hour, and I was able to ask everything I had written up as questions. Kevin Booth has expanded Sacred Cow and he now works with a number of young and up-and-coming comedians, such as Joe Rogan and Doug Stanhope of Comedy Central’s The Man Show. Kevin Booth has in the recent past, begun working with Alex Jones of Infowars and Prison Planet, and their first collaboration is a documentary of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, which is entitled Martial Law: 9-11 Rise of the Police State.

This interview was originally conducted as part of a book I was working on, which was to be titled Destruction of the American Middle Class. However, now that I have the opportunity to discuss many of these same issues in the Maybe Quarterly, it now seems more appropriate to publish this interview in this new online publication . . .

Kent Daniel Bentkowski

Buffalo, New York USA

March 20, 2005 (vernal equinox)

Kevin Booth Talks About Bill Hicks:

The Maybe Quarterly Interview

June 26, 2003 7:30pm

Interviewer: Kent Daniel Bentkowski

MQ – “Once again, thank you for talking with me --- I really do appreciate this. And, so to begin --- let me go to question one here. To begin, if you wouldn’t mind doing so, could you just kind of recap how you and Bill developed the concept for Sacred Cow, and what it was originally designed to do?”

KB – “Well, you know --- I’d be lying if I told you it had really high and mighty beginnings. We were just a couple of young guys who wanted to make a film and records and stuff like that. But also, we were dabbling and reading a lot of spiritual books, doing flotation tanks, and experimenting by taking a lot of [psychedelic] mushrooms and acid [LSD]. You know, just exploring that side of life from other realities and all that.

Sacred Cow originally was just a funny name, or a concept, and kind of like an idea for us, it was just a name. I guess when I bought my first video camera, I just started videotaping everybody talking and hanging out, and just trying to capture all these things [ideas] that you share with other people, and my first outlet was Austin Access TV.”

MQ – “Right, right.”

KB – “That’s kind of where it was all born, it started off on [Austin] Access TV.”

MQ – “Okay.”

KB – “And I guess the name Sacred Cow came from --- my family has a ranch, its’ about seventy miles from here. And this is where Bill and I and some other friends used to go trip all the time.”

MQ – “Uh-huh, Umm-hmm.”

KB – “And it would be great because we’d be the only ones out there, we’d have this whole piece of land to ourselves, with a nice house on it and with no other people. And we had cattle, so obviously the connection with [Bill mentioning in his act] ‘mushrooms growing out of cow shit’ --- that’s where the name came from.”

MQ – “Okay. Obviously, the connection between Bill and Lenny Bruce constantly comes up. What did Bill personally think of that comparison, and what do you think about it now, almost a decade after the fact?”

KB – “My personal thing is that I see what people are talking about in that Lenny broke down walls, I guess, in society. But, I just have to be honest and tell you that Lenny Bruce doesn’t really make me laugh that much.” (Laughs)

MQ – “Okay. Alright.”

KB – “And I’ve tried. (Laughs) I’ve tried to watch and to listen, and watch and listen, and I don’t know if its’ like a generational gap, or whatever, but Lenny’s like delving into these taboos, but, the punchlines never came that made me go ‘Oh my God!’ You know, that guy just totally pulled the seat out from underneath me, you know --- like Bill would do.”  

MQ – “Yeah, sure.”

KB – “Like Bill would do --- pull the rug out from under you, and you find yourself laughing on the floor.”

MQ – “Umm-hmm.”

KB – “Lenny Bruce never really did that for me. And with Bill, Lenny was an inspiration and all that, but I don’t think he was that heavily influenced by Lenny Bruce. And it was kind of like more because other people started calling him ‘The New Lenny Bruce’ or something.”

MQ – “Yeah, yeah. Right.”

