Episode 871 - Loudon Wainwright III / Judd Apatow
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What the fuckadelics?
Marc:What the fucknicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Marc Maron.
Marc:Wow, did I just say my name weird?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my show, WTF.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Everybody okay?
Marc:Thanks for all the excited feedback about the James Franco episode.
Marc:Seems that people really dug it.
Marc:It was good.
Marc:Nice long one.
Marc:Dug in.
Marc:Did a lot of listening.
Marc:I've been doing a lot of listening lately.
Marc:More listening than I'm generally known for.
Marc:Usually I'm known for listening and interjecting.
Marc:Now I'm just experimenting with just listening.
Marc:We should all do some listening.
Marc:Anyway, there's actually a sign in my garage that says what people need is a good listening to.
Marc:Someone sent that to me.
Marc:It was a gift.
Marc:I took it as a gift and as a not a passive aggressive thing.
Marc:Super fan Amy years ago, I think, sent that to me.
Marc:I think it was her.
Marc:But yeah, so that's just up there.
Marc:And now I'm referring to it.
Marc:because at some point i'm gonna have to dismantle this shrine of listening here at the garage but not soon doesn't seem like it's going to be soon i'm here now i'm here in it i'm doing the show today on the show i'm going to talk to my old friend judd apatow he's got a special and loudon wainwright who also judd is used in movies they're not together two different talks but that's uh that's what's ahead that's what's ahead for you but first
Marc:Europe.
Marc:Hello, Europe.
Marc:I'm coming to see you this spring, Europe.
Marc:Monday, April 16th in London, England.
Marc:Thursday, April 19th in Stockholm, Sweden.
Marc:Sunday, April 22nd in Oslo, Norway.
Marc:Monday, April 23rd in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
Marc:And Thursday, April 26th in Dublin, Ireland.
Marc:It's my few parts of the world tour.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com and check out the tour page to get venue and ticket information.
Marc:All right?
Marc:I'm coming for a little while.
Marc:That is the tour I planned.
Marc:I want to go see some places.
Marc:I want to see the world before it burns.
Marc:I'd like to see some parts of the world before they're gone.
Marc:I'd like to get out and enjoy my life now that I've worked so hard all these years before it goes away.
Marc:See, I'm trying to be those two tones.
Marc:That's the upbeat.
Marc:And then I just undercut it with the terrified.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:It's terrified, but not running.
Marc:Like, oh, no.
Marc:unbelievable but uh yeah so it's been an interesting week i haven't talked to you since last week but i think i recorded that before uh most of california was on fire and before i was nominated for a critics choice award see how it comes the yin and the yang hey is that fire going to consume my new house i don't know i don't know if it is do i it's time to spend some time watching fire apps
Marc:watching fire maps, watching for when the fire comes.
Marc:I feel horrible for people who lost property, lost pets, lost homes, not in that order necessarily, whose lives were compromised by these fires.
Marc:But there are fires all over fucking California.
Marc:And it's terrifying because the brain just seeks to make like, you know, there's always been fires, right?
Marc:Not like this.
Marc:Just like, I don't know, a fire might break out in the fucking garage in three minutes.
Marc:It's just like spontaneous fires.
Marc:But most of the people I know up north and around people I come in contact with at work, their homes are okay.
Marc:But again, I hope everything's okay out there for everyone.
Marc:I feel bad for people that got compromised by these fires.
Marc:But is this normal now?
Marc:Like, I've always been kind of nervous about California in general.
Marc:I can't.
Marc:I want to run, man.
Marc:But then it's like nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Marc:And I believe there are some places to run and there are a few places to hide.
Marc:But I dug in.
Marc:I dug in.
Marc:I got a new place.
Marc:And I guess if it's going to go down, it's going to go down.
Marc:But I've actually done jokes about this, about these fires and about years ago.
Marc:That's just crazy.
Marc:I went out.
Marc:Sarah, the painter, got some emergency kits.
Marc:We got that.
Marc:I guess I'm gonna have to get a generator one way or the other.
Marc:You better be preparing for the end of something.
Marc:And I'm not saying that in a tone of terror or existential despair.
Marc:It's a practical term.
Marc:Prepare for the end.
Marc:All right.
Marc:On the other side of the fires, I was nominated for a Critics Choice Award.
Marc:Yeah, I'm excited.
Marc:A Critics Choice nomination.
Marc:I look, folks, for me, I didn't anticipate being nominated for anything ever.
Marc:You know, I thought the one shot we had was a Peabody, but they they didn't.
Marc:They they poo pooed it.
Marc:The Peabody's poo pooed us, I guess.
Marc:I thought that would have been the one possible, the one window of opportunity to get any accolades.
Marc:I certainly didn't anticipate getting any accolades for acting or for anything.
Marc:For stand-up.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I'm not being falsely humble.
Marc:Looking at my life, it just was not part of...
Marc:any of the uh the possibilities but so so the critics choice award is a is a welcomed excitement and i am uh grateful for it and i'm excited about it and uh glow the show got several alice and brie got one betty gilpin got a nomination i think that the show got a nomination so everybody on set was excited and we needed that excitement over the last few days because uh we were we were shooting the show up in pomona
Marc:On a set that... God, I don't want to spoil anything.
Marc:Would it spoil anything?
Marc:Maybe it'll just provide... It'll provide suspense.
Marc:We were on a hospital set in Pomona for two days.
Marc:12-hour shoots running well into the evening.
Marc:One or two in the morning.
Marc:So it was nice to have the extra added excitement of knowing that the show is getting this recognition.
Marc:It was fun times.
Marc:I'm trying...
Marc:You know, on a day to day basis, for whatever reason, I experience a great deal of dread and terror in my head.
Marc:And I know many of you know this and I'm not experiencing it right now.
Marc:But I actually had a moment on set the other night where it's like, look, I wait around a long time to do three lines on Friday night.
Marc:We had shot all day.
Marc:I was there, we were there from like 12 to one in the morning.
Marc:And I did one scene in the morning, which was a fun scene, no lines, but it was a fun.
Marc:It was me and Alison and Betty and Chris Lowell.
Marc:And then pretty much I waited around like eight hours, about eight hours.
Marc:And they did everyone's coverage.
Marc:All the women were there.
Marc:You know, all 13, 14 of them.
Marc:And we covered everything except my point, you know, my coverage where the camera's on me.
Marc:It was the last shot of the night, of a 12 and a half hour night at one in the morning.
Marc:And for some reason, instead of...
Marc:feeling like, well, fuck, man, what kind of gig is this?
Marc:What is all this waiting around this acting business?
Marc:I just locked in, and I'm like, make it a good few minutes, man.
Marc:This is what you wait for.
Marc:This is what acting is.
Marc:Enjoy this minute and a half, and just act the shit out of it.
Marc:I was doing a beat with all of them, and I had a beat with Betty, who's great, great actress, and we just had the moment, and it felt very rewarding.
Marc:That's a step in the right direction.
Yeah.
Marc:It wasn't like, man, was that worth waiting for?
Marc:I'm trying to tell you that I turned a corner and I've grown to appreciate, hey, if this is the window, if this is the moment, if this is where I get to act on this episode, if these two lines are where it's at for the day, then lean in, man.
Marc:And I guess that's pretty good advice for anybody.
Marc:Like if you have those moments where you got to show up and do your job fully focused,
Marc:You know, even if it's only for a half an hour that it's expected out of you and you spend the other 12 hours, you know, looking at a computer or pretending to work, make the best out of that.
Marc:Make the best out of that half hour.
Marc:Make the best out of that five minutes, man, because it's all burning.
Marc:Everything is on fire.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:So.
Marc:judd came by because he's got a special judd apatow the return premieres tomorrow december 12th on netflix and we got into it it's always good to see judd it's always good to have a chat and it always ends up longer than we think and it always ends up pretty engaged because uh you know we do what we do so this is me uh hanging out with judd apatow for a bit
Marc:That's the thing about your special.
Marc:Let's start there.
Marc:Technique-wise, you bold motherfucker used a wireless.
Marc:There was no aversion to using a fucking wireless?
Guest:At least I didn't go with the Janet Jackson, you know, McDonald's wireless on the head.
Marc:No, you can't do that.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:Of course not, but I don't trust wireless mics.
Marc:I'm like some weird old-timey guy.
Marc:Like, if I don't know that it's connected to something, and they always seem bulky, and they don't slide in and out properly, and you just went ahead and used it.
Guest:Well, I have a different issue, which is I am not that professional as a comedian, and I will constantly trip over the cord.
LAUGHTER
Guest:So you knew that you're like, I prefer not to have more mess up here than necessary.
Guest:I literally find myself at the comedy store tripping over the cord so often that when they said we have a cordless, I was like, yes, thank you.
Marc:Didn't even think about it.
Marc:So I watched you work on a lot of the material for months and months, and then I didn't know like a third of it.
Marc:Where were we hiding that stuff?
Marc:Did you just pull it out that night?
Guest:Well, what's interesting is when you do the improv and the comedy store...
Guest:There's so much material that just doesn't work there.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:You know, longer stories, things that take time when you need people to pay more attention.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, there was always a larger hunks that worked in theaters or places where people were paying more attention.
Marc:Oh, so you were working that stuff out elsewhere.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah, certain bits where I thought, well, this is an 11-minute bit.
Guest:The poem bit.
Guest:Yes, the poem bit.
Guest:I read a poem that I wrote when I was 14 when my parents were getting divorced, which I stumbled onto.
Guest:And it's so sad, but it makes me laugh so much.
Marc:I wrote poems in exactly the same cadence, that there was a weird kind of naive social importance to what you're saying.
Guest:And the Dr. Seuss rhyme scheme.
Guest:Yeah, but you had a little three verse there.
Guest:It was.
Guest:It wasn't all Dr. Seussie.
Guest:What I found interesting about finding this poem, one is that the poem is basically saying, I'm in enormous amount of pain, but maybe this pain will one day make me a good comedian.
Guest:And I wrote that when I was 14.
Guest:That's basically what the poem is about.
Guest:You already knew.
Guest:But when I was a kid,
Guest:I had this sense that I was supposed to be good at certain things if I wanted to be in comedy.
Guest:And I tried everything.
Guest:I tried juggling pins.
Guest:I tried to write sketches.
Guest:I just took a quick pop at everything.
Marc:What were the other ones?
Marc:Guitar playing?
Guest:Guitar playing I was terrible at.
Guest:I like that you went with the juggling.
Guest:Did you figure out how to get the balls in the air?
Guest:I could juggle the pins.
Guest:Then I bought the fire pins that you could light on fire and then never worked up the courage to light them.
Marc:And that's why it took you so long to make a special.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I was so afraid.
Guest:And then one day I wrote a poem and it's interesting.
Guest:It's a real window into how my brain works or worked at the time.
Guest:But I find the most interesting part is I never wrote a poem again.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I wrote this long poem.
Guest:And then in my head, I must have thought, yeah, you're not good at this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And stopped, which is a metaphor for my standup career.
Guest:You know, my brain wants to shut it down.
