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GC
Who said hello at the party?
MM
Oh, some guy. And he said, "I hear you are going down to interview George Carlin." I said, "Yeah." he says, "Tell him...". - you did a bit with extra dirty words, not the seven, but like sheets of them or something?
GC
Yeah, yeah.
MM
He says, "Tell him I love seventy-two!"
GC
Oh, OK, alright. Oh, seventy-two is sixty-nine with three fingers up your ass.
MB
We are rolling.
MM
OK, this is the question I always ask everybody.
GC
OK
MM
Why did you do it?
GC
Ah, I couldn't help it it was my lymbic system. My lower brain, my reptilian brain dictated it.
MM
Alright, OK, is that a defense these days?
GC
It will be.
MM
OK. No, the first question is always: Your first encounter with Buckley?
GC
Well, sometime in the late '50s, the woman that I would eventually marry, who at that time was pretty close to being my fiance, had an album of his. That first album, was it called "Way Out Humor"? The one with The Nazz on it, the first cut. And she played it for me. I had already learned about Lenny Bruce and I, you know, I followed Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce and Shelly Berman, but I had never been exposed to Lord Buckley until that time. And it was mind opening. It showed me an avenue in comedy that I had no reason to believe existed. A very - very specialized - well, a very specialized, personal approach to performing comedy.
The sort of comic revolution that occured in the '50s had been in full swing. By that I mean that comedy had begun not to play it safe in the '50s. What Tony Hendra - Tony Hendra wrote a book called "Going Too Far" about what he termed it "Boomer Humor", for the sake of a better term, for the want of a better term. And what he meant was the sick, gross, far out, challenging, off-beat, irreverent comedy that developed in the '50s. Nicholas and May, Shelly Berman, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce. Prior to that comedy, as most people know, comedy was very safe. The nightclub comedians, you know, as dirty as they ever got was - they did jokes about the size of your dong or can you get it up. And it was just very embarassingly skittish. And there was no talk of any sort of societial or cultural things. It was all made up things. And then it all exploded and became different. And the improvisational groups began. And the seeds were formed for things like - what evenutally would be Monty Python and Second City and even National Lampoon - Mad Magazine came along at that time, it was Mad Comics at first. It was a period when everything exploded and turned around in comedy. And I had already been aware of that, and was feeling good about that as a listener and as a person who wanted to do comedy. So, when introduced to Lord Buckley, that was still another version of this thing that had been happening. What happen with these comedians, in that period, is that each of them developed and put forward a signature identity that no other comedian could have. Because prior to that comedians could interchange their material and you wouldn't have known which was which and what the difference was. There were mostly tummelers and Catskill comics, you know, it was that sort of a thing in the nightclub circuit. But now, each one had a separate, distinct voice that was interesting and was based on ideas. These were college educated for the most part. That was one of the things that changed. Prior to the '50s the comedians were not college educated, now, suddenly, they are people with education and some background in thought doing comedy. And, of course, Buckley was a throwback but he had been different all along. So - he just showed me there was even another personal signature that could be brought to comedy.
MM
It kind of brings to mind, the idea that - you know, the '50s is kind of thought of as this place where all the track houses happened and everybody started looking the same.
GC
Yeah, right.
MM
Do you think the comedy was a reaction to that?
GC
Well, there's no question that it was. I mean, that this thing - let's use Tony's term for now, Boomer Humor - that this was a reaction and this occured in other fields of culture as well. All the beat poets and the beat writers came out of this period. There was a ferment. The war ended in 1945, and we started to have more goods and in 1947 the National Security Act was passed. And that's when the CIA and the NSA came into existance and the military industrial complex realized they needed to have something for us to be afraid of to justify their existence. So, the world change greatly between '45 and '50 and then they got this consumer culture started and advertising rose and became important. Vance Packard's book The Hidden Persuaders, all of the things that tried to get people into that suburban life, everybody's going to have a nice clean kitchen and two and a half kids, daddy will go to work, they'll live out there. That whole thing, which was so stitifying to people that had some creative impulses or people that had some rebellious impulses. That there was a reaction to it. And I know that comedy was one form of that. I don't know enough about art and the graphic art form to know, but I know that that was going as well. I just know a little about the beatnik, the beats, you know, so I'm not real good at describing this history I just am aware that it was happening.
MM
Let's see. You never saw him live though right?
GC
No, I never saw him work at all. And I consider that a kind of a loss. I don't think I was ever in a town where he was that I missed him. When did he?
MM
He died in '60.
GC
Yeah, so see, I just began, as a comedian, with my partner Jack Burns, in 1960. So, any chances I would have had - and before that I didn't travel, I was in radio and I was in four cities and that was it and I never heard him. So, I just - it was just complete. I missed the boat, I missed the train.
MM
We all did too. I don't know if this is a great question or not. But, an you trace anything in you that was him? I mean, is there anything that you could say: "Yeah in my act I'm influenced by him in such and such a way."?
GC
Well, there is an element in my, - I guess delivery is the word they use for it, that probably has to do with my own skills and development independent of him, but probably was encouraged or reenforced a little. And that is, speaking rhetorically and using rhythms and pauses and changes in tone in the manner of musical instruments or musical arrangements. People referred to Lenny Bruce as a jazz comic. I've heard that said about Lord Buckley too. Especially Lord Buckley because of the way he played his voice, like a horn solo. He knew how to [George makes some rapid sounds] ala Buckley and then stop and then tell you what it was. And to use those wonderfully artificial speech patterns that are so theatrical. And so, I find myself in the years, especially the last ten years, when my writing got a lot better, and my attitude, my point of view and focus kind of came together with the writing, - I think I've done my best stuff in the last ten years. And I noticed in that period, that the delivery on stage, thanks to the writing being very specific, has allowed me to be a little more musical or theatrical or to do things that have really rhythms in them.
MM
You weren't a comedian in the '50s
GC
No, I was in radio then.
MM
The sort of the hey day of his hip material was in the '50s.You're kind of student as well. I mean you've studied a lot of different people and -
GC
You know, not as deeply as I sound.
MM
Well, we won't put PHd behind your name.
GC
No. Pile it higher and deeper.
MM
Pile it right. More shit, what is it? Bullshit, more shit and piled higher and deeper.
GC
Yeah, that's what it was. That's what it was, I can see you've got multiple. You've had multiple degrees.
MM
Oh, was his stuff radical when he was doing it? I mean, was Lord Buckley, in the '50s, doing this hip material with a black patois, was that a radical move?
GC
Well, again, not having been there, but just describing it from a distance, you'd have to say yes. The word "radical" comes from the meaning of "root". And, you know, that's - I used to use that when people would talk about "These radicals" in the '60s. And I said, "Well, it just means "root", you know, it just means going to the root of things. And going and looking and seeing.
As I was growing, I grew up in a neighborhood, a little Irish enclave in the upper west side of Manhatten, in West Harlem. We called it White Harlem. We had Cubans, Puerto Ricans and Dominican on one side, all of Black Harlem on the other, and this little Irish enclave next to Columbia University, Barnard, Grant's Tomb, Riverside Church, and all this big institutional area. So, we were right down there. And I noticed the white kids in my neighborhood, and this is a thing I did on an early album. The white Irish kids who, in any other setting, would have been plain old white Irish Catholic kids of the '50s. In our neighborhood, we were attracted to the black street culture and the black ways of living in the street as young guys. And what I noticed, at the time, that black had - they were freer with their bodies, with their speech and with their manner. They were more fluid and open. Whereas the Irish Catholics tended to be tight and uptight and somewhat ridgid and and unbending in their body language and so forth, and many other things,. But talking now about their style, Blacks were very loose and it was all very open and very free and their sexual relationships and their love making and the way they carried - everything was more graceful and fluid and natural and open. And that's reflected in the kind of music they produced. And I always - I took note of that. That we sort of adopted some of that. We took on a littel bit of the veener of that style for ourselves. And so, in Lord Buckley using the black patois and reference - you know, the cultural sort of references in his work, gives all of these fables and historical figures so forth, who are all set in solid stone and in solid form, gives them a new kind of fluidity and grace and freedom. And that's why he is so close to a horn, because he has - not only does he have the black voice going and the terminology that was a jazz musician black jive talk - he has that rhythmic delivery too, that jazz flow. So, I don't know what I'm answering now but I know that was a good answer.
MM
That was a great answer. Could I ask you to sort of do it again sort of condensed? Like: "I grew up in an Irish neighborhood, we were influnced by the blacks, probably more than they were by us, and then weave that into the Buckley thing."
GC
OK, well, yeah, I grew up in an Irish neighborhood that was surrounded by blacks and Spanish in New York . And the black culture, that we were up against, was very much looser and more fluid and easy going, with the body, the talk, the song, the music, the love, the sex - everything about it was more loose and graceful. We were very uptight as Irish white kids. And I noticed that we were influenced by that - in the blacks. And I think Lord Buckley's work, using the black patois and the black jive talk, which really seems - saying the same thing there, but the speech patterns of the blacks and the jazz music influence of his voice and his rhythms, to me, gives these otherwise very sharply cornered things like fables and historical figures and events, gives them a smoother, more accessable polish to them - some sort of a contour that makes them easier to receive. And gives them a whole different life - a whole different reflection. Something like that.
MM
Lovely. Let's see - Oh, are you familiar at all with his - I guess what I would call his darker routines, like Murder, The Bad-Rapping of the Marquis De Sade?
GC
Yeah, sure, not as familiar as with the more - you know, the ten or fifteen - like God's Own Drunk and Nazz and The Hip Gasser - Vasco de Gama - the Hip Gan, I mean and Vasco de Gama, the Gasser. But, yes, to a lesser degree, familiar with them.
MM
I just was wondering on your take on it. I mean a lot of people say that right below the surface of comedy is anger. And certainly in your work, I think you use anger as a driver to say things.
GC
Yeah, yeah.
MM
I was just wondering if you have a take on his darker work. Does that reveal something about him or did he just find funny things in those subjects?
GC
I couldn't hazard a guess. I think any artist, no matter the form, you know, has - any person has an underside. And artists are kind of well known and well suited digging into themselves anyway. I mean that's the whole task: to find out what's in you and present it. Or at least find out what the world says by passing it through you. So, I would guess that he's just another artist who had better access to that area. And having a sort of unregulated career - you know, coffee houses, little cafes, places that didn't have strict societal standards, he was a little freer to look at that side of himself. Whereas Joey Lewis [laughs] perhaps didn't have that access, you know. He had to go out and get drunk in a hotel room and do something weird to exercise it. Whereas an artist, a beat artist, you know, a person who's part of the demi-monde, or whatever you want to call it, he can just kind of let it all out there. But, I just had never thought of it very much from the standpoint you're asking.
MM
OK, well, this is something maybe you can relate to. I see maybe, in some ways, Buckley and you doing the same thing on some levels, which is that you, early in your career, you were doing stuff people couldn't understand or didn't want to hear - like, you know, your whole - I mean the seven words - your seven dirty words thing was - I mean you were right on the edge of people didn't -
GC
Some.
MM
Some, alright, some didn't want to hear it -
GC
It sold a lot of records so there were some people who were OK with it. It was 1972, the '60s had had some traction.
MM
Well, what happens to an artist - I guess I'm trying to draw a paralell between you and Buckley in some ways. What happens to an artist who's doing stuff that people don't understand? Or that few people understand? I mean, what do you go through?
GC
Yeah. Well, I never had a period quite like the one you're describing for him.
MM
Well, I guess, we don't have him to ask, so I'm trying to figure out, I'm trying to figure out how do we understand. In the '50s he kind of walked away from a great career in vaudeville. I mean vaudeville was sort of ending but he also could have done a lot more television than he did. But, he jumped into this stuff that very few, except hip people understood and would patronize and he struggled from 1947 to when he diwd in '60. He really scuffled.
GC
Yeah.
MM
I guess we are trying to understand, you know, what drives a person.
GC
Well, you have to sing your song. And it's what is most important to you that surfaces, that's my guess. In my own case, I had a fortunate convergence of doing things that I felt deeply about, that I felt were mine, that I owned - thoughts and feelings and attitudes. And having them become acceptable to a wide portion of the public. It's like Lily Tomlin said, "It's very embarrassing to be successful in a mediocre society." And, on his part, he had the first part. He had the song he wanted to sing. But, it wasn't a song that was transferable to a larger, broader audience, it was very exclusive and excluded a lot of people. So, he had, therefore, to do that for himself. Because, you know, if you say he put aside something that was a little more promising commercially, and went to this, then he was consciously making an artist's choice I guess.
MM
Yeah.
GC
Just guessing.
MM
Yeah, well, I think that's probably right on. Where would you put him in the pantheon of comedians?
GC
Well, you know, he's in my, my own personal top five, you know. But, the thing about comedy is that it's so subjective an experience for the audience. And two people can write down their ten favorite comedians and they'll agree, very wholeheartedly, on five of them and then on five others they'll really be at odds. And you just can't understand, a person says [George imitates a person] "You now who I love? I love Woody Allen, I love Lily Tomlin and Jackie Leonard." And you say, "Huh?" It's just, you know, it's an odd thing. And, I, you know, pantheon, hmmm - but certainly -
MM
Well, why is he in your top five?
GC
Well, because of the originality and the artistry. The completely different approach to expressing himself through comedy. Just a completely different set of tools and skills that he called on. And then the unusual nature of the combination of things. You know, the black street language, the social commentary and then the use of familiar fictional and historical figures, and their situations, to get the thing out. You know, it's a wonderfully odd thing. I mean, when I - if I say "Mort Sahl. I like Mort Sahl." I say because of the analytical mind at work, just, you know, and then finding the ways to [George imitates Mort Sahl] "give you some, you know, write an interesting thing to think about." And that has nothing to do with what Lord Buckley did but they're both like in my top ten or fifteen or whatever. They're just - good comedians have to be different and have to be unique: Woody Allen, Lily Tomlin is another one I think highly of, although Jane Wagner wrote a lot of her stuff. Jackie Mason, who sounds like one - should be one of those old style comics that I'm kind of rejecting but he's not. He's full of conscience, full of societal comment and extremely funny, you know, to my funny bones. So, the reason Buckley's in there is for originality and artistry and the unusual combination of things he brought to his comedy.
MM
Do you have a favorite routine?
GC
Well, The Nazz is a favorite that you can't deny. But, when you get past The Nazz, I just love God's Own Drunk. The bear, Buddy Bear, Phil Bear, Bear Bear and all them - you tell all them bears. It's just, it's just wonderful - there's a tone or something in it, of love that effects me somehow when I hear it. I also love Vasco de Gama, the Gasser because of the lessons in it, you know, he says, "When do we eat?" [laughs] You know, I wish I could quote better from his stuff. I used to be able to do it and I'm not as able.
MM
There's a great power within.
GC
Yeah, and when used in vahoom!
MM
When used in purity and devotion to duty it -
GC
Grows
MM
Grows like a magic garden and if it is not used it recedes from you.
GC
Yeah.
MM
I always get goosebumps.
GC
Yeah, that's really the thing I was referring to, yeah. It recedes.
MM
I use the word radical but maybe I don't know if that's the right word. But to weave spiritual themes into comedy.
GC
Yeah.
MM
That, that was kind of unusual.
GC
It was daring, you know, in it's own way. Having an overlay of spiritual lessons, or spiritual feelings in comedy is kind of daring. Of course, his whole premise was a daring one to begin with, so, he was free to be daring in a number of ways. But that's one of the things that stands out about the love and the spirituality of the - words are so imperfect. I'm sure there's a much better word than love and spirituality for what we are taling about. Maybe they haven't come up with it yet. But, it's something to do with the human spirit, yeah.
MM
The other thing I wanted to ask you about was - words were extremely important to Buckley. I think more than anything. From what we can tell, he gestured a little bit, he took a stance, but the words - I mean people remember the words more than they do anything else.
GC
Yeah, sure.
MM
And I think it's the same with yours. But, I think they are different somehow. I was just wondering if you had ever thought about the difference between the way he handled words and the way you handle words.
GC
No, I haven't thought of that. I'm just trying to get a quick reading on it.
MM
It sounds like a high school thing: compare and contrast.
GC
Right. Well, for one thing, we were both, I think polishers. I'm a believer in getting something down to where it should be and then saying, "Here, look, this is what I have." Like sculpture, "Here this is finished. Now we can hear it." And there are versions, he varied and so forth, from time to time, but essentially he knew where all the hand holds were in his material. And I do that. But the use of language itself, no, I don't want to try and just make something up.
MM
Are there any aspects of his work that are maybe extraordinary but would not be really apparent to a casual listener? I mean from a comedian's standpoint, certainly timing and the use of his voice can figure in, but I'm just wondering if there's things that he does that maybe somebody who wasn't so aware of things might miss that are kind of amazing?
GC
I don't know. It's hard to put myself in that category. I have no idea - no, I mean, there's so much that's apparent. You know, the rhythm and the modulation and the delivery is really apparent. And then the choices of subject matter and the black lingo, those are all very obvious. I can't think of something that's sort of like lurking. But, you know, that's one of those ones you want to study about.
MM
Well, how about the black patois? I mean, what's your take on his use of it?
GC
Well, it's like I - you said you had somethings that were done earlier when he had - when it was more the work could be called demeaning black accent or dialect. But, I just think, as I said in an earlier answer. I just think his use of the black, what I think of as jive talk. Because a lot of it was purely jive talk. And then other parts of it were the style and the delivery in a black manner, which is different. I just think it gave what he did a musical quality and separated from ordinary storytelling. You've heard, I'm sure - a lot of people you've run into who for the first time thought he was black. And that's common I guess, so, he just - he owned that so much that it's just sits on him very naturally like a cloak and he's able to use it as part of his instrument, as part of what he does and that's my only take on it.
MM
OK. How about the difference between Lord Buckley and say a "modern" comedian. Is there such a creature I don't know.
GC
You mean the difference between him and -
MM
Well, I mean, he seems to - you know you were talking earlier about the difference - like somebody like Jackie Mason, who seems like somebody from the Borscht Belt -
GC
Yeah.
MM
Until you really listen to him.
GC
Yes.
MM
And then you go, "Oh, wait a minute, he's talking right now."
GC
Yeah.
MM
He's talking - Buckley almost seemed like a Victorian, like a race track tout.
GC
Yeah.
MM
Or a martinet or something, you know. But, he's delivering this - what was my question?
GC
Comparing him to some modern -
MM
Yeah, OK, thank you.
GC
I can kind of give you the same answer from earlier on that's similar. And that is that, no, he's incomparable, except to contrast. Like he is not like Bob Hope, he's not Jackie Mason. But, to make valid comparisons, I don't know that there's any comparison to be made, because, again, the comedians that have stood out and lasted the longest, excepting the Bob Hope's and really mainstream radio, TV, movie comics, excepting them, the one's that just made their living because of who they were and how they thought and what they said. They're all different. Each of them has a different identity to reveal to us and therefore a different experience and a different set of tools for revealing it and he had one of the more unusual sets and especially for his time - to be, you know, without the subject matter being particularly daring, the whole presentation was, it was risky. And he was doing it in safe places for him, of course, but nonetheless, people were there and the ones that don't know him - you know it's a risk to come and to begin to speak like that - to say, you know, [George imitates Lord Buckley] "M'Lords and Ladies of the Royal Court." And wouldn't he make you a bishop or something if you wanted to? People told me he would make you a monsignor, you know, he'd say, "I like him. You are a monsignor now!" Or something like that. That's just wonderful.
MM
Yeah, that's what it was, yeah. But, you had to have something he would hook into. Prince Eaglehead was a guy with a big snozz. Prince Owlhead looks like an owl.
GC
Really, yeah, that's great, see. I just -
MM
Is there anything that he did that really touched your heart?
GC
Well, the love in his voice is the only answer I have for that. Because it transcends the specific bits and the choices he made. It's - there's a yearning in him for a kind of recognition of the universal handholding. This word "love" is the only word we have for this thing. There are all kinds of words for other things. Love has only one word so it gets a little misused. But, it's close enough. This - the humanity of us all, the similarities as opposed to the differences. It's just a tone, there's a moral and spiritual, again a word I shy away from, tone of universality that touched me and draws me to him and allows me to enjoy him in levels I can't really identify at the time.
MM
Lovely. I'd like to open it up to anybody else who has - something's come up.
SB
You and I talked once about, after twenty years of seeing comedians, like Robin Williams who, and Jim Carrey, who get to act out physically and verbally and that was something he was kind of doing. And people, now looking back at him, say, "I don't know, looks like Jim Carrey's father or something." They don't relate to how radical it was. They don't relate to how new that was at the time. It's not even a question it's -
GC
Yeah. Well, you said that he was fairly stationary on stage.
MM
Well, he would move around a little bit but I think he put most everything through his throat.
GC
Yep, his vocal cords and his choice of words. Yeah, I don't know that I have much to add to that observation.
MB
I wonder if you could comment on - he'd had a - he was denied a cabaret license in New York near his death, due to a drug charge twenty years earlier.
GC
Right.
MB
And - but it was also had something to do with the kind of material he did. He was not allowed to do the black stuff on TV.
GC
Yeah.
MB
And you had similar runs through you career. I wonder if you could comment on dealing with working against what society doesn't want you to do.
GC
Yeah. Well, I had the good fortune, in my case, to emerge in the form I wished to emerge in. Previously I had done kind of like safe comedy. But, as I went through my changes, the world had already changed. Things were more hospitable to a person like me. So, I didn't come up against it very actively because there was a large block of people who liked what I did, supported it and bought these albums and filled up these concert halls. But, all of my stuff was second hand. All of the resistance to me was second hand. I wasn't involved in the Supreme Court case - it came out of a radio station playing my record. I was an observer. And became part of the only case in the Supreme Court's case to concern themselves with a comedian's routine. Which is a nice piece of historical footnote-ism. You know, I'm a footnote. But, all that resistance to me was sort of second hand. I was once removed because my bus was on the road and it was moving in the direction I wanted and then there would be, occasionally, people along the road, you know [makes angry people sounds] but the bus was on it's way. So, I would imagine that that - I did know Lenny Bruce when he got busted and I also - it happens - that was in Chicago that I was present that night. I went to jail with him for not showing my ID. I know it's not a very romantic charge but it counted at the time with me. But, then he got arrested in New York at the Cafe A Go Go, which is the place I developed a lot of my things. And the cop who wore the wire in the audience for the New York bust, was a kid I grew up with, Randy Jorgenson. And I came in the bar one day where we all hung out and I overhear Randy saying [imitates Randy] "Yeah, he's talking about the Pope and he says, the pope this and that, and his sisters and the monks, and then there's this thing, let me see, oh, cunt here and cocksucker." And I say, "Oh, it sounds like Lenny." So, they didn't know I knew Lenny and I wasn't home alot in the neighborhood in those years. And I remember feeling distance and alien from the culture I had grown up in, I had other reasons for that too they were all really obvious to me. But this was the thing that kind of went [George makes head spinning with thoughts kind of sounds], "Oh, yeah, that's right, I'm from the Irish Catholic neighborhood. I forgot about these guys." And so, therefore, I have a sense of what that's like, or could be like, taken to a higher - you know my imagination is good enough to take some experience like that plus Lenny being busted, that whole thing, and with my imagination take it to a more real level.
So, without having really had it touch me, I think, when they say that that was thing that injured him [Lord Buckley] a great deal psychically, I would imagine that's true. To - you know, to be - police/cabaret card - you can't do your art - the police don't want you to do your art. You know, that's kind of limiting.
