Comedian bill hicks biography

Initially, it was challenging for Hicks to perform alone due to his young age, and he required special permission to work. However, by the fall of , he had settled into his new profession and had dedicated Thursday nights to his performances while still attending school. After graduating from school, Hicks began traveling across the country. Over time, he realized that performing the same material repeatedly did not contribute to his professional growth.

Seeking inspiration, Hicks started experimenting with alcohol and drugs, believing they would help him discover something new. However, he soon realized the dangers of this path and that his success as a comedian stemmed from his commitment to always speaking the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. Although he quit drinking and drugs, Hicks continued to smoke cigarettes, which became a recurring element in his performances.

Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. This article needs more sources for reliability. Please help improve this article by adding reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged or removed. Hicks was a huge hit in the UK and Ireland and continued touring there throughout Hicks made a brief detour into musical recording with the Marble Head Johnson album in , collaborating with Houston high school friend Kevin Booth and Austin, Texas, drummer Pat Brown.

During the same year, he toured the UK, where he recorded the Revelations video [ 25 ] for Britain's Channel 4. He closed the show with his soon-to become-famous philosophy regarding life, "It's Just a Ride. Progressive metal band Tool invited Hicks to open a number of concerts in its Lollapalooza appearances, where Hicks once asked the audience to look for a contact lens he had lost.

Thousands of people complied. Members of Tool felt that Hicks and they "were resonating similar concepts". He had a joke that he used frequently in comedy clubs about how he caused a serious accident that left a classmate using a wheelchair. NBC had a policy that no jokes about the handicapped could be aired, making his stand-up routine difficult to perform without mentioning words such as "wheelchair".

It was his 12th appearance on a Letterman late-night show, but his entire performance was removed from the broadcast. At that point, it was the only occasion where a comedian's entire routine was cut after taping. He would die less than four months later. Letterman aired the censored routine in its entirety on January 30, Hicks's mother, Mary, was present in the studio and appeared on-camera as a guest.

Letterman took responsibility for the original decision to remove Hicks's set from the show. For many years, Hicks was friends with fellow comedian Denis Leary , but in , he was angered by Leary's album No Cure for Cancer , which featured lines and subject matter similar to his own routine. Comedians borrowed, stole stuff, and even bought bits from one another.

Milton Berle and Robin Williams were famous for it. This was different. Leary had practically taken line for line huge chunks of Bill's act and recorded it. At least three stand-up comedians have stated on-record that Leary stole Hicks's material, and copied his persona and attitude. I stole [Leary's] act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did.

The plot thickens. Do you know that's his material? Hicks' performance style was seen as a play on his audience's emotions. He expressed anger, disgust, and apathy while addressing the audience in a casual and personal manner, which he likened to merely conversing with his friends. He would invite his audiences to challenge authority and the existential nature of "accepted truth.

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 only a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the weather. American philosopher and ethnomycologist Terence McKenna was a frequent source of Hicks' most controversial psychedelic and philosophical counter-cultural material; Hicks infamously acted out an abridged version of McKenna's " Stoned Ape " model of human evolution as a routine during several of his final shows.

Another of Hicks' most-delivered lines was given during a gig in Chicago in later released as the bootleg I'm Sorry, Folks. After a heckler repeatedly shouted " Free Bird ", Hicks screamed, " Hitler had the right idea; he was just an underachiever! Much of Hicks' routine involved direct attacks on mainstream society, religion, politics, and consumerism.

In an interview recorded after one of Hicks' shows in Santa Monica and aired as part of the six-episode BBC Two series Funny Business in , Hicks was asked if audiences got upset by what he said on stage. He responded by saying that occasionally audience members did not find his material funny but that not only would it be impossible to please everyone, it was not his responsibility to do so.

He recounted an instance in which an audience member snidely told him "We don't come to comedy to think! We don't have to do this here! I mean, this is a night club and, you know, these are adults, what do you expect? What you're going to see on TV? This isn't TV live. And also, it's my show. What am I supposed to do? Change my own outlook and my beliefs?

To be what to them? When one of the interviewers challenged that audiences just wanted to be entertained, an exasperated Hicks asked, "When did thinking not become entertaining? Am I supposed to go out and tickle them individually? We have to express an idea here. Hicks was strongly against political correctness , and jokingly stated that the politically correct should be "hunted down and killed.

Hicks often discussed popular conspiracy theories in his performances, most notably the assassination of President John F. Hicks ended some of his shows, especially those being recorded in front of larger audiences as albums, with a mock "assassination" of himself on stage, making gunshot sound effects into the microphone while falling to the ground.

On June 16, , Hicks was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that had spread to his liver. Following his cancer diagnosis, Hicks often joked that any given performance could be his last. The public, however, was unaware of his condition, and only a few close friends and family members knew of the disease. He performed the final show of his career at Caroline's in New York on January 6, ; he moved back to his parents' house in Little Rock shortly thereafter.

In his last weeks, Hicks re-read J. Tolkien 's The Lord of the Rings , [ 53 ] and made telephone calls to friends to say goodbye before he stopped speaking on February 14, Melvin Hicks from Georgia. Yee Har! I already had gotten off to life on the wrong foot. I was always "awake," I guess you'd say. Some part of me clamoring for new insights and new ways to make the world a better place.

All of this came out years down the line, in my multitude of creative interests that are the tools I now bring to the Party.

Comedian bill hicks biography

Writing, acting, music, comedy. A deep love of literature and books. Thank God for all the artists who've helped me. I'd read these words and off I went—dreaming my own imaginative dreams. Exercising them at will, eventually to form bands, comedy, more bands, movies, anything creative. This is the coin of the realm I use in my words — Vision. On June 16, I was diagnosed with having "liver cancer that had spread from the pancreas.

I'd been making such progress recently in my attitude, my career and realizing my dreams that it just stood me on my head for a while. Well, I know now there may never be any answers to those particular questions, but maybe in telling a little about myself, we can find some other answers to other questions. Some bad shows got him a bad rep at some venues, prompting him to question his reliance on substances.

In , realizing he was surrounded by people offering him drugs all the time, he quit. I go through two lighters a day. One of his most inspired routines picked out the irony of the U. It lasts a lifetime; each pocket of One Consciousness he opens. A bloodless revolution. I need my sleep. I make no bones about it. I need eight hours a day, and at least ten at night Through his Waffle House routine he begins poking fun at his own Southern background.

He prowls the stage, thinking on his feet, reciting lines from the Dylan song. When introducing the topic of smoking he seems to be whipping up the crowd to mock smokers, like some P. There followed in his first album, Dangerous , to rave reviews. The style and delivery, though unique to Hicks, still has something of a foothold in the traditional comedy album.

His perceptiveness and sense of irony went down well in the U. He toured Britain and Ireland extensively to sympathetic and responsive audiences. Relentless is a more sophisticated album than its predecessor Dangerous , Hicks more at ease with the format, his routines seamlessly interwoven around his thought processes. In November the booze, drugs and cigarettes were behind him when he recorded the Revelations video for Channel 4 in England.

Filmed at the 2, seat Dominion Theatre, Hicks is at ease with the crowd, drawing them in, puncturing hypocrisy with his sharp humour. Things seemed to be coming together, Hicks a success on his own terms, his creativity never more focused. In it they would play two Victorian-era counts who chat and philosophize with guests. In mid-June, though, Bill Hicks learned he had cancer.

Hicks worked fast with producer Kevin Booth, all guns blazing in the angriest of shows, recording two albums worth of material. At the same time, his confrontational gigs were making a huge impact.