If you did not know him, I think this very touching post on Facebook by Howie Pyro will give you an idea of who he was, and how many people he touched. He was a living melting pot. Will miss his out of the blue questions and crazy rare out takes by bands you like or should..

From Howie:

UPDATE:

Bill died in his sleep, thank the powers that be. I will have more info coming soon. No one understood everything i understood as well as Bill…he made me sooo fuckin’ mad pretty often, but also was the source of so much happiness in my life that that totally outweighed anything. The never ending childish retarded glee that Bill derived from Rock N Roll in all it’s disguises was truly something to experience & tap into. Everything about bill was entwined with mysteries, riddles, tricks & downright lies, right down to his credit card & license plate. Trust no one, all truth is a lie and all those sayings were Bill’s reality, but in a sweet childish way. His life was a Phillip K Dick book. The last thing we did was go to Phillip K Dick day in Orange County last week. He always knew someone everywhere we went, even more than me. Bill got people to DO THINGS. Impossible things. And miracles occurred, even if years later, like him secretly getting The Shaggs & Os Mutantes to co-write a song together even though they both didn’t know of each other’s existence. Like Yoko Ono telling him how much she enjoyed the Tater Tots, like Os Mutantes posting yesterday that their resurgence was due to Bill, this from a massive Brazilian band who’s first LP Bill’s sister (an exchange student in Brazil in the 60s) brought him as a gift which then led him on a 30 year campaign to make sure everyone knew about them. Curt Cobain went on tv in Brasil in the 90s and said something like “we want to find this band Os Mutantes because my friend Bill told us how great they are, he has a mustache” and he held up a drawing of Bill. This from the then biggest rock star in the world. (you can find this clip on youtube). This is typical in his world and things like this happened daily. Things that no one could or would make happen. The endless combinations of music, bands & people colliding in his infamous decades long Tater Tots project involving everyone he was obsessed with, friends with or bumped into. Bill was the only person that could get a shocked reaction out of Gene Simmons in Kiss’ own dressing room…”What’s BILL doing here again???” As he had been harassing them for decades as well. When my band D Generation toured with them in ’96 when they first put the make-up on again, Bill literally jumped off the (the) Melvins tour bus and onto ours, completely stumping Kiss & their crew as Bill strolled into soundcheck a thousand miles away from a couple days previous. Bill & I saw the weirdest & greatest obsessions of ours come to life, bands that couldn’t possibly exist appeared before our eyes much to our astonishment…we saw the Monks & The Shaggs in one week in a time when it just wasn’t possible for that stuff…not that it is now. I have watched him piss more people off in the years that i’ve known him than any one person, company or country might be able to do. It was art. Bill was a walking living performance art project and if you think he’s done with us, well, think again. His life was a Phillip K Dick novel where someone is a drug dealer and is being followed by a cop that is wearing a scramble suit that changes his identity every few seconds until he realizes that he is following himself! That is Bill’s reality. He was so amazing. So smart. so fucking into “it”. So secretive. So annoying! So full of love. And so fearless. Bill was my best friend (of which i can count 3 others). I can not fathom that i will not hear his voice on the phone from his car, sucking down a gallon of Diet Coke & plotting his next scheme. I can not believe I will never hear his giddy voice stuttering some incomprehensibly idiotic concept. I can not imagine life without Bill Bartell aka Pat Fear. Much love.
Howie Pyro 9/25/132:18 PM