Andy Langer
“This is a Bill Hicks interview, not a Tool interview,” declares Tool frontman
Maynard James Keenan over the phone. Although California’s progressive
metalists have imposed a press blackout in order to protect the lyrical
integrity of their brand new album, Aenima, Keenan has reluctantly made
an exception to discuss Bill Hicks. After all, the late, Austin-based comedian
gets big play on Aenima: several of his routines are sampled, there’s a
painting of him in the CD booklet titled Another Dead Hero, and the
disc’s back cover inlay depicts Hicks’ California-in-the-ocean “Arizona Bay”
theory. So, while Keenan says Aenima isn’t a tribute to Hicks, he’s
fully aware what kind of exposure this highly anticipated album should give the
late comedian.
“[Our fans] will search him out,” says Keenan. “That’s why we put the picture
on the album, so they can get a wider idea. It helps people understand where
we’re coming from as well if they can get perspective like that. They’ll get
Bill’s tapes and listen to what he’s talking about, listen to our album, and
then hopefully have enough intellect to make the leap and say `I see where the
connection is.'”
Keenan says his own connection to Hicks originally came the same way most
bands find musical inspiration — from tapes someone hands them after a show.
“They became a staple of the road,” he says. By late 1992, after citing the
comedian as inspiration on the liner notes of Tool’s full-length debut,
Undertow, Keenan mailed the album to Hicks, followed that up with a
call, and started a phone dialogue. “He came down to Lollapalooza in Los
Angeles and introduced the band,” Keenan says. “We saw him a couple times after
that, talked to him a couple times more, and then he decided to check out.”
Although Keenan says they had almost worked out details for a co-headlining
tour just before Hick’s death in 1994, the mutual admiration society between
the musician-turned-comedian and the ultra-political singer developed mostly by
phone and tape exchange.
“The music is a catalyst for the ideas,” says Keenan, who saw Hicks perform
only once, but nevertheless owns bootlegged versions of the albums Rykodisc is
planning to release. “His ideas were what really resonated with us. I think
that’s what he really liked about us as well — that we were resonating similar
concepts. Unity is the philosophical center. Evolution. Change. Internally and
externally. Individually and globally. That’s pretty much the gist of his
comedy no matter what he was talking about — music, porno, smoking. Whatever
it was, it came back to the idea of unity and evolution. Evolving ideas.”
Initially, finding the ideological middle ground between Hick’s painstakingly
straightforward comedy and Tool’s gloom is obscured by the length and depth of
Aenima‘s 77-minute attack. Still, the most obvious connection are the
Hicks’ samples that end Aenima’s title cut and segue into the
album-closing, “Third Eye,” a song about the government’s war on drugs.
“It didn’t take too much digging,” says Keenan of the sample selection
process. “We’ve heard the tapes enough to where when we were coming up with
that particular song, dealing with that particular medium, it was very simple
to pick those particular passages. They definitely sum up the idea that’s being
spoken in that song.”
Keenan says further explanation would constitute a Tool interview, but agrees
to discuss the painting of Hicks on Aenima‘s CD booklet — Kevin Willis’
portrait of the comedian in a lab coat examining a three-eyed alien’s leg. “I
see Bill Hicks pulling my leg, using the medium he used the best to convey his
ideas: comedy,” he says.
“The message that he’s bringing forward in his work is an age-old message.
It’s been around in every major religion and every sub-minor religion. It’s all
about unity. I just think it’s important that in his particular demographic he
was spreading that idea. That’s the important thing. We have such a diversity
now of media and information dispersal that it’s almost like each area has to
hit its demographic. In Bill’s particular demographic, the comedy circuit,
people need gut laughter relief — especially since comedians themselves are so
tortured. People think that comedians are all happy and jovial all the time.
No, they’re pretty sad people, otherwise they wouldn’t have gone into this
medium. So, he served that purpose in that demographic.”
While Keenan admits Aenima, which chart pundits predict as a sales
blockbuster, is his own attempt to hit the teenage metal demographic with a
message of unity, he says it remains to be seen if the Hicks/Tool common ground
has limits. “We’re speaking the same message,” says Keenan, “but in a different
language.” And although the Tool frontman is saddened by losing the comedian’s
artistic feedback, he’s also optimistic about Hicks reaching important
demographics post-mortem.
“If you look at Bill’s work and really understand where he’s coming from, you
start to realize he’s not really gone, he’s just going through a change. Which
is what he said throughout his entire work…. He’s just gone through a change,
whatever aspect of him that was, whatever part of soul was in that physical
form at that time has just changed form… Even in the passage when he’s
talking about the young man on acid realizing all matter is merely energy
condensed with soil vibration, he says there’s no such thing as death,” says
Keenan, paraphrasing one of Aenima’s samples.
“I don’t think we lost anything. Perhaps his soul decided it was time to check
out,” Keenan concludes. “I think in the particular medium he was working in, it
was almost more powerful. It will be more powerful and more effective if he’s
not here. It may be one of those things that end up transcending themselves.”
This article appears in October 4 • 1996 and October 4 • 1996 (Cover).