KB – “And that wasn’t even until like right before he died, that that started happening. Even so, when Bill and I were in San Francisco not long before he died --- when I was recording an album called Rant In E-Minor, where a guy by the name John Magnuson, came out to Bill’s show just because . . .  (pauses) . . . now that Bill’s dead, I occasionally through the grapevine I get hey, like this guy’s the new Bill Hicks, you know what I mean?” 

MQ – “Yeah, sure. Right.”

KB – “They say, ‘Kevin, you gotta come out and see this guy, he’s the new Bill Hicks. And, I’m always like ‘Yes. Well, of course.’ That’s exactly what happened when we were in San Francisco, this guy John Magnuson, who had produced some Lenny Bruce stuff, he did an animation short called something Mask Man, or something that Lenny Bruce did [Thank You Mask Man, 1963 – 7 mins.]. He heard that Bill was the new Lenny and all that, and he came to Bill’s show and he was blown away! And it was cool, because we got to hang out the whole next day. He actually filmed Bill and I working on another Ninja Batchelor Party film. And we got to talk about Lenny and his family and all that kind of stuff, so it was kind of a cool connection.

As an artist, I don’t think Bill truly identified with Lenny as much as like --- maybe some people would think. Bill identified a lot more with Richard Pryor, Charlie Chaplin, and other spiritual people like Rajneesh. The guy that did the books about tripping in the desert. Don Juan.”

MQ – “Carlos Castaneda?”

KB – “Yes, Carlos Castaneda, yeah, Bill was totally into that. Bill was very aware of Lenny Bruce --- I am sure Bill probably read everything there was to read about him, and listened to everything there was to listen to, and all that. But, it wasn’t like I ever saw Bill doing a Lenny Bruce impersonation. ”

MQ – “Yeah, yeah.”

KB – “Like I had seen him do a million Richard Pryor impersonations, and early on, when he was doing Woody Allen impersonations.”

MQ – “So basically, would you agree with me if I said that this connection seems to be a creation of the media, which is based upon . . .”

KB – “Yes, because people are looking for an angle . . .”

MQ – “Yeah.”

KB – “ . . . and the censorship thing is another way to hype it, and to me it’s fine. You know, these people go ‘we’re gonna do a film about censorship,’ and it’s like ‘Ooooh, big taboo,’ and some others like that one book about Bill. When people try to hype Bill up like he was this ‘fearless bearer of the truth’ and ‘he wasn’t afraid to say the truth’ and censorship, censorship.’ The Letterman thing really wasn’t that big of a deal in Bill’s life. You know, it pissed him off at the time, but ten years later, for it to be the big hallmark of his life, it seems ridiculous to me.”

MQ – “Yeah, yeah. Sure.”

KB – “It’s just like another thing that happened, and if Bill was alive today, I’m sure he’d barely even remember it, you know?”  

MQ – “Yeah.”

KB – “I’m sure he would have gone back on Letterman a year later and forgot about it. But because he died, it just became like this big thing. Bill didn’t really cling onto shit like that, he was not a clinging person. I’m much more of a clinging person than he ever was. He would just move on.

That whole censorship thing, and connecting Bill as the next Lenny Bruce and all that, I think that is the media has to have some kind of an angle on stuff.”

MQ – “Yeah, yeah. That’s what I thought.”

KB – “Yeah. I was really blown away the other day --- I watched FOX NEWS --- it’s just like Bill and cops --- it’s like touching a sore tooth, you know? I watch it to get my daily dose of hatred and stupidity.”

MQ – (Laughs)

KB – “When I wake up, I turn on this show ‘FOX and Friends.’ It’s like these fucking retarded Bu$h supporters. They go, [makes funny Bush voice] ‘Anybody who disagrees with George Bu$h’ --- like a couple months ago, they had their daily ‘how much we hate Michael Moore’ little segment, like every day.”

MQ – “Sure.”

KB – “And right now, they are on their little daily ‘How much we hate Jeanine Garofalo.’”      

MQ – (Sarcastically) “Oh, wonderful.”

