Kevin Booth - Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution

KEVIN BOOTH
AND
MICHAEL BERTIN

Tripping was very ritualistic for us. It was something wed prepare for. Meditation. Fasting. Flotation tanks. We even had meals prepared for the comedown, and usually had instruments set up as well so we could play music together to ride out the end of the trip. We werent just taking psychedelic drugs and running around like crazy people.

It almost always involved us going to my familys ranch near Fredericksburg, Texas. It was 70 sprawling acres of hill country, pocked with enormous live oak trees. There was a 2600-square-foot tract home with a garden and an orchard. Out back was the pond. The reflection of the sun setting over the water made even the monochromatic Texas heat come alive with intense color.

Parts of Bills routines werent comedy or jokes: they were directives. When he was talking about mushrooms and he said, Go to nature. They are sacred, he wasnt kidding. Tripping would allow Bill to commune with nature.

Bill, David Johndrow and I went out to the ranch to trip. We planned and timed everything out. Shrooms were sacred, but they werent the only thing on the menu. This time we were taking acid. We timed when we dropped so that we would start tripping right as the sun was setting. Once we were tripping, full-on tree-vibrating star-dripping wigging out, we each often had a separate sense of what the others were doing. There would be times when something bad was happening to one of us, and one of the others would just appear. Wed come together and work through it. Then we would have times when we all went out and drifted off on separate paths, only to reconvene at some unspoken spot hours later.

At one point on this particular trip I came across Bill as he was looking pensive and distraught. He was in the yard all by himself, walking in circles. And he was gradually wearing a groove into the grass. I heard him muttering to himself over and over, What is this thing? Goddammit, what is this thing? He just kept circling and muttering, circling and muttering. What is this thing?

I asked him: Bill, what are you talking about? Whats going on?

I dont know, dude. Theres just this thing. I dont know what it is, but Ive got this thing in me. Bill was pointing to his side, right where his pancreas is, as he was saying this. Ive got this thing inside me, he said. It needs to come out. Its like an upside-down cross inside of my body. It needs to come out.

Right when he said that the upside-down cross bit I broke out laughing. Sometimes everything seems funny when you are tripping your nuts off, unless, of course, something is distressing you; and this was obviously distressing Bill.

Fuck. Too late. It sent Bill off.

Oh, fucking forget it, he fired back, and then, visibly agitated, he stormed off into the woods.

I followed him. No, I wasnt trying to make fun of you, Bill. Whats up? Whats wrong? This was my friend. We were tripping but, shit, he was trying to tell me something important. It got fucked in translation. Drugs can do that.

I tried to assure him I wanted to understand what he was talking about, but he was not going to risk being laughed at again. Forget it. Nothing, Bill said. I put up a few more weak protests. He brushed them off. And that was that.

That was the summer of 1982, more than a full decade before Bill died of pancreatic cancer.

Im not from the States, Im from Texas.

Bill Hicks

As a kid in grade school, Bill Hicks was a phenomenal athlete. He was strong, fast, agile. Anyone who ever saw Bill perform stand-up comedy in later years would have a hard time imagining this. With a cigarette dangling off his bottom lip, hed tell his signature joke about smoking: perusing the front rows of the audience, hed find someone with a lit cigarette and ask them how much they smoked.

A pack a day? Hed take a drag of his cigarette and inhale like his life depended on that tar-laden cancer stick. Pussy. I go through two lighters a day.

Bill wasnt exactly a posterboy for athletic prowess. Doubters wouldnt be alone in their skepticism that Bill could ever have run anything but his mouth. A fellow comedian from his Houston hometown who accompanied Bill to New York City for an early Letterman appearance recalls seeing him in the hotel: He took off his shirt and he didnt have a muscle in his entire upper torso. Ive never seen anything like it, it was completely slack. Utter lack of definition. Just zero. It almost had a morgueish quality to it in retrospect.

Dwight Slade, Bills friend and comedy partner in the formative stage of his career, was in San Francisco in 1991 to perform on the bill with Bill at the Punch Line. The two comedians made an appearance on Alex Bennets radio show where Bill presented the host with an old 8x10 promo photo of the pair taken when they were just starting out. Bennet looked at the picture and remarked, Dwight, you look exactly the same. Bill, what happened to you?

Bill replied, Id only been drinking for two years then. Bill was 14 in the picture. It was a joke.

Born William Melvin Hicks on 16 December 1961 in Valdosta, Georgia, he was given life and a name he was never ever able to live down. Bill hated his name. Hate is a strong word, but Bill hated his name. In the early years, he would step on stage and introduce himself, saying, Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, my name is William Melvin Hicks Thanks, Dad.

He made a short-lived hobby of trying to find successful comedians who had monosyllabic first and last names. He couldnt come up with any besides Bob Hope. Bill even gave serious consideration to legally changing his name. Obviously he stuck with it, but his dissatisfaction never left him.

In late 1991, Bill was at friend Stephen Dosters house in Austin. Nirvana had just started to make it big and Bill insisted on taking Doster, a well-respected local guitar player, singer-songwriter, and producer, to local institution Waterloo Records to buy him both the bands albums, Bleach and Nevermind, then drive around town listening to them.

That was cool with Doster. First, though, he had to take his toddler son, Django, out for a walk. They headed down to the hike-and-bike trail along Town Lake and they walked. Bill says, So, Stephen. You named the kid Django? Django: named after guitarist Django Reinhardt.

Yeah, thats his middle name, but its what everyone calls him, says Doster.

Of course, you know whats going to happen, Bill baits him.

What do you mean? Nothings going to happen to him.

Surely you, of all people, know whats going to happen, says Bill.

No, Bill. What do you mean? What are you trying to say? Doster asks. What, is he destined to suffer a disfigured hand in a fire accident la his namesake? Thats not nice. Bill is just confusing his friend.

His dad is a songwriter. His mom is a photographer. You named him Django. Surely you know what is going to happen to him?

Whats going to happen to him? Doster isnt sure where this is going and is more than a little perplexed. Then Bill grabs Doster around the neck with his hands friendly, not hostile and says, Hes going to get sucked and fucked more by the time hes 17 years old than you and I ever did in our goddamn lives.

Bill the reductionist had figured it all out: cool name equals hot ass. His experience was the opposite. Redneck name equals not much ass at all. Jim and Mary Hicks, Bills parents, should have just called him Cletus". In addition to the distinctly redneck name, Bill also had the misfortune of being born into a devout Southern Baptist family. With about sixteen million practising patrons, Southern Baptists constitute the largest fundamentalist denomination in the United States. And as fundamentalists they believe the authors of the Bible were inspired by God, making the Bible inerrant. That makes it easy to read: take everything literally.