Episode 401 - Cheech and Chong

Episode 401 • Released June 26, 2013 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck nicks what the fuckaholics this is mark maron this is wtf i am still in new york it is thick man it is thick in new york city but it's weird i haven't been here alone in a long time and i love it

00:00:27Marc:I love going out in the street when it's disgustingly humid and just seeing how it completely beats everyone down.

00:00:34Marc:There's nothing like walking through New York City in the middle of summer where people, their clothes are exhausted.

00:00:41Marc:Their hair is exhausted.

00:00:43Marc:Their shoes are tired.

00:00:44Marc:They look like they have given up.

00:00:46Marc:Everybody looks like they're on a walk of shame of some kind.

00:00:50Marc:And for some reason to me, it's very, it's bonding.

00:00:53Marc:I'm like, look at it.

00:00:54Marc:We're all exhausted and we've all had enough.

00:00:57Marc:And we're just kind of plodding through the day.

00:00:59Marc:And also because of the humidity.

00:01:01Marc:It creates an almost kind of a zombie-like effect in you.

00:01:08Marc:I don't know what it would feel like to be a zombie, but you kind of slow down.

00:01:12Marc:And because I don't get high anymore and I don't do drugs and I don't drink, there's a kind of euphoria to the type of exhaustion that humidity causes.

00:01:21Marc:So I'm thrilled to be in New York in the middle of this disgusting summer, and I know it's going to get worse, and I do feel bad for New Yorkers that they're going to have to go through that.

00:01:31Marc:Today on the show, I have the amazing Cheech and Chong.

00:01:34Marc:I couldn't have been more excited to talk to them in my garage.

00:01:37Marc:I couldn't even believe it was happening.

00:01:39Marc:I mean, come on, Cheech and Chong?

00:01:41Marc:Are you kidding me?

00:01:41Marc:Who doesn't love Cheech and Chong?

00:01:43Marc:How can you not love Cheech and Chong?

00:01:47Marc:I'll tell you a little bit about the experience and about my past experience with Cheech and Chong, because I think not unlike a lot of us, I mean, Cheech and Chong was one of my first exposures to comedy.

00:01:59Marc:One of the first records I had as a human being was Los Cochinos, 1973.

00:02:07Marc:That's about when I had that record.

00:02:09Marc:That was the first record I got, and then later I got Big Bamboo, and then I got the wedding album, and I had Sleeping Beauty, and then I drifted off.

00:02:17Marc:But man, me and my brother sitting around that little record player, the kind that was all one, and it looked like a briefcase, a little briefcase record player, listening to Los Cochinas.

00:02:27Marc:I can't even remember what the cut, I think Glass.

00:02:30Marc:Class.

00:02:32Marc:Shut up.

00:02:34Marc:Oh, up his nose.

00:02:35Marc:Up his nose it goes.

00:02:37Marc:Remember?

00:02:38Marc:Jabornik, the dog pooped a bit.

00:02:41Marc:Oh, man.

00:02:41Marc:It was great.

00:02:42Marc:And that was one of the first times I ever heard comedy being done.

00:02:46Marc:And also...

00:02:47Marc:Jimmy Walker said an interesting thing to me.

00:02:49Marc:He said that Cheech and Chong, really the ones that broke open modern comedy on album.

00:02:55Marc:And I never put them into historical context.

00:02:56Marc:And I'll tell you, I had one of the greatest conversations with these guys.

00:03:00Marc:I think about it a lot since I've done it.

00:03:03Marc:And it was just sweet because I was so surprised at their story.

00:03:07Marc:And I think you're going to dig it.

00:03:09Marc:But let me just tell you a little bit what's going on with me, if I could, if you're still listening.

00:03:12Marc:And I think you should be.

00:03:15Marc:I'm going to be on David Letterman's show tonight.

00:03:17Marc:I'm also going to be on the Craig Ferguson show tonight.

00:03:19Marc:This New York trip that turned out to be sort of a fluke and a mistake turned out it's lucky I did it.

00:03:25Marc:I was supposed to tape Letterman on Wednesday for Wednesday night.

00:03:30Marc:Then they decided that they were going to try to get a hockey player, I believe.

00:03:33Marc:So they wanted me to tape Tuesday to run on Thursday night.

00:03:37Marc:Now, the weird thing about this whole thing was I came down here, as you know, a couple of days early because of the problem in Buffalo.

00:03:43Marc:So I decided that I wanted to do a version of,

00:03:46Marc:of the mel brooks story that some of you know uh from my podcast and i've done it on stage a couple times but i thought it'd be a great way to sit with dave for the first time uh doing panel and you know connect with him and and and have a nice through line but that story runs about 10 minutes so what i did was i went out to a couple of comedy rooms i went out to uh

00:04:06Marc:to Littlefields in Brooklyn, the Wyatt Cenac show, and he put me on, and I tried to trim that story down.

00:04:12Marc:This is sort of the work of a comic, and it's certainly the work of a comic that has to do with television appearance.

00:04:17Marc:If you're doing stand-up on television and you've got to do four and a half minutes, that's hard, especially if it takes four and a half minutes for you to even get an audience to like you, like myself.

00:04:26Marc:So to cut down an actual conversational story, I had to shave about five minutes off that thing.

00:04:32Marc:So I went to a Wyatt show and that was very exciting because I did the set and Questlove was hanging around and Wyatt had to do a show.

00:04:42Marc:I went to the UCB after that and Wyatt was going to go with me and Questlove was hanging out.

00:04:46Marc:So we all went in Questlove's car, and you know me, I mean, around musicians.

00:04:50Marc:It's a whole other world for me, and I was thrilled to be able to hang out and talk to him, and hopefully we'll get him on the podcast.

00:04:56Marc:But then I went to that other show, and I tried to trim it down even more.

00:04:59Marc:Now, the ironic thing about what happened for me leading up to The Letterman is there's this comic, Adam Newman.

00:05:07Marc:He's a New York guy, and he was running his set to do his first Letterman,

00:05:12Marc:For the Thursday night show.

00:05:15Marc:So he was going to tape on Tuesday.

00:05:16Marc:And at the time I was running my set, I was taping Wednesday.

00:05:20Marc:So I told him I met him for the first time and I told him that's why I was in town.

00:05:23Marc:He told me, yeah, he's doing it.

00:05:25Marc:You know, he's going to be doing it Tuesday for Thursday.

00:05:27Marc:And I'm like, great.

00:05:27Marc:And he's asking me for some pointers.

00:05:29Marc:You know, he's doing standup for the first time.

00:05:30Marc:And I told him to look at the camera and, you know, if he thought to and, you know, and to pace and, you know, not worry about it because the audience is so hot.

00:05:37Marc:So we had this nice conversation.

00:05:39Marc:I'm helping him out.

00:05:40Marc:And then I get the call the next day that they want to put me on Wednesday.

00:05:43Marc:So I'm like, who'd they bump?

00:05:45Marc:And then my manager says they bumped Adam Newman.

00:05:47Marc:I'm like, oh my God, I feel so horrible.

00:05:50Marc:This guy's doing his first Letterman set.

00:05:53Marc:And I just met him and I'm the guy that bumps him.

00:05:56Marc:I had no control over it, but I felt bad.

00:05:58Marc:Because I know how that feels.

00:06:00Marc:It's hard not to be pissed off when you get bumped.

00:06:03Marc:Because he gets so jacked up.

00:06:04Marc:And I genuinely felt bad for this guy.

00:06:07Marc:But they gave him another date.

00:06:08Marc:And he was cool.

00:06:09Marc:I interacted with him on Twitter.

00:06:10Marc:But I knew I wasn't the enemy.

00:06:13Marc:But if I were him at that point in my career.

00:06:15Marc:It would have been hard for me not to hate me.

00:06:18Marc:Honestly.

00:06:19Marc:It's still hard for me not to hate me.

00:06:21Marc:Different context.

00:06:22Marc:But you know what I mean.

00:06:23Marc:So.

00:06:24Marc:The experience of doing Letterman was that like I now didn't have another day.

00:06:29Marc:I was told I was doing it that afternoon.

00:06:31Marc:I luckily had bought a sports jacket and a shirt.

00:06:34Marc:And I'm familiar with this, you know, the setup over there.

00:06:38Marc:And we went over, my manager and I, and you literally go up in the tower of the Ed Sullivan Theater, the dressing room.

00:06:44Marc:I don't know where it is, but it's like on the sixth floor.

00:06:47Marc:And the stage entrance is down on one.

00:06:48Marc:So you're in this little tower, in this little room, and you have no sense that you're really in a theater.

00:06:55Marc:There's a monitor there.

00:06:56Marc:There's some cookies.

00:06:57Marc:And I'm hanging out.

00:06:58Marc:And you wait.

00:06:59Marc:And you watch the show.

00:07:01Marc:And I'm on the show with Johnny Depp.

00:07:03Marc:And I'm sitting in that room.

00:07:04Marc:I'm dressed.

00:07:05Marc:I'm jacked.

00:07:05Marc:I'm watching Dave.

00:07:06Marc:I know it's the second show he's taping today because they do that.

00:07:09Marc:They do two shows in one day.

00:07:10Marc:And, you know, I know it's probably tiring and I'm watching him.

00:07:14Marc:I'm trying to get a sense of his energy.

00:07:16Marc:And you got to understand, I've loved David Letterman since he came on television.

00:07:21Marc:And then he brings Johnny Depp out.

00:07:23Marc:For two segments, which is fine.

00:07:26Marc:He's Johnny Depp.

00:07:27Marc:I get it.

00:07:27Marc:But they talk about really the because of the Lone Ranger and Tonto, they get involved in a conversation that's really about the genocide of the Native American people in this country and the decimation of their cultures.

00:07:41Marc:But it was pretty heavy.

00:07:44Marc:And Depp was talking about how he tried to honor Native Americans, how he spent time with Native Americans, that his portrayal of Tonto was a heartfelt tribute.

00:07:54Marc:On some level, how he would really want to pay tribute to the Native American people.

00:07:57Marc:I mean, they could have had a Native American play Tonto, but that didn't come up.

00:08:01Marc:But nonetheless, it was some heavy shit.

00:08:04Marc:But now, like, right when Johnny gets done, you know, I got to go on.

00:08:09Marc:And Biff is supposed to come get me.

00:08:11Marc:So Biff comes up and he's like, you ready?

00:08:14Marc:And I'm like, yeah, I'm ready.

00:08:15Marc:And then the elevator's not there.

00:08:18Marc:Like, we got to wait like three minutes for the elevator.

00:08:20Marc:I'm like, you know, I guess they're going to wait for me.

00:08:22Marc:So we're in the elevator.

00:08:23Marc:And then someone radios Biff.

00:08:25Marc:It's like, where are you?

00:08:26Marc:And Biff says, we're coming out, but we're not.

00:08:28Marc:We're still three, four hours away.

00:08:30Marc:And then they hear the guy on the other line go, 30 seconds.

00:08:33Marc:And Biff's like, okay.

00:08:34Marc:And I'm like, wait, you were 30 seconds till I'm going on?

00:08:36Marc:He's like, yeah.

00:08:36Marc:And I'm like, we're not even there yet.

00:08:37Marc:So it was crazy.

00:08:39Marc:So we get off the elevator and we're counting down 15, 14, and I'm like set up.

00:08:44Marc:I'm right backstage there.

00:08:46Marc:And then I hear him do my intro and then all the applause is happening.

00:08:49Marc:And then I'm just, I'm walking out.

00:08:51Marc:Literally like 20 seconds after I got off the elevator, I wait two seconds with Biff and then I walk out on stage and there I am sitting next to David Letterman for the first time in my life looking him right in the face.

00:09:04Marc:I was nervous and I was raw and I wanted to connect with David Letterman and I felt like, once I got the story going, he asked me about podcasts and whatever, but it was a very genuine conversation.

00:09:14Marc:I was thrilled that there was some real engagement.

00:09:21Marc:A lot of times you get caught up in the pace because everything gets very heightened.

00:09:25Marc:When you're out on stage and there's cameras, you'd like to think it's just you talking to a guy, but we're in the Ed Sullivan Theater.

00:09:31Marc:There's about 400 or 500 people there.

00:09:33Marc:You can barely see them.

00:09:34Marc:You see cameras, you see Dave.

00:09:36Marc:It's heightened.

00:09:37Marc:Yes, I'm just talking to a guy, but it's show business.

00:09:40Marc:I've done it enough to where I'm comfortable like that, but you get that feeling that everything, every moment is just lit up.

00:09:48Marc:Every moment is electric when you're sitting there engaged on television and you're talking to David Letterman.

00:09:54Marc:And I was nervous.

00:09:56Marc:You know, I think that if you look closely, you might even be able to see my hand shaking a little bit.

00:10:00Marc:I'm not a handshake kind of guy.

00:10:03Marc:But I got laughs and I think it went good and he seemed very happy and the people there seemed happy and I felt thrilled.

00:10:09Marc:And, you know, I walked out of there and just right out onto the street and there were hundreds of people waiting outside the stage door clearly to see Johnny Depp.

00:10:18Marc:But that's okay.

00:10:20Marc:I walked quietly away and walked back towards my hotel with my manager and one guy came up and said, will you sign my picture of you?

00:10:29Marc:The subtext of that is, so one day maybe I can sell it for something on eBay.

00:10:32Marc:But it was nice.

00:10:33Marc:And then I went out to dinner with my buddy, Brendan.

00:10:37Marc:We went to Scarpetta and Mr. Conan took care of us.

00:10:41Marc:And it was a nice night in New York and I hope you enjoy that show.

00:10:44Marc:And, uh, you know, while you're listening to this today, I'm probably taping the Craig Ferguson show and I'll try not to wear the same outfit.

00:10:51Marc:Okay.

00:10:53Marc:We good.

00:10:54Marc:Let's talk to Cheech and Chong.

00:11:00Marc:Yeah, you know, I got to be honest with you, man.

00:11:03Marc:It's a fucking honor to have you guys in here.

00:11:08Guest:Yeah, I know.

00:11:09Marc:I know.

00:11:09Marc:I was listening to the records.

00:11:10Marc:I got the old records.

00:11:12Marc:I listened to, when I was probably about 13 or 14, Los Chocinos.

00:11:16Marc:Me and my brother used to sit there and listen to that.

00:11:19Marc:Sure.

00:11:20Marc:But you know what really sparked my excitement recently?

00:11:23Marc:I was talking to Jimmy Walker.

00:11:24Marc:Uh-huh.

00:11:25Marc:J.J.

00:11:25Guest:Jimmy Walker?

00:11:25Guest:Yeah, J.J.

00:11:26Marc:Jimmy Walker.

00:11:27Marc:And I get a lot of guys in here talking about comedy, Bud Freeman, everybody, Jimmy, Richard Lewis, all those guys.

00:11:34Marc:And he said that you guys were the guys.

00:11:36Marc:Because a lot of people say, like, Carlin or Robert Klein or whatever.

00:11:39Marc:And he said, no, man.

00:11:41Marc:Cheech and Sean changed the entire fucking game.

00:11:45Marc:Because those records make college kids like stand-up.

00:11:49Marc:Yeah.

00:11:49Guest:Yeah, that's it.

00:11:50Marc:Now, what year was that first record?

00:11:52Marc:72.

00:11:52Marc:72 was the first one.

00:11:54Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:11:56Marc:And you guys, like, I used to do that.

00:11:57Marc:I was a doorman at the Comedy Store.

00:11:58Marc:So you guys, yeah, back in 86, 87.

00:12:01Marc:But, you know, they got all those pictures over there.

00:12:03Marc:Were you there with Kennison?

00:12:05Marc:My experience with Kennison was I did my graduate work in chopping lines for Sam.

00:12:10Marc:So, you know, my job was strictly like, do you got this shit?

00:12:13Marc:All right.

00:12:13Marc:So I'd chop it and then I hand it back over to him and then he'd share it with everybody else.

00:12:17Marc:So I was, uh, that was how I did my work with Sam.

00:12:20Guest:And Mitzi was coherent.

00:12:22Marc:She was, yeah, she was still coherent enough to tell me when I auditioned for her that I should wear a scarf.

00:12:28Guest:Sam Candison moved in next door to me at the beach.

00:12:33Guest:Oh, really?

00:12:34Guest:Yeah.

00:12:34Guest:In Malibu?

00:12:34Guest:In Malibu.

00:12:35Guest:How was that for you?

00:12:36Guest:Did you have to call the cops?

00:12:37Guest:No, I never told him that he'd live next door to me.

00:12:41Guest:Because there was a big wide field, and then the next house was not even a quarter mile away.

00:12:49Guest:That was his house.

00:12:50Guest:I didn't need no 4 a.m.

00:12:52Guest:calls.

00:12:52Guest:You got a cup of dope?

00:12:53Guest:Yeah.

00:12:54Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:12:55Marc:What are you doing, man?

00:12:56Marc:You up?

00:12:57Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:12:57Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:12:58Marc:Well, so what's your, you grew up, both of you grew up here?

00:13:01Marc:No, you didn't grow up here, but you grew up around here?

00:13:03Guest:I grew up right here.

