Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution. Kevin Booth

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       CHAPTER 3

      After it was clear that the The Suburbs wasn’t going to get made, wasn’t going to get bought, wasn’t going to get anything, Hicks was battling a bout of geographical fatigue. It was compounded by a string of gigs back home in the summer of 1982. He used the shows to take the thought of going back home to Texas for a test drive.

      In Houston, Bill tracked down Laurie. They went out on a few dates. In Austin, Bill hung out with Kevin and David Johndrow, who along with Brent Ballard had moved into a house together near the University of Texas. Laurie, whom he had never got over, was in Texas. His best friends were in Texas. There were good comics in Texas. Everything Bill liked in the world was in Texas. What was in LA? Everything else?

      During the trip to Texas Bill got into astrology and numerology and any “-ology” he could get his hands on. With numerology, Bill found his number. In numerology, numbers are assigned to letters, and you can derive a number from your name. For “William Melvin Hicks” Pythagorean numerology produces a number of six; the characteristics of a six are to be generally responsible but anxious and guilt-ridden. He worked this out for all of his friends as well.

      Bill had a favorite astrologer working out of a bookstore in Austin, and took Laurie to get her chart done. Then he got his chart done. Then he got their chart together done. Bill became unglued because his and Laurie’s compatibility was off the chart. Sagittarius and Aries generally have a great deal of compatibility in their signs, but theirs was exceptional. Bill also decided he was going to have his and Dwight’s chart together done. He called Dwight up, very excited because Bill and Dwight were an even better match than Bill and Laurie. “He said basically that if I had been born with a pussy we’d be perfect together,” said Slade.

      Bill’s hiatus from Hollywood lasted a couple of months. When he got back to LA uncertainty – where to live, how to approach his career, should he reconnect with Laurie – was permeating every aspect of his life. He and Dwight got it into their heads that the way to make a breakthrough, to get guidance, was to open up to the universe, to allow for any spiritual force to enter their lives.

      Slade describes it: “We got up on a Sunday, and we were silent the whole day. Lit candles, did prayers back and forth. The idea was to offer up ourselves to God’s will, or the will of whatever the Universe’s power was.”

      They started out with meditation. Dwight doing a TM and Bill doing a TM that morphed into a thing of his own design. They listened to a tape Bill had picked up in Austin of an Indian chanter named Kuthoumi. Then, according to Slade, “The next step was to invite in all the masters to help us, to surround the area with white light and protect us as we went through this prayer.”

      They exchanged prayers about what they wanted. “Bill’s prayers were surprisingly Christian in their nature,” Dwight recalls. “Mine were kind of generic in terms of ‘higher power,’ ‘universe,’ ‘nature.’ His were ‘God, the father,’ ‘Jesus.’ They were very Christian-oriented, which was odd because he felt so betrayed by Christianity. Creative people, especially greatly creative people like Bill, can’t ignore their spirituality because it is so essential to their work and their being. It comes up whether they like it or not. And Bill was raised in an environment where you have this – the only way you get to express it is with this two-dimensional dogma that is more about the process than it is the goal. He was so betrayed by that.

      “I remember him saying what he wanted most was to do God’s comedy. He wanted to do stand-up, and he wanted to do it like it had never been done before. He wanted God to speak through him.

      “Later on we went and had doughnuts. It’s like we were exhausted so, ‘Let’s go have some fucking sugar, Jesus.'”

      A couple of weeks later Bill left LA. And even though he left some of his belongings behind, it was clear he wasn’t coming back any time soon.

      When he left, he wrote a note and adorned it with a drawing, a self-portrait of Bill playing the guitar, cigarette dangling from his mouth. WDPS.

      Calling the comedy biz in LA “Sybil in reverse,” Bill was happy to be back home. “There are 10,000 bodies out there with one personality,” he said. But LA had taught Bill that he didn’t even truly have his own voice yet. Yet. He was about to take a big step towards finding out how to let that voice scream. The dirty clothes in Bill’s suitcase had barely had time to air out when he decided he was going to try taking mushrooms.

      Bill rang the bell. It’s a user’s term. He had that seminal experience. On stage that night he claimed he could read the audience’s thoughts. Mushrooms did things meditation clearly couldn’t. All it took was a few caps and about a half hour and Bill transformed himself into a clairvoyant with dick jokes.

      This was the answer. How could he bomb if he could tap into what the audience was thinking? Easily. Bill started taking mushrooms and going on stage every single night. It got less and less effective, and he got less and less funny.

      One night he exhausted the mushroom magic completely. He went up on stage after dosing and soon ended up lying in the fetal position on the corner of the stage. The audience took their coasters, their wadded-up napkins, and started playing target practice with Bill’s inert body.

      Then he turned around. He said to his friends, “You know what? I’m never going to take drugs and go on stage again.”

      Bill quit doing mushrooms and immediately turned to alcohol. He was at the Comedy Workshop in Austin when, having never drunk a drop in his life, Bill started downing tequila shots before going on stage. Here was a kid who had never had those formative experiences where you learn about losing control. Part of teen drinking is learning what you can and cannot handle. Bill missed out on that in his priggish crusades.

      When he got on stage, he unloaded, and started berating the audience in general.

      Then he got into it with individuals in the audience. That set the blueprint for the mythos of Bill. It wasn’t every night. It wasn’t even most nights. But it could happen any night. First Bill would get drunk, then he would get really drunk. He’d go on stage and someone in the audience might say something to set him off. And that was it. He’d tear into anything. Says Pineapple, “You know, people were kind of wary about hiring us, because you never knew what was going to happen.”

      There was one certainty with Bill: the party СКАЧАТЬ