Love All the People (New Edition) Read online

  BILL HICKS was born on 16 December 1961 in Valdosta, Georgia. Hicks began his stand-up career while still at high school and went on to become one of the most influential stand-up comedians of his generation. He died on 26 February 1994 at the family home in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was thirty-two years old.

  ‘All he did, really, was to tell the truth about himself, and about the way he saw the world – and this is the hardest thing to do on stage and still be funny with it. Hicks’ life was spent in this quest and he succeeded brilliantly, and to me and to countless others he remains nothing short of inspiration.’

  Bill Bailey, Independent

  ‘Bill Hicks – blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer, and brain specialist, like a reverend waving a gun around. He will correct your vision. Others will drive on the road he built.’

  Tom Waits

  One of the best comedians in the world: a discernible point of view, great mind, attitude – the whole bag. He works completely for me.’

  Dennis Miller

  ‘Bill was right up there with Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor. He was easily the best comic of my generation.’

  Brett Butler

  ‘With his clarity of vision and gift of words, if Bill Hicks had had any more time he might have started a revolution.’

  Keith Olberman

  ‘Hicks’s stand-up act is about taking a stand – and occasionally dodging a chair.’

  Rolling Stone

  ‘Ten years after his death, his words still burn with righteous truth. This book could change your life.’

  Paul Brannigan, Kerrang

  ‘That this house notes with sadness the 10th anniversary of the death of Bill Hicks, on February 26th 1994, at the age of 32; recalls his assertion that his words would be a bullet in the heart of consumerism, capitalism and the American Dream; and mourns the passing of one of the few people who may be mentioned as being worthy of inclusion with Lenny Bruce in any list of unflinching and painfully honest political philosophers.’

  Stephen Pound MP, Early Day Motion, House of Commons, February 2004

  LOVE ALL

  THE PEOPLE

  Letters, Lyrics, Routines

  BILL HICKS

  CONSTABLE • LONDON

  The publishers would like to thank Matt Harlock for his generous assistance in compiling this collection.

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters

  162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Constable,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2004

  This revised edition published by Constable, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2005

  Copyright © Arizona Bay Production Company Inc. 2004, 2005

  Foreword copyright © John Lahr 2004, 2005

  The right of Arizona Bay Production Company Inc. to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by it in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of any third-party material included in this book.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN 1-84529-111-5

  Printed and bound in the EU

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Contents

  Foreword

  The Goat Boy Rises by John Lahr

  PART 1: 1980–91

  Climbing Up to Center Stage, Interview by Julia Joseph, The Oracle, Stratford High School Newspaper (1980)

  Late Show with David Letterman (1985)

  Quotes and Lyrics

  Interview by Allan Johnson (14 September 1989)

  Bush (1990)

  Recorded Live at the Village Gate, NYC and Caroline’s Seaport, NYC (1990)

  Recorded Live at the Vic Theatre, Chicago (November 1990)

  Recorded Live at Funny Bone, Pittsburgh, PA (20 June 1991)

  Salon Interview (October 1991)

  Recorded at Laff Stop, Austin, Texas (14–17 December 1991)

  Interview with Funny Man Bill Hicks by Jimmy O’ Brien (November/December 1991)

  PART 2: 1992

  Hicksville UFO, New Musical Express (18 January 1992)

  Mr Malcontent by Robert Draper, Texas Monthly (June 1992)

  The Questionnaire (Summer 1992)

  Intro to Scotland (Summer 1992)

  The Counts of the Netherworld – Treatment (July 1992)

  The Counts of the Netherworld – Manifesto (July 1992)

  Capitol Hill, 31 October 1992, New Musical Express

  Recorded Live at the Dominion Theatre, London (November 1992)

  Recorded Live at the Oxford Playhouse, UK (11 November 1992)

  UK TV Interview

  Thoughts on Love and Smoking (November 1992)

  Touch Me, I’m Hicks! (14 November 1992)

  Recorded Live at Laff Stop, Austin, Texas (December 1992)