00:13:04Guest:We're talking in Highland Park.

00:13:06Guest:Yeah, my parents lived in Highland Park for a minute before we moved to South Central.

00:13:11Guest:Oh, you moved up in the good neighborhood.

00:13:13Guest:Were they in the Highland Park gang?

00:13:14Guest:No, I was two.

00:13:17Guest:No, but your parents.

00:13:18Guest:Oh, yeah, they were the Highland Park gang.

00:13:20Marc:That was all of them.

00:13:21Marc:Los Highland Park Gangos.

00:13:23Marc:The avenues.

00:13:23Guest:The avenues.

00:13:24Guest:The avenues.

00:13:25Guest:That's the one.

00:13:25Guest:Yeah, they're out here.

00:13:26Guest:My dad was a policeman.

00:13:27Guest:I was explaining to my son while we were driving here that Highland Park, are you kidding me?

00:13:32Guest:He says, is this East L.A.?

00:13:34Guest:I said, don't ever tell anybody from Highland Park that this is East L.A.

00:13:38Guest:Yeah.

00:13:38Guest:How many kids in your family, though?

00:13:41Guest:There was me and my three sisters.

00:13:43Guest:I had twin sisters and then a younger one.

00:13:45Guest:And what did your old man do?

00:13:46Guest:He's a cop.

00:13:47Guest:Really?

00:13:47Guest:LAPD, 40 years.

00:13:49Guest:The whole time?

00:13:50Guest:The whole time.

00:13:51Guest:I told you he was in a gang.

00:13:53Guest:Yeah, he was in a gang.

00:13:54Guest:My uncle, Rudy, was the head of the gang.

00:13:57Guest:He was the first Chicano captain of LAPD.

00:14:00Guest:No kidding.

00:14:00Guest:And the station in Hollenbeck.

00:14:05Guest:It's now named after him, the Rudy de Leon station.

00:14:07Marc:No kidding.

00:14:08Marc:I dedicated it.

00:14:10Marc:Now, you didn't grow up here?

00:14:11Guest:No.

00:14:12Guest:Where'd you grow up?

00:14:13Guest:In Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

00:14:14Marc:Oh, my God.

00:14:15Marc:Sergeant Preston.

00:14:17Marc:Calgary, Alberta.

00:14:19Marc:I've been up there.

00:14:19Guest:Yes, North Alley.

00:14:22Marc:Yeah, very north.

00:14:23Marc:Not a lot going up in Calgary, though, right?

00:14:25Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:14:27Guest:Lots, lots.

00:14:29Guest:When there's nothing to do in a town, that means there's tons to do.

00:14:33Guest:Yeah, because you've got to make your own shit up.

00:14:35Guest:Well, it's all illegal.

00:14:36Guest:It's all under the underbelly of the Christian right-wing.

00:14:45Guest:He found the only black people in Alberta and hung out with them.

00:14:49Marc:Did you?

00:14:49Guest:Yeah, absolutely.

00:14:52Guest:But you started in music?

00:14:54Guest:Yeah, I started in music.

00:14:55Guest:Yeah.

00:14:55Guest:Really young.

00:14:56Guest:I was about 10 years old when I started playing.

00:14:58Guest:Guitar.

00:14:59Guest:Guitar, yeah.

00:15:00Guest:And the dream was to be a musician.

00:15:03Guest:Ah.

00:15:03Marc:No, the dream was to get a beer.

00:15:04Guest:Yeah.

00:15:05Guest:That was the whole thing.

00:15:07Guest:No, the dream was to, yeah, actually, I was a good backup guitar player.

00:15:13Guest:Yeah.

00:15:13Guest:So I always had people asking me to play him, back him up.

00:15:17Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:15:17Guest:So I never...

00:15:19Guest:really wanted to be a lead guitar player right and so i i really didn't decide i wanted to be a musician until my 11th until grade 11 uh-huh when i was having a hard time with algebra yeah sure man gotta get out of that shit and i said math ain't gonna help me no i gotta hit the street i gotta i want to be a blues player so i gotta get into the ghetto as soon as i could

00:15:43Marc:So you went to the ghetto of Calgary, Alberta.

00:15:46Guest:Well, actually, I got kicked out of Calgary.

00:15:49Guest:Yeah.

00:15:50Guest:It's a long story, but I ended up in Vancouver.

00:15:53Guest:That's a good town.

00:15:54Guest:That was the ghetto.

00:15:54Guest:The long story is they told him to leave town.

00:15:58Guest:The mayor...

00:15:59Marc:We've all decided.

00:16:01Marc:The elders of Calgary, Alberta.

00:16:03Guest:No, what happened?

00:16:04Guest:Yeah.

00:16:05Guest:I've always been community-minded since I was really young.

00:16:10Guest:I don't know.

00:16:10Guest:It was just something in me.

00:16:12Guest:So when we started a band, but we had nowhere to play.

00:16:16Guest:Yeah.

00:16:17Guest:And so I was kind of hooked in with this boys club of Calgary.

00:16:21Guest:Sure.

00:16:22Guest:And so I said, you know, then they said, well, you should start your own teen club.

00:16:28Guest:Yeah.

00:16:29Guest:Say the last words.

00:16:31Guest:So I started a teen club, a dance club, and we got the Legion Hall in Calgary to play every Friday and Saturday.

00:16:42Guest:That's a regular gig.

00:16:43Guest:If we only had a teen center, man, we wouldn't get in trouble.

00:16:46Guest:And that's what it was.

00:16:47Guest:We had a teen center.

00:16:48Guest:But what happened, we got so part, because we played, we didn't just play.

00:16:54Guest:Just you playing top 40 stuff or what?

00:16:55Guest:No, we didn't play rock and roll.

00:16:57Guest:We played rhythm and blues.

00:16:58Guest:Oh, okay.

00:16:59Guest:Because I had a black singer.

00:17:01Guest:Yeah.

00:17:03Guest:And the porters that worked the trains used to bring the records up from the states.

00:17:07Guest:Right.

00:17:07Guest:They were called race music.

00:17:10Guest:It wasn't sold in stores.

00:17:13Guest:And so we learned all of Bo Diddley and

00:17:15Marc:Ah, sweet, man.

00:17:16Guest:Eventually Chuck Berry, but it started out with Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters and all those tunes.

00:17:20Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:17:21Guest:It was like pre-Rolling Stones.

00:17:22Guest:The Rolling Stones were going to the same thing.

00:17:24Guest:The same thing, right?

00:17:25Guest:Yeah, we were before that.

00:17:26Guest:Five years earlier.

00:17:27Guest:And so we had this killer band.

00:17:29Guest:Yeah.

00:17:30Guest:And we were playing what everybody thought was original music because they'd never seen it before.

00:17:36Guest:And it was a teen club.

00:17:38Guest:And so we were immune from prosecution from the cops.

00:17:42Guest:You mean from segregation and stuff?

00:17:44Guest:No, no, from the police.

00:17:46Guest:Yeah.

00:17:46Guest:Because, you know, anytime you open anything in Calgary, they close you down, you know, because you're a public nuisance.

00:17:52Guest:Right, but the kids, the kids are having a good time.

00:17:53Guest:Your black guys hanging out with teenage girls.

00:17:55Guest:You know, that's what they do.

00:17:57Guest:And so what would happen, we would play the dance.

00:18:00Guest:Yeah.

00:18:01Guest:And then after the dance...

00:18:03Guest:We'd have hordes of teenagers with nothing to do.

00:18:07Guest:Sure.

00:18:07Guest:In Calgary, the only thing you could do is find where a girl was babysitting, call it a party, and 300 people show up and just devastate the house with a booze and be fighting on the lawn and be fighting inside the house.

00:18:25Guest:The kid that they're babysitting is gone.

00:18:27Guest:Oh, everything.

00:18:29Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:18:30Guest:And so the mayor, the cops...

00:18:33Guest:couldn't close us down because we were a teen club yeah yeah we're a chartered teen club but everybody got along really well you know the race relations were really good they say stuff like hey darky you gotta like oh yeah there was that well calgary was a hotbed for for racism well it's a cowboy town right oh yeah i've been up there still it's still like that what what was your dream initially i mean what how'd you get in you know what were you gonna do

00:18:58Guest:I was a little Catholic school boy.

00:19:02Guest:Yeah.

00:19:03Guest:But I was always in the music.

00:19:04Guest:I mean, the first time I was in the school play, the Christmas pageant in kindergarten, I played the kettle drum.

00:19:11Guest:And a big star on my head, a big star like that with a paper band.

00:19:15Guest:And all you could see is this little hand coming over, boing, boing.

00:19:19Guest:And I said, oh, man, as soon as the lights hit me, I knew, hey, show business is for me.

00:19:26Guest:But I was a singer early, and I made my first record when I was five years old.

00:19:30Guest:What was the song?

00:19:32Guest:Was it in Spanish?

00:19:32Guest:Yeah, amorcito corazón.

00:19:34Guest:Amorcito corazón, yo tengo tentación de un beso.

00:19:37Marc:So it's sort of bizarre to me that both of you, you had music dreams.

00:19:42Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:19:43Marc:And then you ended up like, I mean, how did you end up not being the Rolling Stones?

00:19:46Marc:I mean, Tommy, I mean, it sounded like you were on the cutting edge there.

00:19:49Guest:Well, I was never musically trained, you know, properly trained.

00:19:55Guest:I learned everything by ear.

00:19:57Guest:Right.

00:19:58Guest:And so even the band, we never knew enough music to count.

00:20:02Guest:the tunes in.

00:20:04Guest:We'd just look at each other and say, ready?

00:20:06Guest:Okay.

00:20:06Guest:And then we'd start the music.

00:20:07Guest:Right.

00:20:08Guest:And then we were so good that that summer we got offered a gig at Bonass Park in Calgary.

00:20:15Guest:Sure.

00:20:16Guest:In fact, we took out Gordie Schultz's band.

00:20:19Guest:Gordie Schultz?

00:20:21Marc:Who the hell is Gordie Schultz?

00:20:22Guest:Gordie Schultz is the guy that Cheech met when he was up in Calgary.

00:20:25Marc:Yeah.

00:20:25Marc:I moved to Calgary.

00:20:27Marc:Wait a minute.

00:20:27Marc:All right.

00:20:28Marc:So this is where the magic starts, right?

00:20:29Marc:Yes, it is.

00:20:30Marc:So you're an L.A.

00:20:33Marc:guy.

00:20:33Marc:Yeah.

00:20:34Marc:And you're like, I'm going to Canada?

00:20:35Guest:Yeah.

00:20:35Guest:I was in college in my last semester, and I got heavily involved with the draft resistance movement and became one of them.

00:20:43Guest:And so I turned in my draft card, and I didn't recognize the authority over me.

00:20:48Guest:And I did a lot of demonstrations at the draft board.

00:20:52Guest:What, 66?

00:20:52Guest:This is 67, 78, right.

00:20:56Guest:67, 67?

00:20:56Guest:68.

00:20:58Guest:Yeah, I think I graduated.

00:20:59Guest:Did you go march and shit?

00:21:00Guest:No, we'd go naked.

00:21:04Guest:We'd go in the draft induction center downtown Broadway.

00:21:09Guest:And the night before, we'd take acid and paint ourselves body.

00:21:12Guest:Drop acid, not bombs.

00:21:14Guest:LBJ, kiss here, put arrows pointing your butt.

00:21:16Guest:Yeah.

00:21:16Guest:And so we'd get in there, and they would start their talk, and we would, at some point, take off all our clothes, except for our cowboy boots and our underwear, and go running around the draft center, tell, hey, you don't have to go.

00:21:29Guest:So they frowned on that.

00:21:31Marc:So down here, because you were in Los Angeles, the whole drug culture was like on you.

00:21:37Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:21:39Marc:It was exploding.

00:21:39Marc:Yeah.

00:21:39Marc:And how old were you in 67?

00:21:41Guest:I was, you know, I was 21, just my last semester of college.

00:21:48Guest:So you dropped a lot of the good acid.

00:21:49Guest:Yeah, really good acid.

00:21:51Guest:Well, what happened is I took a pottery class my last semester, and it was just to fill in the thing.

00:21:57Guest:In high school?

00:21:58Guest:No, in college.

00:21:58Guest:To meet a chick, wasn't it?

00:22:01Guest:Yeah, it was to meet a chick.

00:22:04Guest:I'm standing in line, you know, to fill out my card.

00:22:08Guest:And this really cute chick had my eye on me.

00:22:10Guest:I said, what are you taking?

00:22:11Guest:She goes, oh, I'm pottery.

00:22:12Guest:You should take it with me.

00:22:13Guest:Oh, okay.

00:22:14Guest:Yeah, I'm taking it.

00:22:15Guest:And so I did.

00:22:16Guest:But I was always an artist in search of a medium.

00:22:18Guest:Sure.

00:22:19Guest:And I couldn't draw.

00:22:20Guest:And so I got into pottery and my Mexican jeans came bursting out, man.

00:22:24Guest:I flipped out.

00:22:25Guest:I just...

00:22:26Guest:Pottery was my deal, and I quit everything else, quit my job, quit all my classes, and just made pottery like 12, 15 hours a day.

00:22:33Guest:On the wheel.

00:22:34Guest:On the wheel.

00:22:35Guest:Spinning that shit.

00:22:35Guest:Spinning the shit.

00:22:36Guest:And then I got in really tight with my professor, and he saw he got a live one in the corner, so he gave me the keys to the...

00:22:43Guest:Keys to the thing, the pottery lab.

00:22:47Guest:And so anyways, that coincided with all of a sudden, the first draft resistor started getting sentenced to eight years in Leavenworth.

00:22:56Guest:And so because they, Hershey was director of the draft, issued this directive.

00:23:00Guest:Anybody who did any of the things that we did would be immediately reclassified, drafted, and sent to Vietnam, the front lines of Vietnam.

00:23:08Guest:That was his take.

00:23:08Guest:So it was totally illegal.

00:23:09Guest:But I have to go through this crap.

00:23:12Guest:And so I said, I'm splitting.

00:23:14Guest:And so my teacher said, well, I got this ex-student up in Canada, and you might be able to help him.

00:23:19Guest:So that was set the journey.

00:23:20Guest:But he was outside of Calgary.

00:23:22Guest:Wow.

00:23:23Guest:So who was the ex-student up there?

00:23:24Marc:His name was Jerry Kaufman.

00:23:25Marc:So you were going to go help him be in his pottery studio?

00:23:27Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:23:27Guest:He was going to start a pottery studio.

00:23:29Guest:So I went up to help him.

00:23:30Guest:And he had a wife and a kid.

00:23:31Guest:And I had never seen snow before.

00:23:36Guest:Yeah.

00:23:38Guest:Much less 50 below.

00:23:40Guest:And any snow they sell, they pile it on their car.

00:23:43Guest:Yeah, like a little snowman, like a hood ornament.

00:23:46Guest:You go up to Big Bear and you come back.

00:23:47Guest:It'd be melted by the time you got down to the bottom.

00:23:51Guest:And so I did that.

00:23:52Guest:And it was like outside of, it wasn't even in Calgary.

00:23:55Guest:It was outside of Calgary, Brad Creek.

00:23:58Guest:And so I was his assistant.

00:24:01Guest:And then when we got his pottery together, he couldn't afford to hire me.

00:24:04Guest:So he said, well, there's this other potter who lives back, you know, 11 miles back in the mountains.

00:24:09Guest:So you were being turned out by the pottery guys.

00:24:12Guest:Yeah.

00:24:13Guest:This kid will work for nothing.

00:24:14Guest:Sure.

00:24:14Guest:So he got us.

00:24:15Guest:He said, there's this other guy.

00:24:16Guest:And his name was Edra Hanschick.

00:24:17Guest:And he was a very famous potter.

00:24:19Guest:He won the Bicentennial Exhibition Award the year I got there.

00:24:22Guest:He says, maybe he needs an assistant.

00:24:23Guest:So that's all I need.

00:24:24Guest:I got up in the morning, put my boots on, started walking.

00:24:26Guest:You were a pottery guy.

00:24:27Guest:I was in the zen zone.

00:24:31Marc:Do you have any of the pots?

00:24:32Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:24:33Guest:Do you ever get the urge to get on the wheel?

00:24:35Guest:Yeah, but I lay down and it passes.

00:24:40Guest:You had a studio window.

00:24:41Guest:In Malibu, when I moved, my wife got a student, bought me a kiln and a wheel.

00:24:46Guest:It's so time intensive.

00:24:48Guest:You've got to be there.

00:24:49Guest:You've got to throw the pots.

00:24:51Guest:You've got to dry them.

00:24:52Guest:You've got to have nothing else to do with your life.

00:24:55Guest:You've got to have nothing else to do.

00:24:56Marc:Because you've got a kiln.

00:24:57Marc:You've got stuff in the kiln.

00:24:59Marc:That thing could blow up.

00:25:00Marc:I mean, you've got to be there.

00:25:01Marc:I've got a friend who says his wife's a potter, and it's not an easy game.

00:25:05Marc:Yeah, and they pay so much, too.

00:25:08Marc:It's a lot of big money in pottering.

00:25:10Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:25:10Marc:So, okay, so he's doing his pottery, and how do you guys, how do you meet?

00:25:14Marc:You're rocking.

00:25:15Guest:I was, at the time, he was sneaking into Canada.

00:25:19Guest:Yeah.

00:25:19Guest:Or, you know, dodging the draft into Canada.

00:25:23Guest:Yeah.

00:25:24Guest:I'm down in Detroit.

00:25:27Guest:Trying to get into it.

00:25:28Marc:Yeah, he's sneaking into the States.

00:25:30Marc:I'm in the States.

00:25:31Marc:So you want to be in Detroit because that's a port of entry or because of the music?

00:25:35Guest:Well, one of the bands that I entered up, we got discovered by Barry Gordy and Motown.

00:25:42Guest:Actually, the Supremes discovered us.

00:25:44Guest:Really?

00:25:44Guest:In Vancouver.

00:25:45Guest:Really?

00:25:46Guest:And so we got signed to a contract.

00:25:48Guest:With Motown?

00:25:48Guest:With Motown.

00:25:49Guest:So I was in Detroit.

00:25:51Guest:What was the band called?

00:25:53Guest:Bobby Taylor and the Vancouver's.

00:25:54Guest:Bobby Taylor in Vancouver's had this giant hit called Does Your Mama Know About Me, which Tommy wrote the lyrics for.

00:26:00Guest:Wow.

00:26:00Guest:And it was a huge hit.

00:26:01Guest:Everybody covered it.

00:26:03Guest:It was a standard.

00:26:05Guest:Really?

00:26:05Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:26:06Guest:Still people to this day cover that tune.

00:26:08Guest:I had no idea.

00:26:09Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:26:10Marc:So you were on a whole different... You were on track, man.

00:26:13Marc:He was black.

00:26:13Marc:I was a black guy.

00:26:15Marc:Well, you're half Asian, correct?

00:26:16Marc:Yeah.

00:26:17Marc:And what's your background like?

00:26:19Marc:How'd that pan out?

00:26:20Guest:My mother was...

00:26:22Guest:Scotch-Irish.

00:26:23Guest:Father was Cantonese.

00:26:25Guest:Oh, really?

00:26:26Marc:First generation, like, came over to Canada from China?

00:26:28Guest:Well, he was born in Vancouver, but his father was from China.

00:26:33Guest:They came over to work the railroad, ended up working a gambling joint.

00:26:37Guest:And what kind of gambling joint?

00:26:40Guest:The kind?

00:26:42Guest:There was some Chinese where they'd get off the boat and someone would go right to the railroad, I mean, to work on the railroad, and the other guy would go...

00:26:48Guest:I think I'll open a gambling joint right there.

00:26:51Guest:What was the game, though?

00:26:52Guest:Was it Mahjong?

00:26:53Marc:All of it?

00:26:54Marc:Domino's.

00:26:55Marc:Domino's?

00:26:56Marc:Do you know how to play Domino's?

00:26:57Guest:I don't know how to fucking play Domino's.

00:26:58Guest:You don't?

00:26:59Guest:No.

00:26:59Guest:You?

00:27:00Guest:You've never been to jail, then?

00:27:01Guest:Yeah, you've never been to jail.

00:27:03Guest:That's a jail game, boy.

00:27:05Guest:You play a lot of Domino's?

00:27:06Guest:Damn, motherfucker.

00:27:09Guest:I got a six.

00:27:13Marc:With that heritage show, did you ever sort of track it down?

00:27:16Marc:Did you ever go to China?

00:27:17Marc:Were you ever fascinated?

00:27:19Guest:No.

00:27:19Guest:I was fascinated, but my dad, he became a white guy.

00:27:24Guest:Right.

00:27:25Guest:Although he had his Chinese friends.

00:27:28Guest:And he kept that part away from us.

00:27:30Guest:Really?

00:27:30Guest:It was in Calgary.

00:27:32Guest:Right.

00:27:32Guest:I mean, you know, a Chinese guy in Calgary, so it was the first time Tommy just hangs out with black guys.

00:27:36Guest:Yeah.

00:27:39Guest:Well, that makes sense because you're both in.

00:27:41Guest:Well, the thing was, I was being half Chinese.

00:27:44Guest:I was the black guy.

00:27:45Guest:Right, exactly.

00:27:46Guest:In the neighborhood.

00:27:47Guest:Right, right.

00:27:47Guest:And so I figured, well, if I'm going to be treated like one, I might as well hang with him.

00:27:51Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:27:51Guest:And they had the best music and the best fun.

00:27:54Guest:It wasn't until I got with the black culture.

00:27:56Guest:See, before I got with the black culture.

00:27:58Guest:Yeah.

00:27:58Guest:It was like fight my way to school, fight my way back.

00:28:02Guest:I was dealing with redneck assholes.

00:28:05Guest:And so I ended up... Then when I got with the black guys who could fight and were the best athletes in Canada, the last thing they did was fight.

00:28:18Guest:They never fought.

00:28:18Guest:Right, because no one wanted to fuck with them.

00:28:21Guest:No one fucked with them, but...

00:28:22Guest:Their culture was all about music and dancing.

00:28:25Guest:And when I discovered that, then I was home.

00:28:28Marc:That was it.

00:28:28Marc:So you go to Detroit, you're doing the Motown thing, you meet with Barry Gordy, you're part of that whole music mill, like Smokey Robinson is around or what?

00:28:36Guest:Who was there?

00:28:37Guest:Yeah, Smokey.

00:28:39Guest:In fact, Bobby Taylor to this day is considered one of the greatest singers that Motown ever had.

00:28:45Guest:In fact, when we would perform, we would look out and there would be Marvin Gaye and all the Supremes and all the Tops and Smokey and everybody sitting in the audience paying homage to Bobby Taylor and the Vancouver.

00:28:57Guest:That's unbelievable.

00:28:58Guest:And how old were you?

00:28:59Guest:I was 10 years older than Cheech.

00:29:01Guest:Eight.

00:29:02Guest:I was close to 28, I think.

00:29:05Marc:So then what happened?

00:29:06Marc:So you get this hit, do you tour?

00:29:08Marc:Do you go on the bus with Marvin Gaye and everybody?

00:29:10Guest:On the bus with the Supremes.

00:29:12Guest:Oh, no, she had her own.

00:29:14Guest:The Supremes had their own thing.

00:29:15Guest:But I was on the bus with Gerald Wilson.

00:29:18Guest:Gerald Wilson.

00:29:20Guest:It wasn't a tour bus.

00:29:21Guest:It was a sit-up bus.

00:29:23Guest:But I found a little area where you hung your clothes.

00:29:25Guest:Right.

00:29:26Guest:And I got a lot of pillows.

00:29:28Guest:And there was a little area where you could make a bed.

00:29:30Guest:Yeah.

00:29:30Guest:And so I made myself a little bed.

00:29:33Guest:Being from Calgary, I knew how to do that shit.

00:29:37Guest:Yeah.

00:29:37Guest:Pretty soon I had all the Vancouver's in.

00:29:40Guest:I'd go to lay in my bed, there'd be a Vancouver in there.

00:29:44Marc:It caught on.

00:29:46Marc:So you're playing those rooms where you're still dealing with segregation when you're touring?

00:29:50Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:29:50Marc:So you're playing the black clubs?

00:29:52Guest:And I'm the only non-black guy on the bus complaining that we're doing a concert where black kids aren't allowed into the concert.

00:30:02Guest:Tell them what happened when you got to Gary, Indiana.

00:30:04Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:30:06Guest:No, well, it wasn't Gary.

00:30:07Guest:It was Chicago.

00:30:08Guest:Chicago.

00:30:09Guest:We were playing at a club called... Wasn't it the Regal?

00:30:12Guest:Regal Theater.

00:30:13Guest:Yeah.

00:30:14Guest:And the opening act was a little family called the Jackson 5 plus Johnny.

00:30:20Guest:Yeah, with Johnny.

00:30:21Guest:Yeah, with Johnny.

00:30:22Guest:Johnny was a cousin.

00:30:23Guest:He's the kid didn't make it.

00:30:26Guest:And they had just won the contest for the high school contest.

00:30:31Guest:And so then Bobby Taylor convinced them to come to Motown, and they stayed with Bobby for a month, and then Barry Gordy signed them.

00:30:39Marc:So you were right there at the end.

00:30:41Guest:They discovered the Jackson 5, and then all of a sudden, Barry Gordy figured that we arranged for Diana Ross to discover the Jackson 5.

00:30:50Guest:Made better.

00:30:50Guest:Yeah, made better.

00:30:51Guest:Some negotiating down here.

00:30:53Guest:But Bobby Taylor produced their first two albums.

00:30:55Guest:No kidding.

00:30:56Guest:ABC, I Want You Back.

00:30:56Guest:Your guy.

00:30:57Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:30:58Guest:And that's what broke up the Vancouver's.

00:31:00Marc:The Jackson 5.

00:31:01Guest:Yeah, because Bobby had a new career.

00:31:04Guest:In producing.

00:31:05Guest:And so then I ended up playing with Chris Clark.

00:31:09Guest:I was their band leader.

00:31:12Guest:Chris Clark was Barry Gordy's white girlfriend.

00:31:15Guest:One of them.

00:31:16Guest:And then I had to go back to Detroit to get my green card.

00:31:22Guest:And Chris Clark didn't know what a green card was, so she fired me.

00:31:26Marc:What?

00:31:27Marc:Why?

00:31:29Guest:Because I missed a gig.

00:31:30Guest:I had to go back.

00:31:31Guest:I had to miss a gig.

00:31:32Guest:She had everybody else there.

00:31:33Marc:But by this point, though, I guess what's interesting in your story particularly is you saw how shitty show business could be.

00:31:41Marc:No, I didn't.

00:31:43Marc:You didn't register that there were politics in show business?

00:31:46Guest:Not at all.

00:31:46Guest:All you see is this crowd.

00:31:50Guest:You see the crowd out there.

00:31:51Guest:They love you.

00:31:52Guest:And you're playing.

00:31:54Guest:Are you kidding?

00:31:54Guest:You're playing in clubs.

00:31:55Guest:You're playing where you don't have to fight your way out of the thing.

00:32:02Guest:You're getting treats backstage.

00:32:05Guest:Yeah, sure, sure, man.

00:32:06Guest:People asking for your autograph.

00:32:08Guest:Human treats.

00:32:09Guest:Beef jerky.

00:32:09Guest:Everything.

00:32:10Marc:M&M's.

00:32:11Marc:The whole thing.

00:32:12Marc:Potato chips.

00:32:12Guest:Snickers bars.

00:32:13Guest:But I got fired.

00:32:14Guest:I got fired.

00:32:15Guest:I literally.

00:32:16Guest:And I had my girlfriend, who is now my wife.

00:32:19Guest:She was at a motel.

00:32:21Guest:I had another wife in Detroit.

00:32:24Guest:And so when I got fired, I was in Detroit.

00:32:27Guest:You had two wives.

00:32:28Guest:Yeah.

00:32:29Guest:Yeah.

00:32:29Guest:and i had a at the same time yeah not two wives or girlfriend in a way sure i was a musician i hear you and so then i whatever you got to tell yourself i got fired in in in detroit yeah and but i had to tell him i said well i have to go back get my my instrument yeah my guitar i left my amp there and so so they flew me back yeah and he said i have to go get my white girl and then they understood

00:32:54Guest:In fact, when we were doing that trip, when we were on our way to Cherry Hill, Indiana, New Jersey, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Shelby was late because- He was a white wife.

00:33:08Guest:Okay.

00:33:09Guest:The white girlfriend with the- So you have a black wife and a white girlfriend.

00:33:12Marc:Yeah.

00:33:12Guest:A white girlfriend with a white baby.

00:33:14Guest:Okay.

00:33:14Guest:Just been born.

00:33:15Guest:Your white baby.

00:33:16Guest:Yeah.

00:33:16Marc:Okay.

00:33:17Marc:And so Barry Gordy- Is it the white baby that's out on the deck right now?

00:33:20Guest:No, no.

00:33:20Guest:Barry Gordy, that was the youngest one.

00:33:22Guest:His next one.

00:33:23Guest:The next one.

00:33:23Guest:Yeah.

00:33:23Guest:Barry Gordy's walking around and saying, whose baby is this?

00:33:28Guest:Whose baby is this?

00:33:30Guest:And everybody on the band, everybody looking away.

00:33:32Guest:No one answered it.

00:33:35Guest:It was a very funny thing.

00:33:36Guest:So anyway, I went back and collected my girlfriend and my baby and my amplifier.

00:33:42Guest:The three important things.

00:33:44Guest:The band could have saved my ass.

00:33:46Guest:The band could have said, if he's fired, we're fired too.

00:33:48Guest:But none of them did.

00:33:50Guest:All loyal.

00:33:51Marc:Because they were with the Barry Gordy and they were set.

00:33:54Guest:Yeah, they were set.

00:33:55Guest:They didn't give a shit about me.

00:33:57Guest:It's haunted him ever since.

00:34:00Guest:Oh, really?

00:34:00Guest:Then Barry Gordy found out about it, that I got fired.

00:34:04Guest:And I was the only band.

00:34:05Guest:I was the guy that... He was the leader of the band.

00:34:07Guest:I was the leader of the band.

00:34:08Marc:So now he just had some players.

00:34:10Guest:Because...

00:34:11Guest:So Barry called me up right away.

00:34:14Guest:He said, you're not fired, man.

00:34:15Guest:I don't want you.

00:34:16Guest:You can be with me for as long as you want.

00:34:18Guest:I said, no.

00:34:19Guest:I said, I want to be a Barry Gordy.

00:34:21Guest:I don't want to work for Barry Gordy.

00:34:23Guest:Oh, shit.

00:34:24Guest:And so he gave me a nice little severance pay and sent me on my way.

00:34:28Guest:And that's how I met Chief.

00:34:29Guest:So then he's sitting in Detroit.

00:34:31Guest:We're watching a movie.

00:34:32Guest:I'll just be talkless with Peter Sellers.

00:34:34Guest:It's in Venice, and it's warm.

00:34:36Guest:Yeah.

00:34:36Guest:What are we doing here in Detroit?

00:34:39Guest:They got the thing.

00:34:40Guest:They drove across the country and came to Venice.

00:34:42Marc:All right, so you go back to Calgary, and that's when you meet you.

00:34:45Guest:No, actually, I go back to L.A.

00:34:46Marc:I went to L.A.

00:34:48Guest:From Detroit.

00:34:49Marc:With your white wife and your white baby.

00:34:51Guest:Yeah.

00:34:51Guest:Where's the black wife?

00:34:52Guest:White girlfriend.

00:34:53Guest:White girlfriend.

00:34:54Guest:The black wife's with two kids in Detroit.

00:34:57Guest:And so I sent for them.

00:34:59Guest:They ended up in L.A.

00:35:01Guest:Everybody's in L.A.

00:35:02Guest:And I had a nightclub that I owned with a family-owned nightclub in Vancouver that needed help.

00:35:08Marc:A Chong family-owned nightclub?

00:35:10Guest:Yeah.

00:35:10Guest:And so I went back to Vancouver.

00:35:12Guest:Right.

00:35:12Guest:Because I started the teen club.

00:35:15Guest:Yeah.

00:35:15Guest:I started another club in Vancouver the same way.

00:35:18Guest:Actually, what it was was there was actually two empty clubs.

00:35:22Guest:Yeah.

00:35:22Guest:And the guy that owned the building said, hey, you want a club?

00:35:26Yeah.

00:35:26Guest:And I said, sure.

00:35:27Guest:That's what makes Canada great.

00:35:29Guest:So the Chong family started the first topless bar in Vancouver.

00:35:33Marc:Oh, they're very popular now.

00:35:36Guest:But they were the first.

00:35:37Guest:Really?

00:35:37Guest:So it was having troubles.

00:35:39Guest:So I flew back.

00:35:40Guest:How can you have troubles with titties?

00:35:42Guest:Well, you know.

00:35:42Guest:It was not in a wonderful section.

00:35:45Guest:It was in a tough section.

00:35:47Guest:And so I flew back.

00:35:49Guest:And I looked at the show.

00:35:50Guest:And I said, oh, we need to get some comedy in here somehow.

00:35:54Guest:So I started like a burlesque.

00:35:56Guest:Like the classic way.

00:35:59Guest:You got boobs and you got the guy who comes out and does a few sticks.

00:36:02Guest:No, not the guy.

00:36:03Guest:What I did, I used the committee.

00:36:05Guest:I used, what do you call it?

00:36:07Guest:Like an improv group.

00:36:08Guest:Really?

00:36:09Guest:Improv in between strippers.

00:36:10Guest:He had seen improv on the road.

00:36:12Guest:He's in Second City in Chicago and committee in San Francisco.

00:36:15Guest:He goes, that's what I want to do.

00:36:16Guest:Never spoke on stage before.

00:36:19Guest:So I turned the girls into actresses.

00:36:23Guest:Yeah.

00:36:23Marc:So they were improv-ing?

00:36:25Guest:Yeah.

00:36:25Guest:You're not strippers anymore.

00:36:27Guest:You're actresses, so you get paid less.

00:36:29Guest:But you still have to take off your clothes, because we're like free theater.

00:36:32Marc:So what'd you get them doing?

00:36:35Guest:Every skit, we could, you know... You were writing skits?

00:36:38Guest:Well, we would take the Playboy magazine joke part, and we would bring those jokes to life.

00:36:44Guest:Act them out?

00:36:45Marc:Act them out, yeah, yeah.

00:36:46Marc:And then you what?

00:36:47Marc:You're a customer at the place?

00:36:48Guest:No, no.

00:36:49Guest:So I...

00:36:49Guest:around that time yeah i get to vancouver i come from vancouver after and you're making pots with a couple of different dudes yeah but yeah but then a long story short it travels and i get to vancouver and the guy i'm the first day i get to vancouver i'm walking around downtown chinatown because you know you got to go there yeah and i see that i walk by this club the shanghai junk is called i see these pictures of tommy and the and the chicks and i go what the fuck you

00:37:14Guest:I just remember registering it because it looked like old burlesque photos that I had, you know, because I used to go to burlesque houses in L.A.

00:37:23Guest:in the valley.

00:37:24Guest:Two long-haired hippies.

00:37:25Guest:Two long-haired hippies with an army helmet on and a billy club and what the fuck.

00:37:30Guest:That was the picture?

00:37:32Guest:Yeah.

00:37:33Guest:And so anyways, through a friend who's an editor of Rock and Roll Magazine, he says, you got to meet this guy, Tommy Chong.

00:37:40Guest:He's got this thing going down there.

00:37:42Guest:He said, but you'd be perfect for it.

00:37:44Guest:Does it pay?

00:37:45Guest:I don't know.

00:37:45Guest:Because he said that to you because you're a funny guy?

00:37:49Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:37:49Marc:But you had not done any stand-up.

00:37:50Guest:No, no.

00:37:51Guest:I was a writer for the magazine.

00:37:53Guest:I was doing record reviews and that shit.

00:37:55Guest:And so the straight guy that I had working, there's myself and the doorman, David.

00:38:02Guest:I got him involved.

00:38:03Guest:I just wanted him to be the emcee.

00:38:06Guest:And he said, I'll do it if you do it.

00:38:08Guest:And so then I remembered some of the skits that I saw with Second City.

00:38:12Guest:And so we started doing those skits.

00:38:14Guest:And we needed a straight man.

00:38:15Guest:So we had an actor, a real actor, come on board as a straight guy.

00:38:20Guest:Yeah.

00:38:20Guest:And we got so popular that we got the front page of the newspaper.

00:38:25Guest:And Rick Lenz was the guy's name, the straight guy.

00:38:28Guest:Yeah.

00:38:28Guest:And he's got boobs on either side of his head.

00:38:30Guest:Yeah.

00:38:31Guest:And his wife, who is very straight, she thought he was doing community theater.

00:38:36Guest:Yeah.

00:38:38Guest:Yeah.

00:38:38Guest:She looked for the lard.

00:38:39Guest:She literally took him up by the urine.

00:38:42Guest:He took him out of there?

00:38:43Guest:Took him out of there.

00:38:43Guest:So you're out of straight guy.

00:38:44Guest:And so I needed a straight man.

00:38:45Guest:Right, right.

00:38:46Guest:And so the Ihor Todorok.

00:38:50Guest:Todorok.

00:38:51Guest:Todorok.

00:38:52Guest:Ihor Todorok.

00:38:53Guest:The writer.

00:38:54Guest:He was the editor.

00:38:56Guest:Russian?

00:38:57Guest:Ukrainian.

00:38:58Guest:Ukrainian.

00:38:59Guest:He says, I know a very funny guy.

00:39:01Guest:You should come and see him.

00:39:02Guest:Come on out to my magazine.

00:39:04Guest:Yeah.

00:39:04Guest:You meet him.

00:39:06Guest:Yeah.

00:39:06Guest:And so he was kind of insistent, you know.

00:39:08Guest:So I said, okay.

00:39:08Guest:So I took my white girlfriend and her little baby.

00:39:13Guest:Little baby.

00:39:14Guest:Her name is Precious Chong.

00:39:17Guest:Uh-huh.

00:39:17Guest:And so you figure like this little girl with bound feet is going to show up.

00:39:20Guest:And it looks like Sybil Shepard.

00:39:22Guest:Yeah.

00:39:22Guest:A little white girl with the girls in the Shirley Temple.

00:39:26Guest:And so we ended up, and that's when I met Cheech for the first time.

00:39:30Guest:When you went to Second City, though, who'd you see?

00:39:32Guest:I saw Peter Boyle.

00:39:34Guest:It was in the first edition of it.

00:39:37Guest:After the Compass Players.

00:39:39Marc:Yeah, exactly.

00:39:40Marc:So you saw like Alan Arkin maybe?

00:39:42Guest:Not Arkin, but I saw Boyle.

00:39:44Guest:Really?

00:39:44Guest:Peter Boyle.

00:39:45Marc:And you just went over there out of curiosity when you were in Chicago?

00:39:47Guest:Well, you know, I had a chance.

00:39:48Guest:We had a choice.

00:39:49Guest:Most guys went to the blues clubs.

00:39:51Guest:Right.

00:39:52Guest:I looked at that, and it was just fascinating.

00:39:55Guest:The Second City thing.

00:39:56Guest:The Second City.

00:39:57Guest:Like nothing you'd ever seen.

00:39:58Guest:I went in there, and I'd never seen that before.

00:40:00Guest:Actually, I did.

00:40:01Guest:I saw the committee in San Francisco first.

00:40:04Guest:Right.

00:40:04Guest:And that's what got me into the whole thing.

00:40:08Marc:Fred Willard?

00:40:08Marc:Was he the committee?

00:40:09Marc:Was Fred Willard?

00:40:10Guest:No, no, it was the original guy.

00:40:11Guest:Oh, way before that.

00:40:12Guest:Gail Goodridge.

00:40:13Guest:Gail, what's that guy's name?

00:40:15Guest:Goodwin something?

00:40:16Guest:Gary Goodrow.

00:40:17Guest:Gary Goodrow.

00:40:18Guest:The guy from Howard Hessman.

00:40:21Guest:Howard Hessman.

00:40:22Guest:Howard Hessman.

00:40:23Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:40:24Marc:Howard Hessman, Gary Goodrow.

00:40:26Marc:So they were activists, though.

00:40:28Guest:Lee French.

00:40:29Guest:Lee French, yeah.

00:40:30Guest:Oh, wow.

00:40:31Guest:And Howard Hessman used to fascinate me because I saw him almost every night when I was in San Francisco.

00:40:37Guest:And what he would do, he would come up with these red shoes on.

00:40:40Guest:Yeah.

00:40:40Guest:And he'd say, okay.

00:40:42Guest:And then he'd read off a list of where the protests were going to be, the Vietnam protests.

00:40:47Guest:We're going to be here.

00:40:48Guest:Any questions?

00:40:49Guest:Yeah.

00:40:50Guest:Where'd you get the red shoes?

00:40:51Guest:And he would get pissed off.

00:40:54Guest:He'd say, I'm not going to answer that.

00:40:56Guest:And he'd get, literally, he'd get pissed off because they're all, you know, they're all stoned.

00:41:00Guest:What the hell?

00:41:00Guest:You got red shoes on?

00:41:01Yeah.

00:41:01Marc:that's all they're thinking about they're not even hearing the vietnam things like what the fuck man he's got fucking red shoes on yeah and that's what that's what has and has been would he would literally you could see him get pissed off at everybody so what were you doing in san francisco where does that come in the time i was i was in the band oh okay all right so you see the barbie taylor right so you see uh you see peter boyo see this thing where it's sort of like holy shit

00:41:24Marc:This is funny.

00:41:25Guest:See, and this is before we got discovered by Motown.

00:41:28Marc:Right.

00:41:29Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:41:29Guest:So I saw all this before that.

00:41:31Guest:Oh, really?

00:41:33Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:41:33Guest:I was in San Francisco with Bobby.

00:41:35Guest:Hey, we were starving.

00:41:37Guest:We would go down on spec.

00:41:38Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:41:40Guest:And Bobby Taylor was so well-known down there.

00:41:42Guest:Right.

00:41:42Guest:And we'd show up at clubs, you know.

00:41:44Guest:And literally, the club owner would meet us with a fucking gun.

00:41:48Guest:Yeah.

00:41:48Guest:Really?

00:41:49Guest:Yeah.

00:41:49Guest:Nigga, I told you if I ever saw you again, I'd kill you.

00:41:52Guest:And Bobby would say, put the gun down, motherfucker.

00:41:55Guest:We're here to make you some money.

00:41:57Guest:This is my boy.

00:41:58Guest:Tommy, come here.

00:42:02Guest:Bobby Taylor's a character.

00:42:05Guest:He's in China now.

00:42:06Guest:He is?

00:42:07Guest:Yeah, he's got to act in China, man.

00:42:09Guest:Probably got three old ladies.

00:42:10Marc:That's where he ended up?

00:42:12Guest:Yeah.

00:42:13Guest:He emails me all the time.

00:42:17Guest:But Bobby was such a legend.

00:42:18Guest:Because what he would do, he would show up at the club.

00:42:22Guest:He would pack the joint.

00:42:23Guest:He'd fuck every old lady's, guy's old lady he could find.

00:42:28Guest:He would take money from everybody he could get.

00:42:32Guest:And then he'd leave unexpectedly with shit.

00:42:36Guest:And then he'd come back like it never happened.

00:42:38Guest:You got the wrong guy.

00:42:39Guest:That's another guy.

00:42:41Guest:I know I did that, man.

00:42:42Guest:I'm sorry.

00:42:43Guest:Okay, I'm sorry.

00:42:45Guest:Hey, one of the last times I saw Bobby, we're in Vancouver.

00:42:49Guest:We got the after hours club is going great.

00:42:51Guest:Everything's going great.

00:42:52Guest:It was a beautiful day, one of the long summers.

00:42:54Guest:I was on the beach all day.

00:42:56Guest:I'm sitting and smoked.

00:42:57Guest:I smoked out.

00:42:58Guest:I'm sitting, standing in front of the club waiting for the...

00:43:02Guest:You know, for the gig to start and the cab pulls up, Bobby gets out and he's got an axe.

00:43:09Guest:He's holding an axe.

00:43:13Guest:I said, what's up, Bobby?

00:43:14Guest:He says, fuck that bitch.

00:43:19Guest:Oh, shit.

00:43:19Guest:What happened, Bobby?

00:43:21Guest:But man, she kicked me out of the motherfucking house, man.

00:43:24Guest:Shit, all the work I put in that house, I nailed every fucking door shut.

00:43:30Guest:If I can't get in there, no one else is getting in there.

00:43:33Guest:Was that Marnie?

00:43:34Guest:No, Evelyn.

00:43:35Guest:Evelyn, ooh.

00:43:36Guest:Remember Evelyn?

00:43:37Guest:Ooh, no, I didn't remember.

00:43:37Guest:Oh, you didn't mean that Evelyn was a working girl.

00:43:40Marc:All right, so he...

00:43:43Marc:He's your new straight guy.

00:43:45Marc:You go to the office, you meet Cheech with the baby, and what happens right then?

00:43:49Guest:So he says, hey, come on down to see what we did.

00:43:56Guest:And my girlfriend, who was like, was coming in to see me from L.A.

00:44:00Guest:I haven't seen her in a long time, and she was like, you know, coming in.

00:44:02Guest:And Cheech didn't tell me this.

00:44:03Guest:Yeah, I didn't tell her.

00:44:04Guest:He just said, yeah, yeah, I'll come down.

00:44:06Guest:I'll try and make it.

00:44:07Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:08Guest:I'll check you out.

00:44:09Guest:I'll try and make it.

00:44:09Guest:Yeah, I'll check it out.

00:44:10Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:44:10Guest:And so we're backstage.

00:44:13Guest:We had just dropped some acid because that was the thing.

00:44:15Marc:You're dropping acid during the show?

00:44:17Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:44:17Guest:Before the show.

00:44:19Guest:It made the show much better.

00:44:21Guest:But this is like Owlsley shit.

00:44:23Guest:I mean, this is the real deal.

00:44:23Guest:Yeah, it was the real shit.

00:44:25Guest:They would do four hours of improv a night in a strip club for people that went, what the fuck?

00:44:30Yeah.

00:44:30Guest:I'm not a fucking girl.

00:44:32Guest:I'm not a fucking long-haired guy talking to me.

00:44:34Guest:On acid.

00:44:36Guest:Well, we were on acid.

00:44:38Guest:I'm looking out, and I see Cheech come in.

00:44:40Guest:They said, oh, he's here.

00:44:41Guest:All the girls were excited.

00:44:42Guest:They wanted to see the new guy.

00:44:44Guest:And so the girls said, oh, he's here, he's here.

00:44:46Guest:Who's he with?

00:44:46Guest:And I looked out there, and here's this gorgeous chick with this full-length mink coat.

00:44:51Guest:And Cheech, you know, he's... Right, I said, well, no, he's hired.

00:44:57LAUGHTER

00:44:57Guest:I always judge a man by his woman.

00:45:01Guest:I don't care what the guy looks like, but if she's hot, he's got something going on.

00:45:06Guest:Oh, dear God.

00:45:07Guest:Boom, boom, boom, still to this day.

00:45:09Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:45:09Guest:And so anyway, she was kind of, I was more into her.

00:45:12Guest:And I was watching, they were doing this, whatever they were doing on stage, and it was like, you know, trying these, the girls trying to act and stuff.

00:45:19Guest:On acid, though.

00:45:20Guest:I mean, what was it like, though?

00:45:21Guest:I don't fucking know.

00:45:22Guest:I don't remember anything except for this one bit where David, his partner, comes out and he sings this.

00:45:28Guest:No, see, that was the first bit.

00:45:30Guest:Was that the first bit?

00:45:30Guest:That was the very first bit.

00:45:32Guest:That was the first?

00:45:32Guest:See, I think what happened was that- Oh, the girls stopped dancing.

00:45:36Guest:They were dancing, and then they stopped, and they cleared the stage.

00:45:39Guest:Oh, that's what it was.

00:45:40Guest:And then we would start our show.

00:45:42Guest:Yeah.

00:45:42Guest:And so I'm trying to, Sarah's looking at me and saying, what the fuck, you bring me to a strip joint in the worst part of town.

00:45:48Guest:Yeah.

00:45:50Guest:What was the bit?

00:45:51Guest:So David, the guy, comes out and he's a real long-haired guy.

00:45:55Guest:Well, first, first, first, I'm my artist.

00:45:58Yeah.

00:45:58Guest:You got the mime.

00:46:02Guest:We got a classical guitarist.

00:46:03Guest:He comes out, he sits down, and he starts playing.

00:46:07Guest:And then this mime artist comes out, and he's picking flowers.

00:46:11Guest:And these are bikers and perverts waiting.

00:46:16Guest:We're waiting to see some girls.

00:46:17Guest:And so they're sitting there watching this mime artist throw flower petals around and blowing things.

00:46:22Guest:In full mime drive.

00:46:24Guest:But he's a serious mime.

00:46:25Guest:Yeah, a serious mime.

00:46:26Guest:And then he leaves the stage.

00:46:28Guest:And then David, my first partner, comes out.

00:46:30Guest:He's got long hair and a cowboy hat.

00:46:32Guest:and a scarf wrapped around his neck.

00:46:35Guest:And he walks up seriously to the mic.

00:46:37Guest:And what does he sing?

00:46:38Guest:He sings this song.

00:46:39Guest:He goes, I dream of brownie in the light blue jeans.

00:46:44Guest:She's just as neat as licorice jelly beans.

00:46:48Guest:I dream of brownie and it makes me mellier.

00:46:52Guest:Because brownie is my favorite wire-haired terrier.

00:46:57Guest:Everybody's just looking at them.

00:47:02Guest:They're biker

00:47:02Guest:They're looking around and going, what the fuck is this?

00:47:07Guest:And then I kick a door open, and I'm shirtless.

00:47:11Guest:And it looked like my hair's all messed up.

00:47:13Guest:It looked like I just woke up.

00:47:14Guest:And I got a rolled up newspaper.

00:47:16Guest:And I walk over to David, and I look at him, and I go, what kind of fucking song is that?

00:47:21Guest:And I start beating this shit.

00:47:23Guest:I fucking fell off the chair, man.

00:47:25Guest:I laughed so hard.

00:47:26Guest:That was just...

00:47:27Guest:It cracked me up.

00:47:29Guest:And I said, okay, I'll join this group.

00:47:31Guest:But see, when I auditioned, when I met Tommy for the first time, I gave him this big resume of what a great improv actor and writer that I was.

00:47:39Guest:I was a member of Instant Theater here in L.A.

00:47:43Guest:And I had seen this little improv group called Instant Theater.

00:47:47Guest:And it was in L.A.

00:47:48Guest:It was on Melrose at the Horseshoe Theater.

00:47:50Guest:And it was Rachel Rosenthal who went on to be the Grand Dama performance art.

00:47:54Guest:Yeah.

00:47:55Guest:And her husband, her boyfriend, I think it was her husband, King Moody.

00:47:58Guest:Yeah.

00:47:58Guest:And King Moody eventually turned up to be Ronald McDonald.

00:48:04Guest:Oh, really?

00:48:05Guest:Yeah.

00:48:05Guest:He was the original for 20 years.

00:48:07Guest:He was the original Ronald McDonald.

00:48:08Guest:He was the guy, yeah.

00:48:08Guest:Yeah, he was Ronald McDonald.

00:48:10Guest:And they used to do this.

00:48:11Guest:Please tell me he thought it was a performance art piece for the entire 20 years.

00:48:15Guest:He was a little nipper, you know.

00:48:16Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:48:17Guest:He used to enjoy a little nip.

00:48:19Guest:Yeah.

00:48:19Guest:And it was weird.

00:48:22Guest:I used to go to this thing.

00:48:23Guest:I know that was the weirdest thing I ever saw, but funny.

00:48:25Guest:But I remember when I was watching, and I'd go a lot of times, and I can do this.

00:48:30Guest:I could jump on stage right now, and I could do this.

00:48:33Guest:And so I told Tommy that I was a member of Vincent Theater, and I just did this, and we wrote.

00:48:37Guest:And I improv'd a resume.

00:48:40Guest:He bought it.

00:48:42Guest:OK, come on down and be a writer for the show.

00:48:44Guest:OK.

00:48:45Guest:So you guys started writing together.

00:48:47Guest:Well, no, really.

00:48:49Guest:David and I really were the main guys.

00:48:52Guest:And then Cheech was kind of like the understudy.

00:48:55Guest:Sure.

00:48:56Guest:And then he would come in.

00:48:57Guest:But Cheech was the only guy that would bring original material that started bringing it.

00:49:03Guest:David really wasn't an actor or comedian.

00:49:07Guest:He was a doorman.

00:49:08Guest:Right.

00:49:08Guest:that he really was a roadie right if anything so you were just riffing all this shit so we were just riffing i was the only one that had seen the second city sure but he owned the club right and so we could do anything yeah yeah and and the audience loved it man in fact they loved it so much that we changed from this hard drinking biker kind of bar into this uh theatrical theater group

00:49:33Guest:wow where they would nissa they would nurse a wine all night but you still had the girls though oh yeah we had the girls and they get naked yeah yeah that was the end of the skit somehow they got naked yeah you know and and but but we changed the audience right so drastically that we were packing them in but we weren't making any money because they weren't drinking

00:49:55Marc:Right, because they weren't there for the old guys.

00:49:58Guest:I'll get Jonesy some titties.

00:49:59Marc:These people are like, this is interesting.

00:50:01Marc:We're students.

00:50:01Guest:Yeah, so my brother, who kind of took care of paying the bills and that, he came up with a bunch of bills.

00:50:08Guest:He says, we got to do something here.

00:50:10Guest:And so I said, well, obviously, we got to go back to the old strip routine.

00:50:17Guest:And so the group was out of a job, basically.

00:50:22Guest:Yeah.

00:50:22Guest:And I've never really been one to look ahead and say, well, we can work over here.

00:50:29Guest:I would do a project at a time and then feel that you could be there forever.

00:50:33Guest:And so we did one performance and then we broke up for good and it was for the Three Dog Night.

00:50:43Marc:Opening for Three Dog Night?

00:50:44Guest:No, no.

00:50:45Guest:They were playing at an arena in Vancouver.

00:50:50Guest:Sure.

00:50:51Guest:And the drummer was my brother-in-law.

00:50:54Guest:Remember the black guys in Calgary?

00:50:56Guest:Yeah.

00:50:56Guest:That's his brother-in-law.

00:50:58Guest:My first wife.

00:50:59Guest:Yeah.

00:50:59Guest:My first wife's brother, he was the drummer.

00:51:01Guest:He was the drummer for the street all night.

00:51:03Guest:Floyd Snead.

00:51:04Guest:Floyd.

00:51:04Marc:Were they a Canadian band?

00:51:05Guest:No, no, just him.

00:51:06Guest:No, just Floyd.

00:51:07Guest:And Floyd was in the original band when I went down to Second City and all that.

00:51:11Guest:Floyd was with me then.

00:51:13Guest:The original drummer of the- The original, the Vancouver's.

00:51:15Guest:Yeah.

00:51:15Guest:What are you, the Bobby, no, it was the Bachelors.

00:51:19Guest:Little Daddy.

00:51:20Guest:Little Daddy and the Bachelors, really?

00:51:21Guest:He was in that band?

00:51:22Guest:Before the Vancouver's.

00:51:24Guest:Yeah.

00:51:24Guest:And so we did that one performance.

00:51:27Guest:And Danny Hutton, they all seen us.

00:51:31Guest:The only time they ever saw the whole group together.

00:51:34Guest:And then Cheech and I decided we were going to put a band together.

00:51:39Guest:And so we did.

00:51:41Guest:We actually put a bass player and a piano player.

00:51:44Marc:What did you do, Cheech?

00:51:46Marc:I was a singer.

00:51:46Guest:I was a singer all my life.

00:51:48Guest:He's a singer.

00:51:50Guest:But we got to the gig.

00:51:51Guest:It was about all the bands.

00:51:52Guest:And because I had the reputation of the Vancouver's, we got a gig right away.

00:51:57Guest:They said, yeah, we want to hear the band.

00:52:00Guest:But Cheech and I have been doing comedy for nine months.

00:52:03Guest:Just on a solo?

00:52:04Guest:Just the two of you?

00:52:05Guest:No, no.

00:52:06Guest:With the other guys.

00:52:07Guest:Yeah, with the gang.

00:52:08Guest:And so we said, well, let's do comedy first.

00:52:10Guest:And then we'll play.

00:52:11Guest:Then we'll play some music.

00:52:12Marc:And you guys had already worked out two-man show?

00:52:15Guest:well we worked it out that night yeah yeah well let's do that bit on that bit okay so you so you guys you were no longer the understudy you were integrating well during this during the length of the show that i was with them i i would write material for them yeah and then somebody couldn't make it or they were late i would do the bit i would fill in and the only thing i couldn't do was like naked dancer right right but i did everything else in the show at some point

00:52:38Marc:Okay, so you guys, you're going to do a comedy bit.

00:52:41Guest:So the two of us, we go out there, and we were a hit right from the first.

00:52:45Guest:What was the bit?

00:52:46Guest:What was the first bit?

00:52:49Guest:Was it the guys in the cars?

00:52:50Guest:No, it could have been.

00:52:51Guest:Not long.

00:52:52Guest:We did a minute of that.

00:52:54Guest:I know we did the dogs.

00:52:57Guest:And then we did Blind Melon.

00:52:59Guest:We did Blind Melon.

00:53:00Marc:So you guys were doing those bits already.

00:53:02Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:53:02Marc:The bits that showed up on the first and second record.

00:53:05Marc:So it smells like dog shit.

00:53:07Marc:Oh, no, that was a joke.

00:53:08Marc:No, that's an old joke.

00:53:09Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:53:09Marc:But what was the dog?

00:53:12Guest:The dogs.

00:53:12Guest:Ralph and Herbie.

00:53:13Guest:We became dogs.

00:53:14Guest:Ralph and Herbie.

00:53:15Guest:All around the stage sniffing each other's butt and fucking each other.

00:53:18Guest:The kids loved it.

00:53:20Guest:Oh, they did.

00:53:21Guest:Oh, shit.

00:53:21Guest:the crowd it was a battle of the bands and the crowd well they all gathered right close to the stage sat down and enjoyed the hell out of the show and the blind melon bit that you know that became a big bit oh yeah yeah well they all they all actually they all evolved evolved yeah and and it was such a big hit in in that

00:53:42Guest:that we never played we never played and the band stood there like really yeah you're just killing not one note yeah and and so the bass player who ended up becoming the powder blues blues band in vancouver big band yeah he ended up he says so when's our next gig boss

00:54:00Guest:Well, we ain't got a good night gig.

00:54:03Guest:Tom Lavin.

00:54:04Guest:Tom Lavin.

00:54:05Guest:And so Cheech and I, I had my dad's car, and the windshield wipers were broken.

00:54:11Guest:In Vancouver, it was torrential rain.

00:54:13Guest:And so we were taking turns.

00:54:15Guest:Working the windshield.

00:54:17Guest:With a coat hanger.

00:54:18Guest:A coat hanger out the window.

00:54:20Guest:We'd be hanging out the door.

00:54:22Guest:Getting drenched.

00:54:23Guest:I'm driving.

00:54:23Guest:He'd do it for a while.

00:54:25Guest:Then I'd do it for a while.

00:54:26Guest:And that's when we named ourselves.

00:54:28Guest:So we're going across the Georgia Viaduct Bridge.

00:54:33Guest:And it was a condemned bridge.

00:54:35Guest:It was big signs.

00:54:36Guest:Go along.

00:54:36Guest:It's your own risk.

00:54:37Guest:And so we're trying to figure out a name.

00:54:39Guest:So I said, well, let's say Richard and Tommy.

00:54:42Guest:No, that doesn't sound good.

00:54:43Guest:And I said, Maren and Chong.

00:54:46Guest:No, that doesn't sound good.

00:54:47Guest:He says, well, do you got a nickname?

00:54:49Guest:And so I said, well, Cheech is my family name.

00:54:51Guest:And he goes, Cheech and Chong.

00:54:53Guest:Cheech and Chong.

00:54:54Guest:That was it.

00:54:55Guest:It was never Chong and Cheech.

00:54:56Guest:It was all because it sounded better.

00:54:58Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:54:59Guest:Yeah, we're going to conquer the world.

00:55:01Guest:We're going across with this coat hanger.

00:55:03Guest:I was literally screaming, screaming the word, Cheech and Chong.

00:55:09Guest:Cheech and Chong.

00:55:11Guest:It does sound good, man.

00:55:13Guest:We played on the lawn in UCLA one time.

00:55:17Guest:And this linguist, after we did our show, she was walking alongside us.

00:55:21Guest:She says, it's very interesting that you chose the name Cheech and Chong because it's a first name and a last name.

00:55:28Yeah.

00:55:28Guest:And she went on this whole big thing.

00:55:31Guest:Broke it down.

00:55:32Guest:Yeah, she broke it down.

00:55:33Guest:We're the only other team that has a first name than last name.

00:55:35Guest:You know the other one?

00:55:36Guest:Who?

00:55:37Guest:Penn and Teller.

00:55:38Marc:Really?

00:55:38Marc:That was it?

00:55:39Marc:Penn Jillette and Al Teller.

00:55:41Marc:But you guys didn't think about that.

00:55:42Guest:No, no.

00:55:43Guest:Where'd you get the name Cheech?

00:55:44Guest:Cheech is my family name.

00:55:46Guest:It's short for Chicharron.

00:55:47Guest:Sure, the fried pork rind.

00:55:48Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:55:49Guest:So when I was a little baby, I was just born, my uncle looked in the crib and said, I parece un chicharron.

00:55:54Guest:Looks like a little chicharron, all shriveled up.

00:55:57Guest:So that was my name.

00:55:58Guest:I was always Cheech in the family.

00:56:01Marc:All right, so now you got the groove.

00:56:02Marc:You know you got the thing.

00:56:03Marc:So how do you end up down here?

00:56:05Marc:Well, we got to come back to LA.

00:56:06Guest:Well, what we did, what we did.

00:56:08Guest:Well, I was wanted by the FBI at the time, so we're jumping the draft.

00:56:12Guest:But I wanted us to play in a little club first.

00:56:15Guest:To try it.

00:56:16Guest:Yeah.

00:56:17Guest:I said, you know, we got to do one more gig.

00:56:18Guest:Yeah.

00:56:19Guest:And so we went down to this little blues club.

00:56:22Guest:Yeah.

00:56:23Guest:Little folk club.

00:56:23Guest:Vancouver.

00:56:24Guest:And where we saw T-Bone Walker.

00:56:27Guest:Oh, he's still alive.

00:56:28Guest:At the end of his career.

00:56:29Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:56:30Guest:He was so drunk that they literally carried him out.

00:56:34Guest:put him in the chair yeah and then they put his guitar on his leg and he he tried to play the guitar but they had untuned the strings because of the flight yeah and the bass player literally was leaning over trying to tune his guitar while he's playing yeah yeah yeah and he's and he and he couldn't he couldn't get anything together yeah and when he finished whatever he was doing

00:56:58Guest:the crowd erupted into the biggest cheers ever we were sitting in the club just laughing our ass off that's when blind melon was born and we played that club you played that what's ronnie scott's ronnie small ronnie smalls ronnie smalls ronnie small we river queen or something yeah the river river something and we we played it that uh i was the next day or something the next day next day we played it went over really well did you do the blind melon bit no no we hadn't involved

00:57:27Guest:Well, the next day, we came back to LA.

00:57:31Guest:I did, because I got on a plane.

00:57:34Guest:But I had to... Well, first of all, we had to get money to get him back.

00:57:37Guest:And so I went and visited some friends of mine.

00:57:40Guest:Lionel.

00:57:41Guest:And he just funded us some money.

00:57:46Guest:What about Lionel?

00:57:47Guest:Lionel was...

00:57:48Guest:It was this Jewish guy who had a battery company or a tire company.

00:57:52Guest:Battery.

00:57:53Guest:Battery.

00:57:53Guest:But he was a rounder and he was hanging out with all these nightclub guys.

00:57:58Guest:He was a wannabe.

00:58:00Guest:He was like the guy that got killed in Goodfellas.

00:58:04Guest:The swimming pool guy.

00:58:06Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:58:07Marc:Sure, sure, sure.

00:58:08Guest:That was him.

00:58:09Guest:He was hanging out with all these gangsters and boosters, mostly boosters.

00:58:13Guest:Yeah.

00:58:13Guest:And so he lent us the money.

00:58:15Guest:Yeah.

00:58:16Guest:Yeah, it was like, I don't know, 100 bucks or 200 bucks.

00:58:18Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:58:18Guest:No, no, no, it was 1,000.

00:58:20Guest:Really?

00:58:21Guest:Yeah, because we had to get the ticket.

00:58:23Guest:What happened to my end of that 1,000?

00:58:26Guest:You never got it?

00:58:27Guest:You got it, man.

00:58:30Guest:Yeah, remember?

00:58:31Guest:We'll talk about this later.

00:58:33Yeah.

00:58:33Guest:there was so we bought a plane ticket but i had to you know had to go buy customs you know and in those days you know and so i borrowed my friend bill nor's id yeah with a picture of him on it yeah and he was kind of dark yeah and i went and i held it up right next to my face and i looked at it looked at me okay go through i was wondering by the fbi okay a lot has changed since then well how'd you deal with the fbi issue well i just they didn't know i came back they didn't know i left and

00:59:00Guest:the first place so it's like we'd be on stage and i'd say any fbi people here at night the draft dogs you know change you go shut up man that's not funny because they were going by my mother's house all the time looking for me what happened i was in canada yeah and and while i was in there they changed my classification from 2s student to 1a available for the draft yeah and they drafted me while i was in canada yeah and totally illegal so i said oh man this is

00:59:26Guest:So when I came back, I snuck back in the United States.

00:59:28Guest:I didn't know it was there.

00:59:30Guest:I was Bill Knorr now.

00:59:31Guest:Yeah, new identity.

00:59:33Guest:And so just as we got back, the first cases from the draft resistance movement went to the Supreme Court.

00:59:44Guest:Right.

00:59:45Guest:Got thrown out.

00:59:46Guest:This is totally illegal what he did, but this is blah, blah, blah.

00:59:49Guest:So all you guys are free of this.

00:59:52Guest:So the next day, they sent me a notice for a draft, a physical.

00:59:55Guest:Yeah.

00:59:56Guest:Okay, now you don't have a 2S deferment.

01:00:02Guest:So I had broken my leg skiing in Canada the second year I was there.

01:00:08Guest:Really badly.

01:00:09Guest:You know that guy on TV, the basketball from Louisville, the kid that broke his leg in half?

01:00:16Guest:Yeah.

01:00:16Guest:And it was a compound.

01:00:17Guest:That's exactly what I did.

01:00:18Guest:So you had several breaks?

01:00:20Guest:No, just one in half.

01:00:21Guest:Oh, God.

01:00:22Guest:Like I sevened my leg.

01:00:23Guest:Oh, so it was sticking out.

01:00:24Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:00:26Guest:Oh, shit.

01:00:26Guest:I went to a medical doctor.

01:00:29Guest:He used to be a medical examiner for the Air Force.

01:00:31Guest:I got him to write a letter, got some x-rays, went and took the physical and got 4F'd.

01:00:36Guest:Goodbye.

01:00:37Guest:Actually, I was 2FY.

01:00:39Guest:Too fucking young.

01:00:41Marc:But after all that bullshit, you actually had to go for the physical.

01:00:46Marc:Yeah.

01:00:46Marc:The shit got scary, right?

01:00:48Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:00:49Guest:Yeah.

01:00:49Marc:But that was towards the end of the war already, right?

01:00:51Guest:Well, the scary part was seeing a thousand other guys in their underwear.

01:00:54Marc:No, it wasn't, really.

01:00:55Guest:It was right in the middle of the war.

01:00:57Guest:69, 70?

01:00:58Guest:That was 69.

01:00:59Guest:Oh, so it was still, yeah.

01:01:01Guest:Yeah, 70.

01:01:02Guest:No, it was 70.

01:01:02Guest:70, yeah, 70.

01:01:03Marc:So when did you come down?

01:01:05Marc:The same time.

01:01:06Marc:Oh, so you got the plan ticket.

01:01:08Marc:But I had a green card.

01:01:09Marc:Right.

01:01:09Marc:So then how did you start out?

01:01:11Marc:What happened when you got here?

01:01:12Marc:Well, we started playing black clubs.

01:01:15Guest:Well, first of all, we stayed at my first wife's house.

01:01:20Guest:He stayed on the couch.

01:01:21Guest:Yeah.

01:01:21Guest:You know, and...

01:01:24Guest:In fact, the first bit in Up in Smoke is really a story of what it was like living at my house at the time.

01:01:32Guest:Because he'd wake up.

01:01:34Guest:My daughters would come out and turn on the TV real loud and get their cereal.

01:01:38Guest:And give me the stink guy, Ray Don.

01:01:40Guest:Ray Don Chong.

01:01:42Guest:What is this Mexican doing on my couch?

01:01:46Marc:Oh, shit.

01:01:48Marc:So you started doing black clubs?

01:01:50Guest:yeah yeah that was the only ones that would pay yeah money and have comedy and who were the guys you were seeing when you were working with that oh everywhere all the mavericks flats uh the parisian room uh pjs pjs which would pjs open in hollywood opened up reopened as the uptown black club and so we were the house comedians for there

01:02:12Guest:So we played with everybody that came through there.

01:02:15Guest:I mean, we opened it with Carmen McRae and the Impressions and the Isley Brothers and Edwin Starr.

01:02:20Guest:Earth, Wind, and Fire.

01:02:21Guest:Earth, Wind, and Fire.

01:02:22Guest:Oh, Earth, Wind, and Fire.

01:02:23Guest:We used to play this other club.

01:02:24Guest:It was Johnny Mathis' brother, Ralph.

01:02:27Guest:It looked exactly like him, sang all his songs.

01:02:29Guest:Cheech and Chong and Earth, Wind, and Fire.

01:02:31Guest:Wow.

01:02:32Guest:Every night on stage.

01:02:33Guest:Was that the Millionaires Club that?

01:02:35Guest:Yeah, that was... Four o'clock.

01:02:37Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:02:37Marc:And what bits were you doing?

01:02:38Marc:You were doing, what, a half hour, 20 minutes?

01:02:40Marc:I don't know what we were doing.

01:02:42Marc:No, we did a half hour, at least a half hour, maybe a little longer.

01:02:46Marc:Yeah, a little more, yeah.

01:02:46Marc:And you were doing, because you guys did bits.

01:02:49Marc:I mean, it was almost sketches.

01:02:51Guest:You weren't like... No, no, we did sketches.

01:02:53Guest:Yeah, and you bring costumes?

01:02:55Guest:Yeah, oh, we had a pile of costumes.

01:02:58Guest:We'd lay them on the stage in a pile.

01:03:00Guest:Yeah.

01:03:00Guest:I swear to God.

01:03:01Guest:All right, what bit we're going to do next?

01:03:03Guest:Oh, let's do that one.

01:03:03Guest:And we went to Club to Club on a scooter.

01:03:06Guest:I had a little Honda 90.

01:03:08Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:03:09Guest:And Cheech would wear, we'd both wear all the costumes.

01:03:11Guest:All the costumes, layers of coats and three hats and shoes around the neck.

01:03:15Guest:Scoot around on the scooter.

01:03:17Guest:Because I still had my wife and my girlfriend.

01:03:21Guest:Right.

01:03:22Guest:And did they know about each other, obviously?

01:03:24Guest:No, they knew.

01:03:24Guest:Yeah, they kind of knew.

01:03:25Guest:They knew.

01:03:26Guest:Kind of knew.

01:03:26Guest:They knew.

01:03:27Guest:Everybody knew.

01:03:29Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:03:30Marc:All right, so you're running around doing the Black Club.

01:03:32Marc:So when do you start to evolve into recording or the Comedy Store?

01:03:36Marc:Well, what happened... Because you're still before the Comedy Store, right?

01:03:39Marc:You're doing this late 60s, 70s, 1970s, nothing.

01:03:42Guest:The Troubadour.

01:03:43Guest:Yeah.

01:03:44Guest:The Troubadour.

01:03:45Guest:We did... Opening for music all the time.

01:03:48Guest:No, no.

01:03:48Guest:It was for... Hootenanny Night.

01:03:50Guest:Hootenanny Night.

01:03:50Guest:Hootenanny Night at the Troubadour, Monday nights.

01:03:52Guest:Yeah.

01:03:52Guest:And the deal was that the first six acts that were there when the box office opened up,

01:03:58Guest:at 6 o'clock, got to go on that night.

01:04:00Marc:Music or variety don't matter.

01:04:02Guest:In reverse order.

01:04:03Guest:So the first one got to go on 6th, which was really actually a good spot because everybody was in.

01:04:08Guest:Oh, yeah, they're not.

01:04:11Guest:Because it was a free night, like no charge kind of deal.

01:04:15Guest:No, they charged them, but tax didn't get paid.

01:04:17Guest:This was like open mic night.

01:04:19Guest:So we were always the first ones, always, every time.

01:04:22Marc:You drove the scooter over, you're sitting there with like four layers of clothing on it.

01:04:25Marc:It's like Monday night at the Comedy Store.

01:04:27Marc:You see people wearing chef's outfits and garbage bags.

01:04:30Marc:What the fuck is going on?

01:04:31Guest:And we'd get there at 9 o'clock and sit there in front of the troubadour till 6.

01:04:35Guest:Eating sunflower seeds.

01:04:37Guest:Eating sunflower seeds and working on bits and talking.

01:04:41Guest:And so we started to gain a following.

01:04:43Guest:We did it a bunch of times.

01:04:44Guest:And we started to gain a following.

01:04:45Guest:Some people were calling and asking.

01:04:47Guest:So reenters Danny Hutton from the Three Dog Night, the singer.

01:04:51Guest:Yeah.

01:04:51Guest:And we got with him when we first were there.

01:04:54Guest:He introduced us to his management team.

01:04:56Guest:We got signed to them.

01:04:58Guest:They didn't do shit for us except give us Coke every Monday.

01:05:02Guest:We were with Herbie Cohen for a minute.

01:05:04Guest:Herbie Cohen.

01:05:05Guest:No, we were never with Herbie Cohen because he wouldn't give us $200.

01:05:07Guest:Yeah.

01:05:08Guest:Oh, really?

01:05:09Guest:Shit.

01:05:10Guest:So we were always hustling.

01:05:12Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:05:13Guest:And so he arranged for Ted Templeman from Warner Brothers to come down.

01:05:17Guest:He was a big record producer.

01:05:19Guest:Come down and see us at the tubular.

01:05:21Guest:Randy Newman was there and Brian Wilson.

01:05:23Marc:The night you were there?

01:05:24Guest:This was like the sixth or seventh time we

01:05:27Marc:But it's just you guys now.

01:05:29Guest:No, it's that same.

01:05:29Guest:Still the Hootenanny Night.

01:05:30Guest:Still the Hootenanny Night.

01:05:31Guest:But they're coming out to see you?

01:05:32Guest:Yeah.

01:05:32Guest:Okay.

01:05:33Guest:Because he arranged it.

01:05:34Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:05:34Guest:And so we did that, went on, killed.

01:05:37Guest:And then this- Frank Zappa was there?

01:05:38Guest:Frank Zappa was there.

01:05:39Guest:Really?

01:05:40Guest:Yeah.

01:05:40Guest:He must have liked you.

01:05:41Guest:Steve Martin said he was in the audience the first night we ever performed.

01:05:44Guest:He came up and saw that.

01:05:45Guest:Because he used to play there, too.

01:05:46Guest:He was there, too.

01:05:47Marc:He opened for bands.

01:05:48Marc:A lot of the cats used to open for bands.

01:05:49Guest:Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

01:05:50Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:05:50Marc:Yeah, sure.

01:05:51Marc:Yeah.

01:05:51Marc:And he opened for, who was it, Melissa?

01:05:53Marc:I don't remember, but I know that, like, I've talked to a lot of dudes from your generation.

01:05:57Marc:That was the gig, man.

01:05:58Marc:That was the gig.

01:05:59Guest:That was it.

01:05:59Marc:There was no comedy club.

01:06:01Marc:No.

01:06:01Marc:So, okay, so all these cats come down.

01:06:03Guest:Yeah.

01:06:03Guest:And so, after we finished the gig, we're out in front, basking in our glory there, and there's this girl, Melissa, Missy Montgomery, who was Dinah Shore's daughter.

01:06:12Guest:Okay.

01:06:13Guest:And she comes up, and she goes, and we knew her, because she was Danny Hutton's girlfriend at the time.

01:06:18Guest:And Danny Hutton's girl, she says,

01:06:19Guest:It was Danny's girlfriend.

01:06:22Guest:She says, Lou Adler was in the crowd, and he wanted me to send a notice.

01:06:29Guest:He saw you guys, and he would really love to talk to you.

01:06:31Guest:Oh, yeah, where?

01:06:32Guest:Well, his office is at A&M.

01:06:33Guest:He would like you to come tomorrow if you can.

01:06:35Guest:And he's a huge record guy.

01:06:38Guest:He was the biggest.

01:06:38Guest:And he's still around, right?

01:06:40Guest:He hangs out with Nicholson.

01:06:41Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:06:41Guest:We just inducted him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a couple weeks ago.

01:06:45Guest:And so I told Thomas, hey, Lou Adler.

01:06:47Guest:Who's Lou Adler?

01:06:48Guest:He didn't have a clue.

01:06:49Guest:But I knew because I was a record reviewer.

01:06:52Yeah.

01:06:52Guest:so so we go to his office and he goes and he was from east l.a yeah and so he got what we were doing right away and so he says well what do you guys want to do we look at gold records make a record yeah what kind a gold one and you did right we signed us up in the office right there and we started to work on our album

01:07:11Marc:So when you guys define the roles, though, I mean, you were doing character stuff.

01:07:15Marc:I mean, there was definitely a point where, you know, you played a lot of the hippie kind of doofus dude and you were the sort of aggravated Chicano dude.

01:07:24Marc:I mean, that became sort of the through line of the whole thing.

01:07:26Guest:Yeah, yeah, exactly.

01:07:27Marc:And did that just evolve naturally or were those the ones that were hitting because there was such a sort of separation of the two tones or what?

01:07:34Guest:yeah it was it was what uh the audience yeah you know we do a bit in the the hippie and the lowrider yeah yeah we're there we're the stars we're the stars sure because i mean as long as we did those bits yeah you know then everything else yeah it was okay it was the audience yeah

01:07:53Marc:So the first record, what was the life of it?

01:07:57Marc:So you guys put this out.

01:07:58Marc:It's 1971, so there's no comedy store.

01:08:02Guest:There's no nothing.

01:08:02Guest:There's no comedy records.

01:08:04Guest:They're just going to start coming out with us.

01:08:07Marc:Well, there's the older ones.

01:08:08Guest:There was before from the 50s and early 60s.

01:08:11Guest:The very first bit we ever did became a viral hit.

01:08:15Guest:Which one?

01:08:16Guest:Dave's Not Here.

01:08:17Guest:That's fucking...

01:08:19Guest:That was the one.

01:08:20Guest:That was the very first thing we'd ever rehearsed.

01:08:22Guest:Very first record.

01:08:23Guest:We never rehearsed it.

01:08:25Guest:Yeah.

01:08:25Guest:Well, we just did it.

01:08:27Guest:What do you mean?

01:08:28Marc:So you were in the studio and that's where Dave came from?

01:08:30Marc:It was just a riff?

01:08:31Guest:Yeah.

01:08:32Marc:Well, no.

01:08:33Guest:Tell him the story.

01:08:34Guest:He was locked outside the studio.

01:08:36Guest:It's an A&M.

01:08:37Guest:It was hot.

01:08:38Guest:It was in the middle of the afternoon.

01:08:39Guest:That's what really happened?

01:08:40Guest:And he's knocking on the door.

01:08:43Guest:And I couldn't figure out if I had a little tape recorder.

01:08:45Guest:I was trying to figure out if it was recording or not.

01:08:47Guest:Yeah.

01:08:48Guest:And every time he'd knock, I'd look at the door.

01:08:50Guest:And then I'd look back at the tape recorder and the needle wasn't moving.

01:08:55Guest:So I was kind of stunned looking at it.

01:08:58Guest:And then I heard him in his voice.

01:09:00Guest:You know, I'd say, who is it?

01:09:01Guest:And he goes, it's me, man.

01:09:03Guest:Let me in, you know.

01:09:04Guest:And I heard he was annoyed.

01:09:05Guest:Because that wasn't supposed to be the bit.

01:09:07Guest:He was working on another bit.

01:09:09Guest:He said, go out and knock on the door, and then I'll come in and we'll do this other bit.

01:09:13Guest:So he kept knocking on the door, and I kept thinking.

01:09:17Guest:And then I started fucking with him.

01:09:19Guest:Who is it?

01:09:19Guest:And he goes,

01:09:20Guest:It's me, man.

01:09:22Guest:Come on, open up.

01:09:23Guest:And I just waited.

01:09:24Guest:I waited.

01:09:25Guest:And then finally he knocked again.

01:09:26Guest:I said, who is it?

01:09:29Guest:And he goes, it's me, Dave.

01:09:31Guest:I just made up Dave on the spot.

01:09:33Guest:Dave, you know.

01:09:34Guest:So then I said, Dave's not here.

01:09:36Guest:and then he's laughing and it's fucking hot out there and it's like a hundred I'm wearing a long coat and a hat and everybody on the A&M lot is walking by looking at this fucking guy knocking on this door and they're always wondering who are these guys anyways I see them around who are they oh man I finally opened the door and he was pissed he's throwing shit and I said listen listen listen I played it back

01:10:05Guest:And we literally played it over and over again for about an hour.

01:10:09Guest:Oh, God, just laughing more every time we heard it.

01:10:12Guest:Because it was so stupid.

01:10:13Guest:The timing of it was just like from the mountain.

01:10:18Guest:And then we played it for Lou.

01:10:21Guest:And that night, I don't know how he did it, but he had every record, every radio station across America, you woke up to...

01:10:31Guest:Who is it?

01:10:32Guest:And the DJs would say, we're going to play Dave's Nut here in another half hour.

01:10:39Guest:People couldn't get enough of it.

01:10:40Guest:We were trying to figure out during this process of how to convert our stage act into a record.

01:10:45Guest:And so some things transferred and some things didn't.

01:10:49Guest:So we started in that process learning how to make stuff that sounded funny, that you didn't have to see them.

01:10:55Marc:And also you could use the sounds, like you could use traffic noise or whatever.

01:11:00Guest:It was a multi-track studio with 8-track, and then 12, and then 24.

01:11:05Guest:Oh, God.

01:11:06Guest:And the first time we recorded it, it was in a big studio.

01:11:11Guest:Lou's there, and he's got everybody around him.

01:11:15Guest:He's got his engineers.

01:11:16Guest:He's ready to go.

01:11:17Guest:And we walk in there.

01:11:20Guest:We've recorded the first one.

01:11:21Guest:One take, or two takes.

01:11:23Guest:It was done.

01:11:25Guest:OK, what else you got?

01:11:26Guest:And we looked at each other.

01:11:28Guest:Oh, well, let's do Blind.

01:11:30Guest:Yeah.

01:11:31Guest:We'll do Blind Melon.

01:11:32Guest:Yeah.

01:11:32Guest:And so I'm out there, you know, dark glasses and Cheech's in the thing.

01:11:39Guest:And we decided that Cheech is going to be the producer, record producer.

01:11:44Guest:Right, right.

01:11:45Guest:But Lou wants to be the producer.

01:11:48Guest:Yeah.

01:11:48Guest:And I'm out there kind of muttering to myself, trying to figure out what to say.

01:11:55Guest:Lou says, should I record that, Tom?

01:11:58Guest:I said, no, no, no, I'm just muttering here.

01:12:02Guest:And finally, we did the bit, and then finally Cheech and I, we said, you know, we don't need all this.

01:12:08Guest:In fact, all we need is a little mixed-down room and an engineer.

01:12:13Guest:Yeah, so that's what we did.

01:12:14Guest:And Lou said, okay, fine.

01:12:16Guest:Lou loved it.

01:12:17Guest:So from that point on, we just went into this little mix-down room with me and Tommy and our engineer, Norm Kinney, and we figured it out.

01:12:25Guest:We started making it up.

01:12:28Guest:So you just ripped it.

01:12:28Guest:You just kind of put it together.

01:12:29Guest:We'd come down with a little idea.

01:12:31Guest:Okay, you be this guy and you be this guy, and we're in this situation.

01:12:33Guest:We started going.

01:12:35Guest:And then, OK, that was good.

01:12:36Guest:Let's change it this way.

01:12:37Guest:And then we got the basic track together, and we started adding sound effects.

01:12:42Guest:It must have been a blast.

01:12:43Guest:Then we'd send it to Lou.

01:12:44Guest:Lou would hear it every night.

01:12:46Guest:And then he'd give me his notes, either the next day or on the phone.

01:12:52Guest:And his notes were mostly, that's good.

01:12:56Guest:How about more?

01:12:57Guest:A little more.

01:12:58Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:12:59Guest:A little more.

01:12:59Guest:And it was cool because we were just, our influences, I mean, we were like radio theater.

01:13:05Guest:Yeah.

01:13:06Guest:And I was really into this guy named Ken Nordean.

01:13:08Guest:And he had this series of records called Word Jazz.

01:13:12Guest:I would always listen to those records.

01:13:14Guest:So it was kind of that influence.

01:13:15Guest:Tommy, he had heard Ken Nordean before.

01:13:17Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:13:18Guest:And so I said, let's do it this way, man.

01:13:20Guest:And he had atmosphere.

01:13:21Guest:And so we just started making it up.

01:13:24Marc:And how much drugs were you doing then?

01:13:26Marc:Not a lot.

01:13:27Marc:Not a lot?

01:13:27Marc:A little joint.

01:13:28Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:13:29Guest:The joint would always... We would get to the studio, and we'd look at each other.

01:13:33Guest:You hungry?

01:13:34Guest:Yeah.

01:13:35Guest:Okay.

01:13:35Guest:So we'd go eat.

01:13:37Guest:Then we'd come back, and one of us would have to go to the bathroom.

01:13:40Guest:Right.

01:13:40Guest:And then somewhere in there, we'd say, hey, I got an idea.

01:13:44Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:13:44Guest:But you were through the acid tunnel.

01:13:46Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:13:48Guest:And we were through the cocaine tunnel, too.

01:13:50Guest:We did...

01:13:51Guest:I did ask it, I think, after we started performing.

01:13:55Guest:Because the minute we got the record out, boom, we were put on the road right away.

01:14:01Marc:I listened to Dave's out here yesterday on vinyl.

01:14:04Marc:I got the vinyl in there.

01:14:06Marc:Oh, bless you.

01:14:07Marc:Because I'm like, they're coming over tomorrow.

01:14:09Marc:Because I got to rejigger my brain.

01:14:11Marc:Because me and my brother used to sit down in the basement with that little flip-top record player.

01:14:16Marc:But we listened to Los Trochinos.

01:14:17Marc:For some reason, that was the first one I had, Los Trochinos.

01:14:20Marc:I think, is dog shit on that one?

01:14:22Guest:I can't remember.

01:14:22Guest:It might be.

01:14:23Marc:Yeah, yeah.

01:14:24Marc:Chabornik.

01:14:25Marc:Chabornik.

01:14:26Marc:And Sergeant Stodanko.

01:14:27Marc:Yeah, it was, yeah, I think it was Los Cochinos.

01:14:30Marc:Los Cochinos, yeah.

01:14:31Marc:That's your Grammy, right?

01:14:34Marc:You got a Grammy for... No, wedding album.

01:14:36Marc:The wedding album I got in there.

01:14:37Marc:I got Big Bamboo in there.

01:14:39Marc:Let's see, let's see.

01:14:40Marc:Yeah, Sergeant Stodanko, Los Cochinos, Sergeant Stodanko, Peter Ruder, Up His Nose.

01:14:45Marc:Up His Nose.

01:14:47Marc:Everybody loves that, man.

01:14:48Marc:Well, that's so, I mean, because, you know, if you're high or you're nine, you know what I mean?

01:14:55Marc:You've got, you know, you could appeal to five-year-old all the way up to a stone 30-year-old.

01:15:00Guest:You know, that's the beauty of Chichichang, and I don't know how it happens.

01:15:03Guest:It just happens that it's five-year-olds or the head of the philosophy department at the University of Montreal.

01:15:08Guest:Yeah, right.

01:15:09Guest:It's the same nerve.

01:15:11Guest:Yeah, it's the same nerve.

01:15:12Marc:It hits the same nerve.

01:15:13Marc:All right, so did Adler produce all those records?

01:15:16Marc:No.

01:15:16Marc:And so all the way through, you did, let's see, how many records was it total?

01:15:22Guest:Six, I believe.

01:15:22Marc:I think nine.

01:15:24Marc:so all the way up through that sweeping beauty up in smoke but that's a that's a soundtrack that's a soundtrack so one two three four five and then he did let's make a dope deal yep 1980 six and greatest hits and then get out of my room eight well get out of my room was the only one lou never produced right it was after we left so all these albums became you know pretty gold records right

01:15:47Marc:So you guys were the hottest comedy thing.

01:15:49Marc:Because I'm looking at that.

01:15:50Marc:1971, the first Cheech and Chong.

01:15:52Marc:I don't think Class Clown comes out until 72, right?

01:15:55Guest:Yeah.

01:15:55Guest:We were the first ones.

01:15:56Guest:And then it was us and Carlin and Lily Tomlin.

01:15:58Guest:Right.

01:15:59Guest:And Richard Pryor started making records then.

01:16:02Marc:Now, what was your history at the comedy store?

01:16:05Marc:We never went to the comedy store.

01:16:06Marc:Why, she got a picture of you up there.

01:16:08Guest:Oh, eventually.

01:16:08Guest:No, after when we had Up and Smoked the movie.

01:16:11Guest:Yeah.

01:16:11Guest:We went back to do a... We had split with Adler, and we were looking for work, really.

01:16:17Guest:So you're doing the main room over there?

01:16:18Guest:And so we did a week.

01:16:20Guest:We did a week.

01:16:21Guest:Okay, okay.

01:16:22Marc:So you never had to deal with the thing over there.

01:16:25Marc:But you knew Pryor, right?

01:16:26Guest:Yeah, I knew Pryor from... I was always a big fan.

01:16:30Guest:But I knew Pryor from Vancouver when I was writing for this magazine called Poppin'.

01:16:35Guest:And they said, Richard Pryor is at the cave or Izzy's.

01:16:38Guest:He was at Izzy's.

01:16:39Guest:There's two nightclubs, one cave in Izzy's.

01:16:41Guest:He says, go on and interview him.

01:16:43Guest:So I go, okay.

01:16:44Guest:So I go down and see his show, and he gets fired the next day for saying something that he didn't want to hear.

01:16:49Guest:And so I go to visit him in his hotel room in Vancouver, and he was cool.

01:16:54Guest:He was in bed.

01:16:55Guest:He just finished fucking some chick.

01:16:57Guest:He was sitting over there.

01:16:58Guest:And I started...

01:16:59Guest:interviewing him.

01:17:00Guest:And he was really into the interview.

01:17:02Guest:He talked about this and that.

01:17:03Guest:And he said, hey, well, thank you very much.

01:17:04Guest:And we printed the interview.

01:17:06Guest:You couldn't find it.

01:17:07Guest:And remember he was playing at the Bitter End West?

01:17:12Guest:I was down there almost every day.

01:17:13Guest:We both were.

01:17:15Guest:He played at the Bitter End West.

01:17:18Guest:And with Bo Diddley.

01:17:19Guest:Yeah.

01:17:20Guest:Bo Diddley was opening for him.

01:17:22Guest:And the bass player was J.D.

01:17:24Guest:Souther and the drummer.

01:17:25Guest:No, J.D.

01:17:26Guest:Souther was the drummer and the bass player was Glenn Frey of the Eagles.

01:17:29Guest:And we saw him every day.

01:17:30Guest:Hey, remember me?

01:17:31Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:17:32Guest:Well, I got a comedy team.

01:17:34Guest:Oh, yeah, that's good.

01:17:35Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:17:36Guest:really really nice man i got a message from him one time from when i put out born in east l.a oh yeah yeah and he calls me i wasn't there at the house but he leaves this message i was oh man i went to see this movie i didn't i didn't really expect much but i really dug it it was really cool man you know richard let's get together yeah yeah and then he died you know

01:17:56Marc:Okay, so now you hit the road on the first record, and that's full on, right?

01:18:03Marc:Yeah.

01:18:03Marc:And you had to figure it out.

01:18:04Marc:How are you going to make those sounds?

01:18:05Marc:How are you going to make all that shit?

01:18:06Marc:No, no, we had a live act.

01:18:07Marc:We had a stage act first.

01:18:09Guest:We always had a stage act.

01:18:10Guest:We never even attempted to do the records.

01:18:13Guest:Oh, but I mean, when you were expected to do Dave's Not Here.

01:18:16Guest:Well, not really.

01:18:17Guest:No, no.

01:18:18Guest:We just started doing it lately.

01:18:20Guest:We did it one time.

01:18:22Guest:Like recently?

01:18:23Guest:We did it one time at the Roxy.

01:18:25Guest:No, it wasn't at the Roxy.

01:18:26Guest:It was at the Bitter End East.

01:18:28Guest:That we did Dave's Not Here.

01:18:29Guest:We tried it.

01:18:30Guest:In the dark.

01:18:31Guest:In the dark, yeah.

01:18:32Guest:and it wasn't that great well they didn't know it yet because that album was just out yeah yeah and so so we we we never even we we separated we had a stage act we right we had a record right right so you weren't too hung up on you know the sound effects no not at all and people dug it oh yeah yeah and then all right but basketball jones was big too right and you did you get a ban for that uh

01:18:58Guest:Well, Lou Adler would do the music, and he'd pull in Fabers out of his hat.

01:19:04Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:19:04Guest:The guys that were in the next studio was like George Harrison.

01:19:06Guest:Hey, George, come here.

01:19:09Guest:Who played on it?

01:19:10Guest:George Harrison.

01:19:11Guest:George Harrison played on basketball.

01:19:13Guest:Yeah, he's at the lead guitar.

01:19:14Guest:Yeah, George Harrison.

01:19:15Guest:Yeah, he did the intro.

01:19:17Guest:Intro, Tom Scott.

01:19:19Guest:Oh, those are nice girls.

01:19:20Guest:I'll have to knit those.

01:19:22Guest:Yeah.

01:19:22Guest:Cheryl King comes over to play piano and goes, those aren't the chords to Love Jones.

01:19:30LAUGHTER

01:19:31Marc:That's hilarious.

01:19:32Guest:That's unbelievable.

01:19:33Marc:And you're just meeting all those guys.

01:19:34Marc:No, we knew.

01:19:35Guest:Yeah, well, no, they were always in the studio hanging out.

01:19:38Guest:And George Harrison had a record company there, Dark Horse, at the A&M Lot, so we hung with him all the time.

01:19:43Guest:Oh, really?

01:19:44Guest:Good guy?

01:19:44Guest:Yeah, it was good.

01:19:45Marc:Got good weed, you know?

01:19:47Marc:Beetleweed.

01:19:48Marc:Beetleweed?

01:19:49Marc:Yeah.

01:19:50Marc:All right, so you do the movie.

01:19:51Marc:The first movie was amazing.

01:19:53Marc:The best line in that movie, though, for me, you just took more acid than anyone I've ever seen.

01:19:58Marc:What are you doing for the next month?

01:20:00Yeah.

01:20:01Guest:I hope you're not busy for the... Well, that was part of our stage act.

01:20:04Guest:So we were trying to figure out how to... Now we had to reconvert the stage act to movies.

01:20:08Guest:Oh, boy.

01:20:09Guest:And so we had to make up... That was funny, man.

01:20:11Guest:It was the same process as the records.

01:20:12Guest:Okay, we had some things were going to work and some things we just had to make up for.

01:20:16Guest:Sure.

01:20:16Guest:But once we got to movies, that was it for me.

01:20:19Guest:I mean, I was like, this is the guitar.

01:20:21Guest:Yeah.

01:20:21Guest:We should be playing this guitar all the time.

01:20:23Guest:The movies.

01:20:23Guest:This is what we do...

01:20:24Guest:We're great on this one because it uses everything we could do.

01:20:28Guest:And you guys were fucking huge.

01:20:29Guest:No one was bigger than you.

01:20:31Guest:Yeah.

01:20:31Guest:I remember that time.

01:20:33Guest:But it was funny because we came out with a record and then the records went.

01:20:37Guest:And it was stage act.

01:20:38Guest:We're always working stage.

01:20:39Guest:We had a big concert.

01:20:40Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:20:41Guest:And then after a while, it was sixth, seventh album.

01:20:44Guest:It started going down.

01:20:45Guest:And just as it started getting a little seedy, we got into the movies.

01:20:49Guest:And then.

01:20:50Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:20:51Guest:Yeah.

01:20:52Guest:And then the movie.

01:20:52Guest:Well, we didn't want to do Australia.

01:20:54Guest:We had done Australia three times, and I said, I don't want to go back.

01:20:59Guest:You don't want to end up there.

01:21:01Guest:No, what happens is that you lose summer.

01:21:03Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:21:03Guest:So you're there for their winter, and then you're back here for our winter, and then you're there for their winter, and you're back here for our winter.

01:21:11Guest:We lost three summers.

01:21:13Marc:So you didn't want to have to do Australia.

01:21:15Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:21:16Guest:Yeah.

01:21:17Guest:But we had to be on the road because we hadn't been making money because we were broken up with Adler, and that was costing us a lot of money in lawsuits.

01:21:23Guest:Yeah.

01:21:23Marc:Really?

01:21:24Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:21:25Marc:What do you mean?

01:21:27Marc:You couldn't just say we're done?

01:21:28Marc:How many more records did you have on contract?

01:21:31Guest:No, it was the movies that we were signed for, like, six, seven movies.

01:21:37Guest:So he came after you?

01:21:38Guest:No, he didn't want to.

01:21:39Guest:No, no, we...

01:21:40Guest:We... Well, it's really confidential.

01:21:44Guest:Okay.

01:21:44Guest:That's fine.

01:21:45Guest:It was just a lot of shit.

01:21:46Guest:We broke up.

01:21:47Guest:A lot of shit that happened.

01:21:48Guest:You and Adler broke up.

01:21:49Guest:And we're back together.

01:21:50Guest:We're back with Adler.

01:21:51Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:21:52Marc:We're back with Adler.

01:21:53Marc:So what happened with you guys, though?

01:21:54Marc:Because was that volatile?

01:21:56Marc:Was that like... Yeah.

01:21:58Yeah.

01:21:58Marc:It always was.

01:21:59Marc:We're always arguing.

01:22:00Marc:But no, but how did you end up, like, how did it end up stopping?

01:22:03Marc:I mean, what happened?

01:22:04Guest:Well, you know, we're not like best friends.

01:22:06Guest:Oh, you guys must be best friends.

01:22:07Guest:You know each other forever.

01:22:09Guest:We were brothers.

01:22:10Guest:So you can fight with your brother.

01:22:11Guest:Sure.

01:22:12Guest:You know, but he's still your brother.

01:22:13Guest:Sure.

01:22:13Guest:I mean, that's really the kind of connection we have, you know.

01:22:16Guest:Right, right, right.

01:22:17Guest:So it got, I don't know, you come to a point where you just don't want to hear what the other guy has to say, you know.

01:22:23Guest:Both of us, you know, kind of.

01:22:24Guest:Well, I think what happened is that Cheech got divorced and I was part of the divorce settlement.

01:22:31Guest:Okay, you get Chong.

01:22:35Guest:And I get the house.

01:22:37Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:22:37Guest:Okay, that's a good deal.

01:22:39Marc:So when you guys broke up, though, or whenever you had the fight, or where you stopped working together, was it like, we're not talking to each other?

01:22:47Guest:Yeah, kind of.

01:22:48Marc:And you started doing TV?

01:22:49Marc:Is that about the time?

01:22:50Marc:I did another movie.

01:22:51Marc:I did Born in East LA.

01:22:52Marc:Right.

01:22:53Guest:Because I had done the record.

01:22:55Guest:Sure, sure.

01:22:56Guest:Is that what pissed you off or no?

01:22:58Guest:Yeah.

01:22:59Guest:Yeah, totally.

01:23:01Guest:Because we had done everything else.

01:23:03Guest:I directed all the other movies.

01:23:08Guest:And I thought we had a deal.

01:23:10Guest:I thought we had a thing going.

01:23:13Guest:And then Cheech came to me and he said, I got an offer to do another movie.

01:23:17Guest:I'm going to do it.

01:23:20Guest:Fuck you.

01:23:21Guest:See you later.

01:23:22Marc:See you later.

01:23:22Guest:Okay, I'll see you.

01:23:24Guest:all right so you do that you do tv and when did you guys uh you know what was he uh how'd you guys make up well we tried before before that timing was off you know there was a time when when she uh we we almost got back together a couple of times yeah but i was going in another direction at the time and he was going to

01:23:46Guest:Then we never really rushed.

01:23:49Guest:You mean you were becoming an activist more?

01:23:51Guest:No, no.

01:23:53Guest:First of all, it took me a couple of years sitting around trying to figure out what I wanted to do.

01:23:58Guest:I put a band together for a minute.

01:24:00Guest:I sure didn't want to do that.