MM
It's kind of fascinating, the end of his life. I mean this is a life full of bravado in a lot of ways. You know, big, he was much bigger than life, he never seemed to come off stage. He had been through countless scenes and cons and, I mean all kinds of stuff where he survived.
GC
Yeah.
MM
And thrived, not even just survived, but thrived. And it seems odd that this last thing breaks him. I mean, I've always wondered about that, like, the cabaret card goes down, he does a police benefit, thinks he's - I'm sorry, thinks he's going to get his card back.
GC
Right.
MM
And then, and then they won't give it to him without - they bribe - there's a bribe involved evidently and they won't give it back to him. And he spends the last two weeks of his life dropping mescaline, by some accounts, messing around with a fourteen year old mulatto girl, all this wild kind of apocrypha that we don't really know.
GC
Yeah.
MM
And then swooosssh, swoops.
GC
Yeah.
MM
And it's a big, kind of a big question mark.
GC
Well, we all participate, to some level, in our own demise. As we do with our own life, living. And, perhaps, even our birth, you know, if you want to get spookier about it. We do have a hand in this stuff, and so, I wouldn't be surprised, if there were some way to know those things with a voltmeter or someone, you know, measuring, "Oh, look at that! Now we know what happened." That you would find that was an element that drove the behavior that compounded an exisiting problem that the consciousness knew about, you know. There are all sorts of ways to imagine that as real.
MM
The Willometer, maybe that would be: how much will you have left.
GC
Yeah, that's right.
MM
How about you, Roger? Anything?
RM
George, do you think Lord Buckley will survive the test of time? Twenty years from now will young comedians be digging his work and learning from him?
GC
Well, yeah, because there's a pass along - it's a part of a pass along culture of things that are handed down and handed around, as you talked about earlier with some of these tapes and video and things, the records themselves. Yeah, I think there's no question and possibly, at some point, a revival of interest that stems out of something I can't even think of now. You know, some renaissance of interest in him that - I've always thought that it would be great for there to be a proper documentary or - a feature film wouldn't do it of course. But a proper documentary that, with enough exposure to it, accompanied by some exposure of the material itself, could spark a little nucleus of interest that could inform a few people.
I'll leave you with one apocryphal story. about him. Maybe you've heard it because it's a good one, but it's just very brief. But that he was , I guess in that late period of still doing what we would call commerical pursuits of being in nightclubs or being not who he turned out to be, OK. Still in that period toward the end of it, I guess, that he was at a kind of burlesque place. I don't know if New York City had already gotten rid of it's burlesque and it'd moved across the Hudson River to Hudson County. But, I think that's what it was and what I was told is he came out - first of all, the MC comic was always there just to fill a little time in between the women, the naked ladies. So, he was getting increasingly fed up with this and they were, of course, boorish, rude audience of you know, odd folks, you know, sitting around doing that in a theatre. And he came out, and they were hooting and hollering and trying to get him off the stage and yelling insulting things at him and everything [George makes a series of growling sounds like a disgruntled audience] They didn't like him from before, I guess, you know, from before the last lady. And they are yelling and screaming and stuff at him and everything. And he came out and he just waited. He just stood there silently and waited and waited and waited until there comes that lull when everybody just doesn't know what to do now and they are waiting for something. And they all got quiet and he said, "You are all diseased!" And he just turned and left. I was told that he did that. Quit the job in that manner. It's a great story even if it's not true.
MM
It's wonderful. And you've got that on your poster. [a concert poster in George's office] Something about that.
GC
That's what I called my last show. And I told Laurie [Buckley] that when I first had the name of it. That - I said, "I want to use that line from the story that I was told." And I had forgotten that when I first was just telling you that. That's true. And that was probably, that show was early '99 so that title was, probably came into my head around 1997.
MM
That's a wild story.
GC
Yeah, "You are all diseased!" And then just left. That's what I liked too, leaving.
MM
Anyway, George, thank you very much.
GC
Sure. Thank you for including me. And thanks for the stash.
MM
Oh, you're welcome.
GC
I'm going to have to run out of here. |
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