Bill Hicks and George Carlin on each other

Sorry to disable comments, but I felt there was nothing new to be said, and my email was getting continually cluttered with youtube notifications. Bill Hicks and George Carlin pay compliment to each other in interviews on Austin Public Access and a HBO special featuring Jon Stewart respectively.

Carlin and Hicks were two of the most abrasive and controversial stand-up comedians America ever produced. However, Hicks died quite young, aged 32, of pancreatic cancer in 1994, before ever achieving widespread fame in his native country. Carlin was a much more revered figure in the US, recorded 14 HBO specials to packed audiences before his death from heart-failure in 2008.

Carlin style of comedy during the early part of his career was more character based, with creations like "Wonderful Wino" and "Al Sleet: The Hippy Dippy Weatherman", appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He become quite popular with these funny but rather inoffensive performances, before radically changing his style and appearance in the 1970s, with the album Class Clown and the infamous routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television" ("shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits"). Still, his style of comedy still consisted of "thinking up goofy shit".

Bill Hicks emerged in the late 1980s after years of touring the comedy circuit. He was a hard-working comedian, but his uncompromising style meant he never became as well-known as he would have liked. He died in 1994, but recorded enough material to cover several live albums, some of which were released posthumously, such as Rant in E-Minor, Arizona Bay and Love, Laughter and Truth. Other albums released during his lifetime were Dangerous and Relentless.

After Hicks' death, Carlin's later HBO specials, such as Back in Town, You Are All Diseased, Complaints and Grievances, Life is Worth Losing and It's Bad For Ya all bore strong resemblances to some of Hicks' work, covering many of the same topics including children, abortion, religion, the ruling class, war, assassination, national pride and the media.

Russell Crowe is set to play Bill Hicks in an upcoming movie.

Jon Stewart, Bill Maher and Margaret Cho will honor Carlin at this year's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Others who will honor Carlin include Garry Shandling, Lily Tomlin, Denis Leary, Joan Rivers, Lewis Black and Richard Belzer.

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• stand-up
• George
• Carlin
• Bill
• Hicks