KB – “I couldn’t believe it, just last Sunday I was watching it, and they did their little Jeanine Garofalo thing, and this one other guy who’s only on every once in awhile --- he’s not a total asshole like the other guy --- actually chimed in and he goes; ‘You know, but she just did this one thing about this comedian named Bill Hicks, and if this guy would have lived he would have been the next Lenny Bruce.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe it.’

And so, on one hand it’s like, for an insider person who knew Bill, it’s like annoying. But for me, it’s not like Bill is a household word, so, if it takes an angle, like a little goofy hypey angle, you know ‘Bill is the king of anti-advertising’ or ‘The God of anti-censorship,’ and “The next Lenny Bruce.’ If it takes some little pigeonhole angle that will get people to think about Bill or talk about Bill, then that’s okay, you know?

As long as it gets them to sit and listen to an album --- then they get to absorb some real ideas.”

MQ – “Yeah, definitely. Because once you hear this guy, you are absolutely hooked. And, that has been my experience with everyone I have shared his genius with. With the political climate in the country being what it is at the moment, do you believe that this is making people more interested in Bill and his message?”    

KB – “Yeah, you know --- I can even watch the amount of traffic that my websites get, based on what’s happening in the world. When the war in Iraq broke out, my websites started getting more hits. When 9/11 happened, my websites got more hits. So, I can definitely say that in times of trouble and despair, more people do turn to Bill.”

MQ – “Hmmm, that’s interesting. In doing my research, obviously, and just off my CD shelves, there have been a few bands that have dedicated music to Bill --- with Rage Against The Machine and TOOL probably being the most prominent of them . . .”

KB – “Right, and Radiohead.”

MQ – “Yeah, Radiohead also. And a couple others . . . ”

KB – “Yeah, out of the three, the only one I ever got to know was TOOL.”  

MQ – “Yeah, yeah.”

MQ – “What I was curious about was if you had any idea why it always seems to be a band that’s dedicating music to him [Bill Hicks]?”

KB – “Probably because comedians don’t ever make albums that sell!” (Laughs)

MQ – “I mean, is it the rock and roll sensibility angle what they are gravitating towards, perhaps?”

KB – “Yeah, there’s this quote from the first Bill Hicks documentary ‘It’s Just A Ride.’ Did you see that one?”

MQ – “Oh yeah, yes. Yes. Yes.”

KB – “It’s probably because Bill was talking about stuff that people that listen to that kind of music care about. Most comedians --- like Jerry Seinfeld talking about the food on airplanes and shit like that, it’s like ‘nobody cares,’ you know? It’s cute, it’s funny, you’re not doing anything for anybody. Where I guess Bill was like broaching real subjects that really meant something to people. It’s stuff that had troubled people or people thought about, and actually shedding some light on it, and helping to open people’s hearts and minds. It was like a big influence.”

MQ – “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I was just gonna say that --- speaking about ‘It’s Just A Ride,’ that’s available through --- on DVD, oddly enough, in England, of all places.”

KB – “That’s where Bill’s biggest market is. They do that on purpose --- it has to do with licensing and marketing. They release it on DVD’s that will play only in that market.”

MQ – “Yeah, so its’ lucky I have an all-region [DVD] player.”

KB – “Yeah, there you go!”

MQ – “If you’re interested in that [an all-region DVD player], the place to get them is at playbacktrading.com.”

KB – “Cool.”

MQ – “It’s an after-market mod on the unit. It has a remote, and you type in a code, and it flips the region for you. You can play anything from any country in the world. They also sell import DVD’s at that website.”

KB – “That’s cool --- the two DVD’s that I’ve produced work in all regions.”

MQ – “Yeah, the Joe Rogan [DVD] was hilarious, by the way. Yeah, that was great!”

MQ – “How frustrated was Bill by an apathetic audience? I know he kind of really went nuts on stage a few times, but --- did he talk about that in private at all?”

