"Mr. McGee... don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
With all due respect to Lou, the true star of The Incredible Hulk TV show wasn't the big green guy with the muscles... it was his quieter, calmer alter ego, Dr. David Banner. Bill Bixby did the quiet man role masterfully, bottling up his rage until he just couldn't hold it in any more... and then, the pupils went wide. More than that though, he cut a truly tragic figure as a itinerant loner, doomed never to settle down. That was always the final shot of the show, Banner taking that long walk out of town, the emotion turned up to eleven with the help of Joe Hammell's heart-wrenching Lonely Man Theme.
The Incredible Hulk was actually Bill Bixby's fourth major TV role. He'd previously starred in the sitcoms My Favourite Martian and The Courtship of Eddie's Father, followed by the lead role as a crime-fighting conjurer in The Magician. But it was David Banner (changed from the comic book Bruce Banner as the producer didn't like alliterative names) that guaranteed his immortality. Nobody could make a walk out of town seem quite so devastating.
The fact that, at any second, Billy Bixby could go total Hulk on yo' ass endears him greatly to the rap community. As with Lou Ferrigno, he gets name-dropped by everyone from Ice Cube, Lil Wayne and P Diddy to De La Soul and Public Enemy.
And then there's this...
Not to mention this dude...
And this one...
You get the picture. (Yes, we see.)
Meanwhile, David Banner's famous catch-phrase also crops up all over the place, most notably here...
And considering Prince's boss was called Mr. McGee in the track below, I'm betting the Purple One could well have turned Green... if he hadn't been a bit too leisurely.
However, right back at the beginning of this post (in the late 1970s), I proclaimed Bill Bixby the winner over his large green alter ego. And the reason for that is the tune below, a far better Bill Bixby song than any I could find that mentioned Lou Ferrigno.
Bill Bixby died of prostate cancer in the early 90s, but he lives on in my record collection thanks to another Bill, Mr. Callahan of Smog, a man who clearly appreciates the power of a slow stroll of out of town.
You know I used to share a tailor
With David Bruce Banner
That's the Hulk
Traveling jackets and traveling bags
Future rags
And shoes good for walking highways
But never quite far enough away
To see how good and easy it could be
If I just got angry
But I never got angry
Maybe I should have
I could have cleared some things away
In those old Bill Bixby days
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