Brandt Hardin - "Forty-Six and Two"
People always call their heroes “geniuses,” whether such idols are true prodigies or just really likeable. Being clear on that distinction, I proclaim Bill Hicks to be a genius of stand up comedy. There have been raunchier comedians, more politically savvy comedians, even smarter comedians, but none have made me laugh harder or think as deeply as Bill Hicks. No other jokester has had as much hang time, either. My dubbed cassettes of “Relentless” and “Rant in E Minor” brought clarity to my otherwise clueless teenage years, and to this day his routines never get old.
Bill died of pancreatic cancer on February 26, 1994, at the age of 32, but through the necromancy of recording technology and the interactive graveyard, his voice is just a casual Ouija click away.
Like many sprouts in the 90s, I was introduced to Bill Hicks after staring curiously at his portrait in Tool’s 1996 album, Aenima, which was dedicated to “another dead hero.” Tool actually had Bill open a few of their shows during the 1993 Lollapalooza tour, and after Bill’s death, vocalist Maynard Keenan continued to pay homage to his friend by having Tennessee audiences raise our thumbs in the air, just to make sure we had them. Bill never got tired of dogging my home state:
“In many parts of our troubled world, people are yelling, ‘Revolution!’ In Tennessee, they’re yelling, ‘Evolution!—We want our thumbs!!’”
Even after the Great Carpetbagger Migration at the turn of the millennium, Hicks’ stabs remain poignant. He was once accosted by a Waffle House waitress outside of Nashville who asked him derisively, “What you readin’ for?” Bill replied: “I guess I read for a lot of reasons, but one of ‘em is so I don’t become a fucking waffle waitress.” Sounds like home to me.
I was lucky enough to catch the premiere of American: The Bill Hicks Story at last year’s New Orleans Film Festival. What stood out to me the most was that Bill remained ever loyal to his childhood friends. He continued to take psychedelic voyages, play music, and laugh at the world with his pals until his deathday. How fitting that he re-read Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring just before he died. He ended his final message to the world by saying:
“I left in love, in laughter, and in truth—and wherever truth, love, and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.”
It’s easy to wax sentimental about Bill Hicks’ death. Considering his immanent breakthrough in the States, we all wonder what brilliance would have emerged if he’d been given a few more years. After the film, Bill’s sweet little mother spoke of her loss in a heart-tugging Texan drawl, and my date and I even wiped a tear or two away.
But fuck that. You don’t get weepy for the prophet who cries out in the wilderness: “I want my rock stars dead!”
From “Sane Man” (Austin, TX – 1988) and
“Relentless” (Montreal, Canada – 1991), respectively