KB – “A little bit. He didn’t really complain about his career that much to me. It was humiliating to him. There were times like when he had just gotten back from England --- where he was playing these massive sold-out shows --- I think this was actually mentioned in the TRIO documentary [entitled ‘The Censoring of Bill Hicks’]. He flew me to San Francisco . . . on one hand --- he was never the kind of guy who would brag to me. He never did that to his friends, where he would say, ‘Hey, I’m really making it BIG,’ and ‘I’m making tons of money,’ and ‘I’ve got tons of fans.’ He was never like that. He would never brag, but we would go to the clubs in San Francisco, and there’s fifty people there who don’t even know who he is, you know?”

MQ – “Yeah.”

KB – “Oh GOD, here we are recording an album, and it’s like ‘Jesus-Fucking-Christ,’ you know? What do I have to do? It was like ‘Kevin, I swear to GOD people like me,’ you know?” (Laughs)

MQ – “Yeah, sure.”

KB – “He would come off stage at the end of shows and just say ‘people are fucking cattle, and it’s just hopeless, fucking hopeless.’ Shit like that. You know, he was like a soldier, he just kept going on. He went through this little thing several times, saying he’s retiring from comedy. This was something he did like a million times. That’s why right before he died, he started telling everybody that ‘this is the final time I am ever going to do comedy,’ and a lot of people who knew Bill and followed him through his whole career --- especially around Austin, where everyone just kind of laughed it off, because they had heard him say that so many times. On one hand, he was saying it because he really did have his own show in England [Counts of the Netherworld, planned for broadcast on Channel 4, beginning in the spring of 1994. The original script treatment for this never-produced talk-show series has been included in the book Bill Hicks: Love All The People, pgs. 101-110], but on the other hand, he was saying it because he knew he was going to die. So, it was kind of like a weird double-whammy.”

MQ – “Yeah, definitely. That’s always freaky in hindsight.”

KB – “Yeah sure, he was bitter about apathetic audiences. But, I have to admit that I think he realized that, too. Some of my more favorite recordings of Bill are the ones where he was playing in front of an apathetic audience --- where he’s like doing a good performance. I think some of that is captured on Rant In E-Minor a little bit, where it’s more like he’s up there slugging it out, you know?

MQ – “Yeah. Umm-Hmm.”

KB – “The British shows are good, but it’s just kind of like --- it’s like George Carlin or something. It’s like he’s up there and he can do no wrong.”

MQ – “Yes, yes.”

KB – “No matter what he says, it’s like ‘Ha-ha-ha.’ You know, it’s super-polite --- everyone’s perfectly in time, which is cool, I’m sure if you’re him that’d be better. But, I enjoy the ones’ where he’s like having to fight for every inch, you know?”

MQ – “Yeah, yeah.”

KB – “Like he’s out on the battlefield, he’s having to like slug it out in the trenches. There’s certain shows where it works, and other ones where it doesn’t.”

MQ – “That bit that he did about feeding and housing the poor, which ended with the three gunshots, and Bill falling to the floor --- that was pretty powerful, and made for a hell of an exclamation point at the end of the show. Did this mean that in some way, he was concerned for his own safety? Is this what he was trying to comment on?”

KB – “I don’t really think that Bill was all that concerned for his own personal safety that much. Bill felt like when his time came, it came. He honestly didn’t believe in death. It was more his way of like showing everybody ‘look, this is my take on being crucified, and here I’m going to give myself to the universe, without any fear.’ It was more like that, if that makes sense.”

MQ – “Yes, absolutely. Besides Jimi Hendrix, which he often mentioned in his act, were there any other guitar players that he admired, or was influenced by?”

KB – “Well for one, Keith Richards he mentioned a lot.”

MQ – “Yeah, yeah, definitely. But not about guitar playing, coincidentally!”

KB – “Yeah, Keith was like a character.”

MQ – “Yeah.”

KB – “Yeah, he was really into Muddy Waters, and as far as someone who was like a Guitar GOD --- he liked Stevie Ray Vaughn a lot.”

MQ – “Uh-huh.”

KB – “It’s weird, because I was in a band that actually got to open for Stevie Ray Vaughn because I live in Austin. Stevie Ray Vaughn wasn’t a real big deal until he died.”

MQ – “Yes.”

KB – “So, I never really thought that much of it, but Bill was like huge into Stevie Ray   Vaughn. Bill really liked those sloppy, nasty kind of guys that can open a can of whoop-ass on the blues guitar. He didn’t rely on any gimmick or he didn’t have any polished show biz presentation or anything like that. He liked Pink Floyd like I do, but I think sometimes he was turned off by the big stage show and all the lights and projectors, and that kind of stuff.”

MQ – “Yeah, yeah.”

KB – “A lot of that was kind of a distraction, and he was more into the down home, nitty- gritty type of stuff. But also, good musicianship though, you know?”

MQ – “Uh-huh.”

KB – “He enjoyed joking about punk rockers and people who were real characters, but at the end of the day, he was really into good musicianship. Right before he died, he was really into John Hiatt. He was like obsessed with John Hiatt. He listened to John Hiatt all day long, for some reason. John became an important part of Bill’s daily routine, right before he died.”

MQ – “Yeah, yeah. There’s an author --- maybe you know of him, maybe you do not, I’m not sure. His name is David Icke.”           

KB – “Oh yeah, of course. He was kind of like a fierce competitor of Alex [Jones], but now they’ve made up and are friends.”

MQ – (Laughs) “Yeah, he’s been on Alex’s show a couple times.”

KB – “Have you seen --- you need to see it if you haven’t --- a three-part series called ‘Secret Rulers of the World?’”

MQ – “Yes, I have it.”

KB – “One follows Alex to Bohemian Grove, another one is about David Icke, and about Alex rebuilding Waco.” [Actually, Alex Jones rebuilt the Branch Davidian Church, in Mount Carmel, outside of Waco, Texas USA.] The third part is about the Bilderberg Group.”

MQ – “Yes, I do have that. The reason why I am asking is because in his two books --- one’s called ‘Children of the Matrix’ and one’s called ‘Alice In Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster.’ In both of those books, David mentions Bill’s ‘All matter is merely energy condensed’ quote.”

KB – “Does he credit Bill?”

MQ – “Oh, absolutely. Oh yeah, totally.”

KB – “Really? I didn’t know that.”

MQ – “Yeah, footnotes and everything.”

KB – “Can I see that? I would like to . . .”

MQ – “He says ‘a comic genius named Bill Hicks says --- BOOM! ‘All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration . . .”

KB – “I didn’t know that.”

MQ – “In fact, do you have a pen?”

KB – “Can you e-mail it to me?”

MQ – “Yeah, no problem. I’ll do that. I can tell you the page numbers and that.”

KB – “Okay, yeah, do that.”

MQ – “No problem --- a minute ago, I mentioned about our current political climate, with this crazy fucker John Ashcroft. Do you think if Bill was still around, he [Ashcroft] would be trying to label Bill ‘The Most Dangerous Mind In America,’ or an ‘Enemy Combatant Comedian,’ or something like that?”

KB – “I don’t know. It would have depended on what Bill was doing. Right before Bill died, it almost seemed like he was ready to give up on America. (Laughs) Right before Bill died, he was gonna do the talk show in England, and so in a way, he had kind of enough.

You know, it’s hard to say how serious people up at the top like that take people like Bill. Or how seriously people like George Bush takes Alex Jones. You’ve got to know that George Bush has to pay some attention to Alex Jones.”

MQ – “Oh, sure.”

KB – “And like what he’s [Alex Jones] is doing. Alex is out in front of the Governor’s mansion with a megaphone yelling ‘George Bush is a devil worshipper!’ (Both Kevin and Kent laugh) He has to be aware of it, and I have a video called ‘The Best of Alex Jones’ that I sell on my website . . .”