  PART 3: Early to Mid 1993

  Bill Hicks: Comedy for the Head by Cree McCree High Times (April 1993)

  Outside Broadcast, Branch Davidian Compound, Waco (8 March, 1993)

  Recorded Live at Laff Stop, Austin, Texas, and Cobbs, San Francisco, CA (Spring and Summer 1993)

  Wake Up America (Summer 1993)

  The Wicked Christians (Thoughts on the ONE TRUE religion (June 1993)

  Letters of Response

  My Philosophy (August 1993)

  PART 4: Late 1993–94

  Free Press or The Observer Show Idea, (October 1993)

  CapZeyeZ Live! with Dave Prewitt (24 October 1993)

  Unresolvable Problems – Resolved! (November 1993)

  Introducing . . . Bill Hicks, Scallywag No. 14 (Autumn 1993)

  On Smoking (undated)

  On the Fall of Communism (undated)

  Two Myths Explored, Debunked, and Other Rantings

  Igby’s Comedy Club, California (17 September 1993)

  Letter to John Lahr (January 1994)

  Letter to David Letterman (December 1993)

  Letter to Jay Leno (December 1993)

  The Vision (18 December 1993)

  Bill Hicks, Interview Taken From Campus Activities Today (January 1994)

  New Happiness (7 February 1994)

  Appendix: Recorded Live in Denver, San Ramon, West Palm Beach and San Francisco (1990–93)

  Notes

  Index

  FOREWORD

  The Goat Boy Rises

  I

  On October 1, 1993 the comedian Bill Hicks, after doing his twelfth gig on the David Letterman show, became the first comedy act to be censored at CBS’s Ed Sullivan Theatre, where Letterman is now in residence, and where Elvis Presley was famously censored in 1956. Presley was not allowed to be shown from the waist down. Hicks was not allowed to be shown at all. It’s not what’s in Hicks’ pants but what’s in his head that scared the CBS panjandrums. Hicks, a tall, thirty-one-year-old Texan with a pudgy face aged beyond its years from hard living on the road, is no motormouth vulgarian but an exhilarating comic thinker in a renegade class all his own. Until the ban, which, according to Hicks, earned him ‘more attention than my other eleven appearances on Letterman times one hundred,’ Hicks’ caustic observations and mischievous cultural connections had found a wide audience in England, where he is something of a cult f
igure. I caught up with Hicks backstage on a rainy Sunday last November at the Dominion Theatre, in London, where a record-breaking crowd of two thousand Brits was packed so tightly that they were standing three deep at the back of the dress circle to hear Hicks deliver some acid home truths about the USA, which to him stands for United States of Advertising. Hicks thinks against society and insists on the importance of this intellectual freedom as a way to inspire others to think for themselves. ‘To me, the comic is the guy who says “Wait a minute” as the consensus forms,’ Hicks told me as we climbed the stairs to his dressing room. ‘He’s the antithesis of the mob mentality. The comic is a flame – like Shiva the Destroyer, toppling idols no matter what they are. He keeps cutting everything back to the moment.’

  Even then, the talk about courting comic danger had Hicks worrying about his prospects in America. ‘Comedy in the States has been totally gutted,’ he told me when we’d settled into the dressing room. ‘It’s commercialized. They don’t have people on TV who have points of view, because that defies the status quo, and we can’t have that in the totalitarian mind-control government that runs the fuckin’ airwaves. I can’t get a shot there. I get David Letterman a lot. I love Letterman, but every time I go on, we have tiffs over material. They love me, but his people have this fictitious mainstream audience they think they play to. It’s untrue. It doesn’t exist. I like doing the show, but it’s almost like working a puzzle: How can I be me in the context of doing this material? The best thing I do is make connections. I connect everything. It’s hard to do it in six minutes.’

  Hicks certainly went for broke and pronounced his real comic self in the banned Letterman performance, which he wrote out for me in a thirty-nine-page letter that also recounts his version of events. Hicks had to write out his set because the tape of it, which the Letterman people said they’d send three weeks ago, had not yet reached him. He doubts it ever will. But the routine, which he had prepared for a Letterman appearance a week earlier (he was bumped because the show ran long), had been, he wrote, ‘approved and reapproved’ by a segment producer of the show. Indicating stage directions and his recollection of significant audience response, Hicks set out some of the ‘hot points’ to which the network took exception.

  You know who’s really bugging me these days? These pro-lifers . . . (Smattering of applause.)

  You ever look at their faces? . . . ‘I’m pro-life!’ (Here Bill makes a pinched face of hate and fear; his lips are pursed as though he’s just sucked on a lemon.) ‘I’m pro-life!’ Boy, they look it, don’t they? They just exude joie de vivre. You just want to hang with them and play Trivial Pursuit all night long. (Audience chuckles.)

  You know what bugs me about them? If you’re so pro-life, do me a favor – don’t lock arms and block medical clinics. If you’re so pro-life, lock arms and block cemeteries. (Audience laughs.) . . . I want to see pro-lifers at funerals opening caskets – ‘Get out!’ Then I’d really be impressed by their mission. (Audience laughs and applauds.)

  I’ve been travelling a lot lately. I was over in Australia during Easter. It was interesting to note they celebrate Easter the same way we do – commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus by telling our children a giant bunny rabbit . . . left chocolate eggs in the night. (Audience laughs.)

  Gee, I wonder why we’re so messed up as a race. You know, I’ve read the Bible. Can’t find the words ‘bunny’ or ‘chocolate’ in the whole book. (Audience laughs.)

  I think it’s interesting how people act on their beliefs. A lot of Christians, for instance, wear crosses around their necks. Nice sentiment, but do you think when Jesus comes back, he’s really going to want to look at a cross? (Audience laughs. Bill makes a face of pain and horror.)

  Ow! Maybe that’s why he hasn’t shown up yet. (As Jesus looking down from Heaven) ‘I’m not going, Dad. No, they’re still wearing crosses – they totally missed the point. When they start wearing fishes, I might go back again . . . No, I’m not going . . . O.K., I’ll tell you what – I’ll go back as a bunny.’

  Hicks, who delivered his monologue dressed not in his usual gunslinger black but in ‘bright fall colors – an outfit bought just for the show and reflective of my bright and cheerful mood,’ seemed to have a lot to smile about. Letterman – who Hicks says greeted him as he sat down to talk with ‘Good set, Bill! Always nice to have you drop by with an uplifting message!’ and signed off saying, ‘Bill, enjoy answering your mail for the next few weeks’ – had been seen to laugh. The word in the Green Room was also good. A couple of hours later, Hicks was back in his hotel, wearing nothing but a towel, when the call came from Robert Morton, the executive producer of the Letterman show, telling him he’d been deep-sixed. Hicks sat down on the bed. ‘I don’t understand, Robert. What’s the problem? I thought the show went great.’ The following is a condensed version of what Hicks remembers from the long conversation.

  ‘You killed out there,’ Morton said, and went on to say, according to Hicks, that the CBS office of standards and practices felt that some of the material was unsuitable for broadcast.

  ‘Ah, which material exactly did they find . . .’

  ‘Well, almost all of it.’

  ‘Bob, they’re so obviously jokes.’

  Hicks protested that he had run his routine by his sixty-three-year-old mother in Little Rock, Arkansas, and it passed the test. Morton insisted that the situation was out of his hands. He offered to set up another appearance and, according to Hicks, shouldered the blame for not having spent more time beforehand editing out the ‘hot points.’

  ‘Bob, they’re just jokes. I don’t want to be edited by you or anyone else. Why are people so afraid of jokes?’

  ‘Bill, you’ve got to understand our audience.’

  ‘Your audience! Your audience is comprised of people, right? Well, I understand people, being one myself. People are who I play to every night, Bob. We get along just fine. We taped the show at five-thirty in the afternoon, and your audience had no problem with the material then. Does your audience become overly sensitive between the hours of 11.30 p.m. and 12.30 a.m.? And by the way, Bob, when I’m not performing on your show, I’m a member of the audience of your show. Are you saying my material is not suitable for me? This doesn’t make any sense. Why do you understimate the intelligence of your audience?’

  ‘Bill, it’s not our decision.’

  Morton apologized to Hicks, explaining that the show had to answer to the network, and said that he’d reschedule him soon. The conversation ended soon after that exchange, and in the intervening weeks Hicks had had no further word, he says, from Morton or Letterman. He has, however, heard indirectly from the CBS standards-and-practices office. A man who heard an interview with Hicks on the radio and was outraged over the censorship wrote to CBS to upbraid the network for not airing Hicks’ set. He faxed the reply from CBS standards-and-practices to the radio station, which faxed it to Hicks’ office. ‘It is true that Bill Hicks was taped that evening and that his performance did not air,’ the letter said. ‘What is inaccurate is that the deletion of his routine was required by CBS. In fact, although a CBS Program Practices editor works on that show, the decision was solely that of the producers of the program who decided to substitute his performance with that of another comedian. Therefore, your criticism that CBS censored the program is totally without foundation. Creative judgments must be made in the course of producing and airing any program and, while we regret that you disagreed with this one, the producers felt it necessary and that is not a decision we would override.’

  Hicks, who refers to the television set as Lucifer’s Dream Box, is now in Lucifer’s Limbo. He can’t get the Letterman show to send him a tape of his performance. He can’t get to the bottom of who censored him. And, as yet, he has no return date on Letterman. I called Robert Morton two weeks ago, and, when pressed, he finally grasped the nettle. He had begun by saying that the decision not to show Hicks’ routine was made jointly by the Letterman show and CB
S and ended up telling me that the producers of the show were solely responsible. ‘Ultimately, it was our decision,’ he said. ‘We’re the packagers and owners of the program. It’s our job to deliver a finished product to the network.’

  ‘It’s been a strange little adventure for Willy,’ Hicks told me at the Dominion last year, referring to his American comedy career. And so it has proved – stranger, in fact, than Hicks’ most maverick imaginings. The farce came full circle in the week following the Letterman debacle. A friend called Hicks to tell him about a commercial she’d seen during the Letterman show – a pro-life commercial. ‘The networks are delivering an audience to the advertisers,’ Hicks said later. ‘They showed their hand. They’ll continue to pretend they’re a hip talk show. And I’ll continue to be me. As Bob Dylan said, the only way to live outside the law is to be totally honest. So I will remain lawless.’

  Outlaw is how Hicks was styling himself last year for the Dominion performance as he put on his black rifleman’s coat and Stetson in the dressing room. When the curtain came up on his performance, Hicks was revealed in his hat, long coat, and cowboy boots, while behind him huge orange flames licked the air. Images of heat and hunting are the perfect backdrop to Hicks’ kind of comic attack. He was a hostile sharpshooter taking aim at the culture’s received opinions and trying to shoot them down. The British, who have an appetite for this kind of intellectual anarchy, embraced Hicks with a rare and real enthusiasm from the moment he stumbled onto the vivacious English comedy scene in November 1990, as one of eighteen comedians in ‘Stand Up America!,’ a six-week limited engagement in the West End. The next year, Hicks was at the Edinburgh Festival, where he outclassed the native talent and won the Critics’ Award. This led to his 1992 ‘Dangerous Tour’ of Britain and Ireland, which culminated in appearances in the West End, at the Queen’s Theatre, that May. The response was overwhelming, and now Hicks was doing one of the final performances of the ‘Relentless Tour,’ his second lap of honor around the British Isles in one year. Hicks was at home with the English, whose sense of irony made them more receptive to his combative humor than the credulous American public had been. ‘There’s a greater respect for the performer,’ he said. ‘If you’re onstage, people think you’ve earned it. In America – I’m not kidding – people bark their approval.’ I looked at him dubiously. ‘Ask around,’ Hicks said, and he simulated the sound. ‘They bark like animals. It’s frightening. It’s what American society has reduced people to. Ironically, in this show I call myself Goat Boy. They shouldn’t be barking, they should be baaing.’