but jugglers, dancers, magicians.
That March, I did my first hoot at the Cafe Wha?—a hole-in-thewall off Bleecker—and another the next night at the Bitter End on
Bleecker itself. Nothing. A few nights later I auditioned at the Village Vanguard, a venerable old jazz joint in the West Village. Still
nothing. Next month I did the same circuit, and at the Bitter End
hoot, Howie Solomon caught me. Howie owned a new, quite large
coffeehouse-style club across Bleecker Street called the Cafe Au
Go Go.
The Go Go was well on its way to becoming the epicenter of
everything people now remember Bleecker Street—and by extension the Village—to have been in the sixties. Stan Getz recorded
his Au Go Go album there, other jazz giants like MJQ and Nina
Simone played it. Mort Sahl was a regular. Steve Stills got his start
as a solo, as did many other folkies who later crossed over to rock.
Howie covered the field and he offered me exactly the kind of deal
I was looking for: an open-ended arrangement to be a regular when
the mike was open, two nights here, four nights there, drop by of an
evening if you're downtown. He'd offered the same deal to a number of young musicians but to only one other comic, a guy three
years my junior named Richard Pryor.
The Go Go became my home-court advantage. I still took jobs
outside New York—I wasn't turning down money—but I had made
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my stand. Now I had a place to stand as well, a laboratory in the very
heart of what would soon be the counterculture. An audience not
only open to material that contained some ideas, some risk, but outsiders by instinct or choice who didn't accept received values, who
resisted convention, who felt alienation from the smug certainties
of middle-class Middle America. And who in a few short months
would add to this potent mix a smoldering rage . . .
When Kennedy came on the scene, I identified closely with the
youthful Irish Catholic man of ideas. He wasn't my class but he
was my tribe. A politician, yes; but like a lot of my contemporaries,
I wasn't old enough yet to have been disappointed. With him a new
beginning seemed possible, a chance for ideas to be advanced that
took into account how people felt and lived, how the world treated
them. A slow but sure march toward more concern about people
and less about property. The black struggle was the most visible and
emotional example of it, but Kennedy's promise included much
else, explicitly and implicitly, about people who had been ignored or
marginalized in the rush to the fifties' consumer paradise.
During the Kennedy years, I found my political values. Or rather
I found political ideas that matched the feelings of an individual
who was not organized politically.
My Kennedy impressions were affectionate. I continued to do
JFK through these years but my ear gave me as much pleasure
as satirizing him. Though I have this other alien creature inside
that wants to get out, most of me is just pure hambone-entertainer
child-showoff. And I had this favorite phrase of Kennedy's: "We will
low-ur the quo-tah of sug-ah from Cu-ber." I loved that because in
a nine-word sentence I got to use two intrusive r's and leave off two
final r's. Flashy word shit. My claim to fame.
Like most people, I remember where I was when the assassination happened and what I was doing. I was walking my baby daughter on 110th and Broadway in the very fancy pram Mary had bought
her. There was a blind man's news kiosk on the corner. I went to buy
the newspaper but he didn't hand me one. He just said, "You hear
about the president? The president has been shot down in Dallas."
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I went into Rexall's or Liggett's or some drugstore and called
Brenda. I said, "Turn on the television," and I realized I was crying.
It came out as a cry. As a gasp. And yet I hadn't felt grief before I tried
to speak the words to her. Saying the words caused the emotions . . .
That's all I consciously remember. Beyond that, I'm not sure what
I felt. I was limited by being very self-absorbed in my career path.
I've probably done some blocking in all the years. And there was
always the marijuana.
But I was stunned. I don't know if I was depressed. As far as the
Moylan—the community—was concerned, there was great shock
that this kind of thing could even happen. In America or anywhere.
But the sheer elemental shock of it blocked out or pushed away
other, more nuanced emotional reactions that might've taken place
in its absence. I knew guys who liked Kennedy, guys who didn't.
Obviously there were cultural links: we were all Irish Catholics. But
in general they were conservative and Kennedy was a liberal.
I was down in the Moylan when Oswald got shot, because there
was a TV there, and we all saw it. Other than that, as far as I recall the bar functioned normally the weekend of the assassination.
The feeling was, "Hey, we're drinking here and there's exciting stuff
on TV."
There was another assassination going on at the time—a slower
and more methodical one but in the end just as deadly. One that affected me far more deeply and directly.
Two years earlier, in 1961, Lenny Bruce had begun to be hit with
a series of arrests for obscenity in San Francisco, Los Angeles (at
three different clubs), Chicago and finally in New York (twice in two
weeks) at. . . the Cafe Au Go Go. The British police also deported
him from the UK when he tried to perform in London.
I guess it would be clinically paranoid to think these were coordinated, but because several ended in acquittal or mistrial (in one
case he was illegally tried in absentia) and because he was often
arrested while awaiting trial for a previous arrest, it certainly looked
like there was some degree of consensus. As if by some kind of bush
telegraph, law enforcers across America had agreed that this comic
had to be made to shut the fuck up.
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I was there when Lenny was busted in Chicago—in fact I went
to jail with him. It was in December 1962 at the Gate of Horn. Bob
Carey of the Tarriers, one of my folkie friends, and I were drinking beer upstairs and watching Lenny be his usual genius self. Suddenly a policeman stands up in the audience and says, just like they
do on a street corner when someone gets shot or run down and a
crowd gathers: "Aright, the show's over!" He actually said it, not as
a metaphor, but as a literal piece of information being transmitted
to the audience by someone in authority. "Aright, the show's over!"
Wonderful.
They hauled Lenny away. Lenny had been busted so often that
he always wore his coat during performances so he could leave immediately with the police. (He didn't want to get separated from that
coat; it was a nice piece of cashmere.)
The cops bust the upstairs bartender too, because he's serving the
people during sets, and they bust the owner, Alan Ribback. Carey
and I stay upstairs. Downstairs the cops are trying to close the front
door so they can check ID before people leave in case there a
re minors present. They really wanted to punish the club for having the
balls to let Lenny speak free. Eventually they found a girl who was
fifteen or sixteen and Alan later got into legal troubles for that. The
Gate of Horn was never really the same afterward.
Carey and I were still drinking—we were pretty juiced—and purposely I arranged to be almost the last going out. The policeman
said, "I wanna see your ID." I said, "I don't believe in identification.
Sorry." And I tried to give some kind of fucking stupid drunk speech.
The cop grabbed me by the collar and pants in the old buncheroo
fashion and hustled me down the stairs and through the lobby to the
front door. As I was passing the bar area, I yelled out: "Brenda, I'm
going to jail!" Then it's out the door with my hands cuffed behind
me and into this paddy wagon where Lenny was.
I knew Lenny not just because he gave Jack and me our break,
but because he was a friend of Brenda's. Whenever we were in the
same city on the road, we'd check in with him and he'd always welcome us, especially Brenda "the shiksa." He was an affectionate and
lovable man—even to cops. He always called them "peace officers."
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He said, "Why you here, man?" I said, "I told them I don't believe
in this shit." I omitted to mention that it wasn't a principled First
Amendment stand so much as a smart-ass joke.
Lenny showed me how to work my arms down under my ass and
my feet so the handcuffs were in front of me. Somehow that worked.
Much better. And off I went to jail with Lenny in a paddy wagon.
And even though it began as a drunken joke, the whole affair had a
radicalizing effect on me.
It was only reinforced when Lenny was busted at the Go Go. Not
once but twice. I was out of town at the time because when the Go
Go had major headliners, the regulars had no opportunity to appear,
By now it was becoming pretty clear that Lenny wasn't being arrested for obscenity. He was being arrested for being funny about
religion and in particular Catholicism. A lot of big city cops—not
just in New York but in Philly, San Fran, Chicago—tend to be Irish
Catholic. In addition Lenny's persecutors had names like Ryan (the
judge who tried him in absentia in Chicago), Hogan (the DA who
went after him in New York) and Murtagh (the trial judge in New
York). Lenny's Chicago trial began on Ash Wednesday, 1963. In
court, judge and jury having just come from Mass, everyone had
ash crosses on their foreheads.
So it probably shouldn't have blown my mind that the vice
squad cop who busted Lenny at the Go Go—the one who wore the
wire—grew up in my neighborhood. But it did when I found out in
the Moylan a couple weeks later. He was a guy named Randy. I'm
immediately thinking, why would Randy do that? He must know
what great stuff Lenny's doing, knocking down this bullshit, seeing
through that. Surely any of the guys I grew up with would agree. We
were so outside the law, so inconsonant with authority.
A few days later Randy comes into the Moylan and he has a transcript from the wire he wore. He's showing it around to the guys:
"You gotta see this. Lookit what that foulmouth had to say . . . A
nun's tit, fecal matter on a crucifix, Pope this, Cardinal that." And
there are universal reactions of outrage. I try to mount a feeble defense of Lenny and they get even more outraged. Now I am truly
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blown away. Because these are disrespectful guys. They stopped going to Mass when they were twelve, thirteen. Nothing was sacred to
them.
It was the most dramatic evidence I'd had to date that these lines
were sharply drawn, the legacy of that Catholic upbringing, that
clannish Irish working-class neighborhood ethic was a rigid demarcation. Just because you grew up with a guy and shared A, B, C, D
and E with him didn't mean that on F through Z you wouldn't be
diametrically opposed to each other.
Twelve days before Lenny died in 1966 Brenda and I went up
to his house in Hollywood. We'd just moved there and we wanted
to check in just like the old days. He had a beard by then and he
was completely immersed in his legal battle; he knew the law incredibly well on the specifics of his cases. He didn't appear in clubs
anymore—the Irish cops and judges had indeed shut him the fuck
up. He was just about bankrupt, having spent all his income and
intellect trying to vindicate himself. We visited for a while and he
was as affectionate and lovable as ever. That was the last time we saw
him alive.
Lenny was one of the very few comics—perhaps the only one—I
sought out and felt comfortable hanging with. I never had a circle
of friends in the comedy biz. I never went to the delis or coffeeshops
after late shows, where people would sit around eating breakfast and
riffing till dawn. I always felt alien, not a part of them. Not that I
was different or better, I was just apart. They had some common
bond that didn't include or interest me. A competitiveness that I was
very uncomfortable with. I wasn't a compulsive entertainer. I could
always think on my feet, but I never was quick around the kind of
people who dominate a table. I was a product of ideas, not ad-libs.
Later I came to realize the curiousness of choosing to be, and feeling, apart from people and at the same time dying to be accepted.
Longing to be accepted, to be asked in. But on my terms.
I rubbed elbows with some comics—like Richard—but it was
rock musicians who shaped my development. John Sebastian, Cass
Elliot, Zal Yanovsky, Phil Ochs—all the people in the Village in
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the midsixties who were forming and reforming into groups like the
Mugwumps and Poco. Having had that initiation on Wells Street I
felt at ease with them. They were companions, not competitors.
In the end I was a loner. A loner happy to be alone. I worked
alone, I wrote alone. I was sticking to my plan, which I'd nurtured
for years. Stage One: radio as a way into show business. Stage Two:
become a comedian, like the comedians I'd listened to on the radio
as a boy. Stage Three: achieve fame as a comedian and take possession of the ultimate dream: movie stardom. To be Danny Kaye—or
Danny Kaye the Second. (Though by now this had shifted in the
direction of Jack Lemmon the Second.)
Stage One of this plan had already worked; there seemed no
reason to believe that Stage Two wouldn't someday succeed also,
leading, as inevitably as night follows day, to Stage Three: all Hollywood, helpless with laughter, at my feet.
But Stage Two was turning out to be a long, hard and lonely row
to hoe. There was a deeper problem: I didn't feel free onstage. I
was constricted, a very Protestant-Catholic comedian. Even on pot,
which I was on every day, I was still in that Playboy Club, in that
Playboy tie, talking about Bart Starr and a stupid Vitalis commercial
and how he could throw the football and grab someone's ass. That
I knew intellectually there was an anal, uptight world out there I
didn't feel part of di
dn't erase the fact that I was a living, breathing
example of it.
And for all the comfort I felt in the Village with its outsider-Leftliberal-pot-smoking audience, this wasn't the direction I was going
in at the Go Go. As much as I might want to say I had a risky, edgy
side that wanted to experiment with material that had social significance, and this was the right audience and Greenwich Village
was the right place, I'd be full of shit. What I was trying to do was to
develop a TV act.
Or rather that one solid five-or six-minute piece that would open
the doors to TV.
And I had it now. It was called "The Indian Sergeant." The premise grew out of all the Westerns I'd seen as a kid. If the U.S. Army
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hardened sergeant or trail boss who pumped up his men before the
climactic battle, the Indians must have had the same NCO type
who did the same for them. My Indian sergeant was my well-worn
Irish guy from the Upper West Side . . .
All right, tall guys over by the trees, fat guys down behind the
rocks and you with the beads—get outta line! Boy, there's one in
every village.
All right, youse've all been given a piece of birch bark and a
feather dipped in eagle's blood. We want youse to write on the
birch bark—with the feather—in the upper right-hand corner.
The upper RIGHT HAND corner. That's your ARROW hand.
You write your name. Last name first, first name last. If your
name is "Running Bear" you write, "Bear, Running." Under-
neath your name we want your age. In summers. If you've been
alive for eighteen summers, you put "18 summers." Yeah, Trot-
ting Bear? (pause) If you were born in the winter, just put that
down. Next, you write down your date of enlistment. That's the
day we came around and took you from your parents and made
you sleep on the hot coals.
Now, a lot of youse guys have been asking me about promotions.
You'd like to make Brave second class. Get another scar up on
your arm. Well, the results of your tests have come in and youse