#156 Bathtubs Over Broadway with Steve Young from Late Night With David Letterman

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:30

All right, Dava. Thank you for that amazing introduction. You got this show going each and every week and this week was no exception. Welcome, everybody to Episode 156 of classic conversations. As always, I am your host, Jeff Dwoskin. Great to have you back for another classic episode, or taking this one all the way to Broadway. Kinda. My guest today is Steve Young. Steve Young was a comedy writer for Late Show with David Letterman for over 20 years. One of his assignments on the Letterman Show was finding funny records for David to use during a bit during this time, he uncovered an entire hidden world of industrial musicals. What's an industrial musical? It's our Broadway style show put on by General Electric McDonald's Ford Xerox, but only by their sales team full on Broadway productions on why you should be eating Big Macs and stuff like that. A world we were never meant to see. But Steve uncovered the magical LPS of vinyl that existed in the US record stores. And now there's an entire documentary all about it bathtubs over Broadway. We're gonna dive deep into that talk all about Steve's time at Late Show with David Letterman. That one time he wrote a Simpsons episode and the amazing documentary which I love to death bathtubs over Broadway. This is all coming up in just a few seconds. In these few seconds. I want to just remind everyone of last week's episode episode 154 was Sharon glass Cagney from Cagney and Lacey, an amazingly super fun interview. Don't miss that one. Episode 155 was a crossing the streams bonus episode. Tons of great TV binge watching suggestions, but enough about the past. Let's focus on what's in front of us. Get ready for Steve Young get ready for bathtubs over Broadway. And yes, the interview includes snippets of some of the songs from the industrial musicals, we're talking about urine bird traits. And that's coming up. All right, now. Enjoy. All right, everybody. I'm so excited to introduce you to my next guest, comedy writer, author and subject of one of the most amazing documentaries that we're gonna cover and just a little bit, you're gonna, you're gonna be like, I got to stop listening and run off and listen and watch that. But no, that's why we're gonna wait. Get to it later. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. Steve Young. Steve,

Steve Young 3:07

how are you? Hello. Hey, Jeff. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, this documentary sounds great. I may have to stop what I'm doing and run off and watch it.

Jeff Dwoskin 3:14

You don't have to Steve Young because you were the focus of the documentary. And I'm so excited to get to that part. But we're going to build up to it. Because Steve Young is more than just the focus of a documentary. He was longest running writer for David Letterman on the Letterman show so much talk about but I gotta say, I will admit, when we were connecting, and you were like, Oh, by the way, there's this documentary on Netflix. You should watch it. I didn't make it but I'm the focus of it. And I'm gonna give you an idea who I am. I'm like, Okay. Because everyone like everyone like bad stuff to watch, right? So I am I go to get my I go to get my oil change. I sit at the dealership and wait, I had like an, like two hours to kill. So I started watching the documentary. Well, let me just say I got so obsessed with the documentary. When my wife called me about 45 minutes into it. You ever get like interrupted when you're really into something and you inadvertently just start a fight? That's what happened. I like snapped. I'm like, I can't talk right now. Like I like she knows I'm really into a documentary. Right? Like she she's aware of that now, but I'm like, I'm so into it. And I don't want to stop.

Steve Young 4:22

Did she just assume that the oil change was a very emotional experience? Or did she have no idea what was going on?

Jeff Dwoskin 4:29

I don't know. We got divorced, but it was very nice. Just kidding.

Steve Young 4:33

Yeah, sure. We'll enjoy that one.

Jeff Dwoskin 4:36

That's That's how good this documentary is it everyone were teasing. And I have left my wife over it.

Steve Young 4:42

All right. Well,

Jeff Dwoskin 4:43

I guess that's, yeah, that's a little too much build up. That might be a little too much build up. People won't want to watch it because they'll be scared. I'm telling you. It's amazing. It's amazing. All right, so longest right here for David Letterman. But how did you get into comedy writing like what's the what's your origin?

Steve Young 4:59

Well, first of all, you know I don't know if I've run the numbers or how many people have on the terms of relative seniority on that show, but I was there for 25 years, but there were people who predated me who went to the end. I don't know if I mean, Dave Letterman himself had a writer credit on the show, and very deservedly so he probably outrank me on that. But yeah, there were a lot of people who stayed there for many, many years. How did I get into comedy? You know, I was a funny, wise ass kid. But growing up, I had no idea that people wrote for television shows or that was a career or anything wasn't really till I was at college, and I was on the humor magazine. First of all, Conan O'Brien was the president of this humor magazine. And he was very impressive. And I thought, wow, I would like to be like this guy. He's so funny. Whenever he walks into the room, just things are suddenly mysteriously but in arguably hilarious. How does that work? I want to learn about this. And whatever little germ of talent I may have, perhaps I can polish it. That was when I was also learning people go on from college and can work in all sorts of creative fields as a real career. And suddenly, I was hearing about people who were working at SNL or Letterman and I thought, oh, you know, that's a great idea for me, partly because I have no other ideas. And partly because I think, yeah, maybe that would work out for me. It didn't happen right away after college kicked around for a few years as a bartender and things like that. But I had some lucky breaks and was in the right place at the right time, that sort of thing.

Jeff Dwoskin 6:29

Besides Conan, were there other notables there? I mean, people who later went on I talked to Mike Greece on the show, I talked to Al Jean. They were both at Harvard. They're both at the Lampoon.

Steve Young 6:39

Yeah, the Harvard Lampoon, Greg Daniels was there. He's an enormous creative force and TV. Lots of people from the earlier days of SNL, but many people who've come after me have done very well, people who've been on Seinfeld, anybody that you think of as somebody you know, that works on a funny show. It's not a terrible guests. They may have been on the Harvard Lampoon, there is, I think, a little perception that, oh, it's the Harvard mafia and you can't work in comedy. Without that. Not true. Of course, I'm sure it is a small percentage of people, but it is sort of useful because it made people like me realize, oh, this is something I could do. And I don't know if it would have occurred to me otherwise, because I don't think in those days, people were being groomed from birth for media careers like they are now everyone's so media savvy at a young age. Right now. They're

Jeff Dwoskin 7:31

getting famous on tic tac, it swells. And

Steve Young 7:33

yes, exactly. Yeah. People are very aware of, oh, what do I need to do to make it big in some sphere of entertainment world? Maybe there were people like that in some super hip areas. Like if you grew up in LA, and New York and your parents were in the business, you knew what the business was, but for anyone in other areas of the country where it's just like, things are on TV, no one knows how they get there, or who did them really, I mean, you can read names at the end. But I don't know really what those people did, or how they got to where they got to. So it was all mysterious.

Jeff Dwoskin 8:06

So before David Letterman, you you wrote for not necessarily the news.

Steve Young 8:11

Yeah, that was kind of my first real paying job. Although I had written some humor pieces for National Lampoon and things like that. So I was just kind of scrambling around trying to get any traction. I could, but not necessarily the news was in LA, and it was on HBO, which I didn't have. So I knew it was well regarded. And I went out there. Conan O'Brien had worked there a couple years before, and I found little cartoons that he drew of himself in the desk, so I knew Oh, yes, it's like in the journey to the center of the Earth where you would find the little arrow scratched into the stone pointing Okay, oh, we have to go this way to keep going toward the center of the earth. Finding these little Conan's strewn through the early years of my career leading me along and eventually turns out diverged and I did not follow him to the point of coming a host of a nationally known TV show, but that's okay. It was all just exciting. Your first job, you know, I got a couple pieces on the show. And I was only there a couple of months. I think they had miscalculated how much money they had to pay writers. So I was last hired first fired sort of thing. But suddenly it was a legitimate credit, some real samples and that helped for going for the next things.

Jeff Dwoskin 9:22

Is that what helped you pivot to Late Night with David Letterman.

Steve Young 9:25

Before that, I was in New York, my first New York job something called the comedy channel. Before there was Comedy Central. There was the comedy channel. And there were there was Hi, there were two cable things that started up in the fall of 89 kind of simultaneously, and we all just thought, oh, this can't work out very well. One of us is gonna kill the other one, probably. And I think they did merge. But yeah, it was in New York working for a show hosted by very funny talented woman Rachael sweet, who is also a singer and Comedy Central. The comedy show annal it existed, but it didn't exist everywhere. So I lived in Manhattan, but I couldn't watch it because it wasn't on the local cable system is very spotty. And you'd tell people that you work for this thing and they'd go, I'm not sure that's a real thing. And you'd have to say it's kind of on the border right now. It is apparently it is a real thing. Some places.

Jeff Dwoskin 10:18

Yeah, I interviewed our bell on the show, he worked at HBO, he lays claim for the concept of inventing what eventually became Comedy Central. He's not the hot side, he created the other side. Do have you

Steve Young 10:31

talked to any hot people? I don't really have any context to give you but be curious if they also looked with suspicion over the sort of no man's land between our trenches and wondered who the hell are those people?

Jeff Dwoskin 10:43

I think when I talked to Paul Provenza, if I remember correctly, his shows were on ha. And so he was on the high side, doing some comedy stuff there. I'll get so you land a role with David Letterman. So you were there during the late night wars?

Steve Young 10:57

Yeah, I guess that was like the early to mid 90s. I mean, the wars are never ending, of course.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:04

I mean, I'm so I mean, specifically the battle for the tonight show.

Steve Young 11:08

Yeah. So I started in 1990. Johnny Carson was still on the air. He'd been going for a couple more years. If Dave was already thinking about what would happen next. I'm sure he was, but I wasn't privy to thinking or worrying about that. It was really only around 92, beginning of 93, that it was all kind of heating up and oh, is Dave gonna get the Tonight Show? No, he's not. Well, what's he going to do? Oh, is he going to move to California, there was some brief flurry of rumors that was actually on the front page at one of the New York tabloids, Dave dumps New York inside sources say Dave's moving his showed and to California. And that was an ugly day, because we all had to get to the office and go, is this true? And big staff meeting? No, no. Well, we don't want to say either way. But no, that's not based on anything solid. So it turned out yes, he's going to be at CBS. And we're going to stay in New York, and we're going to get the Ed Sullivan Theater. And that was almost 22 years that we ran with that. It was weird, though, in the early 90s. at NBC would last few years of Late Night with David Letterman, it felt like oh, the old days were in the 80s. Those were the good old days. And now things have kind of run their course. And it's not like it used to be the old timers would shake their head sadly, or it's not like it used to be turned out we had 22 more years to go. So it just we had no idea what was ahead. But they were good years, we did a lot of good stuff.

Jeff Dwoskin 12:34

Hey, they're just a quick break, want to thank everyone for their support of the sponsors. When you support the sponsors. You're supporting us here at Classic conversations. And that's how we keep the lights on. And now back to my amazing conversation with Steve Young Steve was about to share some of his favorite bits and routines with us. And we're back. Do you have any favorite routines or bits that you wrote?

Steve Young 12:58

There was one, it was collaborative in the best way. I mean, many things are even in the late night world where it's individual jokes and ideas. But there was a bit called the strong guy, the fat guy, the genius. And we did once very late in the NBC era, Dave walking around with a strong guy, and he'd say, Do you have anything for the strong guy to break? And then do you have anything for the fat guy to eat? And do you have a question for the genius and this came together through talks with Dave and the head writer and myself. And it was so much fun and so bizarre and wonderful. We did another installment once we were at CBS. That seems like a lifetime ago. Now. There were great bits. In the later years, I do have a website, Steve Young world.com, where I have a few samples from the later era, we were able to do so much more so quickly. With the video editing technology that we had in the last few years. In the early 90s. You'd take all week to try to put together one video piece and by the end of the show, we were doing eight a day just to give Dave all these beautifully produced options. I say beautifully, I mean, they were slammed together pretty hastily but so many talented people worked their graphics, music editing everything, it was surprising how much you could do kind of on very short notice and make it seem kind of legitimate.

Jeff Dwoskin 14:14

And now today if you were doing it today that even in a quarter a fraction a fraction of the time probably still things you can just do on your phone.

Steve Young 14:23

Yeah, although we the writers were not allowed to operate the equipment. They're all the union rules there. So we would sit near an editor but an editor had to do this stuff and that was fine. I didn't really want to you hear about these things now like local news reporters or have to drive their own van run their own camera and audio and do that like everything. I think there's some value to having really talented people who know their specific business run that corner of it.

Jeff Dwoskin 14:50

What was the process of getting any given show up like the whole writing process? Where did you were you focused on monologues I had everyone kind of do a little bit of different things.

Steve Young 14:59

I did run the monologue for the last 11 years at the CBS show, and that was a substantial part of my day reading stuff that was coming in from different writers putting together compilations for Dave seeing what else we needed after he picked some and we needed more and putting them in an order and rewriting things. On a good day, though I had time to do all the other bits, everyone worked on the top 10 List whenever they could, that was kind of just always in the mix. But an average day in the later years would be maybe 9am convening in the writers room, and the head writer would be listening to pitches from everybody, I usually just jotted things down in the margin of a newspaper on the subway, I had gotten pretty good at feeling like I can come up with a few pitiable ideas with in the course of the trip from my apartment down to Midtown to get to the office. And so not every day I was killer material for me, but I got so I could have a few things to pitch and then everybody's pitching their things. And oh, what about this? Or, Hey, that's a great beginning. But what about this, it was a great collaborative room in many ways. And people would say I have the beginning of something, but I'm not sure where it goes, if somebody has a great way to finish it, I'd be grateful or I'm not even sure this is an idea. But I had a freeze that occurred to me, maybe somebody can figure out what this means. So we were all just trying to help each other. Because if the show was good, we all won. And nobody had to be the hero on any particular day. It was it was a very friendly place to work most of the time. So you'd pitch stuff head writer would say, All right, I want you to write that script, you write that one, you write that one in that one, and you'd hustle off and write your fake commercial or your live interrupt or your whatever. And then it was a mad dash for the next four plus hours to get it shot. If something needed to be shot produced, gathered up all the voiceover music and graphic elements and stock footage or whatever you needed and sit down in the edit room and saying working with editors and the editors were really terrific. I learned over the years how much a good editor makes a writer look even better than they are because they make things smart and crisp and with a level of detail and sophistication that you couldn't have even thought of yourself. So suddenly, you're showing Dave all these. Well, for a while it was VHS tapes later, it was all electronics, but had writers showing Dave How about this, or here's the thing we thought of that might be fun based on today's news story. And hopefully Dave picks three or four of them. And we all sail off to glory. And the next day we start from a complete blank slate again,

Jeff Dwoskin 17:42

I think my entire high school when we'd have like youth retreats, everything, like everything was us making up top 10s. thinking we are the funniest,

Steve Young 17:51

it is a wonderfully primal form. And it's just easy to dip your toe in the water of comedy, you don't have to write a 27 page script or whatever, you just have to have a funny one line and put it under the umbrella of whatever the topic is. So yeah, everybody, we liked doing those, but they could be stressful. Like sometimes the show would be starting and we'd get word Oh, Dave wants a different top 10 list. So we'd all gather in the writers conference room, no time to overthink or edit or whatever. Just every 30 seconds, somebody who'd been writing everything down that's being shouted out every 30 seconds or every one minute email to the head writer in the production shack and they would try to put together something in time for Dave to look at after the during the first commercial. And then hopefully we're saved. But sometimes those top 10s done in white heat of panic. were excellent. Because you didn't have time to overthink. You just went right for the bottom of your subconscious and dug right down into your ID and found something crazy. If all of us were doing it, you could do pretty well.

Jeff Dwoskin 18:55

That's awesome. That must have been stressful as heck. But that is that is really cool. Dave could save anything on delivery anyway.

Steve Young 19:04

Yeah, I mean, and I think he probably took some inspiration from Johnny Carson, who was famous for his sort of wounded slow burn if a joke didn't do well. And then suddenly that was funnier than the joke itself Johnny's hurt expression that he could play very well. Yeah, Dave had endless reserves of wit and just being himself in a very entertaining way. So he could embrace the material. He could be visibly cautious about the material. He could come at it as any number of ways. And you just knew it was this real guy. No one was turning tuning into the show to see Oh, I wonder what Steve Young and the other writers are doing. It's just I want to see this fascinating, complex, funny human being just jump off a cliff every night and see where he lands.

Jeff Dwoskin 19:49

That's awesome. That's I was tuning in for Steve Young. I mean for the right.

Steve Young 19:53

Yeah, you didn't know what at the time but yeah, that's that was what it was. Yes.

Jeff Dwoskin 19:57

Interestingly enough. You also did work with with Matt grana, you are credited for writing a Simpsons episode I want to ask how did you get credit for writing a Simpsons episode? How do they narrow it down to who it is? Because I know that that is such a collaborative effort that takes months.

Steve Young 20:13

Yeah, a lot of shows that have one writers name on it are behind the scenes wildly deeply collaborative, but somebody has to be the point person. I knew some Simpsons writers. And my agent at the time said, Oh, it'd be great to have you do some other kinds of things. And I said, Well, I knew I know, people at the Simpsons, and he said, Oh, that's great. Let's pursue that. So at the time, the Simpsons did two, maybe three episodes a year that were not completely staff written. They had freelance episodes. I don't think they do anymore. Some overtures were made in some official fashion and oh, yeah, Steve Young. Oh, yeah, he'd be good. So I went out, and they already had the beginning of that. Episodes idea. I think it was a George Meyers idea. Hurricane Nettie. The episode was called this hurricane that comes to Springfield, and everyone runs around crazily preparing when it's all over the Simpsons house is fine. Everything else in the neighborhood is fine, except the Flanders house has been smashed to rubble, and then you go through all well, I don't know how much I need to describe the Simpsons episode, but it was they had that. I think

Jeff Dwoskin 21:21

that was drawn in your head. I was like, I get it, you know,

Steve Young 21:24

tradition around the campfire and mesmerizing people. I think it was George Meyers idea. And I think he had all the way down to that first sort of dramatic Oh, the Flanders house has been destroyed, and there was much more about trying to rebuild Flanders house and then Ned Flanders. We learn about his backstory, and his his youth and all that that came out over a few days. All the writers just riffing together huge amount of material. What about this? What about that? Here's a joke. Oh, I got an idea. That negates a previous idea. But you put it all down. And then I wrote an outline. And I got some notes from George Meier. Then I wrote a first draft. And there was a wealth of material from everyone to draw from, but I was writing the script, or at least that draft and I could put in any other jokes of mine that I cared to think of. After that first draft. It was just, I think, gone over a few more times, collectively in the room. I did have some jokes that made it into the final episode, which I'm proud of, because you want to feel like yeah, my name represents something here, other than just organizing other people's ideas. But yeah, it's it's a lot of talented people at a show like that all trying to bring out the best in each other and make something better than any single person could do.

Jeff Dwoskin 22:40

Very cool. All right. So let's go back to the Letterman Show for a second, the very specific bed that kind of pivots to the documentary that we teased earlier in the

Steve Young 22:49

yes, people are very, very anxious to get in touch. I'm

Jeff Dwoskin 22:52

getting I'm getting emails and DMS right now, where is this documentary I hold on? It's common. It's common word.

Steve Young 22:58

We were told we would hear about a very good documentary. All right. Yes.

Jeff Dwoskin 23:03

You are hanging on though this was part of the origin story. Steve Young had an obsession with records. Yeah. You tell it.

Steve Young 23:11

All right. I'll see if I can get this going. So my very first day at the Letterman Show in 1990, the head writer Steve O'Donnell, dear friend, the one who hired me, brought me down the hall and said, We got to get you in office, several writers had left. So there was kind of a changing of the guard. There were some empty offices. I got one with boxes of record albums. I said, What is what's going on with these records? And Steve O'Donnell said, Well, we do a bit on the show called Dave's record collection. Hey, maybe you'll be the new guy to run Dave's record collection, the old writer who was working with this piece, he's gone now, but here's his office, and here's the records. So I didn't even know what that bit was. But it was real, unintentionally funny record albums that Dave would hold up on the show. We'd hear a sample he'd have a witty remark piece had been running for years. It started organically with Dave and the early writers all sort of at some point realizing Yeah, I got a few weird records too. Oh, yeah. I've got to what were some of them we had? Well, the William Shatner singing was kind of the gold standard for many years. The celebrities who should not have been singing and yet

Jeff Dwoskin 24:16

who were I love that one letter Nemo has got a good one too. Yeah,

Steve Young 24:19

he's he's got several of them. And you had what was the guy? I want to say Henry Cabot Lodge No John Sebastian something Cabot. Anyway, you look recites the the lyrics of Bob Dylan, all these weird 60s records that were not quite fully baked in some conceptual way. They had fun with that with the weird records on Dave's record collection for a number of years. When I got there, and I started going to used record stores and thrift shops looking for stuff. We were kind of done with the funny singing celebrities. Most of them had been found. But I started finding souvenir albums from company conventions and sales meetings, which you would just think oh god, this is going to be dismal, but they were musicals. If I was astounded to keep finding General Electric privately produced musicals, or Detroit Diesel engine, or American Motors or Ford tractor, full blown Broadway style musicals that were performed at these company events, and the only people who could see them or the sales force, or the distributors are people in the industry, again, this could sound just horrifying. And not all of them were great. But by the time I had four or five of them, I thought many of these are I can't get these songs out of my head about the need to be a better insurance salesman, or how are we going to sell and service all these diesel engines or whatever, I just thought, What is going on? How can this possibly be real? How can this be not terrible? And maybe kind of great, and what else is there? And how many are there and who did them and why? And that's kind of the question that gets you into the documentary bathtubs over Broadway, made by Deva, who has an aunt who I met when she was an editor at The Letterman Show. She's now a director, she said she wanted to make a documentary about my record collection and my my investigations into this world. So she she made this movie, which is startling ly hilarious, but also beautiful and powerful. Because it's all about the people I met and what they came to mean to me and how you figure out what is it what is the worth of what I've done with my life or my career? What is it can I feel okay about my my creative output if it was all in front of floor tiles, salesman, things like that.

Jeff Dwoskin 26:32

So sorry to interrupt this amazing conversation with Steve Young, but we got to take a quick break. And we're back with Steve Young. We're about to dive even deeper into bathtubs over Broadway, the documentary, which you need not miss, and we're back. As you said, bathtubs over Broadway is the name of the documentary. I watched it on Netflix, obsessed. I loved every second of it. I loved it. It's if you love it kind of combined a few things that I really love, which are LPs and LP hunting. I love looking for vinyl pig Broadway fan grew up going to shows we still go to I mean, I was I was like all these and I've been part of the corporate culture as well, where you have to sit through these long weekend sales meetings, you know, where you go. And it's like a whole convention, you go to Vegas, and it's a thing and it's all these education, education, but usually boring PowerPoint. So for anyone who's ever sat through one of those meetings, imagine it is a full scale Broadway production literally written by the people who wrote Fiddler on the Roof. This is what Steve discovered. Yeah. And

Steve Young 27:36

congratulations on the trifecta of being interested in vinyl knowing about and appreciating Broadway and having a taste of the corporate culture and meetings and all that I was lacking. Really, I didn't care about records other than just this was part of what I did for the show. I grew up having zero knowledge of Broadway. I had to learn everything backwards. Like it turns out these names on the back of the Ford tractor musical Yes, those are the guys who wrote Fiddler on the Roof four years later and became super high level Broadway geniuses, but I didn't know that when I found this record. I just thought hmm, I wonder who those people are. I wonder how they felt about writing a tractor musical.

Jeff Dwoskin 28:18

And let's play a song just to give people an idea of what's going on. This is called diesel dazzle from diesel dazzle the Detroit Diesel engine division of GM from 1966 Here we go.

Unknown Speaker 28:43

Is oh man

Steve Young 28:49

these are not like a few people from the shipping department fooling around with a piano and trying to claim out some half baked showtune parody or something. The top level of this stuff was original music and lyrics with real Broadway people up and down the line diesel dazzle had cast included Hal Linden before he was famous for Barney Miller. But New York Broadway people loved these industrial show gigs because you made a lot of money and got treated very well and out on the road going to exotic locales and resorts and all that it could be a very, very nice way to be in show business would be one problem of other than the Detroit Diesel engine salesmen. No one is ever going to see the show. It's not like you're going to be the toast of Broadway so it was a bit of a deal with the devil in some ways.

Jeff Dwoskin 29:39

I'm gonna play another one. This one's called my bathroom from the bathrooms are coming American Standard 1969 This is the one that you played that your children talked about throughout the documentary, just having to hear over and over again,

Unknown Speaker 29:55

my bathroom My bathroom is a private kind of place. Very special kind of place.

Jeff Dwoskin 30:13

All right, so explain how your family put up with you through all that?

Steve Young 30:17

Well, first of all, I'll say both of the songs we played the diesel dazzle clip and my bathroom are meaningful to me because of along the way, as you see in the documentary, I meet people who 4050 years earlier had done this stuff. And we're sure that no one was ever going to ask them about it or care about it. And then I show up and say, I'm actually kind of a big fan of diesel Dazzle, and I want to hear about what it was like. And the woman who's saying my bathroom, Pat, she's a big part of the documentary. Also, the man who wrote the music for diesel dazzle is now 95 years old. I'm friend of his Deva, the director of the film, and I speak with him on a regular basis. So my bathroom is I think of that song as the gateway drug. When people hear that they go, What in the world is going on? That sounds so legitimate, and yes, it's off the charts crazy on some conceptual level. So number one, that's, that's the stuff I love is something is great and yet conceptually bizarre. And number two, I think I forgot your actual question.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:26

Your family, your dad? Oh, yeah. civically. Yeah, they

Steve Young 31:29

would hear me occasionally play a new record. Mostly, I didn't subject them to the records. But like the song, my bathroom, everybody has a bathroom. Not everyone cares about specifics of diesel engines, but a song like my bathroom, once you hear it, it can be just part of your life and singing around the house. And my two daughters saying the movie, they thought that I had just made this up. And they only years later realized that it was the sort of tip of the iceberg of this enormous secret world that I had found. And even they growing up. And knowing that I collected these records, they didn't really know all the levels that I was getting into with meeting people and finding out about American business history, and org, organizational psychology and all this stuff. It went really far and deep and a lot of directions that I wasn't thinking of would because I was just at first looking for stuff to make jokes about and then off we go as the documentary shows,

Jeff Dwoskin 32:22

I thought one of the most fascinating parts of the documentary that you just touched on was the fact that you've got to meet these people and let them know how special it was one of the folks said Seagull you actually spoke at his memorial. And I mean, when I was watching that, I'm thinking myself that is incredible. I mean, here you are two separate worlds completely separate worlds. Somehow you've you've discovered this world and became so entwined with their lives that you spoke at this man's Memorial, the only connected with him towards the end of his life, right. So I just it was so to me, that was so touching. That was so incredible. I love that human element of this, the passion and drive to find all these and discover all this.

Steve Young 33:06

I could not have imagined how far this would go and how much these people would mean in my life. But yeah, it was for Sid. And for other people like him. They spent many years may be doing other kinds of work also. But a lot of these people did a lot of industrial shows and found it nearly impossible to explain even to close friends and family what they were doing. People just said, Oh, you mean you write commercials and we know not quite I mean, they're like shows but you can only go to it if you're a salesman and forget it. So I know Sid's family has told me it was such a gratifying things late in his life that somebody knew exactly what he had done and wanted to come to talk to him, tell him your stuff was terrific this stuff is it grabs ahold of people, and I'm making sure people hear about it now because this this must not be forgotten. And I think it was a great relief to Sid and a few other people who just sort of resigned themselves to I did some pretty darn good work for a very strange subculture of the show business world that now is forgotten and I just have to make my peace with the fact that it all went for nothing. I made money. I supported my family. I wrote music and felt satisfaction, but they had given up on anyone ever really understanding what they did. And then surprise at the last minute. Turns out no, we're gonna we're gonna drag this back from the edge of the precipice in the abyss and we're going to talk about it. Because these

Jeff Dwoskin 34:35

went on for a long time, right? 50s 60s 70s It didn't start to wane till the 80s

Steve Young 34:40

and even then I keep finding out new information like there were no really vinyl records after the 80s but there were still things happening. You see, you see some examples from the 21st century in the documentary like the Walmart, the musical thing was 2005 Very impressive choreography with the shot pin cards. State Farm Insurance keeps doing them. I have bootleg recordings that people have passed me under the table that go up till very recently, they may still be planning to do more, I don't know. But the golden age I would say it was 50s to the late 80s Just the full book musical big orchestra big cast props and scenery, basically a Broadway show, but behind closed doors and you could only go in if you were the kids sneaker salesman or the Coca Cola bottler or whatever,

Jeff Dwoskin 35:31

and tons a huge brands, Burger King Raghu Ford Oldsmobile pure oil, John Deere, I'm noticing an automotive trend but Bill Miller ber Detroit Diesel, just to name a few that come up in the in the documentary but like all of these major, major brands, were doing this and you interview in the documentary, Florence Henderson, Mrs. Brady from The Brady Bunch, Martin Short, it was just incredible to hear them talk about how this was a way to make money to fund your actual acting career. Outside of that,

Steve Young 36:04

yeah, you could drive a cab or be a waiter, like back in the day, how Linda and I think said this was actually better than doing either of those things. Because you would meet all these wonderful talented theatre people who you are hopefully going to keep working with. And you are also going to keep improving your craft. If you could get out on stage and do an intricate number about the industrial applications of silicone and actually kind of nail it and land it and make it exciting, either as a writer or a performer, you could do pretty much anything that could be thrown at you. I mean, this stuff could get so weird and arcane, that it just seems beyond the scope of what a human being should be able to do entertainment wise, but some really smart people made it work.

Jeff Dwoskin 36:49

You've mentioned Bob Fossey Newhart Dom delouis Chita Rivera, Tony Randall. I mean, all these people were part of these I can't even imagine being those. I mean, I've been into like a Google event and Katy Perry performs, but you know, but she's doing a Katy Perry concert. She's not doing Detroit Diesel, you know, but this is the incredible that we like to have this memory of being able to say, oh, yeah, Tony Randall. Yeah, I saw me saying about catalytic converters. Yeah, sounds convention.

Steve Young 37:17

Yeah, sometimes it was people before they were famous. But sometimes a company would say let's let's bring back celebrity acts and will have to pay him a lot for this gig. But they'll come in and be the the big name on our Hardee's owner, operator show or whatever and made people in the audience feel like wow, this is a big deal. The company has the resources to make this happen and kind of make it exciting and fun. And were part of a great family and a great organization. It really could make people feel like wow, this is this is this is huge. This is this is not an ordinary business meeting. This is like next level of getting me motivated and excited.

Steve Young 37:57

Let's play another song. Never a bad idea.

Unknown Speaker 38:00

Now I look at packaging and pricing as a great big pair of pliers, especially designed with us in mind. And that means you and me. Packaging and pricing and a pair of pliers, simple as ABC. Myers to get a grip on profit. Profit from the business. Yes, sorry.

Jeff Dwoskin 38:19

All right, that was from 1961 Coca Cola bottler show the grip of leadership.

Steve Young 38:25

Yeah, there certainly was a lot of tractors and heavy equipment and cars, but there was all the other sectors also, Coke and Pepsi both did big shows, stores like JC Penney, and Woolworths doing shows you had, like I mentioned, Kid sneakers and arrow shirts, just so many things that you would think there's no way there should be a musical about that. And yet, yes, there are musicals all the way down to I think I say in the movie, the most improbable products like roller bearings and Karki blanks and plastic wrap for butchers. I have them all in my record collection, Coca Cola, they were, of course, a huge top level American institution and they could pretty much afford to do any extravagant show that they cared to do. So that was 1961, the 75th anniversary of Coca Cola as founding so they did a big blowout for all their bottlers,

Jeff Dwoskin 39:17

they pulled no punches on that one lets us into another one.

Unknown Speaker 39:26

Times doesn't sell 25 years to sell 2050 5060 7080 times to sell. He's got tires to sell.

Jeff Dwoskin 39:51

Wow. All right. So that's from the great life. For those who don't know 1979 BF Goodrich.

Steve Young 39:57

Yeah, the tire dealers all got together. I think they were in Hawaii and saw this musical with the plot about this beleaguered BF Goodrich dealer has literally made a deal with the devil the devil will take his tire business away from him if he can't sell X number of tires in the next week or whatever it was. It's like oh my god. That's all right. The stakes are there the high stakes, but why does the devil want a tire dealership? This is like one of the background questions that always makes me laugh just that the premises of these things. They kind of made sense. Some of them were just fine. But in Yeah, why does the devil want the BF Goodrich franchise.

Jeff Dwoskin 40:39

So right they would mouth and how the robber would mouth the

Steve Young 40:43

devil should just stick to stealing souls or running hell or whatever. But good news. Spoiler alert, our plucky tire dealer sells enough and once he sees the new BF Goodrich line and all the marketing materials that are going to make the best sales year ever sorry, Devil Not this time, Satan.

Jeff Dwoskin 41:00

Not this time devil. Man. All right, well, you mentioned arrow shirt. Let's play one from Arrow shirt to dream.

Unknown Speaker 41:10

The impossible dream to increase sales by 20%. To check stock, and to feel in this state moves to make sure sports shirts keep getting sold.

Jeff Dwoskin 41:28

Oh my god, I love that. Yeah, listen to that all day.

Steve Young 41:30

Some of the song parodies are corny, but are still just so satisfying. But think we had that on the Letterman Show and record collection once and we played that clip. And Dave would say hmm, you know, I guess I've never really listened to the lyrics of that song before. Pretty.

Jeff Dwoskin 41:46

How many of them were parody verses are completely original.

Steve Young 41:50

I guess we'll never know really, because I would say, based on your sample set, yeah, my record collection is probably breaks down about half and half, maybe a little more original music, and lyrics. But for every record that I have, every souvenir record that was made of a show, there were probably dozens, at least of shows that were never recorded in any way. It was expensive to make souvenir records. And it was unclear whether it was actually going to help the cause how many Detroit Diesel salesmen went home and played the souvenir record and got fired up again. And you find these records often in very nearly new condition. I don't know how many people played them at home.

Jeff Dwoskin 42:34

My guess is things haven't changed. And it's more the marketing department just showing off and having a budget and creating this amazing giveaway, and then giving it to everyone and like it's a feather in their cap. But yeah, no one ever no one listens or uses it.

Steve Young 42:49

I think it was kind of this prestige thing for a few decades. Like we have to show that we are the preeminent lawnmower company. And that means the biggest show with the most dancers and the biggest orchestra and the biggest name talent and we're going to make the most lavish souvenir record that people may or may not ever listen to. And then by the 70s, you're starting to see it scale back and they're getting smaller and more as pre recorded and management consultants and accountants were saying it doesn't really make sense. To do all this. We're unclear as to whether people actually get a tangible benefit out of doing these shows.

Jeff Dwoskin 43:25

I can't imagine how they went up to want Let's play one more. Do you have a favorite one? We haven't done?

Steve Young 43:30

Oh, do you have anything from the dominion road machinery company? Do you have standard equipment?

Jeff Dwoskin 43:37

Yes, of course I do.

Unknown Speaker 43:42

Separate does my hand brake blade, power slide sip? Doors

Jeff Dwoskin 43:54

90 degrees dude equipment. Amazing.

Steve Young 44:04

Yeah, that was a Canadian company. So it was mostly a US phenomenon, but not entirely. And I do have a very happy Detroit association with that show when Dave and I were in Detroit in early 2019 for the freep Film Festival, and a little time to kill and we ended up in a record store and I was just digging through the bins. Now with very very little sense of I might find something it's just so hard to find these in the wild but that day, I found the Dominion road machinery 1975 Toronto sales meeting album for $4.72 Still in the shrink wrap and I thought oh my god, this is the only thing that would be better as if I knew that album existed and didn't have it. I did have one already but it's a it's a rare one. And to find one in the wild was just delightful.

Jeff Dwoskin 44:55

Important question when you found it. Who did you call first to tell Oh,

Steve Young 45:01

well, Davao was there and she took pictures of me holding it. I just killed a woolly mammoth in battle like a caveman. But there are a handful of record collectors, some of whom you see in the documentary who we all report to each other very briskly, anytime some great new collecting success happens. And it's it's a very sharing generous sort of rivalry where if somebody gets something, we immediately record it and send the digital files to everybody else. So everybody knows now what it is, and we trade with each other. Some people think collectors are just these quarters. And these jealous people are trying to get things away from other people and have the biggest pile and yeah, we want to keep our collections going. But it's just fun to have a few other people who care about it, and who get excited with you and for you. So yeah, there are a few people like I'm sure I within a day or two had told a handful of people that I had found the road grader show,

Jeff Dwoskin 46:00

the experience that you're just talking about is the same as if like you're watching the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie. And Harrison Ford finds that golden idol, and he's excited because he's got this and he's gonna deliver it to the museum and he's excited. That's his success, right? That's what it's like when you're just somewhere and you find that one thing you're looking for the thing you collect anything, everyone is just someone it might be a little giraffe thing. Someone else it might be a penguin little ornament. Some people collect elephants, you know,

Steve Young 46:30

penguins, giraffes, yes. Elephants not sure about but yeah, there is that feeling of, I'm not just getting this from me, I'm getting this for all of humanity, because we're saving a legacy of something that almost disappeared into the darkness. And it's a little bit like what I said about the Letterman writing room, if somebody is red hot that day, and it really helps the show. We all feel like great, we all are happy in each other's success. And whenever a new record comes up, and one of my rivals has it. I'm just excited to add it to my want list and hear the MP threes and think wow, maybe someday I'll get it. But if I don't, I don't really lose any sleep over it. devas movie has told the story so powerfully and beautifully. Now the genre has been rescued from oblivion,

Jeff Dwoskin 47:17

you also wrote a book, everything is coming up profits, the golden age of industrial musicals, which is a kind of encapsulates all your findings and your story. The book came first.

Steve Young 47:28

Yeah, the book actually came out in 2013. And a lot more lay ahead in terms of meeting people and discoveries and wonderful surprises. So the book is, I'm very proud of it. I'm the co writer with my friend sport Murphy, who is another collector of this sort of thing. And we joined forces, and he has some wonderful material in the book and you meet him in the documentary as well. But yeah, it's coming up on it's over eight years since the book came out. So lots more records have come out. But the whole thing about the people who did the bathrooms are coming I had not met most of them yet I couldn't find them. It really was sort of organically happening while the documentary was going so so that's that's all great extra stuff that's not in the book.

Jeff Dwoskin 48:11

So bathtubs over Broadway premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, April 2018. It was handpicked by dinero, The New York Times variety Rolling Stone. So this is an award winning documentary, you have to go watch this. It's the perfect amount of time. It's like roughly 90 minute documentary. So it's not like one of those. I have a show where we talked about shows and one of the things we always say is Was it too long, could have been shorter, you know, like usually sometimes four partners or like it could have been like this is an amazing amount of time. Steve is also a songwriter and writes songs and actually performs at the end of the documentary, which is a nice kind of cherry on the top at the end of the documentary, but when I tell you while you may never have heard of industrial musicals and you're probably still listening and not really sure when you get started to watch this this is one of those movies that just sucks you right in succe right and this is me i This is I couldn't be making this up. This isn't like the host is saying so I couldn't get enough of this. I've sold every single person I've bumped into that they need to watch this movie.

Steve Young 49:14

Oh thank you for that. It says great over word of mouth. It's Netflix, Amazon and iTunes has it also we also have a soundtrack if that you've finished the movie and gone my goodness I would love to hear all those songs again every day for the rest of my life. You're in luck yes digital versions as well as a two record vinyl set is available.

Jeff Dwoskin 49:35

I just discovered that and I'm like I have to get this and who would buy it other than on vinyl. How could you even justify listening to about I guess if you don't have vinyl go ahead but so many people do you know vinyl I read outsold all the other mediums this past year. It's such a combat

Steve Young 49:51

tremendous comeback to the point where the pressing plants can't keep up. If you're a band and you want to make your record on vinyl. You may have to wait a long time we were lucky we got this To soundtrack out on vinyl right before the pandemic, and I don't know if economically, it would have been better or worse later earlier, but the pressing plants are just they were teetering on the edge of extinction, extinction. And now they can pretty much set their own rates and write their own ticket.

Jeff Dwoskin 50:17

Let's do one more song and then we'll say goodbye. I'll let you tell everyone where they can keep up with you on social medias and all that kind of good stuff. Let's do one more song. This one is from the writers of Fiddler on the Roof called Golden Harvest

Unknown Speaker 50:33

a bumper crop in 1959, gonna be a lot toward buyers to sign the dotted line with the new tractors and stuff. Your

Jeff Dwoskin 50:50

future is looking fine. Like.

Steve Young 50:53

That's right. It's gonna be a great year for tractor dealers.

Jeff Dwoskin 50:56

It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be huge. I'm so inspired by these right so Steve Young world.com You mentioned that earlier. It's got links to everything we talked about where else can people keep up with the on the social medias? Oh, well,

Steve Young 51:09

let's see. I think I'm pants Steve on Twitter and Instagram and there is a bathtubs over Broadway account on all the social media. You can find us find the movie on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and I have an Instagram eminence industrial musicals Facebook page from when the book came out. And once in a while I put up a post about hey, found a new record. Look, it's a meatpacking company show or Oh, it's the Frigidaire appliance show that we'd never knew about before. So the adventure continues.

Jeff Dwoskin 51:42

So exciting. Steve, thank you so much for hanging out with me and talking to me. It's been an honor. Really?

Steve Young 51:48

Oh, thank you so much. And I'm so pleased that there's real enthusiasm and gleam in your eye about the documentary. It's all thanks to David who is an aunt and her film making magic in the hands of a lesser filmmaker. It could have been just a sort of light snarky overview of something weird, but she found all the universal human stories in it that make it really something something amazing.

Jeff Dwoskin 52:13

All right. How amazing was Steve Young. I know it bathtubs over Broadway. I promise you, you will love every second of that documentary, you will be fascinated by the hidden world of industrial musicals. It will be something that you never needed to know. But once you know, you can't understand how you live without it on Thursdays bonus episode coming up. I do a review on crossing the streams of bathtubs over Broadway as well because I can't get enough. That's how much I love this. So head over to Steve's website. Check it out. Check it out on Netflix, tweet at me and let me know at Jeff Dwoskin show. What's your thought after you give it a listen? All right. Well, we're the interview over that guy me one thing that's right, it's time for another trending hashtag in the world of hashtags. That hashtag round up, download the free always free hashtag roundup app at the Google Play Store or iTunes App Store, tweet along with us and one day one of your tweets may show up on a future episode of Classic conversations, fame and fortune awaits. You are going all the way to Broadway for this episode's hashtag of course inspired by bathtubs over Broadway #RejectedBroadwaySongs songs that just didn't make the cut on Broadway. You can't stop the BS because it was it was it was defying gravy is as for all those that are gluten free man of the munchies. Suddenly Seymour butts Hedwig and the Angry Grinch. These were all rejected Broadway songs rightfully so. I feel petty Oh, so petty. Almost made it into West Side Story. I mean, the meme the sound of mu kiss mammaries like this. Sorry, sometimes I just go into song. If I were a bitch, man. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. None and the Hills Have Eyes with the sound of music. Actually, that would be a good mashup movie Broadway combination. Can you feel the lies tonight? That sort of Lion King meets Pinocchio? Oh a whole new world. It's taken Disney to the wrong level Hopelessly Devoted to glue. That would have been a rejected song from Greece that was really only in Greece the movie but I'm gonna let it slide. Rip Olivia Newton John. At our final #RejectedBroadwaySongs tweet. There's No Business Like shoe business like no business. I know. Oh, okay. Those were #RejectedBroadwaySongs brought to us by musical hashtags a weekly Game On Hashtag round up, all will be retweeted at Jeff Dwoskin show on Twitter. If this episode has inspired you to tweet your own #RejectedBroadwaySongs tweets, go ahead and do that tag us at Jeff Dwoskin show and I will show you the appropriate Twitter love. All right, well, would they hashtag over and they interview over that can only mean one thing. Episode 156 has come to an end. I can't believe it. The Time just flies. I want to thank my special guest, Steve Young. And of course, I want to thank all of you for coming back week after week. It means the world to me, and I'll see you next time.

CTS Announcer 55:41

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai