Last Words Read online

  There were dire financial consequences to the path I’d taken. And as of June 1971 I had no idea where it led, or where I would end up. No guarantees, nothing.

  But far underground, the volcano began to rumble.

  11

  WURDS, WERDS, WORDS

  A contemplative moment on stage

  (Copyright susan ragan)

  I do love words.

  One time when I was about twelve, I was coming out of Muller’s Ice Cream Parlor on Broadway, and across the street outside the University Bar and Grill, my pal Mickey was kicking the shit out of a Juilliard student. The kid was a classical musician with long hair. In 1950 that was the only long hair there was. And Mickey’s yelling: “You longhair fucking music prick.”

  Longhair fucking music prick. Great. I wrote it down. Another time I heard this guy Chris calling Mrs. Kohler a “Kraut cunt.” Kraut cunt. Also great! I wrote that down.

  Some guy came home from the service and I asked him what it was like being in the army. His reply: “Fine if you don’t mind waking up at five in the morning with some burly, loudmouthed cocksucker yelling at you.” Burly, loudmouthed cocksucker. Great rhythm to that. Loud burly cocksucker: not the same at all. I wrote that down. Soon I had a list of about ten of these.

  Sure enough, my mother found the list—with dire results: she threatened me with psychiatry. But twenty years later the list bore fruit. It contained all of the “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” aka the “Seven Dirty Words,” arguably the best-known cut from my breakout album, Class Clown. Which in turn spawned all the pieces on the ways we use, misuse and abuse words I’ve done in the thirty-odd years since.

  I needn’t have worried myself sick all those months after I recorded FM & AM. It came out in January ’72 and was an immediate hit.

  It quickly went gold. The AM-to-FM premise seemed to click with people. In the early seventies, the feeling that something freer and fresher was emerging from the violence and confusion of the sixties was pervasive.

  That feeling was mirrored by the cover art. Not the usual selfconsciously goofy comedy-album shot, but serious and thoughtful. It conveyed that I had more than a merely mimic side. I was more than what I had been up to that point: a string of words that skated over real meaning and then disappeared into the night.

  By the time FM & AM came out I was already hot to do another album. The FM part of me was bubbling over with truly authentic material: autobiographical stuff, school memories, first-person, outward-directed commentary like “Seven Words.” All in my voice. George Carlin was finally front and center in my act.

  FM & AM by then felt like something I’d needed to get out of the way, so that I could go ahead to the next generation. I felt good, knowing that although this album was selling so well, I could put it on the shelf.

  On other people’s shelves too, but especially my own. I’ve always liked the idea of having a shelf for my stuff. Tangible proofs of the things I’ve done. All those videos and CDs stacked neatly together. If I get a nice big massive stroke and all I can do is watch TV for the rest of my life, I’ll always be able to look over at that shelf and say to myself: “Good job. Well done. Task completed.”

  Just four months after FM & AM came out I recorded Class Clown. I realized that these pieces had been incubating and building for a long time, held back by my own uncertainty; now they were bursting out of me, full-blown:

  I used to be Irish Catholic. Now I’m an American. You know—you GROW. I was from one of those Irish neighborhoods in New York. A parish school. Corpus Christi was the name, but it could have been any Catholic Church: Our Lady of Great Agony. St. Rita Moreno. Our Lady of Perpetual Motion. The school wasn’t one of those prison schools with a lot of corporal punishment—Sister Mary Discipline with the steel ruler:

  WHEESH! “AAAAAAARRRRRGGGHHH!! My HAND!!” You’d fall two years behind in penmanship, right?

  “He’s behind in penmanship, Mrs. Carlin. I don’t know why.” He’s CRIPPLED—THAT’S WHY! He’s trying to learn to write with his LEFT HAND!

  We didn’t have that. The pastor was into John Dewey and he’d talked the diocese into experimenting with progressive education. And whipping the religion on us anyway and seeing what would happen. There was a lot of classroom freedom. No grades, no uniforms, no sexual segregation … In fact, there was so much freedom that by eighth grade many of us had lost the faith! They made questioners out of us. And they really didn’t have any answers for us: they’d fall back on, “Well, it’s a MYSTERY …” “A mystery? Oh. Thank you, Fadder!”

  I used to imitate the priests, which was right on the verge of blasphemy. I did Father Byrne the best. He did the children’s Mass and told parables about Dusty and Buddy. Dusty was a Catholic. And Buddy—WAS NOT. And Buddy was always trying to talk Dusty into having a hotdog on Friday.

  I could do Father Byrne so well that I wanted to do him in confession. Get into Father Byrne’s confessional one Saturday and hear a few confessions. Because I knew, according to my faith, that if anyone really thought I was Father Byrne and really wanted to be forgiven—and PERFORMED THE PENANCE I had assigned—they would’ve been FORGIVEN, man! That’s what they taught us—it’s your intention that counts. What you want to do. Mortal sin had to be a grievous offense, sufficient reflection and full consent of the will. YA HADDA WANNA!

  In fact, WANNA was a sin all by itself! Thou shalt not WANNA! It was a sin for you to WANNA feel up Ellen. It was a sin for you to PLAN to feel up Ellen. It was a sin for you to FIGURE OUT A PLACE to feel up Ellen. It was a sin to TAKE Ellen to the place to feel her up. It was a sin to try to feel her up and it was a sin to feel her up! There were SIX SINS in one FEEL! …

  (With an Irish priest at confession) … First of all, he recognized your voice, because you’d grown up there. He knew everyone. “What’d you do that for, George?” “Oh God! He KNOWS!” And the Irish priests were always heavily into penance and punishment. They’d give you a couple of novenas, nine First Fridays, five First Saturdays, the Stations of the Cross, a trip to Lourdes. That was one of things that bothered me about my religion. That conflict between pain and pleasure. They were always PUSHING for pain. You were always PULLING for PLEASURE!

  There were other things that bothered me. My church would keep changing rules. “That law is eternal—except for THIS WEEKEND!” Special dispensation! Eating meat on a Friday is definitely a SIN—except for the people in Philadelphia—THEY WERE NUMBER ONE IN THE SCRAP IRON DRIVE!

  I’ve been gone a long time now. It’s not even a sin anymore to eat meat on Friday. But I’ll bet you there are still some guys in hell doing time on a MEAT RAP!

  Once a week Father Russell would come for Heavy Mystery Time. And you’d save all your weird questions for Father Russell. You’d take a whole week thinking up trick questions. “Ey, Fadder: If God is all-powerful, can he make a rock so big he himself can’t lift it? AHAHAHAHAHA! We GOT ’IM NOW!”

  Or you’d take a simple sin and surround it with the most bizarre circumstances to relieve the guilt. Example: you had to perform your Easter Duty—receiving communion at Eastertime—once between Ash Wednesday and Pentecost Sunday. So you’d ask the priest: “Ey, Fadder: Suppose that you didn’t make your EASTER DUTY. And it’s PENTECOST SUNDAY. And you’re on a SHIP AT SEA. And the chaplain GOES INTO A COMA. But you wanted to receive. And then it’s MONDAY, TOO LATE! But then … you CROSS THE INTERNATIONAL DATE LINE! …

  With Class Clown and Occupation: Foole in 1973 (which was really part two of Class Clown), I had a sense of coming alive, of experiencing myself fully, of great potential for further exploration. Each time I shone light into a new corner I discovered new passageways. What I had been doing before had been limited and closed: a cul-de-sac. This new approach had an open end. It stretched off into the distance and the future.

  As long as you have observations to make, as long as you can see things and let them register against your template, as long as you’re able to take impressions and c
ompare them with the old ones, you will always have material. People have always asked me: “Don’t you ever think you might run out of ideas? Don’t you ever worry about not having anything to say anymore?” Occasionally that does flash through your mind, because it’s a natural human impulse to think in terms of beginnings and endings. The truth is, I can’t run out of ideas—not as long as I keep getting new information and I can keep processing it.

  I had skills and gifts that I hadn’t suspected. Originally, stand-up had been intended only as a means to an end. But now that it had become its own end, now that it was starting to be the thing I did, all the walls came down. “Jesus, I am good at this. Here I am just talking about something and suddenly I’ve attached two minutes to it that’s funny in itself.” I was taking my life and putting it out to the world—me, the artist, the writer, the performer, creating something out of nothing or perhaps out of something I already knew without knowing that I knew it. Making something greater out of something smaller.

  All three of these albums eventually went gold, and FM & AM won me my first Grammy. They also benefited from being on the leading edge of a new boom in comedy albums. Albums had been the medium of choice for rock and the counterculture, which both rejected and was rejected by television. It was natural for our new humor to use albums too as our medium. That’s at the heart of “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” Even though it’s been possible for a while to say some of them sometimes on television, it’s still one of my favorite pieces, if for no other reason than the grief it caused people who deserve to have grief caused to them.

  There are four hundred thousand words in the English language and there are seven of them you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is! Three hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-three … to seven! They must really be bad. They’d have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large. “All of you over here … You seven, you bad words.”

  That’s what they told us, you remember? “That’s a bad word.” What? There are no bad words. Bad thoughts, bad intentions, but no bad words.

  You know the seven, don’t you, that you can’t say on television? Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. Those are the Heavy Seven. Those are the ones that’ll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war. Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.

  Tits doesn’t even belong on the list. Such a friendly-sounding word. Sounds like a nickname, right? “Hey, Tits, c’mere, man!” “Hey, Tits, meet Toots. Toots, Tits, Tits, Toots.” Sounds like a snack, doesn’t it?

  Yes I know, it IS!

  But I don’t mean your sexist snack. I mean new NABISCO TITS! The new cheese tits. Corn tits, and pizza tits, and sesame tits, onion tits. Tater tits. Yeah. Bet you can’t eat just one, right? I usually switch off. But that word does not belong on the list.

  Actually, none of the words belong on the list but you can understand why some of them are there. I mean, I’m not completely insensitive to people’s feelings. I can dig why some of those words got on the list. Like cocksucker and motherfucker. Those are heavyweight words. There’s a lot going on there, man. Besides the literal translation and the emotional feeling, they’re just busy words. A lot of syllables to contend with. Those k’s are aggressive sounds, they jump out at you. Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Cocksucker, Motherfucker. It’s like an assault on you.

  Two of the other four-letter Anglo-Saxon words are piss and cunt, which go together of course but forget that. A little accidental humor I threw in. Piss and cunt. The reason that piss and cunt are on the list is that a long time ago certain ladies said, “Those are the two I’m not going to say. I don’t mind fuck and shit, but P and C are out! P and C are out!” Which led to such stupid sentences as: “Okay, you fuckers, I’m going to tinkle now.”

  And of course, the word fuck. I don’t really—here’s some more accidental humor—I don’t really want to get into that now! Because it takes too long. But the word fuck is a very important word. It’s the beginning of life and yet it’s a word we use to hurt one another. People much wiser than I have said, “I’d rather have my son watch a film with two people making love than two people trying to kill one another.” And I can agree. It’s a great sentiment, I wish I knew who said it first. But I’d like to take it a step further. I’d like to substitute the word fuck for the word kill in all those movie clichés we grew up with:

  “Okay, sheriff, we’re going to fuck you now. But we’re gonna fuck you slow.”

  Those are the seven you can never say on television under any circumstances, you just cannot say them ever, not even clinically, you cannot weave them in on the panel with Doc and Ed and Johnny, I mean it’s just impossible. Forget those seven, they’re out. There are, however, some two-way words. Like prick. It’s okay to prick your finger. But don’t FINGER YOUR PRICK! …

  Another part of the excitement of doing albums came from them being distributed by Atlantic Records. I had a corporate push behind me and also the music business. Going to their offices was exciting! Record offices were full of stickers and posters and shit on the walls. The people all dressed the way they wanted to. The women looked terrific. As if a bunch of high school kids had said, “Let’s play office.”

  You felt connected to all the other acts on the label—rock and folk superstars. You got the feeling vividly when the person whose office you were visiting or doing business in took a phone call and mentioned some of these artists in the conversation. “Hey, I’m on the same roster as the Rolling Stones!”

  Then there’s something everyone with an album does. You go into the record store and see about ten of your records displayed. Or you look in the comedy rack and see your name on the separators. You have your own section! And I did this more than once: if there was a bunch of comedy albums not organized, I would take mine out and put them in the front. Absolutely!

  So suddenly there was money. The college dates I’d wanted began to come in, not huge yet, $3,000 or $4,000 a pop, but some of them the kind where you got a guarantee versus a percentage of the gross. If you packed them in, those could be big.

  I had money. I felt terrific. So why not get more cocaine? To do Class Clown, which I recorded on May 27, 1972, I had to say to myself, “I want to be sharp and clean and clear tonight. No cocaine.” My diction on it is remarkably lucid. In other words, I was already using enough cocaine that I had to think consciously about not using it to record an album.

  But it was a great time. I felt so free. So flush. It was such a catharsis, such a coming to terms, such a reward. It was proof that I was right—fuck you people, look at this! Not only are they going for it—it’s GOOD too! I needn’t have been worried about success. Lily Tomlin once said, “I worry about being a success in a mediocre world,” and I’d always been fearful that if I had mass appeal I wouldn’t have substance. So I was happy that I had substance and yet was getting all this attention, approval, applause, approbation, affirmation—all those A’s I never got in school.

  Throughout ’72 and early ’73 the excitement built and built. It was a time of First Times. There was the first time of selling out a theater or a club. I still have the handwritten sign from the Main Point, a little folkie room, near Bryn Mawr, west of Philadelphia. About four hundred people had shown up, and they had to put up a sign on the door: “SOLD OUT.” The first time this ever happened in my life!

  There was the first time I got caught in my own traffic jam. The first time you’re driving to the theater and you’re stuck in theater traffic you have created! (This also happened in Philadelphia, at the Academy of Music.) Just a fabulous feeling: “I did this! I’ve created a fucking traffic jam!” To stand there and see them all walking in and think: “Each one of these people has left his or her home and paid money and come here just to hear me and this stuff I’m doing.” It’s so affirming—it fires your imagination about the rest of your future.

  There was another, deeper level o
f fulfillment too, about playing at colleges to college students.

  I had a deferred adolescence. In my actual adolescence I was already thinking like an adult and making adult decisions. I was planning my career at eleven, getting engaged at fifteen, getting my mother if not out of my life certainly out of my heart in advance of any normal differentiation that a child goes through with his parents. And I joined the air force at seventeen.

  So my late childhood was postponed, or rather not experienced. Then, in 1967, as I’m entering my thirties, along comes a youth-oriented culture that attracts me for political reasons, but for other hidden reasons too. “Oh, there’s something I didn’t do when I was that age. They’re burning a car!” When I make the identity full and complete and it includes what I do for a living and as an art form, I say, “Let me tell you about when I was a kid. I’m just like you!” I finally found a way to live that deferred adolescence.

  Generationally—for what generations are worth—I’m at the midpoint between the Boomer generation and the GI generation. I had no biological identification with one side or the other of the generational conflict of the time. Which was good, because it gave me a feeling for both. Though technically I was past the magic age of thirty, beyond which there was no trust and no hope and no life.

  My rejection of the older generation’s notions of values and authority were by now complete. In my mind and heart, I was saying, “Your values suck, I reject your inherent authority, I don’t buy that authority comes on a direct line from God to my parents, to my appointed church people, or to the police or to anyone else.” For me, all authority comes from within. All my power comes from within me.

  But the other side of me—the side that respected much about the GI generation and had nostalgia for it—could find fulfillment too. In the summer of 1972, I played Carnegie Hall. It not only meant validation but arrival at a certain level. You may not really be on the same level as others who played there before you, but you now have something in common with them. Lenny worked Carnegie Hall. Stokowski worked Carnegie Hall. I worked Carnegie Hall. Fabulous. And it was an acknowledgment that I did accept certain kinds of authoritative wisdom: for example, that Carnegie was a prestigious place to appear.