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Alice Miller has a book called The Untouched Key, where she traces the creativity of some brilliant artists to their experiences in early childhood. Richard Pryor often talked about his tortured youth. What role in Bill's early life played in his art and how dysfunctional was his family?
There is a quote in a book I am working on, you can quote this from my biography: "Behind every great man is a great woman, but I think behind every great man is probably a father that this person never came to peace with"
Bill's family was a trip, and is a trip. Nobody loved Bill more than they did or held him in higher regard. I don't think they understood a lot of what he was really all about. Especially not before he died. I think after he died they were forced to come to terms with it more because they actually sat and listened to all his material, cock jokes and all, as they tried to keep the career going after he was dead.
But I think if Bill had just had "regular Joe parents" there is no way he would have turned out to be the way he is. I think most people are products of their parents and upbringing, definitely. For the first five years of knowing Bill, every time he talked he was always imitating his mom or his dad. Not only imitating their voices, but he was imitating their take on what you would be taking about, so it was also just like this state of craziness.
All that being said, I think Bill's mom and dad are very incredible people and you know their faith in God and faith in Bill is all connected. I think what Bill got from them was a really intense conviction.
Back to the drug thing. He did really desire wanting to have some kind of breakthrough connection with his parents. He worked on this very, very hard, before he passed away which is a lot of the reason why he kind of blocked out the world before he died too. He had to return back home and mend some fences, perhaps you could say, before it was time for him to leave. They always say that there is nothing sadder than losing your own child, there is nothing sadder than the death of her son, maybe that's not the quote. Here it is, the quote is: "there is nothing sadder for someone than outliving their offspring," how's that? Offspring, I hate that word.
