Part
1 of 15
When
did you first meet Bill?
In
1975 I was in 10th grade, he was in 9th grade, it was the
lunchroom, a close friend of mine, Bruce Salin who I had
known for years, same birthday, same home address. I still
know him; he is also a bass player. You know these
parallel things. But anyway, he kept telling me about this
really hilarious guy that he had met and then I found out
through some other people that there was this new young
kid at school that everybody didn't know if he was
retarded or if he was an outward psychopath... We meet in
the cafeteria at Stratford High School for the first time.
It seems that over the '80's and early '90's comedy
went from being an important vehicle of ideas to the
mundane and almost formula like medium. I think Bill
brought it back to what comedy originally was supposed to
be. I think the year Bill was nominated for the comedy
award Carrot Top won. How did Bill feel about the comedy
industry in general?
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Well,
first of all, Bill was dead when Carrot Top won. He had
just died, which was a bigger disappointment for all of
us. I think he was pretty burned out on it. Early on, the
comedy business was up and coming. You can compare it to
the music business, which after 15 - 20 years, after bands
chasing after record contracts, was kind of becoming jaded
and mundane. When comedy appeared in the 80's, I think it
was almost like the new musical frontier for people. Back
in the early '60's to tell someone, "Hey I'm in a
rock band and we write all our own music and we are trying
to get a record deal" was probably a pretty original
thing to say. Linked in the early '80's saying "Hey
I'm a comedian". But like everything else, the system
gets cluttered with shitty people and as that happens the
people with money and control get to make more decisions
than the people with talent. Such is the way of the world,
nothing new.
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"...that there was this new young kid at school that everybody didn't know if he was retarded or if he was an outward psychopath.…
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So,
I think Bill was pretty disillusioned by the industry of
comedy. I think you will even hear that if you listen to
Rant Minor. He says they are draining the Pacific Ball
right now for the next Carrot Top concert and yet, here I
am in front of 100 people. Pretty embarrassing coming back
to San Francisco to play half empty clubs after he had
just returned from 30 nights in a row in England playing
for over 2,000 people a night. There were 100 people at
that show and to even make it worse, a lot of people there
didn't even know who he was. It was kind of like,
"Let's go see comedy after we go to the World War II
exhibit or after Alcatraz there's a comedy thing." I
was like he might as well been Bill at Chucky Cheese.
