#358 Rodney, Carlin, and Beyond: Dennis Blair’s Hilarious Stories

Jeff Dwoskin 0:00

All right, everyone, my next guest, self proclaimed renaissance man, accomplished screenwriter, songwriter, stand up, comic, author of touring with legends, Grammy, nominated Emmy Award winner, put your hands together for Dennis Blair, what

Dennis Blair 0:19

I hate myself already.

Jesus, you just sit back and relax for a while.

Jeff Dwoskin 0:25

Paul lander introduced us, and he said you should talk to Dennis Blair. He opened for Carlin for, like, 18 years. And I'm like, Oh, that's cool. That's cool, yeah. And then when I started digging into your your bio and everything. The one thing that I stumbled on that was like, oh, oh, my goodness. Dennis Blair wrote rappin Rodney and I held right Rappin Rodney with Rodney Dangerfield and as a kid, this cassette which legit, just had my basement when got it rap, and Rodney was, like, obsessed. I was obsessed with that when I when I was like, Oh my god. Dennis Blair wrote with Rodney Dangerfield Rappin' Rodney the greatest song ever,

Dennis Blair 1:16

and I can the greatest song ever. Forget about yesterday. Forget about those

Jeff Dwoskin 1:20

songs, no, as a kid, as a kid, as a kid, it's Yeah, wow,

Dennis Blair 1:24

that's nice, yeah, yeah, that was me. I put the I put the jokes into rhyming and song form was my major contribution. I think, I think I did the chorus too. So long ago, had something to do with the chorus. Yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 1:38

no, respect, no. Was back. Okay, so on your journey to hilarity, when what was, how did you start out in comedy? Like what was? Yeah, drove you to be a comic? Nothing,

Dennis Blair 1:56

total It was a total accident. No, I had no drive. I had no incredible, fervent wish to be a comedian. I wasn't like those guys. I always want them to do comedy since I was four, since I was in the embryo. No, I, I didn't. I was, I was a musician. I was a songwriter. I was going to make it as a as a famous songwriter like James Taylor or something. And, you know, you go to a bar or you sing your songs and your cover songs. And I did that a lot, and people weren't listening as is their want. And I got pissed off one day because nobody was listening to my art. So I went up, no respect, no, yeah, and respect, that's right, I was talking about having something in common with the big guy. So went upstairs and wrote this parody of the bee. Gees, just for fun, because I was bored staying alive. It was called singing too high and I came back down. I did one or two or three cover songs, James Taylor, Paul assignment, and then I threw that in. It's the singing too high song. And all of a sudden people started going, Hey, wait, those are the real words, some people, and then they started laughing. I was going, Oh, they're laughing. That's a good that's a response. I'll consider that a response. And so I did that. And then I started doing some patter, and I wrote some more parodies of famous songs of the era, just 1979 and I started developing at this place in Long Island, called ferns harness shop. It was a little wine and cheese place. So I developed a little act around the songs that I wrote, you know, the parodies I wrote. And then moved into Manhattan. I was four blocks away from danger fields. Someone told me that it was things. They had an open mic night on a Sunday, and I went to open mic night. They finally put me on at one in the morning, and it went well. And I had this little act that I developed over ferns, and so that they hired me to open for Jackie Mason the next week. And I did that. And then Rodney came in to see me. Like Rodney happened to come in. He didn't come in to see me, and he see me. I guess he saw me having a good show. I came off stage. He goes. So they obviously like, what you do, what do you do? I told him, I do parodies and, you know, stand up and observation. So he watched my next show, and he said, Hey, why don't you open for me the week after this? So, so out of the blue, basically out of the blue, out of nowhere, started opening for Mason and Rodney and all the other people that headlined to his club and that he took that he did caddy shock, Caddy Shack became the biggest comic in America, and said, Hey, why don't you come on the road with me and open? So I'm doing comedy like three, four months already, and I'm opening for Rodney Dangerfield. That's how it started. His little dare, this little dare, to go to danger fields. That's how it all began.

Jeff Dwoskin 4:44

So within the first three, four months, you're working for a danger field, opening for a Rodney Dangerfield. But even before that, how long were you doing with Jackie Mason? How much? What were you opening with? Like, how many minutes? I mean, I'd

Dennis Blair 4:58

say, Yeah, two. Five minutes, something like that. I had developed the act around, you know, around the BG thing and other stuff that was, you know, I'm sure I was doing eagles and Paul Simon stuff. And then I had, you know, a pattern to go. Did a lot of stuff about disco, because that was still big at that time. I did a lot of jokes about disco and Donna Summer and Barry White. And so I had a 25 minute routine I could do. So that's what I did in front of Jackie Mason. That was for that one week, and then, and then Ronnie came in, and he was the next week. He did the next week, and I was did a week with him, and it all went well. Thank God. The only

Jeff Dwoskin 5:37

thing that didn't go well was caddy check two didn't go as well for Jackie Mason as

Dennis Blair 5:42

No, Jackie was not an actor. I did a they called me up in a panic once because Jackie wanted to do a musical on Broadway. It's a long, long story, but he said, Yeah, I want to do Jackie. Is just his manager, Jill said, Do you write sketches? I go, I've written sketches because we would, you want to write Jackie's musical, because we've had five writers and they all suck, all right, I can try to join that group. And we've worked on this. He wanted to, he didn't sing, he didn't dance, he didn't do anything like that. I have no idea. He wanted to do a show. He was doing his one man shows on Broadway, but he was making him work too hard. He wanted to sit down more often on stage, so he hired these five actors, and they sang and they did bits, and we worked on songs and we worked on the book, but that's, you know, that's down the line so, but yeah, Rodney was that first week, and he started taking me on the road to the big 3000 seat bidders. I sit around going, how did this happen? This is weird. That's cool.

Jeff Dwoskin 6:48

That is amazing. So Rodney made you his pro today, right? That's pretty much, yeah. What was it like touring with Dangerfield? Everyone has Dangerfield stories, usually involving a robe that's open, yeah, the

Dennis Blair 7:02

robe. And people would tell me these stories about Rodney. He like, I've been with him for three and a half years straight on. So they're telling me like, they're telling me something new. He goes, Yeah, I went to rodney's apartment. I knocked on the door and he he had this robe on and and before they got past the end, I said, and his junk was hanging out. They went, how did you know sounds with the guy for like, three years. He just, he felt comfortable around me, and I guess, around you too, but yeah, he just did that all the time. He was very casual. Even I heard he used to go down to the when he was doing the casinos in Atlantic City in Las Vegas. He used to just go down to the casino and go to the crap table or something like that, and be standing there with his robe, with his junk hanging out, you know? So, yeah, it was pretty well known. But yeah, that was, that was a shock when it first happened, you know, I said, I guess somebody had used to this, you know, yeah, we traveled together. He had, he bought a house in Connecticut, and I, I hung out there and did a lot of writing with him. Easy money, of course, came along, he made me a writer on that. So those are the beginning years.

Jeff Dwoskin 8:03

Was that great though, working on easy money, I love It's a great movie. I started, re watching it because I knew it was talking with you. It's funny.

Dennis Blair 8:12

It's funny. You should say it's a great movie because I did it well, we did it. It took two years to write it because Rodney was Rodney could under could not understand anything that was not a joke. Joke, like, you know, like a no respect kind of joke, or, you know, I tell you I was ugly, you know, that's what he had. That's what that was humor to him. He would always make us rewrite things when we were around his table doing the movie, uh, he'd make us rewrite things. But it's not a joke, man. It's not just not funny. You know, somebody went to see Tootsie with Rodney. It was, it was the big movie at the time. He was one of the guys who became a writer on easy money as well. And he told me, I'm sitting there and people are dying laughing. They're bent over, they're doubled over laughing. And Rodney turns to me and goes, not funny, man, what's the joke? People are dying laughing. He didn't get it. He didn't get it. So we had to be very careful. We had to work doubly hard to make it, all these scenes something that he could understand, where the humor was. So, you know, we had a lot of scenes that we would have loved to have done with him, but they he just didn't get them. He didn't get why they'd be funny. But we made it into a pretty good movie. I don't think it did very well at the box office, at first back to school, I hear, did much better. And it was a first time director and with everything, and Joe Pesci was wanted to get out of the movie as soon as he signed it, because Rodney would take all the good lines. Rodney, if Joe Pesci said a line that would get a laugh, Rodney says, Okay, I'll say that. You know, cheeks, it's like, and Bucha would come back to his trip. She would come back to his trailer and go, he can't act, so all sorts of adventures, you know, and I think it's a little over a year to make the movie and two years to write it. So it was an ongoing project, man, there was a lot of lot of stuff happened during those movies. Tell you,

Jeff Dwoskin 9:55

were you involved with getting Billy Joel to do the well, he. I

Dennis Blair 10:00

tell, I tell this to people. And this is the truth. If I was never born, Billy Joe never would have, would have written easy money song. Easy money. They wanted to get him, but Bobby was a big fan of his. Yeah, so I'd say yes. I was involved. I was I was responsive, because I think I came up with half the title. I think they were looking for a title for the movie halfway through, and I said, Well, how about easy, come easy, go. I think was the title that I came up with. Rodney said, easy, come easy, go. How about easy? His and his manager said money. So I did half the title, and that's how the song got written. You know, that's why it was, was all that.

Jeff Dwoskin 10:37

It's a good half. He came up with a good half. Thank you very much. I made my contribution. I think Did I read somewhere that, like this song is what triggered the whole innocent man album? I don't

Dennis Blair 10:49

know about that. I never heard that, but that was the first song on the album. So who knows? You know

Jeff Dwoskin 10:57

then Rodney was in the one of the videos for uptown girl, or one of the other Billy Joel ones. It was, tell her, tell her about it, yeah, tell her about it, yeah. And I

Dennis Blair 11:09

was at that shoot too. That was, I forget what theater they rented out for the day, I think was in New Jersey. You drove up there, and Billy was there, and all these extras playing, you know, the screaming girls in the audience, yeah. So I was there

Jeff Dwoskin 11:23

growing up, I always had Billy Joel when he talks about the comedian, and my life was supposed to be Rodney Dangerfield, but then someone else died, and everyone claimed it was that person. So I don't,

Dennis Blair 11:34

I don't know, yeah, I don't know if it was supposed to be, yeah, exactly. Alright.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:38

This, this section of the random Billy Joel trivia is coming to an end. Okay? No, it's good, alright. So yeah, Jennifer, Jason Lee, was in that movie as well. There's it was so was Joe Pesci cool, though,

Dennis Blair 11:52

Joe Pesci was very cool, but I think he started out as a Rodney fan, and you know, all the stuff Rodney put him through, with the taking the funny lines and Rodney just, you know, his his acting style was a little bit much for Joe. I think Joe is more of a method actor. Joe said at the beginning of the movie, Joe, what told Rodney? Joe told me this. He said, Yeah, so at the beginning of the movie, I say, Rodney, you and I should hang out as our characters, you know, get into character, go to the racetrack, you know, stuff like that. And Rodney immediately turns to him and goes, I don't do that. Okay, here's what I do. You throw a loaded line at me. I'll throw a line back at you. That's, that's, that's how I act. And Joe, Joe just went, oh shit. Did I sign the contract? Can I get it back? Even from then, he said, Maybe this, this was a mistake. So by the end, it was just like he couldn't wait to stop. You know, I don't even think. I don't think him, or he, or Taylor Negron or or Jennifer Jason Lee, ever mentioned that they were in easy money. I don't think they ever bring it up. And I'd love to just, you know, I can't, Taylor's gone, but Jennifer, Jason Lee's around. If I ever ran into her and say, Hi, I was one of the writers of easy money. And if she, if she was still there, she didn't take off, I'd say, so did you really hate being in that movie? Did everybody hate being in that movie, or not? So I don't know. I wasn't privy to a lot of the onset stuff, because I was in the writers room, you know, trying to come up with jokes and stuff like that. But apparently he was difficult.

Jeff Dwoskin 13:24

So this was Rodney second movie, then right after Caddyshack, or, Yes,

Dennis Blair 13:28

well, he actually did a movie before Caddyshack called the projectionist, which he wasn't that famous at all. This was like, maybe eight years before he was great in it. He was, like, low key. He was kind of acting the part. He was the character. So I don't know what happened, but I guess the his his energy from his, uh, road act, just kind of seeped into his consciousness, and he just was all over the place. This is but, yeah, this is the one right after cattle shack, because he came to me and addressing him and said, so they want me to do a movie starring me. So if you come up with any ideas, let me know. So I ran home, which was four blocks away. I said, Holy shit, Rodney, danger go just asked me to come up with an idea for a movie, and I came up with the idea for easy money, and then they hired writers, and he hated the writers, and he told the writers that I thought Rodney called me and said, Yeah, I've read the script for easy money. It's a piece of shit. I'm going to send it over to you and let me know what you think. Okay, and I get the script, and it's okay. It's not great. It's a first draft that needed work. Obviously, I called and I told him, I says, yeah, it's okay. And he but he goes, That's what I thought. It's a piece of shit. He calls up Estelle endler, who's his manager, whose husband is one of the writers on the movie, and the Dennis agrees with me. He thinks it's a piece of shit. So for the first three weeks, I'm sitting at the writer's table with Michael Edler, who's the Who's the guy whose script I said was a piece of shit, along with PJ O'Rourke, and they're staring at me and glaring, and I'm going, what did I do? Did I do something? And I finally came out. That he had said that. And I said, I never, I never said it was piece of shit. I just said it was a first draft. So, God, you get in trouble by not even doing anything, you know. But that's all that stuff worked out.

Jeff Dwoskin 15:13

So a lot of rewriting on the go was there then just to kind of fit, oh yeah, Rodney style. Oh yeah, yeah,

Dennis Blair 15:20

yeah. He was very difficult to please. You know, it's like, you know, you'd come up with a scene that you think was pretty funny, and he goes, No man, there's no jokes in here. Where's the jokes? You keep going, where's the jokes? There's no jokes. So you'll easy money. Has a lot of those, you know, kind of one liners. Every once in a while we come up with something that he really likes. So we go, Oh, good. We won one. That's why it was such a long process. And the director was Jim Signorelli, who was the first time director got the guy who used to do all the Federal Express commercials, and he was, he was a director for like one month, and then he fired him, and he got Signorelli back. But the one scene that what was his name subtle, settles Joe settles in the one scene that read that remain of Joe settled. Remember the overhead scene in the wedding scene, the wedding reception. All the all of all the backyards are empty, except for rodneys and all these people are crammed together. That was the only thing that remained for Joe's tenure as a director. Dance was on the go, on the fly. Well,

Jeff Dwoskin 16:23

that does stand out.

Dennis Blair 16:26

Yeah, people remember that, yeah, I know. I'm telling you. Was there

Jeff Dwoskin 16:29

something about making him a baby photographer? I was a baby, so I grew up to become a baby photographer.

Dennis Blair 16:34

I wasn't at that session. I didn't know 90% of the writing sessions, I think I had a gig or something. And they'd come up with that was Rodney would come up a lot of schools, a lot of scenes too, and you'd kind of have to go along with it. Sometimes you go, Okay, I guess that's in the movie. So,

Jeff Dwoskin 16:52

so I so what was it being a protege and writing? What's a writing session with Rodney Dangerfield? You

Dennis Blair 17:00

go to you go to his apartment, sit around the big den, dining room table, wait for everybody to be there. His manager was there. The writers, of course, there was another guy who kind of was sort of a sounding board. He never wrote anything. He'd sit there and laugh if something was funny. And I guess Rodney liked him or something. So hey, Jim, whatever the guy's name is, Jim. Jim thinks that's funny. Let's keep that in, even if it wasn't funny. So that would be it. And then you would start and wherever you left off the day before, or the whatever days before, you take it from there. I think we all go home and try to come up with scenarios that should follow what we had written before. And you know, we work for a couple of hours. Sorry, I just lost my in a year. We worked for a couple of hours, take a break, have lunch, and work for more, and then forget how long we'd work, but maybe six, five or six hours a day, and that's the way it would go.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:54

How many jokes were in a typical Rodney set? Because they were like, they're shorter one liners, right? I mean, they're definitely,

Dennis Blair 18:02

well, what he did the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. I think he did approximately 15 jokes for the stand up section, and then he'd go over to the panel. They called it the panel when you sit down with Johnny. And he just basically continued doing his jokes. You know, Johnny would be there going, Oh, you don't say or, Oh, really, you know. And then you know, Joe Rodney would do his ugly jokes or whatever. So that was about 12. So I guess, you know, 2728 would be in a typical TV set, and his shows were a little over an hour. So I don't know how many jokes he fed into that, but that's a lot. But tonight, show set is like 1012, minutes, talking about times six times that, or five times that. So what's

Jeff Dwoskin 18:45

your what's the craziest Rodney story drops out here? Just one that just kind of always sticks in your head.

Dennis Blair 18:54

Uh, well, the one that just came right, right to my head. We were in a limo and we were late for the gig. We're going to be late for the gig, and we were in traffic. And where he goes, we're going to get late, man, we're not going to make the show. So he tells the driver, Hey, see, that's a shoulder over there on the highway. We're on the highway in a not moving traffic. Just go up on the shoulder and, I pass all these people, and he goes, Ronnie, I'm really not supposed to do that running. Come on, do it, man, do it. You know, I'll take it. If we get a ticket, I'll take care of it. Guy goes, Okay, goes up on the shoulder. He went, we do about three miles on the shoulder. People are honking, peeping, you know, fuck you guys. We get a flat tire all of a sudden, and we're at the side of the road. Now all these people who beeped us because we were passing them like giving us a finger, you know, and I don't think that they knew it was Rodney, because, you know, he was kind of like hiding his face. Oh, shit, I'm in trouble now. And one guy with the pickup truck stopped, and Rodney says, Hey, can you give us a ride to whatever the theater is? And the guy said, Yeah, sure. Randy, like we start talking. Guy goes, Hey, wait a minute, aren't you Ron, Roger dingleford, and Ron, he goes, Dangerfield, yeah, yeah. So that's gonna have so the guy got us to the theater just in the nick of time. But that was the kind of stuff that would happen on the road all the time. Hilarious, but that's the one that just one of the one of the ones that have stick out in my mind, the other one that I could think of is Billy Joel. That involves Billy. Billy came to a show at Westbury music fair, and I came off. He goes, Hey, Dennis, how you doing? He said, Oh, hi. Really nice man. And then after the show, Rodney is in his dressing room, and Rodney says, Hey, Billy. Hey, Dennis Peggy, come on in. We'll hang out. So we're all in the dressing room. And the trading stories Rodney and Billy one point. Billy goes, yeah. Well, what we're going to do is we're going to do the next tour. I'm going to have a TV on stage, on, say, on the stage, and we're going to have a channel tune to like an old Andy Griffin Show, and Ronnie. Ronnie chuckles, you can see on Billy's face, oh, I just made Ronnie Dangerfield chuckle. That's pretty cool. So they continue talking about other stuff, and about five minutes later, Billy goes, Yeah, well, like we said, we're going to do that TV thing. Gonna have the TV on the stage. And Rodney looks at Billy and goes, it was kind of funny the first time Billy just sinks down on the floor. Goes, oh shit, I guess I did. And oh, poor Bill, you just the wrath of Rodney. So those are two. Those are two that stick out of my mind immediately. That's

Jeff Dwoskin 21:22

funny. That is fine. So you've opened for like, everyone before we get to Carlin Joan Rivers, yep, two years with her. Yeah, I was at like, she's amazing,

Dennis Blair 21:36

yeah. Totally different bike. See, Rodney happened to be a very unhappy person, just the way he was nothing, maybe even his success, even when he he felt he made it too late in life, he felt he made it when he was 60. Now, if he was, he was kind of famous before that, but not, you know, birth shattering. So this Caddy Shack came about when he was like 60, and he felt, man just gonna be too long, so long to get here, you know? But he could turn anything into a tragedy, pretty much, right? And he was a great guy and hilarious, and we had great times, but as a person, he just wasn't the happiest person on earth. Joan was totally different. Joan love being on the road. She loved working. She would take us on trips like once I was we were, my wife and I were sleeping in the bedroom of our room at Lake Tahoe, and we got a phone call like, nine in the morning, which was, it's not comic hours, and sleepily, I go, Hi, yeah, it's John. We're all going. We're all going, what do you skiing? Water skiing. We're all going water skiing. So beat down in the lobby in 10 minutes, and we'll meet. We'll go water skiing. Come on. So it's another game these guys, you know, you're opening for somebody. You can't say, No, it's like you You're like the fire. So by 10 o'clock, we were on a boat in the Caesars yacht on the lake water skiing. So, but she did that. She was like a den mother. You know, we go regular skiing. We go, here we go. There we go shoe shopping, you know, because John wanted to buy my wife some shoes, so there was a pay list down the down the block. So we went there. You know, it's interesting, but she didn't take all of your time up. Rodney would take all of your time up. Joan would occasionally, you know, chill out, go to hotel room. So it was okay, it was it was tolerable, but, yeah, but totally different personalities. And then she got me on The Tonight Show, so that I'm forever grateful for that.

Jeff Dwoskin 23:28

That is amazing. I in terms of what's the difference between how they paired before going on stage?

Dennis Blair 23:35

Are they prepared? I don't know. I know Joan had cards. She had good cue cards that she would take to the stage, you know, during sound check, or whatever it was, you know, before the people came in. So I don't know how much preparation she did. If she did it was you in her room. I never saw it, but she always used two opening acts in those days, in the in the in the mid 80s, me, very often it was Gary Shandling. So I got to hang out with Gary Shandling for two years. No, that was amazing. He helped me put my Tonight Show set together. So that was great. Well, he had some great laughs. Good laughs, yeah. So that was cool. Sometimes it was Father Guido Sarducci from SNL, yeah. So that was great. He came out of his dressing one once in total, Father Guido Sarducci and I just looked and says, Man, I was gonna wear that and that. So you know who else? Nell Carter, sometimes, I guess if Gary wasn't available, because he was starting to get some notoriety, he could have to get other people. So those are the three main ones. But Gary did the lion's share of work, that's for sure. That's

Jeff Dwoskin 24:38

I love Gary Shandling. He was so funny. My parents would watch Joan Rivers and Gary Shandling. I feel like they would always have that's how I got exposed to them. Gary Shandling had one of the funniest jokes. Is it Porsche or Porsche? Yeah, it's Porsch. I'm driving my Toyot,

Dennis Blair 24:57

my Toyota, that's right, I don't know. I. Hilarious. He's great, and we talk on the phone. Every once in a while, I remember once I called him, left a message on his machine. We had machines back then, and he didn't call me back. So as a joke, after two minutes, I said, Hey, Gary, it's Dennis. Again, I left your message. You haven't called me back yet. If it's a matter of money, you can call collect. Three minutes later, I get a call from an operator. He goes, Hi, I have a Gary Shandling on the phone. He says, it's a collect goal. Will you accept the charges? I'll accept the charge. That shit gonna happen.

Jeff Dwoskin 25:38

That is funny. Did you tell I know sometimes when you're working with someone for years, you don't watch every show, but like, when you're working with like, a Rodney or Joan and Carlin, like, do you watch them every time? Or, like, can you ever get enough? Or is it like, you know, I watched, I

Dennis Blair 25:55

watched him a lot of the time, just because, you know, just fun, fun to watch, you know. And you can always pick up some sort of a pointer for yourself by watching these great people. Yeah, Rodney, I watched at least, I'd say 75% just because I want to see the audience reaction if he had anything new. And Joan, same thing. If she had any new stuff she was trying out, I would sit up on a balcony or whatever, you know, wherever the sight lines were watch her car, and I remember specifically, because I don't know where they saw me. They saw me on, probably a TV show or something like that. And I got a call from my agent. My agent, at the time, was booking me with everyone. He was the one guy that got me to opening act, and he calls one day and says, Hey, would you like to open for George Carlin for three months? I said, Yeah, I can probably squeeze that in. So he sent me, gives me the details. It was in Omaha, Nebraska. I'm downstairs. I haven't met George ever. I'm pacing in my dressing room. I hear the door upstairs the, you know, the stage door open upstairs, and I hear George's unmistakable voice going, Hey, Blair, where the fuck are you? I go, I'm down here. He comes down. He goes, Hey, how you doing? I'm George Carlin. I said, Yes, I know it is. And he grabs, like, a whole bunch of stuff from my deli train. Goes, I'm taking like half of these. Okay. Anyway, I saw we love you. We think you're great and and we'll be watching your show, so don't fuck up. And he leaves. I went, this could be fun. So I do my show. Thank God. It goes well, I come off stage. I don't see George anywhere. I go to myself. I guess he didn't watch me, or maybe he's out the audience. And I hear, all of a sudden, to my side, sound of it. So one guy clapping, and it's George. He'd been behind the curtain the whole time. But great show, great show. And then he does his thing. So here's the deal. So I'm feeling pretty good that George liked my show. Pretty good about my response. I go up to the balcony, the closest balcony, I said, I gotta watch George, and I go from feeling pretty good about myself to he does this whole opening bit, and it's like a seven or eight minute bit about people I can do without. I don't know if you've ever seen that bit, a dentist with blood in his hair. You know? That's one of the what the jokes, guys with big teeth, no big gums and small teeth. This is a litany of people he could do without. And I'm sitting there going, Oh my god. This is a this is a real comedian. This is a guy. I don't know how you can think like this. So I was like, I'm going, Okay, I got a lot of stuff. I gotta start writing some stuff, because, you know, he's amazing. So that's there were a couple of bits with George. I was with him so often that I didn't watch every show. Every once in a while, I would watch the show when I knew this one bid was coming up, the guy with the roving eye, he did like a five minute bit, like guy with one of those eyes that look off to the side. And I just would love it, because, first of all, not only with the jokes funny, but he was, he acted it out. You know, he didn't get enough credit for being a great physical comedy because, you know, he would like be hunch over and try to follow the guy's sight line and stuff, and at the end of the bit was, and you realize, so the last five minutes, he's been describing a building down there, you know? And I went, that was the ending of the bit. And it was bits like that that I would just watch. Even if I didn't watch the whole show, I'd go, Oh, he's doing the bit. He's doing the so I guess the question would be, yes, I did watch a lot of those guys, and I think I picked up a lot of subconscious, if not conscious, stuff from them. Did

Jeff Dwoskin 29:28

they assume you were watching? I mean, did you have to watch? Did they meaning, like, did they go? Joan was trying something new. Dennis, how did that work? You know, no, I don't

Dennis Blair 29:37

think they ever did that. I did write him a couple of tags. George was saying, I need to finish for this bit. And I the bit involved him talking about people having an orgy and dancing in front of the statue of and I said, Larry Flint. He went, got it. Thank you. And he used that. I mean. It was just a tag, but I wrote something for Carl, and I felt so good. There was another joke too, which I kind of ended for him. Oh, I know it was. What if there was a guy who was a classical composer and he was so amazingly good, he's better than Beethoven, better than Mozart, better than all those guys, and you couldn't ignore him. But unfortunately, his name was and I came up with El conto pricolini. He said, great. So those are two, two examples. That's those are proud moments for me when I came up with something, you know, to help with a joke. But no, he never asked if I watched him. Joe never asked. Rodney therefore I asked, no, they didn't care. I mean, who didn't mind? I

Jeff Dwoskin 30:45

mean, that must be, like, the greatest thing in the world to be sitting there in the audience. And George Carlin, yeah, is using your tag. And you're like, I

Dennis Blair 30:53

know. I know. Yeah, nice, yeah, yeah. Those are, those are amazing years. I do miss those years,

Jeff Dwoskin 31:00

you know, that's 18 years. So you had to, were you writing like a fiend, then during this time, because, like George Carlin has a new hour every five minutes. So I

Dennis Blair 31:10

know, yeah, I'm not a great writer. And also, the nature of my act is so musical that once you have, you know, you come up with all these, you know, I would come up with every genre of music that I would think I could think of, but once you've gotten every genre of music, it's hard to expand on that. So I stick with that, like Victor Borga, like, you know, set pieces. And then if there were new artists, you know, like they were popular, then I would try to do parity on that. So that was that, was that. And I've come up with a couple of concepts every once in a while, but I wouldn't say I was writing like a theme, but I was really trying hard, but I come up with, I come up with a new stuff, like a new five minutes, maybe every year. That isn't Charlie doesn't Carlin speed, but, yeah, but Rodney was the same. Rodney stuck to his format for long as I was with him. Joan, I think, wrote some news, wrote some stuff too, but she was kind of a workaholic anyway, yeah, so I, yeah, I wish, I wish I was writing more. You know, I came up with enough stuff, but I kept the job for a team here, and then it was Rodney. So Rodney was three years, three and a half years. Joan was two years. Tom Jones was one year. That's my big interest. How was that? It was, it was good, because I was a good opener for him. For some reason, his audiences liked me. And then I was real good friends with the band. I rode on the band bus to most gigs that were within driving distance. So, you know, I made some friends that I still have today. And then, you know, I had, like, whole bunch of other people that I would work with occasionally for a month or a weekend, or beach boys that were open for a couple of times. You know, some people like that, like 150 different acts. I think was my career that I've opened for. So I

Jeff Dwoskin 32:48

believe that is correct. So, so as a with the funny songs, it would work great for a comedian, and, yeah, plug in very well for a musical act. So, yeah,

Dennis Blair 32:59

because there's nothing like what they do, but it's comedy, so it helps get the audience in a comedy mood. So, yeah, it's amazing that that thing of opening for somebody, and Rodney didn't always give me billing, and I always wanted Billy just for that reason, like, you know, at least they know somebody's with him, you know. But it doesn't, didn't help very much, because Carlin gave, always gave me billing. Joan always gave me billing. I would have my guitar on, I would do a sound check, and then have my guitar on stage in a stand as people are coming in. So billing, there's a guitar on stage. Most people should know George Carlin didn't play guitar, and still the lights would go, No, George special guest, Dennis Blair, and it wasn't like booze with Rodney. It was booze because his audiences were fanatical about him. But they go, you can just hear the deflation, you know. So you had to be funny real fast. That was a good practice, you know? They had to be funny really quickly, right? Possible, yeah, but Joan, yeah, so yeah, that's, that's the hard part. I just worked with Barry Manilow for two tours. Same thing, you know, the lights go down. Barry would like you to be very kind to his special guest musical comedian Dennis Blair. And they didn't boo, but it was like,

Jeff Dwoskin 34:21

so well with a fan of those are there for one reason, Barry Manilow happened to be the very first concert I ever saw. My Oh, really took me to see Barry Manilow. Yeah. Oh, okay, did you enjoy it? I recall enjoying it. I was

Dennis Blair 34:39

never a fan of his kind of music. I'm just know, yeah, I might go more of a rock, you know, not heavy metal. But who that lets up

Jeff Dwoskin 34:47

that Barry, manlo, Neil Diamond, those were in the house, you know, but he,

Dennis Blair 34:51

but he has a residency here in Vegas at the West Gate Hotel. And his, his writer, I guess, the guy who comes with the new stuff for him to say. Matter and his friend, he's a comic named Larry amros. He brought Barry up to see me at the West Gate. I was doing a show there. They were trying to do comedy there, and Barry came up with his manager, and Larry and his manager's daughter and stuff, and we had a 10 minute talk, and he was very nice. And they said, Yeah, I really liked your show. I said, Oh, thanks. Blah, blah. 10 minutes later, he's gone. Then a month later, they called and said, Hey, you want to do arenas with us? I said, Okay, it's arenas. How many people is that? Yeah, that's five to 10,000 people. I went, Okay, it wasn't crazy about the idea, but too, and it worked out really well. So, but yeah, the same damn thing you got the you gotta know. You just know they're not there for you. They don't even know who you are. So, yeah, it's, it's weird,

Jeff Dwoskin 35:45

yeah, Barry Manilow can still pull it in

Dennis Blair 35:49

again. I remember opening, I'm opening for Gilbert years ago at a club, uh, someone put us together, and I picked them up, and for the entire half an hour ride to New Jersey or wherever it was. He just complained and bitched about, I don't I hate fucking doing this. I don't want to do this. God damn it. I hate this shit. You gotta he turns to me, you want a headline. I said, I think they're there to see you. Gilbert, all right, what the fuck he's so down on it. And then, like, we get to the place, and he's supposed to do 40 minutes, and he did an hour, you know. So these guys are many times full of shit, you know, I don't want to do once they get here, laughter, you know? There you go. Well, there's something

Jeff Dwoskin 36:31

about once you're on stage, I think, like that. It's just the drug, yeah, it's the musical acts. Like, who is your favorite, favorite ones to open for

Dennis Blair 36:43

Gloria Estefan was the sweetest. I'm sure she's the least was she's not dead. Sweetest person I ever met show business. She wanted me to do parodies of her songs. Okay, Gloria, they don't know who I am. I'm not going to start making fun of your songs on stage. Oh, come on, dude, Goys will be Goys. They'll be hilarious. No, it won't be hilarious because they're there to see you, and they'll think of being disrespectful. So I refuse to do it, but I say she was one of my top, top people. The Beach Boys were pretty cool too, and I opened for them in 1980 when Dennis was still alive. Brian was kind of starting to lose it, but he wasn't completely losing it, but Carl was great. I really liked Carl a lot. So I said because of him, that was one of my all time favorite gigs other music acts. I'm trying to think Tom Jones. Tom Jones was all right. Tom Jones was royalty, but he didn't really talk to the plebes, you know, it was sort of, you know, but he wasn't stuffy or anything, just, you know, you know, we cross each other on stage. He I'd be coming off. He coming, he'd be coming on. You go, Hello, dad. I go, Hi Tom. And that was it. That's a few the most talk you got. So

Jeff Dwoskin 37:56

back to George Carlin. So do you have any what you would consider your classic George Carlin stories that you like to share? Yeah, well,

Dennis Blair 38:05

like I said, George was kind of a hermit when you were hanging out in the car. We do a lot of rental car to the gig, like, we say, at a Central Hotel in a city. And if the gigs were like, like, say Chicago, we stay in Chicago, and then we do Joliet one day, and then Merrillville, Indiana the next day. So we'd stay in that big hotel and do like two or maybe three gigs in the area. So we, me and him and the manager would ride together in the car, and we had some huge laughs. We came up with this one premise for a bit that we, the three of us, did about last words of famous people, and George would always do the funniest one, you know, like we came up once with celebrities who have the bushiest pubic hair, and George came up with Rhea Perlman, just, you know, just, I don't know how he came up with it, but, but Then you're looking you're thinking, going, yeah, she probably does have very bushy pubic hair, yeah. But I won. I won one of those contests. Once he said Famous last words of famous people, and I came up with John Kennedy. Why is my head whistling? And they thought that was hilarious. So once I out shown George Harland, ladies and gentlemen. So Right? Those cars, those rental car rides, were amazing, yeah, and then once we were we used to go into the, you know, we had a city to go to. We take the same plane. This is before he started renting Lear jets, which was amazing, and they let me fly on them every once in a while. But we did the wrong thing. Like, you know, we booked a flight for like, noon or something. And once there was a big snowstorm, and George was the only guy who the plane was sold out or something, and George made the plane, and they said, I'll get on the next one. And I said, Okay, I'll be right there. I'll get there as soon as I can. And. Got to the gig, go backstage, and I find that George had told the people, I'm going to go on, I'm going to do the first half of my show. My opening act is going to be going to come during the intermission, which use the intermission, and he'll do the middle part, and then I'll come back and finish up the evening. And I came out and I thought they're going to boo the shit out of me, you know, because they just had George for like, 35 minutes, and they like, cheered, like they went great. And he must have, like, really built me up or something like that, because there's no other inflammation, because I'm, like, this new guy, you know, who's interrupting? George Carla, so that was, I said, Thanks, George. That was amazing. Thanks doing it. So, yeah, that was just, there's tons of stories. I mean, I could go on from for hours the day I missed this show because I thought it was the next day, three errands. You know, I'm in Beverly Hills, doing errands, and I call up the office, and I go, Yeah, I gotta be the hotel. I got a thing I want to give to Cherry Hamza, who's his manager. And the good woman goes, Okay, you at the hotel? I go, what hotel? You know, the one at the gig. Okay, what gig me tomorrow? No, today. It's nice. I missed the fucking gig, and they had a George did the whole show, and the next day they were merciless, you know, the I see George, so you decided to show up tonight, kind of shit. So, you know, in that, in that sense, we were kind of friends. We didn't hang out a lot, but when we did, we had a great Rhea Perlman, I'll never forget that. That's for damn sure. That's

Jeff Dwoskin 41:31

really funny. Was George always, did he always love it? Did he always love being George Carlin the whole 18 years?

Dennis Blair 41:38

Yeah, as opposed to someone like Rodney, who just hated his life. You know, I don't know what he he had just, he had a tough life growing up, so it was just to get his genes. But George loved writing. I think he considered himself a writer first, more than a farmer. So he just really loved what he did. And he had his HBO specials. What did he wind up doing? Like 16 of them or something every two or three years. So yeah, he said, Yeah, until the very end, where he just got sick. You know, the last year of his year or two, he just kept heart disease. Arteries were calcified. He hardly had any energy. And he it's weird, because no one knew what was wrong at first, you know, because he'd always been this kind of fun guy, and loved doing it. And he turned to this guy, he was like snapping at people, you know, so, but till the very end, he really enjoyed it. You could just tell.

Jeff Dwoskin 42:33

So, alright, so you're still touring with Barry Manilow,

Dennis Blair 42:36

but he's got, he still works at odd jobs, like here at the West Gate, that he has a residency, but he just used, he used, he uses, I think he used opening acts, just for the arena tours. And they did, they did say this was going to be it for him. But I still go out there and do clubs and doing a lot less. I'm just taking it easier, trying to stay close to home.

Jeff Dwoskin 42:59

I was watching some of the clips on your website and and on your YouTube, all hilarious, but I did want to specifically, I know that's the on YouTube. It's like 17 year old clip, but the vocal dyslexia, I mean, the just the execution of that joke was incredible, like it was thanks, amazing to watch that. That was

Dennis Blair 43:24

just something we came up. We were trying to do Bill has, Bill Murray has, like, six brothers, and one of them was John Murray. And we were trying to put together some comedy. I just came up with that concept about public service announcement. It just, and, you know, just did it so many times. It's in my I can't get it off my head now it's inscribed in my brain. So yeah, and that was at the that was the Writers Guild Awards in 2005 I gotta get to do. I did do, like, a 30 minute special in Sarasota, Sarasota, like, two years ago. I gotta get that on my website. Thanks for reminding me. I should actually put that on there, as opposed to be 11, the 2011 thing that is that they have on there right now, I'm just, I just gotten very lazy in later years. What can I tell you?

Jeff Dwoskin 44:08

And then your book touring with legends. How long did it take you to put that together? 10

Dennis Blair 44:16

years. 10 years. The only reason I did it was because George's manager. Very short story. George's manager wanted to be my manager. And I went, Okay, and one of the things he wanted to do for me was to give me a book deal. So I wrote the book hastily, in about six months or something, I first draft. And why do I keep pulling these hair phones out of me. And he went to one publisher, and they rejected it. They said, Yeah, well, they rejected your book. I said, Okay, well, let's go on. And he says, they never did. They never took anywhere else. So, so we, I had this friend who just said, What do you mean? You're not publishing it says, I can't find anybody wants. They don't know who I am, because I'm going to work as years this guy, like, called up publishers, and nobody was interested, and they finally got a publisher that's got this bear not fair,

Jeff Dwoskin 45:13

whatever. Oh yeah, bear manner. Thank you

Dennis Blair 45:15

very much. Bear Mountain. And they finally published the book. And I, I mean, while I kept up writing for people, I opened for and coming up with stories. So the last one, I think the last one is Norah McDonald's, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I could, I could do another edition with Barry Manilow, but I probably won't, knowing me, but yeah, so that's how that came about. So 10 years, starting from when the manager said, Hey, you should write a book.

Jeff Dwoskin 45:45

Well, at least you finally got it published. So that's cool. Yeah, a lot of people like it. So, yeah, awesome. I thanks for hanging out with me. Sharon, oh sure, thanks for this. I appreciate it. Thank you. Great stories. Such a career, amazing,

Dennis Blair 46:01

yeah, it worked out. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai