ONE WORKING TITLE FOR WHAT YOU HOLD IN YOUR HANDS WAS Billy Bob Talks, and that’s literally how the book came into existence. An ever-changing cast of characters assembled by Kinky Friedman gathered at Billy’s place night after night, assigned the task of getting him to talk—and keeping him talking—with the tape recorder running. It’s not that Billy was reluctant to talk. He wasn’t. But it was hard for him, as it would be for anyone, to talk without people listening. As Kinky said of us, Billy’s audience, before one of the final sessions, “We’re all just furniture.”
Some of those gathered weren’t content, however, to be simply furniture. Danny Hutton, a founding member of the rock band Three Dog Night, who came to one recording session, matched every one of Billy’s stories with one of his own—much to the consternation of Kinky, who was there to get Billy’s stories, not Danny’s. Billy, a Three Dog Night fan since he was a teenager, didn’t mind and saw Danny’s visit as an opportunity to play him a few tracks by Billy’s own band, the Boxmasters. Billy’s politeness wasn’t shared by Kinky when it came to Ted Mann, writer for the television shows NYPD Blue and Dead-wood and frequent guest during the recording sessions for this book. Kinky had to keep reminding him to “shut the fuck up.” Ted’s response, using a line cribbed from another attendee: “You’re stealing my humanity!” There was general agreement, though, given the stories he told, that a Ted Mann book wouldn’t be bad either.
The sessions—recorded by J. D. Andrew, cofounder of the Boxmasters—were fueled by beer, cigarettes, espresso, and, in Kinky’s case, cigars, and often ran hours past midnight. One night, Billy slipped into the guise of Karl from Sling Blade—voice, facial expression, hand-rubbing, mm-hmms, and all—for an improvised monologue about his guests, and then went right back to being Billy to demonstrate that getting into character isn’t all that difficult, despite the big deal some actors make about it. Another night, actor J. P. Shellnutt came by with ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons. One of the final recording sessions concluded with Louie Kemp, who put together Bob Dylan’s midseventies Rolling Thunder Revue tour, explaining to Billy how Orthodox Jews such as himself prepare food to ensure it’s kosher.
Amazingly, even with all the distractions, entertaining though they were, Billy Bob did, in fact, talk, and the book you’re reading is the result. Not everything made it into print, though, and a lot of the stories that ended up on the cutting-room floor—including one bawdy tale about Billy’s underwear drawer from his teenage years, which he feared would embarrass his mother should it be included here—are as entertaining as what was included. Maybe they’ll end up in the sequel. And perhaps that book will get the title that, to the disappointment of some of us “furniture,” was ultimately rejected for this volume: It Only Hurts When I Pee by Billy Bob Thornton.
—DANIEL TAUB (A FIRSTHAND OBSERVER)