Not to be confused with that Jon Landau.

Not to be confused.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's all kind of, like, created.

In fact, there's a great thing.

Bruce Springsteen is one of the few entertainers to be on the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same week.

That happened in 1975 when, uh, Born to Run came out.

So it-

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Is, yeah, that we try to, as opposed to we're gonna do deep dive investigative reporter every year of his life, what actually happened.

That's not what this is at all.

This is his life through what he said.

Right

... once, when he was in college doing those, those things, that he, uh...

A- again, there's multiple stories, but that, uh, Archie Bunker was an influence on how to quietly deliver these lines.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Is, yeah, that we try to, as opposed to we're gonna do deep dive investigative reporter every year of his life, what actually happened.

That's not what this is at all.

This is his life through what he said.

Right

... on, when he was in college doing those, those things, that he, uh, a- again, there's multiple stories, but that, uh, Archie Bunker was an influence on how to quietly deliver these lines.

Mm-hmm.

But it was a narrative film, a Warner Brothers film in the '50s that he saw when he was in Germany, uh, during the Korean War.

So, uh, you know, the best place to be [laughs] during the Korean War is in Germany, where there's no fighting.

So, uh, yeah.

So he had already had like a connection with the underclass, and people that are, like, uh, forgotten by society.

Like, that was sort of like his, unlike, like Elvis Presley, who was like the sexy guy, he was like the serious dude.

Another reason I think that he loved June Carter, 'cause she was funny.

Uh, and then what's your, what's, sum it up.

Not right now.

Okay.

He was a very curious kind of almost experimental avant-garde comedian who pretended to be a professor and then would give lectures on different topics in a very crazed kind of – do you remember like the way Einstein had his hair all crazed? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that was – So Erwin Corey, for some reason is like, you know, I don't want to work seven days a week.

I don't want to work Monday through Sunday.

Can I get Sunday off? You know, I appreciate this gig you're giving me here at the playboy club, but, um, I don't want to do it.

So Hef, who had seen Dick Gregory, he was the host of this club called the Robert Show Club, which is a black club in Chicago, and said, well, why don't we give this kid a chance for $50? So we hired him that night.

So what changed exactly? What was Dick Gregory's next phase in life?

Yep.

There's a guy named Dick Rowe, who famously turned down The Beatles, famously had a chance to sign them, turned them down, didn't think guitar music was gonna happen.

But, uh, this band is a ki- it's a high school buddies put the band together the way you're supposed to do a band, you know, not like some corporate thing.

They win a talent contest to, and The Zombies, because they win this talent, talent contest, they get a record deal with Decca, and they have a hit song, a single one-hit wonder called She's Not There.

You know, the way she look, the way she acted, the color of her hair.

I mean-

And we're off, and we're off.

And so, but they don't reunite for that album tour, and then later, people start appreciating the production of the album, and also just, just how unique it is in the landscape of music, in the, just in the landscape of music at that time, and it's one of those...

Shopify.com/income.

[singing] The 500.

The 500.

Jim been walking us down through that 2012 edition, so it ain't nothing to you.

Hundreds more to go and in need of a friend.

The King of Fleece, Paul Angelo.

Talking the 500 until the end.

I knew that intro.

funny.

Yeah, it was more.

That's where I really got some, as George Carlin liked to say, approval, affirmation, all of those kind of those A words like, oh, this is attention, approval, affirmation.

And so.

Yeah, it was more teachers encouraged me to go into comedy very early on.

And I always liked, again, I had older brothers and sisters, so I was always kind of vying for attention.

Sure.

He killed again.

Just to start us off, I'm curious, in your studies as a professor at USC, adjunct, um, did you include [laughs] your studies in comedy about how it has healing powers for both the givers of the comedy and the receivers? And if so, what did you glean off of the studies?

Um, as a matter of fact, I didn't.

I just stuck mainly [laughs] I know the theme of this show is the, the power of the comedy.

I was more just talking about its evolution and how it went from a very small, a part of variety shows to now it is the show.

Like, it used to be just, like, the monologist, that's what stand-ups were called, were a, like part of a variety show.

Even before Vaudeville, they were doing it.

And then eventually-People really started gravitating towards what these people were saying.

Yes, yes.

How did the band go from stealing Muddy Waters riffs to inventing Swagger itself?

It's one of the great...

Mysteries, that they were that good of songwriters together.

The Jagger and what's the other guy's name? Keith Richards.

These two guys wrote so many hooky, great, swampy, bluesy, R&B, but guitar-based, sort of created, had the first huge riff song, which is Satisfaction, which...

You listen to any Led Zeppelin songs, they're all riff songs.

It's all a guitar riff that repeats over and over again.

Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Supremes.

We've got, so with-

Well, this is the weird era of music, which is betw- after the birth of rock and roll, and that kind of fizzles out for a number of reasons.

Elvis goes into the army, uh, Little Richard becomes a preacher, and Jerry Lee Lewis is arrested 'cause he married a 13-year-old, [laughs] his 13-year-old cousin.

Uh, or, so, like, it was, like, rock and roll was sorta like, "Oh, this is gonna be like a fad, like calypso." And so the music industry was still trying to figure out, there was a lot of produced albums, like Betty, like Up on the Roof, or Stand by Me, or At Last.

And then there was the Italian singers that were, like, you know, kind of created out of Philadelphia.

And then it wasn't till the Beatles came along that was like, "Oh, rock and roll is back and this is how you do it.

You and your buddies start a band." And that, that sorta changed everything.

What's that?

Even

though there's many country songs that aren't conservative ideas, there's many liberal ideas also.

I feel like that's a trope.

But as a rule, country music was like for the hardhats and the thing, and that the hippie music came out of the folk era, and that was all anti-war, pro-drug, pro-free sex.

Yeah.

pro, you know, all of these things, long hair and super obvious.

So there was a real divide and this album tried to cross that terrain.

No,

So

they couldn't be more in that scene.

However, please and hopefully you had time to listen to the record it's not a psychedelic jam band record at all at all it's like a little every song is like two and a half minutes except for their final songs they do a little not so they were more of a like a singles band and which was different than what was going on in that scene but they were right there in that scene they were signed in san francisco they were in that whole world of the the ballrooms you know san francisco scene had these Two, maybe three ballrooms.

The biggest was called the Fillmore and then the Avalon.

These were big ballrooms where they would do these rock shows.

I'm sure you've seen footage with the weird strobe lights, colorful, weird color lights behind them.

And it wasn't they were like dance halls.

So when did it like fracture? When did it really start fracturing? Is that guy losing his mind while they're doing this? That was

(laughs)

And, uh, (laughs) it's just like, that this guy...

It, I love that, in fact, this is the guy that sort of started the whole thing.

It's perfect.

It's perfect.

So anyway, vaudeville was family entertainment.

And the height of vaudeville, like what today would be getting a Netflix special, was to perform at a theater in New York called The Palace, which was, uh, right off Broadway in 44th.

Were they controversial? Were they just something new and strange? Was it a slow evolution or a sudden one?

you get that role?

Well, I knew Larry from standup.

I knew him right, right.

Standup was like high school.

Like there's, you're a freshman, they're seniors.

So you don't really hang out that much.

But so I would introduce him at the comic strip.

Do you remember anything about Bob Costas and or Brad Pitt? I remember Bob