Marc:But oddly, and I, you know, because I wrote poetry in college and I took it seriously at some point, even after high school, even after my big Ginsburgian assault on the world we live in at 14.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think that writing comedy is poems.
Marc:I think that jokes are poetic.
Marc:There's rhythm.
Marc:There's a turn of phrase.
Marc:There's a lot of things that are very poetic elements.
Guest:Yeah, I agree.
Guest:Every once in a while when something's worded perfectly, it feels a little poetic.
Guest:This is the one that is so truthful.
Guest:But I was proud of this thought, and it's so simple, but I talk about how my 15-year-old just seems so unhappy to be in the house sometimes with me and my wife.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I say...
Guest:You know, when you have four people, it is a family.
Guest:When it is three, it is a child observing a weird couple.
Guest:That's as close as I get to poetry.
Guest:It just says it all.
Guest:It's like a haiku.
Guest:Yeah, that's beautiful.
Marc:So, I mean, arguably, I think that you committed your life to poetry.
Marc:That's the way I'm going to look at it.
Marc:I like it.
Marc:I mean, I would have liked to have been a poet, but where do you really go with that?
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's like maybe you got a couple books that nine people read and you teach somewhere.
Marc:That's the best that you could hope for.
Guest:Yeah, that always leads to the debate.
Guest:How many people do you need to watch your stuff or like your stuff?
Guest:Well, I mean, you know the answer to that.
Guest:I need it to work in China.
Guest:I need it to work in Russia.
Guest:That's the funny thing in the business now is everything about the business is like, will things work overseas?
Guest:And you get in these meetings where there's a subtle subtext, which is like,
Guest:Is there anything you could chuck in it?
Guest:Like an actress from another country that might bring in the Spanish crowd?
Guest:And then when you try it, it never works.
Guest:You always bomb in the country of the foreigner you put in the movie.
Guest:You've tried that?
Guest:You've done that?
Guest:Well, just in the sense that sometimes we work with people from other countries because...
Guest:We love them, not to do it for a marketing reason, but I've never felt a bump in that country because I had the Russian guy in a few scenes.
Guest:But they do want you to think that way.
Guest:And they also are trying to reach people that don't understand verbal humor.
Guest:So there's also this feeling generally that movies work best when you're blowing up shit.
Marc:Blowing up shit are just like very broad physical comedy or expressions.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And you think, I don't know how to reach people in other countries.
Guest:And everyone saw a movie blows up around the world.
Guest:You have no idea why.
Guest:We made this movie called Begin Again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a Mark Ruffalo movie that John Carney, the guy who made once made.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it did okay in the United States.
Guest:In South Korea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Makes $25 million.
Guest:That movie.
Guest:It's gigantic.
Guest:In one country on Earth, South Korea loves Keira Knightley in a musical.
Guest:And we don't know why.
Guest:You can't try to appeal because you'll never figure it out.
Marc:You can't manufacture lightning in a bottle.
Marc:It just happened.
Guest:There was no part of the process where I thought, South Korea's going to love this.
Marc:This is going to kill there.
Marc:We got an ace in the hole in South Korea.
Marc:So I like the special and your whole approach to stand-up, given your 20-year hiatus.
Marc:Was it?
Marc:It was 22 years.
Marc:A 22-year hiatus.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:From when you did the Young Comedian special, 19 what?
Marc:92.
Marc:92.
Marc:And then you go on, you make a billion dollars, you make a lot of movies, TV shows, you write jokes for other comics, and now finally you feel confident enough.
Marc:To get back to what you started out doing.
Marc:But the reason I bring it up is because I thought you were very humble and you had a lot of humility around the approach.
Marc:You didn't come in swaggering.
Marc:You were sort of like, I know where I'm at.
Marc:I'm a strong feature at this point.
Guest:I always say that the only show since I started pursuing stand-up aggressively in 2014 where I really felt like I did badly...
Guest:And got nervous was one night at the Comedy Cellar when you walked in the room.
Guest:Stop it.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:I got really self-conscious.
Guest:And I had just started.
Guest:Maybe I had been doing it a few months again.
Guest:And you walked in the room.
Guest:And on stage, all I thought was, Marin knows this sucks.
Yeah.
Guest:And I didn't feel that way with Ray Romano watching or anybody watching.
Guest:Dice Clay was watching me one night.
Guest:I just, for some reason, I felt so connected to you that the voice in my head that's telling me that I suck is also Mark Maron's voice.
Guest:So when I finally was doing well enough that you would indicate to me, like, it's going good.
Guest:You got some good stuff.
Guest:I really relaxed generally.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Just recently?
Guest:Just recently.
Guest:You'd be like, stuff's looking good.
Guest:Or the best compliment is when you hear from someone else, like, Maren said you got some good shit.
Guest:I'm like, oh, thank God.
Guest:Or you're like, Attell said you're funny now.
Guest:Oh, you got one of those?
Guest:Oh, that was a big one.
Guest:That's a huge one.
Guest:The Attell likes your stuff.
Guest:That's the one we all want.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It's for him to say anything about you.
Guest:But when I started doing it again, it's so funny because...
Guest:I was so into stand-up from the time I was 17 to 24, but really from the time I was 10 to 24, that when I stopped, I was pretty burnt out at just doing seven days a week of nothing but thinking about jokes, writing jokes, watching comedians.
Guest:So I didn't even look at comics for a decade.
Guest:And only maybe around 2010, 11, did I go...
Guest:what's everybody doing i didn't even go to the improv for 15 years probably right really even to watch so i didn't even and then i started feeling like even as a comedy producer i should know what's happening yeah but that sounds like somebody who like you know quit something like that was hurting them and and uh but they had no control it was like an addiction like i can never go back to where that's happening
Guest:I just lost interest in it.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It was an anger.
Guest:I felt just bored of watching it.
Guest:And then slowly, I'm trying to think who was the- I think that's a grown-up thing.
Guest:Who was the comedian that got me excited again?
Guest:I started watching Hannibal a little bit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was making me laugh.
Guest:I think watching, there was a few people that I thought,
Guest:wow like maria bamford oh yeah i remember hearing her on your show yeah you you drove somewhere with her right yeah and i was really taken by that oh yeah and you not seen her before that no oh man and then i started looking that up and then i then i realized oh there's some amazing people right who are a lot better than the people when i started
Marc:And different, you know, I mean, yeah, sure, there's always some slouches around.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But, you know, there were some great guys then, too, when we started or, like, whenever that was.
Marc:92, you said the Young Comedian Special was?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And so I started in 89, I think, officially, you know, making money.
Marc:Probably 87, 88 doing it.
Marc:But there were good people around.
Marc:But there was, you know, the remnants of the road, of that first wave.
Marc:And there were a lot of those kind of, you know, mid-level headliners with, you know, rap closers or somersaults.
Marc:But there was always, like, you know, there were some people in the generation before us where you're like, well, that was really unique.
Marc:Those guys are really sort of doing something completely different.
Marc:And there's a lot of them around now.
Marc:I mean, back then, it really was Hicks.
Marc:You go see Bill Hicks.
Marc:For that thing.
Marc:He was singular in that.
Marc:Stephen Wright was singular in that, in his thing.
Guest:Goldflate, when you would go see him in the late 80s.
Guest:And, of course, Kinison, who, to this day...
Guest:I've never seen anyone more exciting to watch.
Marc:Yeah, just menacing.
Guest:Electric.
Guest:Just to see Kinison before the crowd knew who he was was the most exciting comedy you've ever seen.
Guest:And it really can't be recaptured.
Guest:People walk in a room not knowing this guy's coming and not knowing the joke, the point of view, and he starts screaming at them.
Guest:The place would erupt.
Guest:Half the place would walk out.
Guest:And there's no one like that now.
Marc:This is an exciting panic.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Well, I actually, for some reason, on the random thing on my iPod in the car, the album went on.
Marc:I have like that first album, Hotter Than Hell or Louder Than Hell.
Marc:You can't.
Marc:It's not on CD.
Marc:So someone's got to rip it.
Marc:And someone ripped it at some point and gave it to me.
Marc:And I listened to the whole thing through.
Marc:And I've always been a guy that listens to that once a year.
Marc:And I had experiences with him.
Marc:And then like this was the first time where I was sort of like, that was really kind of wrong minded and shitty.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, it's all so awful.
Guest:I remember laughing.
Marc:I mean, I knew it was, but I felt the slight offense for the first time.
Marc:So he was definitely a monster, but the intensity and the balls of it all, you don't see that much.
Guest:It felt like, I guess looking back, if you were to try to define the Sam Kennison character, it would be the world has broken him.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And so in a way- And the world will pay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so you enjoyed it from that point of view that he was a person in meltdown.
Guest:So his opinions, which were so wrong at times, you never felt like the joke was he believes it.
Guest:You felt like this is what happens when you get broken.
Guest:Cautionary tale.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You just completely lose your mind and start screaming at starving people to go to the food.
Guest:It doesn't make any sense at all.
Marc:Punching way down.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Punching as down as you can punch.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Because I always took it like it's the frustration that life is unkind that makes you go, what are we going to do?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Go to the fucking food.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it doesn't make any sense at all.
Marc:That way he captures that whole thing with where it's like, you know, you're sitting there eating what you pulled together.
Marc:Like he phrased it like he was just sitting in front of the television set with some shitty dinner that he pulled together for himself.
Marc:And there's a starving guy on TV, a starving kid.
Marc:And it just infuriated him.
Guest:And isn't that just a cover for an inability to feel sadness?
Guest:That you do feel so sad that you just start screaming nonsense because you can't go to that vulnerable place that just wants to cry about that kid.
Marc:Yeah, your heart broke and now it's exploding.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:All over everybody.
Marc:Unless we're just totally wrong and he was just a prick.
Marc:A monster.
Marc:Definitely there was some of that.
Marc:But okay, but like what I was saying though, like I was impressed and I entered the Apatow return, you know, seeing you around as, you know, like I was, not that I needed to defend you, but I'm like, wait, people were surprised.
Marc:I'm like, he was writing jokes for some of our favorite comics when he was a child.
Marc:What, you think he's going to have a hard time putting together an act?
Yeah.
Marc:You know, I mean, did you ever, did you think, as a joke writer, and you drew from your life, you know, very frankly, that you were going to have a hard time putting together an act?
Guest:I think what it is is that I didn't think about it too much.
Guest:I just slowly slid into it.
Guest:I think what helped me a lot...
Guest:in doing it again.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:One was I didn't need to do it to pay my rent.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I didn't need to beg for spots.
Guest:So I was very lucky that I had enough recognition that clubs would put me up as a freak show anyway, at least in the beginning.
Marc:But you're not like Steve-O.
Guest:I mean, you're Judd Apatow.
Guest:But there was something amusing about seeing me attempt to do it.
Guest:The other thing that helped me a lot is I didn't know who any of the comics were.
Guest:So when I started going up at the cellar, I didn't know almost anybody.
Guest:So I didn't have the fear of everybody because at the time I didn't understand how much better they were than me.
Marc:Or, yeah, where they stood in the hierarchy.
Guest:I didn't know, like, oh, that's how funny Keith Robinson is.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I should be nervous around him because he's killed every single night.
Guest:And all those guys, Greer Barnes.
Guest:Wow, Greer Barnes.
Guest:All these people were so funny, and then I would slowly watch them.
Guest:But at the very beginning, I just hadn't watched comedy in a long time.
Guest:So when I would go in and I would sit at the table with all the comics, I didn't even know their acts to know who I was sitting with most of the time.
Guest:And then by the time I figured out who everyone was, I had enough of my sea legs to not be too embarrassed.
Guest:But I was embarrassed.
Guest:This is kind of weird that I'm attempting to do it, but...
Guest:I always felt like everyone realized that I love it so much.
Marc:But you were a comic.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:I mean, that's the weird thing.
Marc:I would have thought that sitting down with them, that you would have thought that they were projecting, like, what does this guy need to do this for?
Marc:Why is he here?
Guest:I didn't get that from people.
Guest:Well, then I hit it well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, oh, yeah.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:Maybe that was what people were thinking.
Guest:Just what is happening right now?
Guest:Every once in a while, I would see someone get quiet.
Guest:I'd sit at the comedian's table.
Guest:Someone very chatty would just stop talking.
Guest:And I thought, God, I hope my presence here isn't making people self-conscious.
Marc:But then slowly... You don't want them going home at 2.30 going like, I fucked up with appetite.
Guest:Which is so not why I'm there at all.
Guest:But...
Guest:But everyone was so nice.
Guest:I really fell in love with everyone there.
Guest:And Esty and Noam, they just were very inviting.
Guest:The club was excited to have me work there.
Guest:And then I worked my ass off.
Guest:I wrote a ton of jokes to try to... I tried to be worthy of it.
Guest:I really respected all the comedians and thought, I got to get good enough that I can think, I'm on the same level of these people.
Guest:Put on.
Marc:I was watching the special, and it was all loaded up with little one-line pieces that I'd never heard before, and I didn't get it all the way to the end.
Marc:Did you do the Cosby bit?
Marc:I do near the end.
Marc:I love that bit, and I love all the kid stuff.
Marc:And to sort of admit...
Marc:And you sort of had to, because you weren't going to go up and just do, you know, detached jokes.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But you do, you know, you present your life as it is.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You know, I am a rich producer of film and television.
Marc:I live a very, you know, gilded life.
Marc:Is that the word?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But, you know, problems remain.
Yes.
Guest:Well, that is the one thing that you notice, and I'm sure from your new perch and your new home, you will notice as well.
Guest:That once you can pay your bills, and I always say this, that people who have succeeded in what they've tried to do and have a little money, they spend their whole lives thinking when this happens, that happiness will arrive.
Guest:And then when it happens, you realize, oh, I'm still unhappy.
Guest:It's me.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's all me.
Marc:But I don't know that I ever thought that happiness would arrive.
Marc:But I do feel there are some things I don't have to worry about like I used to that used to consume me.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But I mean, but when you really think about how is that going to change you to have.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:You know, I am getting a new house and I walk around it and I'm like, it feels different.
Marc:Like, but I'm 54.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, like, you know, I better do something to feel like that I've arrived somewhere.
Guest:It's hard to think that you deserve it.
Guest:You know, that you've worked a long time and I'm allowed to have the room, you know, with the big TV.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm going to work hard on the sound.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, you do think I don't deserve this.
Guest:There is that, you know, fraud.
Marc:Why is that?
Marc:Well, I don't fucking know why that is.
Marc:I mean, I feel that a little bit, but...
Marc:I guess for me, it's more like, do I need it?
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:It's not like deserve.
Marc:It's sort of like, I'm okay here, but this house is falling the fuck apart, and I've not even fixed anything.
Marc:And when I empty it, it's going to be like, they should just demo it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:There's a point of pride in not being an asshole in the nice house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's a difficult thing.
Guest:I don't think I use much of it in the special, but I do talk a lot about people who always want more.
Guest:Like if you're the Koch brothers and you have $35 billion and you are obsessed with...
Guest:getting all these congressmen to push for a tax cut so you could make $2 billion more, of which you'll never spend a penny.
Guest:What is going on in your mind?
Guest:What are your values?
Guest:At the cost of people's lives?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Quality of life, the country, the globe.
Guest:Food stamps.
Guest:Could we get rid of food stamps so I can get a tax cut?
Guest:And I think that is what's driving all of us mad is that Trump is symbolic of...
Guest:very wealthy people and it's not enough.
Guest:And as someone who doesn't have to feel terrible if I get a parking ticket, I don't get it at all because other than sending my kids to school and having a place to live, there's nothing to spend money on.
Guest:All you really spend money on generally is you might go on a vacation and you might get the extra appetizer and
Guest:And that's about it.
Guest:Why does Trump need to say, I'm worth $10 billion?
Guest:If he was worth $900 million, what the fuck is the difference?
Marc:He also has mental problems, and he needs to win, and he's a bully, and there's...
Marc:And he seems to be at the beginning stages of some degenerative mental condition.
Guest:Do you think that's it?
Guest:People are beginning to say that openly, like something's happening.
Marc:Well, apparently his father had it and his sister has it now, is completely incapacitated with degenerative mental illness.
Guest:Reagan ran the country for several years.
Marc:Just push him out there.
Guest:Remember those Iran-Contra interviews he did?
Guest:He had to do a deposition.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:not good it wasn't it wasn't the best shining moment on the hill well so the special look good you do what you did how many did you shoot nine i shot two shows a night for two nights okay i shot four shows yeah the night before the first show in the same theater i did a warm-up show to get used to this so you did five yeah and i i didn't tape that one and it went so badly
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:And people told me that would happen.
Guest:But when it happens, when you run the full set... And you just can't get over the hump?
Guest:You can't... It felt like every joke was starting over.
Guest:Yeah, the worst.
Guest:And some jokes would work, but every joke... And it was like Canadian people... Yeah.
Guest:who were so polite that their energy never lifted.
Guest:But I thought the thing, it looked great.
Guest:Who directed it?
Guest:Marcus Aramboy.
Guest:Is he one of your guys?
Guest:He is just a great comedy director who did Pete Holmes' special, and he does a lot of them.
Guest:And I thought, I don't know how to do this.
Guest:And he did a beautiful job with it.
Guest:The suit was nice.
Guest:The suit was nice.
Guest:Who makes that suit?
Guest:I don't know, but professionals were involved.
Guest:It's my punch drunk glove.
Marc:It's a punch drunk glove suit.
Marc:I don't think I could pull a suit off.
Marc:I think my head's too large.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I haven't worn a suit in a long time.
Guest:I look okay in a suit.
Guest:I look a little bit like an agent, but my body is so wrongly shaped.
Guest:It's just I get a little pear-shaped.
Guest:So I decided a few years ago, and my wife is not thrilled about this, that the only shirt I looked good in was a black James Purse polo shirt.
Guest:I bought 25 of them.
Guest:Oh, I see you in that a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just decided I'm not even going to pretend I look good in other clothes because
Guest:You did wear that a lot.
Guest:And then I lost some weight so I'd look okay for the special.
Guest:And then the second we were done taping, just put another 10 back on.
Guest:Did you?
Guest:Yeah, just.
Guest:Start eating again?
Guest:Yeah, I just tossed it all out the window.
Guest:I got my cholesterol down without statins.
Guest:There's a big fight in my house.
Guest:My wife is against the statins.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I got against them too because I don't know really why, but no one wants to be on medicine.
Marc:But I just cut meat and dairy out totally.
Guest:That's what people say, it's all the meat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That people think it's everything else, but your cholesterol is very meat-driven.
Guest:I hate any discussion of having to be healthy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I don't like that I have to do it.
Marc:Well, now it's like there's less reason, because it doesn't seem like things are going to go well.
Marc:There's not a positive closure ahead.
Guest:So you might as well live a little.
Guest:Sometimes when I'm watching the news and they say, hey, Trump decided to put all the nukes on B-1 bombers to be up in the air 24 hours a day, I will eat that pint of ice cream.
Guest:And I'm kind of happy that the window got smaller.
Marc:I think that, sadly, it's true.
Marc:It is, right?
Marc:When old people who I respect die, I'm like, they got out.
Guest:they got out yeah i'm like um thank god they didn't have to see this shit yeah after what they lived through yes like let them go now as i get older and i feel closer to death i i get a like a feeling like where i'm excited to die yeah to just get out before like the environment falls apart before some other bad thing i don't know if we're gonna make it dude i didn't might have we might be around for it god
Marc:I know.
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:I thought I was going to get out before the world ended, but I don't know.
Guest:It used to be when I was a kid, I would think, they're going to cure cancer before I get it.
Guest:And now I'm like, they're not going to.
Guest:They've done real good with some of them.
Guest:It really depends which one you get.
Guest:And I can't slip out before the really bad stuff happens.
Guest:It becomes harder to create silly comedy in the face of this.
Marc:It becomes harder to do anything that is pleasurable or not requiring.
Marc:Because there's part of you that thinks like, we're in an urgent situation, and I should be doing something urgently, but you run out of... What?
Marc:So then with that kind of percolating and the news percolating, when you just want to go watch a movie or enjoy something or play some guitar, there's part of you that's sort of like, why do this even?
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Why not just sit...
Guest:I remember being home and kicking jokes around with Seth and Evan for Pineapple Express.
Guest:Like, oh, it'd be funny if he tries to kick out the windshield of the car and his foot just gets stuck.
Guest:And then when they pitched it, we would just giggle for 15 minutes.
Guest:But I don't know if that kind of moment is possible right now where you're so lost in the silly fantasy land.
Guest:And I was talking to someone about this for hours last night that as a Jew, I feel like we're supposed to pay attention right now.
Guest:And I'm not even religious, but I have a feeling of like my whole life I thought, why didn't they do something about all this, you know, during World War II?
Guest:And it feels like if I shut it all off and write silly jokes, I'm abdicating some responsibility.
Guest:And then my friend was saying...
Guest:No, the way you change the world is through your art.
Guest:And that teaches people about love and connection and compassion and everything you do to protest.
Guest:Everything that's going on doesn't matter at all or anywhere near as much as the messages you slyly send through your comedy or your movies.
Guest:And how that's it with you.
Guest:you know what I think of?
Guest:I just think of trains of Jews going into camps.
Guest:And I just think, aren't I supposed to be, like, on the train tracks stopping it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think, is that just a nice notion that I'll write a movie now that comes out in three and a half years, but how did that help people in Puerto Rico who have no water?
Guest:Right.
Marc:And aren't we supposed to... Well, yeah, but, like, what... See, the thing is, is, like...
Marc:Would you be able to do the type of grunt work necessary to get your hands dirty and help out in a practical way, in an immediate way?
Guest:Well, the immediate way I do it is I just try to raise money.
Guest:So I do an enormous amount of...
Marc:What is the ACLU thing?
Marc:I got an invitation.
Marc:Should I go?
Guest:Yeah, I'm going to get some sort of a recognition of the ACLU.
Guest:As soon as the Trump thing hit, I said, I got to figure out what to do so I don't go crazy.
Guest:One of the main things is I'm going to raise money for the ACLU because so much of what slows Trump down.
Marc:I immediately sent them money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You need lawyers.
Guest:And a lot of what has stopped the terrible things he's done, the transgender ban in the military or travel bans is because the ACLU is suing them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So and then I think, well, I still get to do comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I could strong arm friends into doing shows and at least it's doing something.
Guest:So that's one thing I try to do.
Marc:Well, I think that's true.
Marc:I think that's right.
Marc:Because I think that, you know, on the other side where people are just thrilled at, you know, I realize that what's happened because of a tone of an email I got is that these people that hated Obama, that hated progressive, culturally progressive movements in all areas, they were enraged and then they became exhausted by being forced to tolerate things.
Marc:And then once they didn't have to anymore, the fury just came out.
Marc:The fury of intolerance.
Marc:So now their condescending position is like, well, now you guys have to tolerate, you know, this horrendous intolerance and hostility and racism and hate.
Marc:We had to put up with you guys.
Marc:With love.
Marc:With love.
Marc:And open-hearted shit.
Marc:Open-minded garbage.
Marc:Now that, you know.
Marc:So, like, for me, like...
Marc:I think what we have to do as a service to ourselves, but also to the country is not fall into despair and let that become like, just like it's, I think that authoritarian regimes, you know, feed on, on hopelessness, despair, and, and the reality that people are, are not really able to do anything about it.
Guest:And, and we're so confused that how much we're lied to, you know,
Guest:You know, for instance, people already have forgotten about the Vegas shooting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're five insane things past that already.
Marc:And that was just weeks ago.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Everything.
Marc:There's something about there's an old Hicks joke.
Marc:You remember the joke he did?
Marc:I can't just paraphrasing it about watching the TV.
Marc:It's like death, destruction, war.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then, you know, you open the door.
Marc:It's like crickets.
Marc:Like there's some profound idea about, you know, what you allow into your head, what you allow it to do and what your reality is and what you can do.
Guest:So the question becomes, can I stay positive?
Guest:Can I think of constructive things to do while, you know, putting up my resistance and writing boner jokes?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Simultaneously.
Marc:No, the boner jokes are important because if there's no humor, then there's just the hopelessness.
Marc:And then, you know, but yeah.
Marc:But let's talk about before we go.
Marc:I watched the rough cut of the Gary Shandling doc, and it's a beautiful thing.
Guest:You're one of the few people who've seen it.
Marc:Yeah, it was very touching.
Marc:I loved it.
Marc:And like I said to you, and I think I've told you before, and you knew him well, and you put this stuff together from archive footage, from his notebooks, from all the things you had access to in his life.
Marc:And it's a beautiful kind of memorial of a friend and a mentor.
Marc:But like that memorial service that I went to, the show, what would you call that?
Marc:A memorial?
Guest:Yeah, we did a memorial for Gary at the Wilshire E-Bell.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And a lot of people spoke.
Guest:And I cut together little documentary sequences about different parts of Gary's life.
Marc:But just learning about him changed my life, because I talked to him, and I don't know that I appreciated his comedy with the depth necessary, with the depth that was there, that it deserved, and also his process.
Marc:And you turning me on to him, and then having me go to that thing, and then we did the green room together, and I got to sort of, I always liked him, but I never knew on some weird level how much I had in common with him.
Guest:I think that emotionally, I think that's what most people are realizing is that they didn't know him as well as they wished they did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Although people don't, people don't really have the courage to dig, you know, like you're in a unique position because you do get the moment with someone where you're allowed to ask the questions people will not ask in conversation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sometimes I can do it.
Guest:Yeah, every once in a while you could just turn to something like Gary Shandling and go, why are you like this?
Guest:And get answers.
Guest:But in life, even as his close friend, I wouldn't often dig for the psychological underpinnings of who he was.
Guest:But when I made the documentary and I started figuring out how he became this guy and what he was doing and what he was attempting throughout his life to be sane and to find happiness and peace, I realized it's very powerful.
Guest:I related to it as well.
Guest:And it's sad that people didn't get to share that with him as much.
Guest:they could have while he was alive because he had a very interesting journey which is the same as us which is we're young we we have some difficult childhood situation yeah comedy becomes some way to escape a way to be seen then we want to be successful so that we feel good about ourselves that at some point we realize oh that doesn't work yeah what what does work
Guest:Which ultimately is love and connection and some higher purpose.
Guest:And then we go for that, which is still difficult and very hard to attain.
Guest:And then we get killed in that North Korea bomb.
Guest:No.
Guest:Right as we're about to feel that peace.
Guest:Yeah, finally.
Guest:But Gary...
Guest:Had a fascinating story.
Guest:I mean, the one that I love is that when he's 20 years old, he went to a comedy, not a comedy club, just like a bar club and saw George Carlin.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And George Carlin is, you know, he's pretty new to being hippie George Carlin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Gary writes bits for him.
Guest:I found the bits.
Guest:He wrote a fake commercial for legalized marijuana.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he wrote he literally wrote the bit.
Guest:What if they legalize marijuana?
Guest:What would the commercial be?
Guest:And so he had about five pages of bits for Carlin.
Guest:He walks up to him and says, hey, I wrote you some jokes.
Guest:Ballsy for 20.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Carlin says, I don't usually buy jokes, but I'll read them if you want to come back tomorrow.
Guest:I'll tell you what I thought.
Guest:Gary comes back the next day.
Guest:They're laid out on the table.
Guest:He wrote on them.
Guest:He made notations.
Guest:And he says to young Gary, you know what?
Guest:I don't buy jokes, but there's one great joke on every page.
Guest:And I think if you want to pursue this, you should.
Guest:And Gary got in the car and just moved to California.
Marc:and it changed his life yeah yeah he needed that and you know who wouldn't who knows if carlin would have done that on any other day because you know what that's like right you know who is this kid it's a mood thing yeah like i you know like who i don't know carlin for you know how often he did that but he was probably in in arizona what did he have to do yes right like you know what i mean and this little ballsy jewish kid is like i got these jokes and he's like i got nothing to do tomorrow right
Guest:I'm going to read these jokes instead of going to the mall.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, something.
Guest:But I think Carlin used to do that.
Guest:I heard his daughter, Kelly Carlin, on the show.
Guest:And she said he would bump into a comic.
Guest:He would ask the comic for his number.
Guest:And then eight months later, he would just call the guy and go, how are you doing?
Guest:How's the career going?
Guest:And he would follow up in a really beautiful way with people.
Guest:He knew that power that he had.
Guest:And then I found this letter, and this isn't in the documentary, where 10 years later or seven years later, Gary's doing like, make me laugh.
Guest:He's just beginning to get spots at the comedy store.
Guest:And he writes a letter to Carlin thanking him for telling him to be a comedian.
Guest:And he says, more important than your comedy is the man you are and how he wants to be a man like George Carlin.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Who, you know, speaks his truth.
Guest:And it's wild.
Guest:And I don't know if he sent it because I found it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It looked like the unsent.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Thank you letter.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:But it was beautiful.
Guest:It really, he was like, I wrote an episode of Welcome Back, Cotter.
Guest:Like that was going to impress George Carlin.
Right.
Guest:Maybe that's where the second thoughts came in.
Guest:I'm not going to send this.
Guest:But that's going to be on in March.
Guest:Great.
Guest:And it's four hours.
Guest:And I thought, you know what?
Guest:If OJ's worth seven, Gary's got to be worth four.
Guest:All right, buddy.
Guest:Well, the special is great.
Marc:It's called The Return.
Guest:December 12th on Netflix.
Marc:This isn't going to go up for a while because we're going to hold it to promote the thing.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So, like, who knows?
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:The world could be so different when this runs in three or four weeks.
Guest:Ivanka could be in prison by then.
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:That's upbeat.
Marc:That's an optimistic future.
Guest:That's the best case scenario.
Marc:Okay, again, Judd Apatow, The Return, premieres tomorrow, December 12th on Netflix, and it's good.
Marc:He's been a latent stand-up comic for a decade or so.
Marc:It's good to have him out, have him back.
Marc:I did stand-up the other night at the comedy store, and...
Marc:I was third up in the original room, 1045 spot, second show, and I got on stage, and I'd just been free-forming, doing the riffage, trying to find the beats, trying to find the path.
Marc:Where's this going to go?
Marc:What's this idea?
Marc:How does it work?
Marc:Does it have legs?
Marc:But I've just been kind of having fun, riffing, trying not to freak out or freaking out in a funny way.
Marc:And I get on stage and there's a guy front row, stage left.
Marc:totally asleep totally asleep and i'm talking i'm on the mic and you can hear it it's loud and i'm talking about him being asleep and i'm asking him if he's awake if he's if he's enjoying his nap nothing he's not waking up i took a picture of the dude on stage from the stage and
Marc:and yeah obviously i was you know having fun and then the flash apparently woke him up and i gotta be honest with you i felt bad i woke him up i felt bad like i it was rude that he was sleeping but it was one of those moments where i'm like i should have just let that guy sleep you know what i mean i don't know his life you know he's in a safe place he's in a comedy club he came for a few laughs maybe he hasn't slept in days and he was hoping that the comedy would make him feel better and he just finally got a little shut eye and
Marc:He did, I think, end up going back to sleep.
Marc:So Loudon Wainwright is a very prolific folk singer.
Marc:And his memoir, Liner Notes, came out in the fall and is available wherever you get books.
Marc:So this is me and Loudon chatting.
Marc:Do you do the boats?
Guest:I have a sailboat.
Marc:So you know how to sail.
Guest:I know how to sail, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I started when I was 55, so I kind of know how to sail.
Guest:I've been doing it for 15 years.
Marc:Oh, it wasn't something you grew up with?
Guest:No.
Marc:God, I got a friend who sailed around the world.
Marc:Are you that proficient?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, I once did a long sail for five days and that cured me of that.
Guest:So you can sleep in the boat?
Guest:There is a place to sleep on the boat.
Guest:I've never slept there.
Guest:I had sex there once, but we actually didn't sleep.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Were you moving?
Marc:Were you out on the water?
Guest:The anchor was dropped, as they say.
Guest:yeah we were anchored yeah well well that was good it was a was that a something that you needed to get out of your system or is that like like let's fuck on a boat it's time to fuck on a boat haven't done that let's do that i don't know how much time i got left well you know you have a boat and there's a place to lie down it's actually a toilet a head they call it yeah and i've i i i've used that but i said well so we said we should at least have sex on the boat this is what your wife
Guest:This is my much better half, my girlfriend.
Marc:Oh, there's a girlfriend?
Guest:Yeah, I got a girlfriend.
Marc:The girlfriend, is this the mother of the last child?
Guest:No, no, this is somebody new.
Marc:That was a new one.
Guest:This is somebody who works at the New Yorker.
Guest:In fact, I listened to your show with David Remnick, which I greatly enjoyed.
Guest:But this is Susan Morrison, who's a big editor at the New Yorker.
Marc:Oh, that's great.
Marc:So that's nice.
Marc:So you have someone to...
Marc:have sex with on a boat have sex on a boat with and have high-minded conversations about things well uh yeah so tonight you flew in today you're gonna you're gonna go do a thing with christopher guest tonight and you guys know each other a long time about 45 years yeah where did that start where did how did you like uh you know like i i've talked to mckeen you know do you and you're friends with him i went to college with mckeen so that's how i met chris actually
Marc:And Landers too?
Guest:David Lander, Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, acting school.
Guest:So we're all studying to be actors.
Guest:Oh really, yeah.
Guest:And then Michael and David got kicked out and Michael went to NYU and that's where he met Chris in the acting program.
Guest:So when I came to New York, I met Chris through Michael.
Marc:Oh, so they were like youngsters.
Guest:They met in college.
Guest:That whole thing started in college.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like what years are we talking there?
Marc:Like that would be what?
Guest:67.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you were playing a bit or you weren't playing?
Guest:I was beginning to play.
Guest:I had played guitar and I began to write in 68.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:So the original idea was to be an actor.
Guest:That was the original plan.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's right, because in the book you talk about that feeling, that feeling of making people laugh on stage and just sort of like, this is where, this is it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that was really, you just knew you wanted to be on stage connecting.
Guest:It started when I was in Santa Ana.
Guest:When I was about seven, I sang a song acapella for my mother and her twin sister and these two beautiful...
Guest:They were 27 or whatever they were, beaming down this love and approval of me, and that clinched the deal for me.
Guest:That did it?
Guest:I'd wanted to be a cowboy and an astronaut, but then I wanted to be a performer after they...
Marc:But yeah, your mom had twin sisters.
Marc:I guess we should go all the way back because it's sort of interesting to me because you grew up in these kind of like two worlds in terms of who your parents were.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Because you have a very kind of like there's a fairly...
Marc:high uh you know falutin high falutin you know name powerful bloodline uh you know of america in a way yeah uh legacy yeah it's a big name but your dad comes from a big family right from a like an old family yeah the wainwrights have been around for years and we're relatives with the stuyvesons you know peter stuyveson the one-legged governor
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my dad grew up as a kind of in the, what they call the Gold Coast of Long Island.
Marc:So the Stuyvesant, so that money or that family connection goes back to like pre-America New York, to Dutch New York.
Marc:Does it go that way?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Peter Stuyvesant was the first governor of New Amsterdam.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Way back.
Guest:Way back.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They had those, like that.
Marc:I never understand how that money stays around.
Marc:Do you?
Guest:I don't know anything about money.
Marc:I'm really... I know, you're a musician.
Marc:But you grew up in that world, right?
Guest:Westchester, New York.
Marc:Country clubs, mansions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were members of the Bedford Golf and Tennis Club.
Uh-huh.
Guest:But my mother was from the opposite end of the social scale.
Guest:She was this funky white trash chick from Tifton, Georgia.
Guest:Really dirt poor.
Guest:Her dad was an itinerant tobacco farmer.
Marc:And she talked like that?
Guest:Loudy.
Guest:Loudy.
Guest:that's so beautiful loud he sang that again that's sweet i'm glad you had that though yeah no she was my biggest supporter yeah when i was being in trying to start out singing and playing and stuff well there's like there's a lot of kids though there's what four of you or three i have i have four and a half siblings my dad had a had a daughter late in his life and you guys are you know just on the on the same uh life plan yeah
Guest:Just go out there and fool around and see what happens.
Guest:That's it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So how old is that one?
Guest:That is Anna, and Anna is 33.
Marc:That's your half-sister?
Guest:That's my half-sister, Anna.
Marc:That's wild, huh?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:When did you start?
Marc:Because I listen to a lot of the music, and you write very well in the book, and there's something about, and you seem like a pleasant man.
Yeah.
Marc:It's early.
Marc:I had a nap.
Marc:But I mean, there's something about, like, because I do comedy and I do very, you know, personal comedy.
Marc:And it seems that you are sort of compelled to be as personal as possible as well.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And it seems that, you know, in my own life and I imagine in yours that, you know, there's a price to pay for that.
Yeah.
Guest:Some rough Thanksgiving dinners with the family.
Marc:We can evolve into that, but when did you start writing songs and what drove you initially?
Guest:Well, first I learned how to play the guitar.
Guest:I had a guitar when I was 13, and I never thought I'd write songs.
Guest:My dad was a writer, and observing him be a writer.
Marc:But he was like a journalist, right?
Guest:He was a journalist.
Guest:He was a famous journalist.
Guest:He had a column in Life magazine for years, and he was very well known in the 60s when I was growing.
Marc:So I guess you had to look up to that.
Marc:You knew that your dad was famous, right?
Guest:Yeah, I looked up to it, but I also looked askance at it because, A, I didn't want to be like him.
Guest:Like most snotty-nosed kids, you don't want to be like your parents.
Guest:And second of all, he seemed to be an unhappy person trying to write and meet deadlines and write books.
Marc:But was he unhappy in general?
Guest:He was unhappy in general.
Guest:Yeah, he had a hard-ass father, Loudon Wainwright I, who died when my dad was only 17.
Guest:And he never got to work any of their stuff out.
Marc:So I think he was a... Hard-ass how?
Guest:Well, I never met him, but, you know, get your elbows off the table and just a disciplinarian and, you know.
Marc:Not emotional.
Guest:Yeah, cold.
Marc:Other than angry.
Guest:I've seen pictures of him.
Guest:In fact, there's a picture of him in the book.
Guest:You can see that he's holding it in and not letting it in.
Marc:What I thought was interesting in the book is in the parts I read was that, you know, and I try to track this in my own life is that, you know, you have enough self-awareness.
Marc:You've done enough research on yourself.
Marc:And there is to the degree that you have.
Marc:But there's this legacy.
Marc:You know, there are these generations of either emotional detachment or coldness that, you know, you're you're you're up against.
Marc:whether it's conditioned or genetic, that you're propelled by these things.
Guest:Yeah, the deck is stacked genetically.
Marc:Yeah, however it goes.
Guest:The beat goes on.
Guest:There is a legacy of depression and self-loathing.
Marc:But your dad seemed like your dad was not, I mean, it seemed like you had a relationship with him.
Guest:We, you know, kind of toward the end of his life, he died, he was only 63 when he died.
Guest:So we kind of got a little closer toward the end, particularly after he got sick.
Guest:And in 1982, which was five years or six years before we died, he and I took a trip to Australia together.
Guest:I was playing there, and they threw in an extra plane ticket.
Guest:My dad came with me.
Guest:We were both guys then.
Guest:We both had broken families and were in new relationships.
Guest:Anna had just been born, so he was a new dad.
Guest:He was a 59-year-old new dad.
Marc:That's wild, though.
Marc:That must have been bizarre.
Marc:So you're on a level playing field almost.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, we really had probably the best time we ever had then.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Kind of toward the end.
Marc:Yeah, because you do talk about a moment in the book where you finally give it to him a little bit.
Guest:I gave it to him at the very end when he was in the hospital actually dying.
Guest:So he's hooked up to tubes and bags.
Guest:And I've always had this thing where my name is Loudon Wainwright III, which is kind of a pretentious thing.
Guest:It's my actual name.
Guest:So he said when my career started, he said, well, you should use the third because we don't want to have any confusion about which Loudon is which.
Guest:So I agreed to that.
Guest:But then I realized soon after that that he didn't use Junior.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I said, and then I waited 20 years, but finally he's dying.
Guest:I said, you know, Dad, I just got to say something.
Guest:The Roman numeral thing, you did not use the junior thing, so you were just playing all loud in Wainwright.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he said, you can have the name when I'm dead, which shut me up pretty good.
Yeah.
Marc:there's that poetry poetry that goes right through it too yeah so what were your choices like i i you know you chose to be a musician and you you went to these private schools which must have been a nightmare but uh when did you choose like how was the the culture changing that made you want to do it
Guest:Well, I went to Carnegie, which is where I met McKean.
Marc:But it must have happened before, right?
Guest:Well, the playing was, but I didn't think I was going to be an actual musician, although I played in folk bands in boarding school and things.
Guest:But I dropped out of college.
Guest:I was a hippie in San Francisco for about two years.
Guest:I got busted in 67 in Oklahoma.
Marc:You were a hippie in which years?
Guest:I was there in the summer of love.
Guest:Donald Fagan and I lived in a crash pad along with some other people.
Guest:Did you meet him in San Francisco?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Fagan?
Guest:That's where I met him.
Guest:I had met him earlier.
Guest:My girlfriend at that time had friends at Bard, so he was at Bard, and that summer they went out too.
Marc:It's so weird.
Marc:I know that he's a great musician and a funny guy and a cynical writer, but I never locked into the Steely Dan thing.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Well, I mean, I can listen to it.
Marc:I know the good songs, but in terms of complete nerding out, which it seems like they're a band where there's just people who are full-on Steely Dan nerds.
Guest:I am a huge Steely Dan fan.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:In fact, once I asked Donald, because I kind of know him, and I know his wife, Libby Titus, and I asked him if he would produce one of my records for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said no.
No.
Guest:Kind of crushed me.
Guest:But I'm a huge fan.
Guest:I love those records.
Guest:But I know that a lot of people don't.
Marc:I'm coming around.
Marc:I know the ones I grew up with.
Marc:It's very controlled.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Maybe that's the problem.
Marc:Yeah, I do like things messy.
Marc:It's nailed down.
Guest:Yeah, it's almost like sterilized.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I find the great stuff, and there's a lot of it, the songs are very sad.
Guest:I mean, the writing.
Guest:And as a vocalist, I think Fagan is one of the great singers.
Marc:No, I agree.
Marc:I agree.
Marc:So you guys, you kept in touch a little bit?
Guest:A bit.
Guest:We see each other every once in a while.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I forgive him for not wanting to produce my record.
Marc:Well, you got Richard Thompson to do it.
Marc:That's not nothing.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So the Summer of Love, what was that like?
Marc:Were you an acid guy, drug guy?
Marc:Acid.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The good stuff.
Marc:Owsley.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We would drop acid in the morning and then just kind of wander around Golden Gate Park, talk to the bison at the Buffalo Pen there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And saw free concerts with the Grateful Dead and the Big Brother and the whole thing.
Marc:Did you hang out with those guys at all?
Marc:No, because I was just a lowly, you know.
Marc:You weren't even a guy yet.
Guest:No, I wasn't a guy yet.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know.
Marc:You were just one of the hippie masses.
Guest:Yeah, I was.
Guest:I was.
Guest:You know, I would go to the Haight-Ashbury free clinic to get broken glass ticket out of my foot.
Guest:I mean, I was one of those guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you're walking around on drugs with no shoes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A great idea in a major city.
Guest:But you were a kid, right?
Guest:I mean, how old were you?
Guest:Well, 67.
Guest:Yeah, I wasn't a total kid.
Guest:I was 21.
Marc:But I guess when I talk to guys who come of age as musicians at that time, I mean, you were there with this cataclysmic shift.
Marc:Two or three of them, really, in music, right?
Marc:So, I mean, you grew up and it was the end of what would have been sort of Big Bandy, I would imagine, when you were a kid.
Marc:And then rock and roll starts and happens.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then all of a sudden it just completely shifts.
Marc:Right.
Marc:In the late 60s into folk and then whatever acid and speed yielded.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Whatever the drugs that were being taken.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But the Beatles, I mean, you were like a very impressionable person when that shit went down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I loved all the...
Guest:You know, the Beatles and the Stones and, of course, Dylan.
Guest:I mean, when I started to play the guitar and sing, the folk boom was happening.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It didn't last very long.
Guest:It didn't, though.
Guest:It didn't really, did it?
Guest:It lasted about two years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the Newport Folk Festival was the grooviest thing.
Guest:But then electric music, when Bob plugged in, reasserted its power.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:but but that that is that how you look at it like it's like you know we had a good thing going and then you know you had to bring electricity into it yeah yeah i mean it left a lot of a lot a lot of focus in the dust i mean i i loved when dylan went electric yeah it was very powerful and exciting and great
Marc:Like, cause like I read Dylan's book, you know, the, the strange autobiography.
Marc:The Chronicles.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Which was great.
Marc:Like, I think some of the best stuff in it was his, you know, depiction of that scene.
Marc:So like after, so I'm assuming you go, you, you went to San Francisco, did your acids.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And did you run away from San Francisco?
Guest:Well, I was arrested in Oklahoma on my way back.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:For what?
Guest:For possession of marijuana.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I started to write songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And with an acoustic guitar, not with an electric guitar.
Guest:And then I went and sang in these little...
Guest:hoots and open mic things in Cambridge and New York.
Guest:But did you have to do jail time?
Guest:I was in jail for five days and nights.
Marc:Just for weed?
Guest:Yeah, but they were very excited because they found out that my dad was the famous Life magazine writer.
Guest:So they were talking about 10 years in Oklahoma City.
Marc:Because of that, I thought they were going to give you a break.
Guest:No, and then my dad, he was living in London then, so he had to take two long airplanes, one to New York and then down to Oklahoma City.
Guest:And he got a lawyer, and he knew a judge in New York.
Guest:And basically, he used his influence and money to get my ass out of jail.
Guest:And it was about to get jumped on my ass.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I was in a tank.
Guest:It was a county jail in Oklahoma City.
Guest:At night, we would sleep with a roommate.
Guest:But in the day, it was 40 guys milling around.
Guest:Really?
Marc:So it was a kind of hard time for five days.
Guest:For a preppy kid from northern Westchester, it scared the hell out of me.
Guest:I still have nightmares about it.
Marc:Do you really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I was cute.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I was really cute when I was 12.
Marc:Yeah, I saw those album covers, those early album covers.
Marc:Yeah, you're a looker, man.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You weren't exuding alpha strength.
Guest:No, they were going to jump on me.
Guest:So my dad got me out, and then that kind of straightened me up.
Guest:And then I started into music.
Marc:So you say you were doing hoots?
Marc:Is that what they were called?
Guest:Hoots, open nights.
Guest:You'd go and play three songs for a lot of other singer-songwriters and some Japanese tourists.
Marc:But you were going up to Cambridge and you were in New York?
Marc:You went back to New York?
Guest:Back and forth.
Guest:I went back and forth to Cambridge and between Cambridge and New York.
Marc:So that was the folk scene, Cambridge and New York.
Guest:That was the folk scene.
Marc:And then...
Marc:Because I know you talk about seeing Phil Van Ronk and those guys.
Marc:And was this the heart of it?
Guest:The big folk stuff had gone.
Guest:Dylan had gone electric.
Guest:So the early Bleecker Street, McDougal Street, Dave Van Ronk.
Guest:Dave, right, yeah.
Guest:Phil Oaks, Dylan, Richard Farina.
Guest:That was five years before my time.
Guest:So the remnants of that was going on when I hit the village.
Guest:Who was the remnants?
Guest:Well, you know, there was still Eric Anderson.
Guest:I don't know if you know who he was.
Guest:He was a good singer song.
Guest:He was a good singer song.
Guest:John Hammond Jr.
Guest:I love him.
Guest:Well, John Hammond Jr., I did a lot of shows with him at the Gaslight.
Marc:Okay, so you're doing that folk thing, and then how does the second wave of the folk thing happen?
Marc:And what happens?
Guest:Well, what happens is I'm opening a show at the Village Gaslight on McDougal Street for John Hammond Jr.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a guy called Brian Keating, who was writing for the Village Voice, wrote this ridiculously ecstatic review.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:you know uh this guy is the next guy yeah and that's what happens with comedians or musicians or actors you know they get pounced on if they're good yeah and when there was one or two papers it meant something right there was no other input and within six months i had a record deal at atlantic records my struggle was so brief it was ridiculous
Guest:I mean, I did not pay any dues.
Marc:But in that song on, I think it's history, the Bob Dylan riff, the Talking Blues Structured song.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, you talk about that there was a sort of a big rush to sign Dylan types.
Guest:Yeah, because he was out of commission.
Guest:For one thing, he had had his motorcycle accident.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So male singer-songwriters were really, you know, they were signing them left and right.
Guest:So you said that it was you, Prine, Springsteen?
Guest:Yeah, I used to joke that we should start a new Bob Dylan club.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And meet every year at Bruce's house.
Guest:You should.
Guest:And have burgers.
Guest:He's got a nice house out there.
Guest:He's got a good house.
Guest:Yeah, he does.
Guest:Are you friends with him?
Guest:I have never met Bruce Springsteen.
Guest:I've seen him play a couple of times, but I've never met him.
Guest:I saw him way at the beginning of his career.
Marc:You guys are all workers, you know what I mean?
Marc:I mean, that's the wild thing about the life you've led.
Marc:And as a comic, I know that.
Marc:That, you know, you go out there with your guitar and you're still out there with your guitar.
Marc:And ultimately, whatever level you're doing that at, that's what you're doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Now, that's the last chapter in my book, the 75 to 90.
Guest:It's about the job of...
Guest:going and playing for 75 to 90 minutes in mostly in my case a lot of the time in clubs you know and i've been doing it for almost 50 years so all right so you get signed all you guys you friends with prine i've talked i am i am friends with prines great you guys are like you write very uh beautiful and clever songs with a little bite to them a little humor a little jab in the heart were you a steve goodman fan
Marc:i i you know i know about steve like you know i don't like some of this music is is familiar to me from my childhood and i know about the you know the couple of hits but i and somebody sent me a lot of that stuff and i know he was great and he and prine were kind of yeah they were buddies yeah he did it from the chicago scene right right but so you get the record deal and what was the uh what was the expectation
Guest:Well, they pretty much let me do what I wanted to do.
Guest:That would be Atlantic Records.
Guest:Nessui Erdogan signed me.
Guest:So my first record is, I took seven months to make, and it's totally voice and guitar.
Guest:Right, Loud and One.
Guest:Loud and One is just straight ahead, just the songs.
Guest:Got great reviews, and nobody bought it.
Guest:So then it came time for the second album, which interestingly enough was called Album Two.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Good thought on that.
Guest:Good creativity on the title.
Guest:And that, again, there was a harmonica on that.
Guest:And I did a duet with my wife, my then wife, Kate McGarrigal.
Guest:But the rest of the record is all voice and guitar and one song on the piano.
Guest:And great reviews.
Guest:And nobody bought that one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Atlantic dropped me.
Guest:Columbia, Clive Davis signed me.
Guest:And then I...
Guest:He's a big guy.
Guest:So it was Ahmed or his brother?
Guest:Well, Nessui signed me.
Guest:Right, okay.
Guest:And then Clive signed me to- Another big guy?
Guest:Columbia.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the Dead Skunk thing happened.
Guest:They put me together with a rock band.
Guest:Why are you laughing?
Guest:Why are you laughing?
Marc:I like the way you said it.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Marc:Was it not meant to be funny?
Guest:It was a thing.
Guest:I mean, you know, it was a thing.
Guest:It was number one in Little Rock, Arkansas for six weeks.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:Now you found your people.
Guest:Man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've always imagined Bill and Hillary kind of making out in a Rambler station wagon to Dead Skunk on the radio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that was a freak thing, right?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, it was freaking that it's been my only hit so far.
Guest:No, it was a big, big record.
Guest:But then that problem was that then I was the skunk guy.
Guest:So where's the next Funny Animals song?
Guest:So then you have the problem of... But was there pressure?
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:From Clive and the brass?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then the next thing I did was I made a record with Bob Johnston, who produced Blonde on Blonde and Leonard Cohen's records and some of the great Dylan records in Nashville.
Guest:We made a record in four days with all those guys.
Guest:But it didn't have a funny animal song on it.
Marc:But that's sort of like, wasn't there a certain amount of like, because you're writing, you know, I mean, you're doing, you know, real, you know, kind of soulful folk music and you're writing, you know, clever songs that tell a certain truth about the human condition.
Marc:And now you got this skunk song, but you're still like, how did you not get angry and start drinking and...
Guest:i did don't don't worry i did i started to drink and philander and my my marriage broke up and this is the marriage to kate and that's who that's rufus's mom and martha's rufus and martha's mom i've met them at different points in my life so there you were you know the skunk song didn't repeat itself and
Marc:And now you're just a guy, not selling records.
Guest:Well, I had a career not selling records.
Guest:But I still continued to work.
Guest:And then Clive signed me again to Arista when he went to Arista.
Guest:So in 78, I just stopped trying to... I was kind of half-heartedly trying to make what they called radio-friendly records.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Records that were somewhat produced.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Then I started again and just started to put out voicing guitar records.
Guest:And I made those records with Richard Thompson, which were kind of stripped down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the production on the record served the songs.
Guest:And I think, generally, I've managed to do that for the last 30-something years.
Marc:Well, when you look back on it, like, you know, I noticed in the book that you talk about like philandering or the road or what have you is, you know, and that you have done or tried to do and what that did to your family.
Marc:I mean, I'm just trying to put my finger on it.
Marc:Like because like when you do these things in songs, you know, when you do songs.
Marc:you know about this kind of stuff you know about truth about about hitting your kid about your relationship with your father or or fathers in general about you know whatever the darker songs you have the more touching songs that you know that song is that three or four minutes you know but you still have this you know a life where you i imagine you know you have a full range of emotions and and and and you're a decent fella
Marc:But it's just interesting when you're defined by your music, because I don't know whether I read it or I'm just projecting it, that how close do you feel to the protagonists of your songs in general?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I feel... I wouldn't pretend that it's... I feel close.
Guest:It's me.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It's a kind of crystallized, polished... I mean, although it talks about some of my less appealing traits sometimes.
Guest:But it is me.
Guest:It's the waterfront that I've covered.
Guest:My life, my family, my kids, my parents, my sister.
Guest:There's songs about all these people because these are the people...
Guest:that uh mean a lot to me and then quite they're quite particular and i don't really write generic uh love songs i admire people that can do that yeah or even other people that have kind of cryptic things where you're not quite sure what they're writing about
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like Dylan, or even Steely Dan, for that matter.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You're never quite sure what it's about.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But my tendency, and I don't know why, because it's just the way that I write.
Guest:Everybody develops a style.
Guest:But I write very straight ahead.
Guest:It's very descriptive.
Guest:There's a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Guest:And a lot of it, I mean, I do write sometimes political songs and straight-ahead novelty songs, but a lot of it is about my family and my life.
Yeah.
Marc:Well, which is interesting because it's like, you know, a lot of Prime songs are not, he makes characters.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't do that much.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So those are the choices.
Marc:Either you write cryptic songs that people can just, you know, kind of use as a template to feel whatever they're going to feel without having any kind of, you know, not knowing what it means.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you have like songs about people you make up.
Marc:And then there's guys who do the straight stuff.
Marc:You're like the straight guy.
Marc:You go right to the heart of it.
Marc:You're doing the memoir song.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, baby.
Marc:The real deal.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:I'm the real deal.
Marc:I'm the real damn deal.
Marc:But when you're writing as a kid, when you wrote Loud and One and stuff, you must have had, in your mind, you were judging yourself against Dylan or whatever, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And you're like, I got to nail this thing.
Guest:Well, I had to figure out, again, like everybody else in show business, when you start, you've got to figure out what to look like and how to separate yourself from the pack.
Marc:How'd you do with that?
Guest:Well, I assumed, I took up the costume of my youth.
Guest:I had short hair.
Guest:If you look at that first album, everybody else had long hair and bell-bottom pants.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I had kind of a Brooks Brothers blazer and gray flannel pants.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and uh so right away there was a different look right and then uh i started to sing a lot about myself so you're preppy-ish yeah preppy psycho killer look right not kingston trio no no no that would have no no no that that's too that's late 50s right but they were all pretty clean cut seemed preppy-ish right yeah but striped shirts i think yeah i would never wear a striped shirt i
Marc:Don't tell them what I'm wearing today.
Marc:That's a nice plaid, a nice multicolored plaid.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:It is striped.
Marc:I thought there was, oh, it's not a plaid, it's a striped shirt.
Marc:Fashion on the radio is great, isn't it?
Marc:Yeah, but it's not Kingston Trio.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:That's a vertical stripe.
Marc:They were short-sleeved shirts, the Kingston Trio.
Marc:Oh, thank God.
Guest:And they all matched.
Marc:Exactly, yeah.
Marc:That was the big mistake.
Marc:So, all right, so you're doing these records, the skunk song happens, you know, you have this relationship with the label, with Clive Davis, what's happening around you in music at that point?
Marc:What are you up against?
Marc:Because, like, you've really, you know, kept going.
Yeah.
Marc:yeah but and in different times music is changing around you constantly but you you're locked into americana music one you know folk or or you know country ish i write the songs on an acoustic guitar you know usually record them with that and it's the same five chords that i learned when i was 15. what happened was i just kept my head down and kept writing songs
Marc:Right, but when did things get bad?
Marc:At what point did the family structure start to, the vessel start to kind of shake?
Marc:In terms of, you put these records out, you're not selling records, you've got to be on the road.
Marc:You're building a following however you're doing it.
Marc:And at some point you said that you started drinking and that you did get bitter and that made it into the music a bit, but it didn't seem to sink you.
Guest:No, no, I, you know, I didn't have, I've had a pretty good time, actually.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I, you know, I've, like anybody's life, there's collateral damage.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, but I've really, it hasn't been bad for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I haven't been severely depressed.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or had a nervous, when my mother died in 97, I kind of fell apart, but that was appropriate.
Guest:Sure, natural.
Guest:So, by and large, you know, I just kept my head down and did the job, and I liked playing, and that's still what I'm kind of doing.
Marc:And how did your following evolve?
Marc:How did you find that you got the people, the fan base?
Marc:What did they come for, and how long have they been with you?
Guest:well a lot of them have been with me for the ride i mean sometimes i'm shocked when i see my my you know i drive up to the club and i see these old people i think they're there for the bingo yeah i mean but then it's dark and they're so beautiful and warm and they love me and but then other things happen you know we mentioned judd i mean i i did this uh i was in this show that judd apatow did uh undeclared yeah so as a result of something like that all of a sudden there were young people there uh-huh
Guest:So, or fans of my son and Rufus and Martha or something.
Guest:So, you know, occasionally there's some young people up there.
Marc:Sure, but it must be wild because, you know, have you had that experience where, I mean, how old are you?
Marc:71.
Marc:So you're 71 and, you know, you've had a good go at it.
Marc:You've lived your life.
Marc:Do you have that moment where you go back to places and a woman comes up to you and goes, do you remember me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's happened, yes.
Guest:And invariably, no, I don't.
Guest:But I say, of course I do.
Guest:And my line is, through the mists of time, here we are.
Guest:And, no, that just happened to me, actually.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like with somebody your age?
Guest:Yeah, somebody my age.
Guest:It's wild, right?
Guest:And a very nice person.
Guest:And so I said hello and apologized, and we let it go at that.
Guest:You apologized.
Guest:I didn't apologize.
Marc:She apologized.
Marc:Well, that's funny, though, because, like, you're not, like, I guess, like, the assumption about how a performer lives on the road, you know, you're not some sort of crazy party dude.
Marc:You know, you weren't, like.
Marc:Not anymore, no.
Marc:You're not some dangerous, weird junkie or freak out there.
Marc:You're a folk guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you're out there getting laid just like anybody else.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But they must be, I'm just picturing just pleasant ladies.
Guest:By and large, they were very pleasant.
Guest:As I recall, they were human beings.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because they're responding to something very... But I hasten to say we're laughing about it, but that's important to point out, at least for me...
Guest:is that a lot of it created guilt and bad feelings and feeling like an idiot and a jerk and an abuser of power.
Guest:And again, in terms of my domestic life, I had the marriage with Kate, then I was with Suzy Roach for nine years, and we had a daughter.
Guest:So those marriages were kind of smashed up because of my goofing around.
Guest:On the road.
Guest:A lot of it, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But it wasn't like your dad, you weren't hiding like seven-year relationships necessarily.
Guest:I didn't do that.
Guest:I would hide like two-week relationships.
Guest:And again, a lot of times, we're talking about my proclivities a lot.
Guest:But again, the nature of the job as you go to some town, it's not a relationship at all.
Guest:It's someone to go home with.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you don't have to face the television set.
Marc:But also, it's surprising as somebody who performed.
Marc:Well, doesn't that happen in your world?
Marc:Sure, of course.
Marc:I mean, I ruined my first marriage like that.
Marc:But I don't have children.
Marc:I never did that.
Marc:I don't feel terrible about it.
Marc:But yeah, I mean, there's something profoundly lonely about a hotel room.
Marc:I don't know what it is.
Marc:But when you're on the road, even if it's for a night, you're like, what is going on?
Guest:where am i and you've just made love to 300 or 3 000 people i get right adored you right i guess i don't factor that in all the time like you've done a thing right and then you said you just so you kind of take a hostage back to the hotel a love hostage
Marc:Yeah, and they're excited.
Marc:They are.
Marc:They're into it.
Marc:But you've talked, you've seen about this stuff, and there has been kind of a tension that, I mean, Rufus came at you with a song, and I think Martha came at you with a song, and there was like...
Marc:And I imagine, why wouldn't they?
Marc:You're their dad.
Marc:You do it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, you've been writing about them since they were infants.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it's all, you know, you've got to take it if you're going to dish it out.
Guest:And Rufus and Martha, you know, have certainly taken shots.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:i can take it yeah i mean sometimes it's martha wrote this song you can swear on your radio sure so bloody motherfucking right yeah so for for a while you know when she used to play she used to open shows for me in the beginning of her career so she uh would do this song and i thought i would think boy uh
Guest:She was going out at the time with a singer called Dan Byrne.
Guest:I don't know if you know who he is.
Guest:A really talented singer, a bit older than her.
Guest:And they had a tough, difficult relationship.
Guest:So I thought, boy, that's a tough song about Dan, you bloody motherfucking asshole.
Guest:So then we're in Paramus, New Jersey.
Guest:And Martha goes out.
Guest:And it's my audience in the room, primarily, because her career is still moving up.
Guest:So she announces to my audience that this is a song about my dad.
Guest:And then sings Bloody Motherfucking Asshole.
Guest:So that was a moment that I was... Let's bring up that.
Guest:Hello!
Guest:Yes.
Guest:How was that when you got up on stage?
Guest:Well, I just...
Guest:made a joke i can't remember probably yeah i just got through it wait why she just so she decided to lay that on you and you had no idea and what what happened after that martha's very provocative i'm sure she would agree with that she likes to push the envelope i agree i i think that's a good thing to do performers need to wake people up shake people up even if it's their dad even if it's their dad before he goes on in front of his audience yeah
Marc:But it seemed like it was almost like a secret she was keeping for a while because she was playing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then at some point she decided, well, I can't let him think that it's not about him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But there was never a point where you guys weren't talking to each other.
Guest:Oh, we've been there.
Guest:We've been there.
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Yeah.
Guest:Let's see, am I talking to Rufus this week?
Guest:Now, I have another daughter who's an incredible musician that I want to talk about, Lucy Wainwright Roach, my daughter with Suzy.
Guest:From the Roaches, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Lucy has not written a song attacking me yet, and I really appreciate that.
Guest:But that's not her style anyway.
Marc:Yeah, but sometimes I think it's that first group.
Marc:Could happen, though.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But I think it's the first group of kids that think they get the raw end of the stick the most.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In general?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But Rufus, like, is a spectacular performer and songwriter.
Marc:And, you know, his song about you, I guess, is what, Dinner at Eight?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's a sad song.
Guest:That's a beautiful song.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It really is.
Guest:And it's sad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:But I think it's a great song.
Guest:It's one of his great songs.
Marc:Well, when you process this stuff, what do you think your best album is for you?
Marc:What's the one that you're like, that was, I really nailed it all the way through on that one.
Guest:Well, I've made 27 albums.
Guest:I think, and you know, some people, and I've made some duds, that's for sure, or albums that I don't really like.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:i i think there's an album called history that i made in uh it was right after my dad died yeah and that event was such a cataclysmic uh thing these songs started to come out that i and i think they're some of my best songs yeah it's great record yeah it's a great record and then my when my mother died i i made a record called last man on earth and a lot of that
Guest:unfortunately i only have two parents yeah but you know those those are two very strong records of mine yeah yeah history is like history is like beautiful and i think didn't you do one of your father's songs yes my dad wrote a song um there was a guy that he my dad lived we lived in la for for a bit in the early 50s and dad was a friend with terry gilkison
Guest:who was a folk singer, but a pop folk singer.
Guest:He had a group that they sang back up on Dean Martin records, like Memories Are Made of This.
Marc:Oh, they were that weird Hawaiian bunch?
Marc:Well, it was folky.
Guest:They sang a song called The Wild Goose.
Marc:Well, that song, Memories, has a weird little uke thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But Terry Gilkissett and my father were drinking buddies.
Guest:And I think my dad took a shot at writing some songs, hanging out with him.
Guest:And he wrote a great song about 1950, so he would have been 25, called Man, It's Just a Handful of Dust.
Guest:And that song is on history.
Marc:I guess I'm sort of fascinated at your self-awareness and about... Because I wrestle with some of the same things you do.
Marc:Now, is there redemption after this?
Marc:When you say that you look back or in the moment or whatever wreckage you've reaped on anybody, do you...
Marc:you just have an acceptance around it that it eventually resolves itself if you don't make it worse?
Marc:Or do you still kind of like, you just think you're propelled by that?
Marc:Is there still guilt and, you know, self-hatred and that kind of stuff?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, there's also, there is redemption and forgiveness.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I mean, my kids are, you know, my youngest daughter, whose name is Alexandra, she's 25.
Guest:But, I mean, Rufus is...
Guest:is 44, and Martha's 40, and Lucy's 35.
Guest:And they all have kids?
Guest:Rufus and Martha have kids.
Guest:So, you know, but they're all grown-ups.
Guest:They've been banged around in the world, and so there's some forgiveness floating around.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:And that's what I've, you know, one of the things I did in my book was I included some of my father's writing.
Guest:He was a beautiful, elegant writer.
Guest:Some of his essays are in the book.
Guest:And I love, you know, he and I had a kind of a crappy relationship, but he died more than 25 years ago.
Guest:So there's a forgiveness thing that's going on now between me and him, even though he's been dead.
Guest:And if you can't forgive your parents, I'm talking to my kids now.
Guest:If you can't forgive your parents, you can't forgive yourself.
Guest:That's my theory at this point.
Guest:But you learned that the hard way.
Guest:You make a lot of mistakes, and I made plenty of mistakes.
Guest:But it wasn't any more than anybody else.
Guest:I just wrote about it.
Guest:I had a couple of broken marriages, and I screwed around.
Guest:I mean, that's it.
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Like, I use that one, too.
Marc:Like, in the sense that, you know, there is a short menu to transgression.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and of course, there's a big range.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, certainly there are ones that sort of, there's nothing unusual.
Marc:I didn't drown any puppies.
Marc:No, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you didn't, you know, bankrupt a country or kill anybody.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, you kind of like judge yourself on the moral transgression chart and how familiar it is culturally.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you're like, look, you know, people fuck up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So so please forgive me, kids.
Guest:I'm saying this on the radio.
Marc:But you also you seem to wrestle with the very idea of of love.
Marc:Yeah, love, yeah.
Marc:I do material that's similar to this.
Marc:And I'm trying to glean from you, because I'm a little younger than you, how you resolve some of that stuff.
Marc:Because I feel like I'm capable of love, of giving, but there's something that holds me back.
Marc:And in terms of guilt and whatever.
Marc:But how have you... I imagine having kids changes that.
Guest:Well, I have a song called...
Guest:All in a family.
Guest:It's all in a family.
Guest:And that is about love.
Guest:Love heals heartache and familial pain and what family is not insane.
Guest:Love has been working its way into the songs in the last 10 or 20 years.
Marc:with age and grandkids?
Guest:Yeah, I think grandkids, yeah.
Guest:You know, and you do realize that, you know, it's kind of corny, but the love thing is a big thing.
Guest:Do you ever feel pointlessness?
Guest:Um...
Guest:Is that a theme?
Guest:Well, I mean, I wrote a song when I was 25 on my second album called The Suicide Song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a long time ago.
Guest:It was a long time ago, and I was kind of goofing around anyway.
Guest:I wasn't really... The worst I ever felt was after my mother died.
Guest:I really went down hard on that.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:50.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:I was 51 or something.
Marc:So you'd already gone through a lot of your stuff, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot had happened to me, and my father had died earlier, and that was...
Guest:more of a release for me when he died but when my when my mother died the bottom went out and what what was the was the feeling just sort of like you know like a void yeah uh i i couldn't get out of bed you know i mean i i've been mildly depressed for my entire adult life sure this was the real thing yeah and
Guest:But with time and seeing a shrink and some lorazepam, I got back on my feet.
Marc:Oh, good, good.
Marc:So I want to talk a little bit before we wrap it up.
Marc:I know you got to do stuff.
Marc:The acting and the sort of TV thing.
Marc:I had no idea until I looked it up today that you were actually involved with the original David Letterman daytime show.
Marc:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was the musician sidekick on the couch for the first week.
Guest:And that show didn't last that long?
Guest:Is that what happened?
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, they did me for a week, and then they thought, this isn't great.
Guest:And then they tried some other guests.
Guest:And then they shifted over to late night and brought Paul Schaefer in, I guess.
Marc:Because you did act here and there.
Marc:I mean, how did that... Who was...
Marc:And bringing you into that, you knew Christopher Guest and McKean and those guys when they had the sketch of Spinal Tap, correct?
Guest:Yeah, I was in Spinal Tap.
Marc:In the movie?
Guest:In the sketch.
Marc:In the sketch.
Guest:It was in a Rob Reiner TV special called The TV Show.
Guest:Martin Mull was in it.
Guest:And Harry Shearer was in it.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And they came up with this sketch about a heavy metal band.
Guest:I was the keyboard player.
Guest:You can see me on YouTube.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:In a wig, yeah.
Marc:So you always sort of were, these were your close friends, so you were sort of in proximity to comedy all the time.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You were always kind of like around.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And when you met those guys, okay, you went to college with some of them, but you met, you saw like in the city, like you were there pre-SNL, right?
Guest:Yeah, when I met, I met Chris when he was in this thing called Lemmings.
Guest:Oh, the National Lampoon Radio Hour thing?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that was pre, you know, Belushi and Chevy Chase.
Guest:And this was two years before Saturday Night Live.
Guest:And you saw that perform live?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where'd they perform that?
Guest:At the Village Vanguard.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Which was on Bleecker Street.
Marc:Yeah, sure, sure.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:It was incredible.
Marc:That was like the dark festival, the rock festival.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That was the satirical answer to Woodstock.
Guest:That's right, where they all would just go off the edge of the cliff.
Marc:Right, so you saw Belushi as the young, crazy... Yeah, I think he did his Joe Cocker impression.
Guest:Right, of course, right, of course.
Guest:And Chris did incredible Dylan, and a wonderful actress who's no longer alive.
Guest:Alice Playton was in it, and Gary Goodrow, and...
Guest:A lot of great, and Chevy, a lot of great people.
Marc:And you did SNL early on too, right?
Guest:I was in the first season.
Guest:I was in the third show.
Guest:Robert Klein was the host.
Guest:And the other musical act was ABBA.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And nobody knew who they were.
Guest:They had just won the Eurovision Song Contest.
Guest:And they were the only group, I'm told, that ever lip-sank on Saturday Night Live.
Guest:That first time?
Guest:They did it then, and Lorne decided that would never happen again.
Marc:Was there chaos at the show?
Marc:Was everyone excited?
Marc:I can't imagine that first season.
Marc:Because it was more of a variety show.
Marc:They had short films and more scenes.
Guest:No, it was great.
Guest:It was with all the original cast.
Guest:I remember the party after the show we did.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:What he was talking about.
Guest:things yeah going off to the bathroom every once in a while sure yeah what was that did you do carson or any of those shows i did i did carson uh twice uh once with johnny and once with doc severinson guest hosting yeah yeah and i did you know i've done uh i did the mike douglas show are you old enough to remember that i used to watch it after school they sit around the half circle right yeah i did a lot of mike douglas shows oh yeah i did merv griffin
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Shows I have done.
Marc:But sitting there with guys, to me, thinking back on those talents at that time, everything seemed to be more like a community.
Marc:Everybody seemed to know each other.
Marc:Am I making that up, or do you feel that too?
Marc:You're sitting out there on a Merv Griffin show, and there'd be some comic there and some other guy there, but show business felt small to me.
Guest:I think it was a little looser maybe.
Guest:And I don't think that people were... But there were egos flying around and crap and bullshit.
Guest:But it was a long time ago.
Guest:How'd you do M.A.S.H.?
Guest:How'd that happen?
Guest:Larry Gelbhardt saw me playing at the Troubadour in L.A.
Guest:in 73 or something and said, hey, how about an idea of a singing surgeon?
Guest:And I did three episodes of M.A.S.H.
Guest:That's fun.
Guest:Yeah, it was fun.
Marc:And then all of a sudden you got Judd, you know, putting you in everything.
Guest:Judd has been incredible.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What was the first thing he put you in?
Marc:Undeclared.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When he was a 14-year-old kid growing up in Syosset, Long Island, he saw me on that Letterman show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then he used to come into town and see me play at the bottom line.
Guest:When he was a kid?
Guest:Yeah, well, probably.
Marc:To a teenager?
Guest:Well, then he was like 18 or 19.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:oh so he's been a fan a long time he's been a fan a long time yeah and then i got this call about 12 years ago from and i never i didn't had no idea who he was i had not seen freaks and geeks it was weird today i i got on a plane from this morning in new york and martin star was sitting next to me he's a great guy judd and yeah freaks and geeks martin star is an intense dude he's a good guy he slept most of the way okay i could tell he was intense yeah yeah he's intense
Guest:so so he puts you on undeclared and then yeah and then you know i gave me some parts and some other movies and then i wrote with joe henry my friend joe henry we wrote the music for knocked up and uh good stuff from judd yeah and you did that cover your of uh another friend song right daughter peter blake that yes great who's that guy
Guest:That guy is a really interesting guy.
Guest:He's an expatriate.
Guest:He's an American, but he's been living in London for almost 40 years.
Guest:He was in a rock band in the 70s called Slap Happy, and they played a lot in Europe.
Guest:He's a great songwriter.
Guest:He's also an amazing cartoonist and a writer, and hardly anybody knows.
Guest:It's a hell of a song.
Guest:That's a hell of a song.
Guest:If you Google me, the first thing that comes up is Daughter.
Guest:So I have to always tell people that I didn't write that.
Guest:It's a pain in the ass, but it's a great song.
Marc:At least the skunk thing's behind you.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:It used to be skunk, now it's Daughter.
Marc:You can't get a fair shake on your good shit.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:All right, man.
Marc:Well, it was great talking to you.
Marc:The book is beautiful.
Marc:It's well written.
Marc:You know, it's fun.
Marc:And what happens now?
Marc:Do you tour constantly?
Guest:I tour regularly, I'd say.
Guest:Judd and Chris are talking about maybe getting together.
Guest:I have this theater show called Surviving Twin, which is my songs mixed in with my dad's writing.
Guest:And I've been doing that.
Guest:And so there's some talk that we might do a film of that.
Guest:So that's the next thing that hopefully will happen.
Marc:You really are emotionally burying the hatchet with your dad posthumously.
Marc:The more you forgive, the better you feel.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:I just made that up just now.
Guest:That's a bumper sticker, isn't it?
Guest:Or a song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, I'll go back.
Guest:You get cracking on that.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Thanks, Wadden.
Guest:Very nice talking to you.
Marc:Okay, that was that.
Marc:The book.
Marc:Liner Notes is out.
Marc:Get it.
Marc:Get the book.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:A life in music.
Marc:A life in entertainment.
Marc:Loud and Wainwright.
Marc:Dig it.
Marc:Can you dig it?
Marc:Guitar?
Marc:Guitar, anyone?
Guitar.
Guest:Boomer Lives!
Guest:Boomer Lives!