01:24:02Guest:Then I started doing stand-up.

01:24:05Marc:I remember you were touring.

01:24:06Guest:I used to do the same clubs as you do.

01:24:08Guest:I started Dennis Miller.

01:24:09Guest:I was in Vancouver in 1991 for New Year's.

01:24:13Guest:Yeah.

01:24:14Guest:And I happened to be at the same club as Dennis Miller.

01:24:19Guest:And I said, what you up to?

01:24:20Guest:And he said, well, you know, I'm doing stand-up.

01:24:22Guest:I'm working tomorrow at this club.

01:24:25Guest:And I said, oh, I'll come down and see you.

01:24:27Guest:So I went down, and he's a real funny little guy.

01:24:32Guest:He's in the dressing room, and he's kind of pacing back and forth.

01:24:35Guest:And he said to me, he says, so I went backstage.

01:24:37Guest:And he said to me, he says, do you get nervous before you go on?

01:24:42Guest:And I hadn't been on for about five, six years on stage.

01:24:47Guest:Alone?

01:24:48Guest:Yeah.

01:24:49Guest:And I says, no.

01:24:51Guest:I kind of smiled at him.

01:24:53Guest:And then he had to be alone.

01:24:56Guest:So then I sit in the audience, and he gets on stage, and he's doing the singing.

01:25:01Guest:And he started doing kind of like Cheech and Chong kind of dope things.

01:25:06Guest:And halfway through, he goes, what am I doing?

01:25:09Guest:Yeah.

01:25:09Guest:He was so out of his realm, you know.

01:25:14Guest:And I just watched him.

01:25:15Guest:And I just, I said, I got to do this.

01:25:19Guest:I got to do this.

01:25:20Guest:I got to get that mic.

01:25:21Guest:I got to get on stage.

01:25:22Guest:I got to do it.

01:25:23Guest:And so I think as soon as I got back to L.A., I started.

01:25:28Guest:I went on, the first time I went on stage was a night after Rodney King got beat.

01:25:34Guest:And that was my first bit.

01:25:35Guest:I had my little sports jacket on.

01:25:37Guest:You know, I get on stage.

01:25:39Guest:And I started doing a bit about Rodney King, the mothers of the cops.

01:25:45Guest:I'm excited that their son's on TV.

01:25:50Guest:And halfway through my bit, some guy goes, hey, where's Cheech?

01:25:55Guest:And I looked down at him and I said, oh, I got work to do.

01:26:01Guest:And so then the next night, I think it was the next night, I got five minutes at the Laugh Action and Kennison heard that I was on stage and he was a big fan.

01:26:13Guest:Oh, and right away, you know, I mean, he took over.

01:26:17Guest:And there's a guy on stage.

01:26:19Guest:People just quit looking at him.

01:26:20Guest:They're looking around.

01:26:21Guest:And I says, is you going to do some times then?

01:26:24Guest:He says, for you, I'll do it.

01:26:25Guest:I'll do it.

01:26:25Guest:He gets on stage and he gets up there and people start leaving.

01:26:30Guest:Hey, don't walk out on me, you cunt, you whore, you bitch, you pussy.

01:26:34Yeah.

01:26:35Guest:But Kennison and I ended up working some gigs together.

01:26:38Guest:We did a New Year's Eve gig together, and we did a... And he wanted to go out to Screech and Chong.

01:26:43Guest:Screech and Chong.

01:26:46Marc:Yeah.

01:26:46Marc:But was it... When you were doing solo, did you miss him?

01:26:50Marc:Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.

01:26:52Guest:I would phone him sometimes from the stage.

01:26:54Guest:Phone the stage, yeah.

01:26:55Guest:So you guys started to get along again that way?

01:26:57Guest:No, not really.

01:26:59Guest:He wasn't that thrilled to hear me.

01:27:02Marc:I'm on stage right now, man.

01:27:04Guest:We'd sit there and listen to him in bed.

01:27:07Guest:My wife and I would come on the phone and they would be recording.

01:27:12Guest:The first couple times I got up and answered, hey, how you doing?

01:27:15Guest:Hey, man, hi, hey, how you doing?

01:27:17Guest:And so then he kept recalling, no, we're not going to do it.

01:27:20Guest:The audience would say, say hi to Cheech, everybody.

01:27:24Guest:Hi, Cheech.

01:27:24Guest:So you hear that on the machine?

01:27:26Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:27:27Guest:My wife and I would be laying in bed.

01:27:29Guest:Because it was, you know, like 12 o'clock at night.

01:27:32Guest:Then I just went on the road.

01:27:34Guest:Then I got...

01:27:35Marc:i didn't like being alone yeah you know you're so vulnerable you know because you get people hey come on i'm gonna take you oh yeah no yeah you're in the trailer you got yeah you got no choice you know and i stayed at the comedy condo a few times and it was like it was hell but that must have been a pretty humbling experience to be you know as popular as you guys were i mean you know comedy superstars then you choose to do a solo because i remember when you were going around i'd go around i'd see you on the schedule

01:28:00Marc:And then you're back in that.

01:28:03Marc:I mean, you're probably at a place where you weren't since you were in music.

01:28:07Marc:Literally, like staying in the comedy condo with the other guy.

01:28:10Marc:I loved it.

01:28:12Marc:You did, but you didn't like being alone.

01:28:14Guest:He liked prison.

01:28:15Guest:I knew he'd be fine.

01:28:16Guest:I loved every minute of it.

01:28:19Guest:I just didn't like being vulnerable.

01:28:21Guest:And so then I got a gig in Guam.

01:28:25Guest:So I told my wife, I said, come on, let's go.

01:28:28Guest:And she goes, I don't want to go.

01:28:29Guest:And I said, why not?

01:28:31Guest:She goes, I don't want to just sit there and wait for you.

01:28:34Guest:And so I said, well, how about if I put you in the show?

01:28:37Guest:and she's an actress yeah she her eyes lit up said okay yeah and that's why so i put it can i sing yeah yeah yeah and so she yeah she would sing up in smoke oh my god and was like it was like it was a struggle but the rest of the audience is singing along too so cheech i mean what was your feeling when he was going through this did you feel like oh man tommy's struggling or anything like that or

01:29:03Guest:No, I would hear about him doing gigs.

01:29:08Guest:But I was very busy doing other stuff and getting my whole trip together.

01:29:13Guest:And it was like after Born in East L.A., which was a hit and everything, I thought, well, I'm on my way.

01:29:19Guest:And then Universal came to me and put out Born in East L.A.

01:29:23Guest:and says, oh, we really love what you're doing.

01:29:25Guest:And we want you to be part of this family and blah, blah, blah.

01:29:28Guest:And we really understand.

01:29:29Guest:I said, well, already I got this other idea that you're here with us.

01:29:31Guest:No, we want you to do this movie with you and a dog.

01:29:34Guest:That's not what I did.

01:29:35Guest:I was supposed to be Woody Allen, not me and a dog.

01:29:37Guest:Yeah.

01:29:39Guest:And so I turned it down and then.

01:29:41Guest:Oh, really?

01:29:41Guest:And then another.

01:29:42Guest:So I had to get some other gig.

01:29:45Guest:You know, in Hollywood, you go start to develop stuff.

01:29:47Guest:Yeah.

01:29:48Guest:And it takes a long time to develop it.

01:29:49Guest:And you go down blind alleys.

01:29:51Guest:Yeah.

01:29:51Guest:And then it stops.

01:29:53Guest:And you go, oh, fuck, I got to walk all the way back.

01:29:55Guest:Yeah.

01:29:55Guest:And a year has gone by.

01:29:57Guest:Right.

01:29:58Guest:And so a year has gone by.

01:29:59Guest:And then I did a couple gigs, different gigs.

01:30:02Guest:And then I wasn't working.

01:30:04Guest:Yeah.

01:30:04Guest:And then I wasn't working for a little.

01:30:06Guest:And I was like, yeah, fuck, man.

01:30:09Guest:Then I started getting movies in a row.

01:30:12Guest:Yeah.

01:30:13Guest:The golf movie.

01:30:15Guest:No, this was before that.

01:30:16Guest:I started working with Robert Rodriguez.

01:30:18Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:30:19Guest:Because he was a fan.

01:30:20Guest:And I met him when he first came to town.

01:30:23Guest:They said, I'm this young movie maker.

01:30:25Guest:I want you to be in my movie.

01:30:26Guest:He said, well, when you get a budget, give me a call.

01:30:30Guest:He gives me a call and says, I want you to be in this movie, Desperado.

01:30:32Guest:Come on down.

01:30:34Guest:I was in a movie, Desperado, and then I did another movie that he wrote but didn't direct it called The Great White Hype.

01:30:43Guest:Ron Shelton wrote it, but who did it?

01:30:47Guest:Oh, Reggie Hudlin directed it.

01:30:51Guest:And then...

01:30:53Guest:I got Tin Cup, which Ron Shelton wrote and directed.

01:30:57Guest:Like, oh, wow.

01:30:59Guest:Boom.

01:30:59Guest:And then, oh, and it made a big movie.

01:31:01Guest:It was a big hit.

01:31:02Guest:Oh, this is great.

01:31:02Guest:And then Don Johnson, I hadn't known him for a long time.

01:31:07Guest:And he says, I'm doing this TV show.

01:31:08Guest:I want you to be in it.

01:31:09Guest:So I went from the set of Tin Cup to the set of Nash Bridges.

01:31:13Marc:And I was there for the next six years.

01:31:14Marc:it's interesting though you get this opportunity as being a big comedy force because i mean kennison ran into the same trouble they're like yeah we want you to do a dog movie and then then kennison had that opportunity to be nanook with some goof movie that he blew and that was he's like fuck it and that was the end of his movie thing too that you don't want to sell it you know you got a limit the thing in movies is that i don't care who you are i don't care who you're fucking spiel

01:31:37Guest:Yeah.

01:31:38Guest:You have to reinvent the wheel every single time.

01:31:41Guest:Yeah.

01:31:41Guest:And they come in, you know, all these great directors at the end of their career, they can't get any movie finance, Kurosawa or Francis Ford Coppola or anything, because, you know, that's not what the kids are buying today.

01:31:51Guest:Right.

01:31:52Guest:Can you be in on a spaceship?

01:31:53Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:31:54Guest:Can the Godfather on outer space?

01:31:55Guest:How about that?

01:31:56Guest:You know?

01:31:57Marc:And, you know, so it's always a struggle to.

01:32:01Marc:So you were just after, both of you, after everything that happened in your lives, you ended up just sort of, you know, working.

01:32:06Marc:Yeah.

01:32:07Marc:And then you opened up the business that got you into trouble.

01:32:10Marc:When did that happen?

01:32:11Guest:It was a long business.

01:32:12Guest:Well, it was actually my son's business.

01:32:14Guest:I was just a front man.

01:32:16Guest:I was just a pitcher.

01:32:17Marc:And you ended up taking a hit because you made an example of it.

01:32:22Guest:They wanted to make it.

01:32:24Guest:They needed a name.

01:32:25Marc:That's not the kind of marquee attention you want, right?

01:32:29Guest:Well, you know, it's funny.

01:32:30Guest:I was talking to the guy that did the documentary, Josh Gilbert.

01:32:36Guest:A week before I got busted, I told Josh, I need something to revitalize my career.

01:32:41Guest:Some gimmick.

01:32:42Guest:A week later, I got busted.

01:32:44Guest:That was it.

01:32:46Guest:That was the hook.

01:32:48Guest:And that's what did it.

01:32:49Guest:It revitalized my career.

01:32:50Guest:Gave me a whole 10 years of...

01:32:52Guest:How much time did you do?

01:32:55Guest:I did nine months.

01:32:56Guest:Was it bad?

01:32:57Marc:No, it was great.

01:32:58Marc:Yeah, people like you in prison?

01:32:59Marc:He went to Camp Cupcake.

01:33:01Guest:Did he?

01:33:01Guest:It was federal prison, but it wasn't a... It was a retreat, really.

01:33:07Guest:So you got in shape?

01:33:08Guest:I spent more time in the sweat lodge and...

01:33:11Guest:Oh, really?

01:33:12Guest:And you talk about pottery.

01:33:14Guest:The head of the gardener found a big chunk of clay, and they built a little station for me out in the garden.

01:33:24Guest:Yeah.

01:33:24Guest:And I'd go out there every day and just play in the clay and make bongs.

01:33:28Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:33:28Marc:Were you guys in touch when he was in prison?

01:33:31Guest:Yeah.

01:33:31Guest:Well, we were working on a movie before he gets busted because periodically we would try to redo the thing and then we'd always come arguing and, ah, fuck you, fuck you.

01:33:41Guest:And so we were working on a movie right when he got busted.

01:33:45Guest:He says, I got to go away for a little while.

01:33:46Guest:I'm going to go on vacation.

01:33:47Marc:Yeah.

01:33:48Guest:Where are you, one of the Bahamas?

01:33:49Guest:No, Taft.

01:33:50Guest:Yeah.

01:33:50Guest:And so he went to Taft.

01:33:53Guest:And so I go to visit him and waiting for him to get out.

01:33:59Marc:So where are we at now with you guys?

01:34:02Marc:What are you up to?

01:34:04Guest:We're working on our live show with War.

01:34:07Guest:And Tower of Power.

01:34:08Guest:We just started doing a bunch of dance.

01:34:10Guest:It's quite great.

01:34:10Guest:We just played the Greek Saturday night.

01:34:12Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:34:13Guest:We got tremendous reviews.

01:34:15Guest:Everything's good.

01:34:16Guest:It's almost like a...

01:34:17Guest:a play yeah yeah because we integrate with the bands yeah yeah we do bits with them both of them uh-huh and our bits in between and the great thing about it is that because you have so many people you can you only have time for your greatest hits sure sure and so so you don't have to sit through a lot of bullshit that's great man and you're doing a new record or no

01:34:37Guest:No, we haven't.

01:34:38Guest:Not really.

01:34:39Guest:Not really thought about it.

01:34:40Guest:We'll probably do a TV show maybe.

01:34:41Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:34:42Guest:We're looking at, we've got a few options.

01:34:44Guest:There might be a documentary.

01:34:46Guest:Okay.

01:34:46Guest:I think what's evolving now is that there's a few things that we can't do again, which is you can't be yelling again.

01:34:57Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:34:58Guest:You can't do it the first time again.

01:35:00Guest:You can only do that three times.

01:35:01Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:35:03Guest:And the great thing about Cheech and Chong is that every time we break new ground, like we did just now with Tower of Power.

01:35:16Guest:That's a great show.

01:35:18Guest:I mean, everybody is there.

01:35:19Guest:We're playing like 6,000, 7,000, 5,000 seats.

01:35:23Guest:I'm packing them, selling them out.

01:35:24Guest:And it's great.

01:35:26Guest:And people stay to the very end.

01:35:28Guest:And it's like unbelievable.

01:35:31Marc:That's a blast.

01:35:32Marc:So you guys are working.

01:35:33Marc:You're having a good time.

01:35:34Guest:You're in good health.

01:35:35Marc:And we're looking at projects, you know.

01:35:37Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:35:38Guest:But we're looking at them with...

01:35:40Guest:without any desperation.

01:35:42Marc:We've got to really want to do it, and the right one will come along.

01:35:45Marc:And you've got wisdom now, and you guys are back on track.

01:35:47Marc:You seem to be getting along.

01:35:49Guest:Yeah.

01:35:49Marc:Well, it's great.

01:35:50Marc:It was an honor to talk to you.

01:35:51Marc:Our pleasure.

01:35:51Marc:Yeah, I'm hungry.

01:35:53Marc:All right.

01:35:53Marc:I know some Mexican places.

01:35:54Marc:Okay.

01:35:55Marc:Okay, then.

01:35:56Marc:Take care.

01:36:02Marc:How amazing was that?

01:36:04Marc:How amazing was Cheech and Chong?

01:36:06Marc:Huh?

01:36:07Marc:Did you even assume that story?

01:36:10Marc:Could you have even known that story?

01:36:13Marc:Huh?

01:36:14Marc:Could you?

01:36:15Marc:I don't think so.

01:36:16Marc:That was a spectacular treat for me to talk to those guys.

01:36:21Marc:I will be home on Monday.

01:36:23Marc:On Monday, I talk to David Sedaris.

01:36:26Marc:Next Thursday, I talk to Nick Cave.

01:36:31Marc:Go to WTF Pod for all your WTF Pod needs.

01:36:34Marc:I put the mug in the coffee deal up there.

01:36:35Marc:I had a potter.

01:36:37Marc:The guy who makes the mugs that I give to guests on the show made me a bunch, and I didn't even announce it, and they're already gone.

01:36:43Marc:So I'm making more of those for you.

01:36:45Marc:You can go look at them and get excited about them if you want.

01:36:48Marc:Leave a comment, kick in a few shekels, buy some merch, do what you got to do.

01:36:51Marc:Check the schedule, check the calendar.

01:36:54Marc:Check the episode guide.

01:36:56Marc:Do what you got to do.

01:36:59Marc:Oh, my God.

01:37:00Marc:I love Sudafed.

01:37:02Marc:Boomer lives!