CALL FROM LONDON
while driving here to dayton this week i got a call from a producer at the BBC in london and wants to interview me for a BBC special on BILL HICKS. so next week i am going to a studio in las vegas and be interviewed with a live feed back to england. cool. i love talking about bill. (a call from london bbc fits into that catagory of "not your usual phone call what with the heavy british accent and all.)
being friends with bill was akin to being a composer and then hanging out with mozart or a painter and your running buddy was picassol. he was a step above when it came to comedy. sometimes i would watch bill and the thought would cross my mind that maybe i should give up on this comedy thing, it has already been done and it was bill who did it.
i had been going up at the comedy workshop in houston for about 4 months when i first saw bill hicks. i had heard of him of course but he had "retired" at age 22 but unretired and this was one of the first sets he had done in about 6 months. it was fucking brilliant. i went home and told my wife that i had seen a genius. willie boy was the best that ever was. one time i talked to him about the money system and how it works; gold standard to federal reserve to credit cards to how the atm machines came to be and etc and etc. the next night he did 15 side splitting minutes on money. a subject that i knew for years and not come up with a single solitary funny fucking thought about it. man!
i have posted a couple of stories about bill here on the blog but the stories could paint an unfair picture of bill concentrating, as they do, on the wild and wooly but there was so much more to bill. he was a gentleman and a scholar. he was polite and thoughtful and all in all just great company. several times i went up to new york city and stayed with bill and his girl friend, pam, and the three of us would travel the city, eating, laughing, observing and having some of the best times of my life. people would stop and stare (and you have to be out there to get people in nyc to stop and stare) at the three of us laughing so hysterically that we were unable to stand. on a trip to washington bill and i were asked to leave the white house because we were doing a running comedy routine while on the tour. we were killing but they made us leave. no sense of humor.
bill had a habit of calling his friends after a show and going on various rants. "willie here" he would say and off he would go. many times i wished i had a recording device on my phone so i could capture this once in a lifetime comedy routine. the night the punchline in walnut creek, california booked bill with a YOUNG REPUBLICAN SOCIETY cocktail party. what were they thinking??? bill walked the entire room and called me immediately after coming off stage when the memory of what all he had said was still fresh. there has never been anything as funny as what i, and i alone, heard that night! oh well, i will save the rest for the bbc.
if you don't have any of bill's recordings do yourself a favor and get some.
being friends with bill was akin to being a composer and then hanging out with mozart or a painter and your running buddy was picassol. he was a step above when it came to comedy. sometimes i would watch bill and the thought would cross my mind that maybe i should give up on this comedy thing, it has already been done and it was bill who did it.
i had been going up at the comedy workshop in houston for about 4 months when i first saw bill hicks. i had heard of him of course but he had "retired" at age 22 but unretired and this was one of the first sets he had done in about 6 months. it was fucking brilliant. i went home and told my wife that i had seen a genius. willie boy was the best that ever was. one time i talked to him about the money system and how it works; gold standard to federal reserve to credit cards to how the atm machines came to be and etc and etc. the next night he did 15 side splitting minutes on money. a subject that i knew for years and not come up with a single solitary funny fucking thought about it. man!
i have posted a couple of stories about bill here on the blog but the stories could paint an unfair picture of bill concentrating, as they do, on the wild and wooly but there was so much more to bill. he was a gentleman and a scholar. he was polite and thoughtful and all in all just great company. several times i went up to new york city and stayed with bill and his girl friend, pam, and the three of us would travel the city, eating, laughing, observing and having some of the best times of my life. people would stop and stare (and you have to be out there to get people in nyc to stop and stare) at the three of us laughing so hysterically that we were unable to stand. on a trip to washington bill and i were asked to leave the white house because we were doing a running comedy routine while on the tour. we were killing but they made us leave. no sense of humor.
bill had a habit of calling his friends after a show and going on various rants. "willie here" he would say and off he would go. many times i wished i had a recording device on my phone so i could capture this once in a lifetime comedy routine. the night the punchline in walnut creek, california booked bill with a YOUNG REPUBLICAN SOCIETY cocktail party. what were they thinking??? bill walked the entire room and called me immediately after coming off stage when the memory of what all he had said was still fresh. there has never been anything as funny as what i, and i alone, heard that night! oh well, i will save the rest for the bbc.
if you don't have any of bill's recordings do yourself a favor and get some.
posted by Ron Shock | 9:27 AM
6 Comments:
please post details of show so we can hear from BBC on line like BBC 3 or however they organize it.
if i know far enough in advance, i will post it here. it could be, however, that they will call me and want to do the interview that very day...i have no real idea on how they are going to do this since i was driving through a heavy downpour while i am talking to the guy so i may have missed a detail or two...lol
I was in a library in Oklahoma City, circa 2001, and my stated purpose in being there was NOT to read.
(Oh. Like YOU never dated a librarian and had improper relations with her underneath a "quiet please" sign.)
Anyway, while biding my time I happened upon a biography about Hicks, written soon after he died. Don't recall the name at the moment but I will find out. There was a photo of Ron with Hicks at a table in the middle of it.
I read it, literally, cover to cover, without so much as sitting down. And I went immediately to the nearest Hastings (it's a Barnes and Noble for Oklahomans and Texans, basically) and bought every Hicks album they had.
... Best decision I made for years.
The only part about Hicks that feels hollow is, he didn't become revered until after he died. He became a legend posthumously. That is at the same time very cool and somewhat painful.
Who knows if you can call him the best comic there ever was, but this much is true: You can't have a discussion about the all-time bests without including Hicks. If you do, your discussion is a fraud.
"I don't mean to sound cold or cruel or vicious. But I am so that's how it comes out." -- Hicks
That's fucking art, man.
bill was quite popular in england and australia and probably would have moved to somewhere in the british isles if he had not died.
some of the texas outlaw comic shows that we did were so over the top that they could only be called drunken-stoned-coked art. god, they were fun!
The aforementioned book was American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story by Cynthia True. Bio-wise, it's not a literary endall, but Hicks' story was and is compelling.
there is another one which i consider to be better and that is BILL HICKS, AGENT OF EVOLUTION. it has a much better grasp of those wonderful years of the texas outlaw comics 1985-88/89 in houston and captures the wildness and fun quite well.
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