Bill Hicks, the black-humored articulator of doubt

Magnuson and Hicks had agreed to shoot their film Jan. 23 during a performance at San Francisco's Punch Line. The date crept closer. Magnuson still hadn't heard from Hicks. The upcoming week of shows was suddenly canceled due to Hicks' stomach flu. Hicks called up Magnuson and told him they'd have to wait. I was faxed a press release alerting everyone that Hicks was "seriously ill."

January morphed into February. Hicks put all commitments on hold and moved back home to stay with his parents in Little Rock, Ark. Magnuson befriended Hicks' parents, and passed me their address. In a daze, I wrote Hick a final letter while sitting on a train, one of those dopey letters you write to someone who has inspired you. I thanked him for furthering the cause of enlightened rednecks everywhere, and slipped a photo of JFK's head autopsy into the envelope. He died a few days later, on Feb. 26. His manager Colleen McGarr and I ended up on the phone, and she started sobbing. A great one was taken from us much too early. A memorial service in Little Rock attracted comedians from around the country.

Bill Hicks passed away with a TV deal in the works, a finished film script and two albums waiting to be released. It would take his estate another three years to put out the material that was already recorded and compiled. Magnuson told me he made Mary Hicks, Bill's mother, promise not to edit any of the original recordings. And so in 1997, when Ryko released its 4-CD set, "Dangerous, Relentless, Arizona Bay, and Rant in E Minor," he noted that Mrs. Hicks had kept her word.

Joining these original CDs as part of the Hicks legacy is a greatest-hits compilation, "Philosophy," released late last year, and the new biography, "American Scream," by Cynthia True. For someone who never saw or met Hicks, True has done a thorough job of examining his life and career. She wisely stays out of the way, and lets the chronology unfold through quotes and dates, without analysis. Hicks fans will appreciate the attention to personal details, and since another biography doesn't seem imminent, this book is, for the moment, the sole full-length version.

What strikes me about her book is the differences in how it was marketed to the U.S. and the U.K. Hicks was perceived quite differently by the two nations -- in the U.K. he was stopped on the streets for his autograph, and yet in his home country he was censored off television. The American cover is a photo of Hicks sitting in a chair, in front of an American flag. On the U.K. cover, Hicks is lighting his cigarette from a burning American flag. The U.S. back cover runs a quote from Dennis Miller. The U.K. back cover prints an excerpt of the pro-life/Christians routine that was cut from Letterman's show. The U.S. version features a forward by Janeane Garofalo, a recognized Hollywood name, but it doesn't really introduce readers to the text. The U.K. edition carries a forward by Irish comedian/writer Sean Hughes, who describes the first time he saw Hicks take the stage at an Australian comedy festival. Hicks himself would have pointed out the differences, that the U.K. readers understand the wit and irony, and good old literal America, his home and birthplace, still needs to have everything explained very simply. And safely.

The United States thrives on "protecting" its citizens, and despite the Land of the Free hokum, if you dare to speak your mind and have more than 10 people ever hear it, you'll encounter offers of compromise. You'll hear unqualified taste-makers in every industry say the same things: Where can we fit you into what we're doing? No, no, no, we don't care what you think or how you feel. Can you do what this other guy did, only slightly different? How about a combination of x and y? Can you tone this down, beef this up? Can you be edgy? (A magazine editor once told me to make an article sound "undergroundy.")

And if we pretend to embrace our job so we'll always have a job, it's fairly easy to pretend to embrace the rest of the nation, right? Even if it's ironic. Once you place yourself in that proper frame of mind, it's a snap to live in America and get excited, even if it's cheap irony, over the daily distractions of unnecessary celebrities, unnecessary TV shows, unnecessary "news you can use," unnecessary electronic gizmos, unnecessarily large vehicles and the rest of the shit culture we gleefully produce, consume and export around the world. You tell me where Hicks would fit into this picture. I'd like to go there. I'd like to live there.

Among Hicks' favorite targets was the empty-headed celebrity, whether it was George Michael, Debbie Gibson, Michael Bolton or country singer Billy Ray Cyrus. One of the bits censored by Letterman was a new television show Hicks would host, called "Let's Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus":

"I think it's fairly self-explanatory," Hicks said. "Each week we let the Hounds of Hell loose and chase that jarhead, no-talent, cracker idiot all over the globe 'till I finally catch that fruity little ponytail of his, pull him to his Chippendale's knees, put a shotgun in his mouth -- POW!"

To help them run the estate, Bill Hicks' mother and father have hired an attorney from Nashville, who counts among his clients ... Billy Ray Cyrus.

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