- Nothing like bombing during the day.
- (laughing) Yeah, that's right.
You go out squinting.
(laughing)
Maybe the worst part of bombing is that when you go in
for the first night people are,
"Oh, hey, nice to see you."
"This is gonna be great."
"We've heard this and we can hardly wait."
And then when you bomb
people don't look at you on the way out.
It's all, "Is he gone?
Okay, great."
- And the emotional temperature, it plummets.
- Yeah the humiliation...
You can feel it rising up into every vital organ
of your system.
(laughs)
- And like you said,
then they start bringing up the reasons why,
(indistinct) like, "Hey, the rodeo's in town."
(laughing)
Or- - That's right.
- Things that could not affect your act
in any way whatsoever.
- Yeah, that's right.
That's exactly right.
There was a waitress
who was very kind to me and she kind of was my liaison
through the nonsense to the final show.
And that's where you wanna be in Denver, in July.
It's sunny, people are mountain climbing,
mountain biking, picking up hitchhikers.
And you're inside in a dark room
doing your stupid little act.
People just stopping on their way home from church.
(laughs)
- Nothing like bombing during the day.
- Yeah that's right.
You go out squinting.
- You bomb and you eat lunch.
(laughs)
Did you watch Pryor do that?
'Cause that's...
I mean, George Wallace tells me
that Pryor would bomb so fucking badly.
- George Wallace, talk about a guy who never bombs,
there's another guy. - Yeah.
- Whenever Richard was working on a new album,
he would come to The Comedy Store,
and he would come like two or three nights a week,
and people would find out about it.
And, oh my God, the place would be bulging.
This night, Richard is working on a hunk
for his new HBO show, I guess it was.
And he closes with your favorite: having sex with a dog.
The audience now is going crazy.
And it's like a rabid kangaroo
has been turned loose in the building.
And they're all filing out.
And so...
"And now ladies and gentlemen, Dave Letterman."
(laughs) "Hi, how are you?
I've never had sex with my dog."
Just nothing.
They had to close it down and hose the place out.
- What is the story where you were on stage
and Ringo started heckling you?
- Yes. This is a story I don't recall.
People tell me it actually happened.
I don't know that it actually happened.
I never had an act.
I just had like five minutes and I thought,
well, maybe I can get on "The Merv Griffin Show"
with my five minutes.
And so I had no act so I would hope for hecklers.
Because it was fun,
and knowing the hecklers encumbered by alcohol,
I felt like I had an advantage.
And one night, apparently I was being heckled by someone,
just a disembodied voice in the dark,
then it was called out to me that it was Ringo Starr.
And I said, "Great, Ringo Starr, you've ruined your career,
now you're here to ruin mine."
Now, I don't recall an episode where everybody said,
"Boy, did you hear about Ringo?
He ruined his career."
But that seems to be the legend and lore of that.
- When I heard that story, I'm like,
"That's such a funny line."
But then I would think, "How did Ringo ruin his career?"
- Yeah exactly.
It doesn't mean anything.
So, I would like to think
that had I something to say to him,
it would be more direct and more pointed than,
"Hey, you ruined your career.
You remember, Ringo, when you broke up The Beatles,
you dumb shit.
What was that all about?"
- Yeah, he was fairly innocent in the whole thing.
- Yes that's right.
I mean, it's followed me around as a story,
but I honestly do not remember.