Playing to huge crowds, Pryor was by then a superstar. He found humor in some of his most tragic personal experiences, from being beaten by his father in his youth, to shooting bullet holes through his wife's car in a fit of rage. The recollection of his heart attack on the fifth disc is nearly worth the price of the box all by itself, as he tells of waking up in a hospital surrounded by white doctors and nurses. As he looked around the room, he thought he had died. Now I'm gonna have to listen to Lawrence Welk the rest of my days.
Death is a common theme, no doubt because the comedian had so many close calls.
His 1980 freebasing debacle became a major part of his performances, and he vividly recalls what it was like to see his own death reported on television. With third-degree burns over nearly the entire upper half of his body, he nearly did die but instead began to change his life. He became more introspective, but as heard on the 1982 and 1983 recordings found on discs 7 and 8, he never lost his relevance and never stopped delivering his inimitable brand of outrageous social satire. Disc 8 also includes a thoughtful and somber, previously unreleased, 25-minute 1983 interview with Pryor, which provides a fascinating glimpse of what he's like away from the stage lights. The final disc concludes with a 10-minute routine lifted from one of his final public performances in 1992.