Steve Epstein recalls: “Even though we didn’t have much material, other than borrowed – I was borrowing a lot – the energy was really cool and the audiences were great, very supportive.” Many of the comedians had been pushing Menzel to expand, but he was happy with the status quo. Epstein and Mike Vance decided that, if Menzel wasn’t going to open up another room, then they were just going to open up their own club.
They went out and got backing from renowned Houston sports-writer Mickey Herskowitz, whose son had been performing; and from a prominent lawyer whose daughter was also at the club. Once this was in play, Menzel approached Epstein and Vance and said, “Listen if you’ll drop your plans to open a club, I’ll open one.” He converted the strip joint around the corner and the Annex was born. And now the comedians were really starting to get good because they could go at it every day.
Before the start of Bill’s senior year, his dad was getting sent to Little Rock by General Motors. The original plan was for Jim and Mary to go to Arkansas, have Bill stay behind in Houston for the first half of his school year, then move up at Christmas to join his parents. Logistically things ended up not being that simple; the end result was that Bill got to stay the year. In Houston. By himself.
A better scenario young Bill could not have designed for himself. The biggest source of tension in his life — his family – would have a much more difficult time annoying him from 500 miles away. And with the Annex open, there were slots to fill. Bill was free to perform whenever he wanted. There was no parental guidance to hinder his development as a comedian. He was also making a few bucks.
He was still a teen, barely old enough to drive, but Bill was a wunderkind in an adult world. He was already as good as the guys twice his age playing the same stage. And they knew it.
One weekend home from college, Steve got an invite from baby brother Bill. “I knew [Bill] was writing these jokes,” says Steve, “but I did not know what that meant, and one time … he said, ‘Come down to the Comedy Workshop.’ And I said, ‘Well, why?’ I’d never been to a comedy club, it just wasn’t a big thing. And he said, ‘Just come down there tonight.’ So I went down that night, and I couldn’t believe it, he was a superstar already. There was a sold-out show, lines waiting to get in, and that was my brother, I couldn’t believe it.”
Bill wasn’t just the pet apprentice at the Annex and he wasn’t the socially awkward kid at school any more. During his senior year, he scheduled himself to a lunchtime performance at one of the athletic fields adjacent to the school. About 200 students showed for the impromptu set. When a member of the audience told Hicks, “You have the sense of humor of a third grader,” Bill replied, “Then you must have the comprehension of a second grader.”
The son of a Pentecostal preacher, Sam Kinison survived being hit by a truck at the age of three. After leaving a broken home, he and his brother started off following in their father’s footsteps, as they headed up religious revivals across the Bible Belt of the south.
Failing first at the ministry, then at marriage, Kinison traded one pulpit for another and stepped into stand-up. He was ruthless. “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” Sam took that to a level comedy hadn’t seen before. With Sam the key to comedy wasn’t timing but screaming. Kinison would get his break on a Rodney Dangerfield special where he explained why people starve in Africa: “See this? See this? It’s SAND. YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT … GO TO WHERE THE FOOD IS. ARGHHH. ARGHHH.”
To say Sam lived fast is a mild understatement. His brother once found him snorting cocaine off the back cover of John Belushi’s biography, Wired.
Even though Bill had started (i.e. done his first gig) before Kinison, Sam was able to spend more time on stage; to make a commitment to comedy as a career. So he quickly established a reputation not just in Houston but in the whole state, being named Funniest Man in Texas by the Dallas Morning News in both 1979 and 1980.
One night, as Sam was beginning to take off, and Bill was still starting and showing when he could, Sam gave Bill his initiation. He did a bit where he was “Mr. Lonely,” using the Bobby Vinton song. Sam would get up on a barstool and start singing, “I’m lonely. I’m Mr. Lonely. I have nobody …” and he’d be taking off his clothes as he sang. “I’m a soldier. A lonely soldier.” As he got near the end of the song he’d be taking down his pants. Then he’d drop his voice from that of a romantic crooner to a mischievous screamer. “But I see my boy now, and I ain’t lonely no more.” Then he’d jump off the stool, into the audience, wrestle someone to the ground and pretend to anally rape him or her with his clothes on. “I’ve got my boy. I’ve got my boy. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.”
One night Bill just happened to be sitting there at the corner of the stage when Sam made Bill his catamite. Welcome to the family. Bill liked to hang around the guys as much as possible, and the guys liked him. Moreover, pretty much everyone recognized that Bill was supremely talented, even as a teen; but age and lifestyle kept him at arm’s length. When the other comics went out late after the club closed to take the party somewhere else, or even just to go eat, Bill often went home. He had school the next day.
Plus, despite the general camaraderie, not everybody at this point was a Musketeer. According to fellow Houston comic Jimmy Pineapple, “I don’t think Kinison was ever Bill’s favorite person. They had a connection in that they were the two most famous people to come out of the Houston comics, but Sam wasn’t going to do anything for anybody except Sam. He always used to set people against each other. He used to pull one of us aside: ‘It’s you and I, Pineapple. You and I are the best ones here. Everybody else sucks. So and so is a piece of shit. You and I are the only ones…’ Then he’d pull Bill aside,
‘Bill, it’s you and I. You and I are the best ones here…’ Then he would do it with someone else.”
In April of 1980, Sam first got banned from the Workshop. He had a self-explanatory bit he called “Barstool Rodeo,” where he once broke the barstool while riding it. So when they repaired the stool, Menzel had the bar manager write, “If you break this, you owe $20” on the bottom of the seat. A few nights later, Sam, who tipped the scales at about 250 pounds, is on stage when he simply sits on the stool and it breaks. He is a little upset by this, but more upset by how much the other comics are laughing at him. Naturally he wants to know what the deal is, and they tell him to look at the bottom of the stool. He reads it. Ha, ha. “Oh, twenty dollars? That’s no problem.” He takes twenty dollars and tosses it onto the stage.
Then he went off. “And here’s what I think of your fucking rules. So cheap you can’t pay for a stool. You can’t pay for the props.” Kinison started smashing the remnants of the barstool. Another one of the comics, incited by Kinison’s display of insolence, picked up a chair and, thinking he was going to break it on a beam, ended up putting it through a wall. They were both tossed out and banned from the club for a couple of weeks.
Sam’s second excommunication from the Houston comedy community came from doing “Baby Jesus and His Pal Nigger Dog.” He would just ad-lib: “I’m Baby Jesus, I can do anything I want. What you gonna do? I’ll turn you into a leper. I’m Baby Jesus, I’ll drink your drink. You can’t stop me.” One night this mutated into the Adventures of Baby Jesus and His Pal Nigger Dog. Management would let comics get away with most things. Apparently, though, that was too inappropriate. Sam was gone. Steve Moore, the club art director (and a comic himself), was given the job of breaking the news to Sam.
The next day, according to Epstein: “I came to the club and there were a few guys sitting at the store across from the club. They were talking about going to LA and we were like, ‘Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. It’s time to move on.’ Sam goes, ‘Let’s go.’ And I thought he meant, ‘Let’s go right now.’ I’m saying, ‘Great. I love sponteneity. Shit yeah. Let’s do it right now.’
“What I had missed before I got there was them talking about beating the shit out of Steve Moore, who had fired Sam. That’s what