Beginnings Hicks was associated with the
Texas Outlaw Comics group developed at the
Comedy Workshop in Houston in the 1980s.
California and New York By January 1986, Hicks was using recreational drugs and his financial resources had dwindled. His career experienced an upturn in 1987, however, when he appeared on
Rodney Dangerfield's
Young Comedians Special. The same year, he moved to New York City, and for the next five years performed about 300 times a year. On the album
Relentless, he jokes that he quit using drugs because "once you've been taken aboard a
UFO, it's kind of hard to top that", although in his performances he continued to enthusiastically praise the virtues of
LSD,
marijuana, and
psychedelic mushrooms. He eventually fell back to
chain smoking, a theme that figured heavily in his performances from then on. His nicotine addiction, love of smoking, and occasional attempts to quit became a recurring theme in his act throughout his later years. In 1988, Hicks signed with his first professional business manager, Jack Mondrus. On the track "Modern Bummer" of his 1990 album
Dangerous, Hicks says he quit drinking alcohol in 1988. In 1989, he released his first video,
Sane Man; a remastered version with 30 minutes of extra footage was released in 1999.
Early fame In 1990, Hicks released his first album,
Dangerous, performed on the
HBO special
One Night Stand and at
Montreal's
Just for Laughs festival. He was also part of a group of American stand-up comedians performing in London's
West End in November. Hicks was a huge hit in the UK and Ireland and continued touring there throughout 1991. That year, he returned to
Just for Laughs and filmed his second video,
Relentless. Hicks made a brief detour into musical recording with the
Marble Head Johnson album in 1992, collaborating with Houston high school friend
Kevin Booth and Austin, Texas, drummer Pat Brown. During the same year, he toured the UK, where he recorded the
Revelations video for Britain's
Channel 4. He closed the show with his soon-to become-famous philosophy regarding life, "It's Just a Ride." Also in that tour, he recorded the stand-up performance released in its entirety on a double CD titled
Salvation. Hicks was voted "Hot Standup Comic" by
Rolling Stone magazine in 1993.
Hicks and Tool Progressive metal band
Tool invited Hicks to open a number of concerts in its 1993
Lollapalooza appearances, where Hicks once asked the audience to look for a
contact lens he had lost. Thousands of people complied. Members of Tool felt that Hicks and they "were resonating similar concepts". Intending to raise awareness about Hicks's material and ideas, Tool dedicated their triple-platinum album
Ænima (1996) to Hicks. Both the
lenticular casing of the
Ænima album packaging and the chorus of the title track "
Ænema" make reference to a sketch from Hicks's
Arizona Bay album, in which he contemplates the idea of Los Angeles falling into the Pacific Ocean.
Ænimas final track, "
Third Eye", contains samples from Hicks's
Dangerous and
Relentless albums. On October 1, 1993, Hicks was scheduled to appear on
Late Show with David Letterman on
CBS, where Letterman had recently moved. It was his 12th appearance on a Letterman late-night show, but his entire performance was removed from the broadcast. At that point, it was the only occasion where a comedian's entire routine was cut after taping. His stand-up routine was removed from the show, Hicks said, because Letterman's producers believed the material, which included jokes involving religion and the
anti-abortion movement, was unsuitable for broadcast. Letterman aired the censored routine in its entirety on January 30, 2009. Hicks's mother, Mary, was present in the studio and appeared on-camera as a guest. Letterman took responsibility for the original decision to remove Hicks's set from the 1993 show. "It says more about me as a guy than it says about Bill," he said, after the set aired, "because there was absolutely nothing wrong with that".
Denis Leary's alleged plagiarism For many years, Hicks was friends with fellow comedian
Denis Leary, but in 1993, he was angered by Leary's album
No Cure for Cancer, which featured lines and subject matter similar to his own routine. According to
American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story by Cynthia True, hearing the album had infuriated Hicks. "All these years, aside from the occasional jibe, he had pretty much shrugged off Leary's lifting. Comedians borrowed, stole stuff, and even bought bits from one another.
Milton Berle and
Robin Williams were famous for it. This was different. Leary had practically taken line for line huge chunks of Bill's act and
recorded it." As a result, the friendship ended abruptly. At least three stand-up comedians have stated on-record that Leary stole Hicks's material, and copied his persona and attitude. In an interview, when Hicks was asked why he had quit smoking, he answered, "I just wanted to see if Denis would, too." In another interview, Hicks said, "I have a scoop for you. I stole [Leary's] act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did." During a 2003
Comedy Central Roast of Leary, comedian
Lenny Clarke said that a carton of cigarettes from Hicks was backstage, with the message, "Wish I had gotten these to you sooner." This joke was cut from the final broadcast.
American Scream describes an incident in the plagiarism controversy: ==Material and style==