We lost a comedic prophet 31 years ago: Bill Hicks, who, with wit and rage, preached about the need for us to evolve. We didn’t listen.
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Hicks raged about politics, religion, conspicuous consumption, the military-industrial complex, prisons, cigarettes, the true nature of freedom, the mind-altering power of drugs, and all the things he thought were ruining American society or, worse, had the potential to make America a better place yet were banned by either law or a dogmatic, hypocritical code of morality. Often clad entirely in black, often smoking a cigarette, Hicks haunted the stage like the Ghost of Christmas Future, bellowing with all his might for people to change — now — before it was too late.”
-Katharine Shilcutt, Houstonia Magazine, Dec. 16, 2016, ‘Today Would Have Been Bill Hicks’s 55th Birthday’
Bill Hicks was one of the great stand-up comics in this country’s history. Like George Carlin and other renegades that came before, he really pushed the boundaries of the artform in new directions.
“Think of me as Chomsky with dick jokes,” he often said.
A central tenet of his ideology was that freedom of thought is essential to an actually free society. As much a philosopher as a jester, he honed in on why so many people believe demonstrably false things — even outright absurdities — and why some obvious truths are kept out of the realm of acceptable discourse.
I don’t care what you believe, but you gotta admit beliefs are odd. You know what I mean? You have to admit that. A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a f***ing cross? Kinda like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant on, you know. “Just thinkin’ of John, Jackie, just thinkin’ of John.”
Hicks was a one-man paradigm shifter, imploring his audiences to question the establishment consensus about almost everything, from the JFK assassination — something even Chomsky has refused to touch — to UFOs and the complex nature of reality.
One of his early 1990s jaunts was dubbed “The Flying Saucer Tour,” a not so subtle reference to one of his favorite topics.
I’ve been on what I call my flying saucer tour which means like flying saucers, I, too, have been appearing in small southern towns in front of handfuls of hillbillies lately, and uh… I’ve been doubting my own existence.
Emerging from Houston as one of the brightest stars of the city’s “Texas Outlaw Comics” group, Hicks made his mark in the 1980s and early 90s by relentlessly touring the US, Australia, and Canada, but it was in the UK that he really made inroads, due in part to the controversial topics that were a staple of his routine — topics that many Americans did not want to hear about.
He struggled for many years, but that road warrior mentality of performing anywhere and everywhere, for all kinds of people — hillbillies, hippies, or hipsters — made him an underground legend. He could no doubt be self-righteous and sometimes obnoxious, but his earnestness won over a legion of fans, as he introduced them to some transformational ideas that were not easy to come by at that time.
Although only releasing two albums while alive, he had two HBO specials to his name and nearly a dozen appearances on the David Letterman show; his 12th and final appearance was censored by CBS and never aired until many years later.
Hicks was primed to really break out into the mainstream. As his manager recounted in a remembrance published after his death, besides a gifted singer-guitarist and songwriter, his many other talents were not unnoticed. England’s Channel 4 signed him to write and star in his own show, “The Counts of the Netherworld,” and the progressive outlet The Nation wanted him to write columns for them.
Then in the blink of an eye, like a flying saucer, he was gone, dying of pancreatic cancer in 1994 at only 32.
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In his later years, he channeled his anger at the conservative revolution of the 1980s. The inherent cynicism of the Reagan administration’s shotgun marriage with Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority was obvious to anyone paying attention, but Hicks’s insights went deeper than just pointing out the hypocrisy of it all.
Listening to those recordings of Hicks now is an eerie experience because he was so prescient. Much of what he (and George Carlin) warned about has sadly become true.
There was a fascist monster brewing in America — born of the unholy alliance between the GOP and the then-new political force of Christian evangelicals — that posed a dire risk to our secular, civic institutions; a monster of sly operatives, oligarchs, and religious fanatics that feeds off political apathy and the dumbing down of American culture.
A compliant corporate media was another tentacle:
They’re the propaganda arm of the elite few who actually run this f***ing country, and we are lied to on a regular f***ing basis so that we will remain in the dark, … docile, apathetic herd of f***ing cattle that doesn’t know the true agenda of this country.
The singular issue that brought fundamentalist Christianity into the political power structure was abortion, and the first documented murder of an abortion doctor was in March of 1993, less than a year before Hicks died, and it came on the heels of a number of bombings at abortion clinics.
He enjoyed the dark irony, making light of its simplicity.
“We’re pro-life, and we’ll kill yer ass.”
“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.”
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This article began over a year ago as a 30th anniversary retrospective on the life and death of Hicks, but I shelved it, questioning its relevance to the political landscape. And maybe naively I thought that our country’s first dalliance with an authoritarian conman had brought many of his supporters to their senses.
But here we are, and with a feckless Congress, the burden of fighting back now rests largely with lawyers, judges, and journalists. That burden also extends to artists and especially the world of comedy.
Because tyranny prospers through fear and silence, there is an urgent need for comedians to keep the fear at bay — with a heaping dose of expletives and some good belly laughs for sanity’s sake. With that in mind, now is the time to revisit the fearless and prophetic William Melvin Hicks.
Born Again
From Christofascism in full bloom to the possible release of the government’s JFK files and everything in between, it’s remarkable just how relevant his material is to the present situation that the US finds itself in.
His long absence from the cultural and political conversation has been noticed by his fans and the many well known artists that were inspired by him.
Back in 2004 — during the madness of a previous Republican administration, The Austin Chronicle, a weekly magazine in Hicks’s adopted hometown of Austin, TX, asked some of his closest friends and famous admirers for their thoughts on Hicks’s legacy. Richard Linklater, a Hollywood film director and native of the Texas capital, best explained just how unique Hicks was, and it’s worth reprinting here in its entirety:
I can’t tell you how often his death hits me. I’ve never been able to find closure with Bill Hicks because there is too much going on in the world. I miss his analysis. I’d love to be hearing his rants right now. He’d be razor sharp. It’s just a huge loss that it’s not part of the cultural dialogue. To me, he was clearly the most insightful comedian to the world around him. He was the most in touch in that way, and I never laughed louder or harder. He got you in the gut. The laughs seemed deeper and well earned. He earned it through his wit and his intelligence, then he just drove it deeper in you. And he was digging in himself. He was like a jazz or blues musician who is putting himself out there completely. That’s how you felt about his material: “God, this guy is going for it!” He was a lone voice in the total dead zone of the Eighties/early Nineties when the bullshit really started stacking up. And he wasn’t playing footsie with corporate sponsors; he went for the jugular.
Only his family and a few close friends even knew that Hicks was ill, diagnosed in June 1993 with pancreatic cancer that spread to his liver. While receiving chemotherapy in his final months he toured as much as his body could allow, seemingly on one last mission to change hearts and minds with jokes.
The cancer spread though, and he passed at just 32 on February 26, 1994; he definitely died despite the claims that he faked his death, had some plastic surgery, and emerged as another Texan — Alex Jones. No, I’m not kidding. People actually are convinced of it.
As is the case with many gifted artists who died young, the recognition he deserved would only come after his passing, and as the years have gone by and more of his recordings have been released as albums, new generations have discovered his rare talent.
Sam Morril, a popular New York comic, has described Hicks as “like the Biggie Smalls of comedy,” a reference to the late Notorious B.I.G., considered to be one of the greatest rappers ever, who also died at a tragically young age. While some critics of Hicks have argued that his immortalization has more to do with his early demise rather than merit, he was revered by his peers while alive.
The long list of comedians who have credited him as one of their main comic inspirations is impressive. Not only did he inspire them, but as comic/actor/social critic David Cross once explained,
By physics, Bill paved the way for people like me. Bill was a very, very special, very unique, and extremely talented, brilliant comedian. I think I’m a pretty good comedian, but I’m not where he is, nor do I pretend to be. And nobody should really because he was extra special — as well as extra crispy.
Wherever he belongs on the historical list of greatest stand-up acts he has also achieved a mythic status in the wider culture. After his February ’94 death, two of the most celebrated and revolutionary bands to emerge from that decade, Radiohead and Tool, each dedicated their next album to Hicks, indicative of his profound impact.
That impact includes a popularization of fringe subjects that legacy media and academia are only beginning to take seriously.
In addition to the mystery of UFOs, Hicks was an enthusiastic proponent of the societal benefits of psychedelics like cannabis, LSD, and psilocybin — tools which he saw as essential to moving humanity away from the endless cycles of ignorance, fear, hatred, and war; cycles that authoritarian rulers like Trump have utilized throughout history to seize power and not relinquish it.
Of all the taboo subjects that he centered his act around, his favorite was the ugly reality of what actually happened in Dallas, TX, on November 22, 1963:
Boy, I love talkin’ about the Kennedy assassination man. That’s my favorite topic. You know why? Because to me it’s a great archetype example of how the totalitarian government who rules this planet partitions out information in such a way that we the masses are forced to base our conclusions on erroneous. …. Oh, I’m sorry, wrong meeting. I thought this was the meeting at the docks no? Oh, shit, that’s tomorrow night.
Theatre of the Absurd: Standing Up to a Mad King
Soon after the launch of Trump’s 2016 campaign and subsequent election, many of Hicks’s acolytes in comedy saw with clear eyes the danger that Trump and his MAGA movement represented and said so to anyone who would listen. This includes the likes of David Cross, Janeane Garofalo, and Louis C.K.
Most notably was C.K., born Louis Alfred Székely, whose own grandfather left Hungary in the late 1920s before the Holocaust would take dozens and dozens of his family members. Back in early 2016, he equated Trump with Hitler at a time when it was deemed poor taste, even quite reckless to make such a comparison. In a newsletter to his fans, CK wrote,
P.S. Please stop it with voting for Trump. It was funny for a little while. But the guy is Hitler. And by that I mean that we are being Germany in the 30s. Do you think they saw the shit coming? Hitler was just some hilarious and refreshing dude with a weird comb over who would say anything at all.
The Hitler comparison, as squeamish as it may understandably make some, should no longer be dismissed so reflexively. It’s frankly an overdue conversation because the signs were there.
Besides his odd insistence in 2023 that he’s never read Hitler’s Mein Kampf, there was reporting by Vanity Fair all the way back in 1990 that, according to his then-wife Ivana, “From time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed.”
Trump’s inexplicable relationship with a ruthless dictator in Vladamir Putin is another warning sign that has been flashing red for awhile; the Russian leader’s territorial ambitions have not been seen by Europeans since Hitler in the late 1930s.
Maybe more ominous is the claim by his former chief of staff, John Kelly, that while in Paris for the 2018 Armistice Day remembrance, Trump said (among a number of heinous statements attributed to him during that trip) “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.” Hitler also attempted a coup and then later pardoned his co-conspirators once in power.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of other comics who have sadly reacted to Trump like he’s a mostly harmless carnival barker to be squeezed for entertainment value.
Even more unfortunate, there are those with incredible sway, like Joe Rogan — a comic and podcaster who has frequently cited Hicks as one of his main influences — publicly endorsing Trump in the 2024 election. It’s sobering to think that Rogan’s endorsement likely played an outsized role in tipping the balance of the election.
Hopefully he is paying attention to what is occurring and responds accordingly because he is a significant part of the cultural zeitgeist for the foreseeable future.
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Part of the Trump conundrum is that he’s sometimes genuinely funny — and so impossibly orange from tanning bronzer — that he is able to disarm even some of his fiercest critics. This has made it a real challenge in deciding how to think about him and accurately assess the threat he poses to US democracy. From the dancing to the nicknames and jokes, he has been able to masquerade as something that belies the ugliness underneath.
Another problem with accurately viewing Trump is that he has so desensitized the American people with almost 10 years of outlandish lies, trolling, shameless grifting, and general recklessness that a feeling of surreality has set in. We’re now living in The Twilight Zone.
Consider just his recent buffoonery like announcing a US occupation of Gaza or his choice for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a fundamentalist Christian who has consistently professed his belief that we are living in the end times and the final battle of Armageddon will take place in Jerusalem — which is not coincidentally where Trump relocated the US embassy from Tel Aviv in 2018. If the stakes in the Middle East were not so high, Huckabee’s “conflict of interest” would be hilarious.
The coup de grace is Trump giving Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, free rein to dismantle the entire federal government which led directly to the mass firing of hundreds of National Nuclear Safety Administration personnel who oversee and guard our nuclear stockpile.
The subsequent and ongoing failure of the White House to rehire them — upon realizing what these NNSA employees actually do — is because it locked these men and women from accessing their government accounts. It’s all so astonishingly preposterous that it’s almost funny a la Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.
As the political news media struggles with how to approach the insanity of Trump 2.0, this cognitive dissonance is also a problem for satirical news shows like The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
While Jon Stewart’s return as a voice of moral clarity is a great development, he and his co-hosts, as well as writers, are still too focused on finding humor in what is occurring. Although striking a more serious tone now in parallel with traditional news media (see Stewart’s monologue from February 24), is there a red line where they become almost exclusively a news show because making lighthearted sketch comedy just feels inappropriate and/or inadequate?
Those shows — whether The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, or any others of that ilk — also have to mind concerns about losing corporate advertisers and more significantly, the legal limits on speech. They are constrained by federal media broadcast laws that would be enforced by a rogue Federal Communications Commission or Department of Justice. They are simply unable to give viewers the unvarnished, nightmarish truth about Trump and the MAGA agenda.
Stand-up comics, on the other hand, can and must fill the void because they are not subject to those constraints nor the imaginary limits of “taste” and “decency.”
One can only imagine what darkly beautiful and subversive poetry Bill Hicks would conjure about a failed real estate developer turned reality television star twice elected president. And the “family values” folks that voted for him — twice.