MQ – “Yes, I have a copy of that.”

KB – “To me, it’s like --- and I hang around with Alex all the time --- I mean, if they don’t kill Alex, I can’t imagine that they would have, you know, killed Bill. Bill had a more intelligent response to them, but I would think that Alex is definitely more dangerous to them because Alex is trying to prepare an army against these people, you know?” 

MQ – “Yeah, he’s pretty . . .”

KB – “He’s a rebel rouser, and  . . .”

MQ – “Yeah, and . . .”

KB – “ . . . have everybody arm themselves, and ‘we’re going in for a war,’ and that’s something that Bill was against. But, it’s interesting --- Bill met Alex when he was just appearing on the scene when Bill got sick. He had this really weird [cable TV] access show, where Alex would sit in front of a star map and talk.

I remember watching with Bill several times, and I said ‘maybe you should check this guy out,’ it was really intriguing. Alex didn’t have his focus with what he was talking about yet, and he must have been only twenty-one years old. But, he hadn’t focused his ‘Anti-New World Order’ and all that stuff about the Illuminati, and all that yet.”

MQ – “Umm-hmm.”

KB – “But, it’s interesting because when I decided to add Alex to my website, a lot of Bill Hicks fans really winced. It was really like ‘Oh, I HATE THAT GUY,’ and ‘How dare you put him next to Bill The Savior,’ and ‘It’s sacrilege,’ and all that shit. And I was like ‘you know, people just don’t get it.’”

MQ – “It just seems so unbelievable that somebody would be interested in what someone like a Bill Hicks has to say, and then when you turn it over to Alex Jones, it’s a little bit of a reality-check, so to speak.”

KB – “Yeah. They just hate him, because they think he’s this self-righteous Bozo that they see as a Rush Limbaugh, just because he’s got this redneck edge to him, and all that. But, they miss the point. Even though he doesn’t smoke pot, or is not a drug-type person at all, he’s out there fighting for the legalization of marijuana.”

MQ – “Sure, sure.”

KB – “It’s funny --- I’ve lost friendships because of my association with Alex Jones. I had people that I was friends with for years that would no longer talk to me, because I was hanging out with Alex Jones. There are people in this town that HATE him.”

MQ – “That doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

KB – “But, there are a lot more that worship him, you know? He’s a real dividing line in the sand for most people.”

MQ – “Yeah, yeah.”

KB – “But back to your whole question, I guess the day that I’m hanging out with Alex and bullets start flying at us --- then I’ll start believing the theories about the government wanting to silence Bill.”

MQ – (Laughs)

KB – “I think on one hand, it’s an interesting theory, but I also think if the government did kill people like that --- it would add a lot of validation to what they [the one who was assassinated] were doing. It’s kind of like what the government does with UFO’s, which has even been proven. They want a bunch of ‘conspiracy kooks’ to go rattling off a bunch of shit, because it just dilutes it all. It makes it so everybody goes ‘I don’t know what to believe anymore,’ and just ‘Fuck it, I’m just going to go to work and pay my taxes. I just want to stay out of jail, and pay my taxes . . .’”

MQ – “Yeah, yeah, basically. Sure.”

KB – “ . . . ‘I’m going to just go along with the flock, and I don’t care.’ ‘I don’t have time for that,’ that’s something I hear about with Alex all the time. People just say ‘I don’t have time to worry about all of that stuff.’ ‘I’ve got a job,’ or ‘I’ve got kids.’”

MQ – “Oh, they’ll have plenty of time, when they’re sitting in the Concentration Camp. (Laughs) Because that’s absolutely coming!”

KB – “The new Wackenhut Concentration Camps that’s financed by Bush . . .”

MQ – “Yeah --- I mean, anybody that can’t see this --- listen, I have a friend of mine, who is an over-the-road truck driver. All forty-eight states, he drives in. This guy’s telling me that he’s got secure loads that he can’t even look at. He’s got armed guards following his truck in Humm-Vee’s, okay? And I ask him, ‘What’s on the truck?’ He looks at the shipping manifest, and it says he’s got a load of Pop-Tarts. Then, he’s driving out to these supposedly deserted Army Bases that are fully staffed, with these loads he can’t look at.”

KB – “Well, what are you saying it is, what do you think it is?”

MQ – “I think that if I had a load of Pop-Tarts, I don’t think I would want to have armed guards following that truck. So obviously, its’ something other than what they’re saying it is. And if it is anything where they would have armed guards following that truck, it must be very important to them, whatever it is. But, I could not get any information, because he said that they would have a severe problem with him if he opened up any doors that he wasn’t supposed to.”    

KB – “Yeah. That was one of the things in the very beginning years ago, Alex would say ‘They’re building Concentration Camps for us.’ And right there, that’s where a lot of my friends said ‘You know, that fucking guy just needs to shut his mouth.’ At the time, I was open to everything . . . I’m the kind of person, where I can’t believe everything all at once. I’m not looking for definitive answers or this person’s right and that person’s wrong. I don’t look at life that way, in such black and white. I’m a big grey area person, I guess. (Laughs)

MQ – “I think that a lot of life is absolutely that, and I think that the people that do try to turn it into ‘You’re either with us, or you’re against us’ --- that type of mentality is bullshit!”

KB – “Yeah, what’s funny is a lot of peace-loving, pot-smoking people take that same kind of attitude [a “with us, or against us” attitude]. They’re just as dumb and closed-minded as the asshole Republican types. Someone who is against guns, it is okay for them to be associating with someone who is pro-guns. We’re all in this together, you know? The thing with the Concentration Camps, was like years later, one of those same friends [that disassociated with Kevin over these matters] finally kind of like came around. He said, ‘You know, it just seems that a lot of what I used to laugh about Alex saying --- it seems like its’ coming true.” (Laughs)

MQ – “Yes.”

KB – “I was like --- ‘Five years ago, you guys were telling me that he was a fucking psychopath that was spreading paranoia. And now it’s like --- just watch the news.” (Laughs)

MQ – “Absolutely --- its’ all unfolding before our eyes. No doubt about that.”

KB – “Even Joe Rogan [of the television shows Newsradio and Fear Factor] has gone back and forth since I first introduced him to Alex. He keeps flipping back and forth between ‘Either this guy is a complete lunatic, or its’ almost like he is some kind of savant that is seeing into the future on some weird level.’ What’s weird is that I think Alex is one of the funniest guys I have ever known. I mean, I think that Alex is funnier than Bill. Alex makes me laugh harder than Bill ever did. He is such a genuine character.”

MQ – (Laughs)

KB – “If you hang out with him, he just does stuff and says stuff that every second, you just wish you could videotape it, you know?” (Laughs)

MQ – “Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you some of the stuff you have on the site [www.sacredcow.com], some of the backstage and after-hours talk is pretty funny --- with Alex [Jones]. You see a different side of him. It’s a little more light-hearted than his persona, on either TV or the radio.”

KB – “Yeah. That’s what I’m trying to do. Especially on his radio show --- (Kevin imitates Alex Jones) ‘Hello ladies and gentlemen, I’m Alex Jones.’ I tell him ‘Dude --- drop that persona, and you’ll have even more fans.’

MQ – “I have two final questions --- and I really do appreciate this, as I said. The one thing I really wanted to ask you about, and this is because this is an interest of mine --- consciousness and expansion of consciousness. And, one thing over the years that I have been very interested in is your adventures on your ranch there, with the mushrooms and so forth. I’m a reader of Terrance McKenna, and a lot of good things have happened to me through expanded consciousness vis-à-vis taking hallucinogenics.

Specifically, the one thing I wanted to ask about is this flying saucer type of experience that you had. Now, is that something that was like kind of blown up a little more out of proportion by the time it got to the press, or was it that profound of an experience?”

KB – “It was definitely that profound. I mean, I actually had a hard time talking about it and admitting it, until Bill almost died. And Bill, I think after it happened to us, was kind of dumbfounded that I wouldn’t want to talk about it that much. One of our common friends said ‘When you have a UFO experience, it’s all in your head,’ and ‘If you go around telling people about it, it’s dumb,’ and I kind of allowed him to convince me of that, you know? But Bill and I did go through a really profound experience, which actually happened on the Harmonic Convergence. It was the summer of ’87.”  

MQ – “Yes.”

KB – “Where Bill and I were like somehow able to tune into this one exact level, and we broke through some other boundaries. We were able to actually be right inside each others’ mind for a long time, and did have an experience where we boarded a spacecraft. We went in and communicated with these beings, and we communicated with each other. The whole thing was a huge shared experience.

It’s not like I haven’t experienced things like this with other people --- tripping, but this was like this one majorly profound experience. I know it was profound to Bill, too. I mean, he talked about it in his act all the time.” 

MQ – “Yes.”

KB – “You can tell it meant something as much to him, as well. Yes, I definitely think it was the real thing.”

MQ – “And the last question that I have for you is . . . looking through your website, and some of the things on it, I just wondered if there was still something happening with your Bill Hicks film project?”

KB – “No, no. That I have shifted over and I’m trying to complete a book. How can I try to make a movie, if I can’t even finish a book? I have been working on a book for many years. I don’t have the talent to write a book myself, I have a writer working with me. Hopefully, it’s going to come out. It’s all my personal experiences, all told first hand from me. Maybe he’ll interview a couple of other people who were part of certain situations with Bill and I. It’s going to be a much more personal story than that other book, I think.”

MQ – “That would definitely be something to look forward to, I hope to see it soon.”

KB – “Me too!” (Laughs) I’ve been working on it forever.”

MQ – “If you have the time and the inspiration, you can get done, and I’m sure a lot of people would want to read that.”

KB – “Yeah --- I’m not a writer, so it’s kind of like --- I’ve been through many phases with it. It started out several years ago, where I have these wolf dogs that I take for a big six mile walk almost every day. I got myself this little hand recorder. Every day when I would take a walk by myself, I would tell like one Bill story. I would fill up an hour long tape with a chapter.”

MQ – “Umm-hmm.”

KB – “Like one chapter would be like us working on Ninja Batchelor Party. Another chapter would be us working on Arizona Bay. Another chapter would be the UFO experience at the ranch. And so forth. I had a guy working on typing it all out, and it was like 400 pages long. It didn’t really read like a book, so it’s kind of like take all this stuff and fleshing it out and getting more of Bill. It’s not just me describing the situations, we’re also trying to make you feel like you were there.”

MQ – “Yeah, yeah.”

KB – “It’s tricky --- I’m not a writer, so I have to rely on other people to help me with it. But, I think it’s going to happen. It seems to be moving forward again.”

MQ – “That sounds great.”

KB – “I work with one guy and it’s been the kind of project that has been put on hold for nine months here, and six months there, and gets picked back up, you know what I mean?”

MQ – “Yep.”

KB – “It’s going to be like a five years in the making kind of a project.”  

Editor’s Note: Here, Kevin is talking about the book Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution, which is scheduled for publication on March 21, 2005 by HarperCollins in the UK. The date of the USA publication has not yet been announced.

MQ – “Sure, okay. Well, I thank you again for spending some time with me, I really do appreciate that.”

KB – “Sure.”

MQ – Thanks Kevin, I really appreciate it. Have a good night.”

KB – “Excellent, man. Okay, good night.”

MQ – “Have a good night. Thanks a lot, man. Bye-bye.”

© 2003 & 2005 Kent Daniel Bentkowski

All rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission.