Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the bob Weft That's Podcast.
My guest this week is the one and only Jackie Barton.
But guest Jackie, that joke fan, Jackie? How you doing?
I'm all right now, But last week I was in
rough shape? You know? Oh really, Ron, what was it
like last week? I don't know. I don't know. No,

(00:31):
I actually, uh, the world is coming to an end
and the epidemic is completely out of control. The President
is the worst piece of ship I could ever, ever,
ever imagine. But I live on the water. I actually
went swimming again yesterday on November tenth or whatever it was,
and I got a beautiful girlfriend and I haven't missed

(00:53):
the meal. The only my only complaint is that I'm
gaining weight because there's nothing to do except eat, because
I masturbating. I think, Now, don't you live in Long Island.
I live right on Long Island Sound Long Islands. And
you went in the water, yes, and it was it
was cold, but it was fine. It was cold, but

(01:15):
it was fine. What was your motivation? I mean, it's
not quite January first for Polar Bear Day. No, you
know what, every year you start jumping in the water
like in you know, the middle of May and the
May beginning of June, and it's very cold, but you
jump in because then with each passing week it gets
warmer and warmer and warmer. And the truth of it
is a long island sound is a huge body of

(01:36):
water sort of holds holds the heat for a long time.
I mean it was it was cold, but it was cold,
just like it's cold in the beginning of June, you know.
I mean I didn't really swim. I usually swim, but
it was just a little too cold on my hands.
So I just jumped in and thrashed around a little bit, uh,
for the fun of it, because I mean, there's nothing

(01:57):
like it. It just jumps, jumps, start your body and
you come out. I have a nice outdoor shower, and uh,
it's just reset your clock. It's just something fun to do.
It's also something fun to talk about. What else am
I gonna do? If it's middle of November? Are you
done with the sound until May? Are we gonna see
you in the Sune? No? No, you know, but it's funny.
I got an next door neighbor, Phyllis, who's delightful. It

(02:20):
fills some bill and every time she goes in. Of course,
somebody called me today and said, I guess who was
in the water this morning. I'm like, leave me alone.
You know. It's like almost like a pan match, you know.
But I don't really care, you know, I just I
just if I feel like it. If the sun's out
and it's bright, you jump in, and when you jump
out it's it's warm. Even if it's not warm out,

(02:43):
the sun is just a miracle worker. You know. You
have to live on you know, people that live on
the water understand that it's it sounds silly, but it
really isn't you know, it's really it's quite delightful. Now.
That begs the question if you live on the sound.
I know. I grew up in Connecticut, a couple of
months directly across at Stanford. Okay. The question is, though

(03:07):
frequently you have situations where there is a storm and
then the water comes up into your house. What happens?
There're not here. I live in Bayville on the north
shore of Long Island, and Bayville is a bowl. It's
actually a bowl, and I live at the top of
the bowl. It's funny. I'm here and then two doors

(03:30):
down from me is my ex wife's house and then
her other house, and uh, in Sandy I got no water,
just like a half inch of water. I had to
throw away my basement rugs. But I I'm so high
up that I even had the bulls to have a
rug in the basement. I got an inch of water

(03:50):
hundred and fifty two d feet down the street. My
ex wife got four ft in each of our houses.
Because it's a bowl, and it's it's elusive how it
how it's shape, but it's a it's amazing. But you know,
you never know what's gonna happen. You know, in Sandy Um,
we were waiting for the second high tide and we
thought we're gonna be wiped out. And the wind shifted

(04:12):
and we hardly lost a branch off a tree. And
if the wind hadn't a shift that, you know, at
the second high tide, we expected to get wiped out.
And I was over at my friend's house. He lives
in a big, huge, you know mansion up on the hill,
and we're waiting for that second high tide and it's
just it was like y two k. You know, it

(04:33):
just never happened. And if the wind down the shifted.
We're going the way a rockaway which was flattened. You know,
it's all, you know, it's all. It's all a roll
of the dice, no matter what you're talking about, it's
all a damn roll of the dice, you know. Okay,
how many times you've been married? Well, this ex wife,

(04:55):
you've been divorced from her for how long? What do
you mean? How many times have I been married? I've
been married. I was married to Nancy once and we
last that we're married fourteen years. But we got married,
we lived together for seven years, and then we got married,
and then we got divorced. So we made it together
a total like a little over twenty years. But she

(05:16):
lives two doors away, and her and her boyfriend are
my girlfriend and mine's best friends. And we eat dinner
together and have you know, eat meals at each other's houses.
And she's just a wonderful, wonderful girl. I think I
think my girlfriend actually likes her more than she likes me.
And I'm still a little I'm still in love with
every girl I haven't dated. Okay, but why did you

(05:38):
get a divorce then? Because we would have killed each other.
You know, there was a lot of a lot of
personal stuff, a lot of you know, it's like, you know,
it was in my book. You know, we tried, uh
we couldn't have a baby. So we did in vitro fertilization,

(06:00):
long before anybody really knew what it was. And and
Howard was anti you know, science for having babies. So
not only was it an incredibly pressurized situation where I
had to sneak around and we were just getting to
be really well known, but we failed six times, and

(06:21):
there was if you know, anybody's ever been through it,
there's nothing more heart wrenching in the world. And this
is the early nineties, this is long before there were
chat rooms and emails and people he could commiserate with.
You know, misery loves company. You know, if you go
through the worst thing in the world, but there's another
couple or another person or somebody just bounce off of,

(06:41):
it just changes the whole, uh, the whole situation. And
it was you know, so that did a lot of damage.
I mean, you know, lots of reasons. You know, two
strong personalities, and you know, we were very good friends
for years, and then she came to work with me
and we worked together and then we couldn't not fuck,
so we slept together and then we were partners, and

(07:03):
then we lived together, and then we got married. So
we kind of were on a sign curve and now
we're back to being friends and it's all, uh, it's
all wonderful. That begs a question you said earlier, is
still in love with all your old girlfriends? Have you
looked them all up online? If you made any contact?
You know, it really is funny you wind up circling back.

(07:24):
I mean I had circled back. You know, a lot
of girls I went back and revisited and found and
uh it was so much fun. Um But yes, yes,
you know, and it's fun to be in contact with
people and I talked to them and you know, some
from long ago, something from not that long ago. But

(07:45):
it's I think it's just fascinating. It's so fascinating. What's
really fascinating is when you get on the phone with
an old friend. It it's still never fails to astound
me how you instantly are there if it's somebody you know,
I mean I I shared a lot of laughs and
a lot of closeness with a lot of people. It

(08:06):
wasn't really in passing like, you know, we would dig
in and uh, two minutes on the phone. It's like
the years just are not there. You know. Time time
is the most incredible thing. I can remember so much
of everything that happened. My first two years in comedy

(08:26):
and the next thirty eight years are blur. I know nothing,
but I can tell you everything that happened because in
those formative years. You know, it's just like I don't
know how how old you I'm okay, so you probably
know somebody says, how Jackie, when's the last time you
saw Bob Oh? I just I saw him five years ago,

(08:49):
and like, yah know it's amazing. It's a little it's
a little scary, you know. And I'm like when somebody says,
I said, wow, that's not for a long time. No,
it was a long time ago. You know, you know,
I ain't. Being stupid doesn't help either, Okay, we all
are victims of that. But you know, when you there

(09:09):
are a lot of stories about reconnecting with old girlfriends,
were rekindled some romance. Did you have any of that experience?
Maybe you they wanted it and you didn't, or maybe
you didn't. They didn't know because because I uh I
was married and uh, and there's so many girls around here. Um,
there were no real romances that I would have wanted

(09:31):
to really revisit. I got so many stories of friends
that that's such interesting, you know, interesting interesting things that
happened for good or for bad or whatever. But no,
it was never like an unrequirded love where all of
a sudden, I'm single and she's single and wow, let's
put this back together. And not immediately. You know, I
didn't really have girlfriends, you know. Nancy was the first

(09:53):
time I was really serious with somebody. I was so
busy rocking and rolling and drinking and smoking pot and
being plenty screwed up and just partying and trying to
avoid growing up. You know. I I got my first
paycheck from the Holage Starn Show when I was like
thirty eight, you know what I mean. Like I had

(10:14):
a I let h not too charming a life, you know,
pretty crazy. It wasn't like, well, I had a girlfriend
and we lived, you know, I mean I lived together
with a girl in college, uh, for two right after college,
for two years, just long enough to make me realize that, wow,
I am not ready for this, you know, and I'm
still in touch with her. You know, she lives up

(10:34):
in Provincetown, and you know, God, you know, and I
just to this day if I see an old letter
from her and I see her handwriting, I get warm
and I know that sound. You know, I don't like
to talk about make it sound like I'm so funn No, no,
it doesn't. One of the problems with people, as I said,
you know, you see this all the time of celebrities. Oh,

(10:56):
I got divorced, I'm over it. It takes forever to
get over it. But but but the who wants to
be unless somebody has hurt you and done crappy things too.
And it's amazing how you can usually write that off
for you know, you can remember your life the way
you choose. You can remember an incident and told by

(11:20):
one of my friends it was one way, and told
by another of my friends the other way. You know.
I remember at night in late George when the engine
conked out on the boat and we had the paddle
with the with the water skis, and it was dark
and we couldn't see anything, and it was it was
two hours of absolute hell. And I remember saying, I
can't believe then a month from now, we're gonna be

(11:42):
talking about what a great time this one. And I'm
telling you it was a great time that it was horrible.
You know. Yeah, how many times you have a song
on the radio and you go, oh, man, remember this one.
I'm like, wait a minute, I hated that fucking song.
You know it's there's not can't listen to? Which is

(12:02):
Bobby Goldsboro? Honey that I hated it? Then I hate
it now that guy I did he something happened with
him on the Tonight show that you know what it's
gotta be. It's gotta be on YouTube by now. You know,

(12:23):
anything you talk about sometimes you go looking for it
and you can't find it, But six months later you can.
You know, I got a very good friend. Were you
a fan of the Start Show? Yes, but we'll be honest,
you know you eventually I've been living on the West Coast,
and eventually when he came to the West Coast, he
was early morning. I'm a late riser at the time.

(12:44):
I was right. Uh. The reason I'm asking is, do
you remember a thing called the jetty actually that they
they used to break my balls about? What was the
float that that was outside my house here in Bayville,
and uh, and it was very very famous on the show,
you know, uh, because Howard broke my balls about it.
But people came over my house and we get drunk

(13:06):
and eat lobsters and swim out to the jetty and
it was great fun. And uh. But it was built
by Bruce Springsteen's first manager, and from them when I
said that. When I said that, uh on the show,
Gary said, who wasn't I told him it was. He says,

(13:26):
I'll know you out of yourman. It was a guy
named Mike Capell. And at the time, Mike Apell was
on the Internet, which had just started, and that was
Bruce Springsteen's first manager. But as time went on, the
Internet fills in and it's like back times. It's like,
you know, the the Encyclopedia Britannica goes from one leaflet

(13:49):
to volumes, and all of a sudden, here's this guy,
Carl Tinker West. And he was a good friend of
a friend. He was a rocket scientist and a madman.
He's still a dear friend. He's like eighty eight years old,
and he he built the float. But here I am saying,
you know, it was built by Bruce Springsteen's first manager,
and they're saying you're crazy, And it turned out that

(14:09):
I wasn't crazy at all, but it took time to
fill in. But this thing with goldsborow he was on
the Tonight Show and Bill Cosby was hosting, and Richard
Pryor was on first, and then Bobby Goldsboro come out.
I'm sure he sang that so long, honey, because I

(14:29):
think that's the only thing he ever sang. But he's
a good old boy from like North Carolina or South Carolina.
He came and he sat down and prior moved over,
so his Cosby and Bobby Goldsborough and Richard Prayer and
he somehow he's talking about, Yeah, I'm from North Carolina
and what it's like, and then he says, you know, sometimes, uh,

(14:51):
it could be really scary there because whenever there was
a fire up in the woods, all the coons would
come running down from the woods and they were and
he said the word coons and realized he's a Southern guy,
and he realized he was sitting between two black guys,
and he started giggling, and it was so fucking uncomfortable,

(15:13):
and Richard Pryor looked over Bill Cosby and said, well,
are you gonna kill this guy or mine? And when
they came back from commercial, there was no Bobby Goldsboro.
And I've been telling the story for fifty years and
I still have to find somebody who saw it or
knows about it. But I haven't googled it in like
ten years, so I'm sure it's in there somewhere, because
I couldn't make that story up. It was, it was,

(15:34):
and he wasn't doing it. He wasn't doing it to
be racist. What was racist was after he said it,
he heard it and he made that connection. It was.
It was very odd, very very fucking odd. But that
that that is a tough song. That is the tough
But I'm sure if I heard it, I go remember
this one. Okay, let's come back. You're talking about the

(15:55):
Bruce Springsteen's first manager. Are you ever wrong? Um? Sometimes
sometimes you know, it's it's funny. Sometimes it can be
a detail that you absolutely remember and you're absolutely wrong,
but not about a whole event, but like about this

(16:18):
thing and that thing. You know. It's like there was
a show called Andy's Gang in the yearly fifties and
and right, and I used to tell people what it wasn't.
It wasn't Andy's gang before Andy's gang, it was uncle
Ed's gang. And I remember the uncle Ed's gang so clearly,
so clearly, and I'd argue with people, and finally it

(16:40):
came on the web and I looked and it wasn't
uncle Ed's gang. It was Smiling Ed's gang. And the
minute I saw it, I was like, yeah, but in
my mind I saw uncle Ed's gang on the TV screen,
so that, you know, I mean, that's a very small detail.
But it's funny how your mind plays tricks. But when
I say to this day, I was like, he was
the new guy. People like, you're ready mine. No, Andy

(17:03):
was the fucking newgat. I hated. I love Crusado Rabbit,
but they went in to Andy Divine. I hated it.
Do you like and I didn't. I didn't. I didn't
watch Carsade to Arrive and I wasn't a big you know,
I it's so weird what you liked, you know. I
read Superman. Uh, I wasn't anyways near as big a

(17:25):
Batman fan as Superman, but the rest of them kind
of left me cold. I read Aquaman and super Boy,
but when they got wacky. I think, you know, the
Marvel comics that was not my thing. But here I'm
reading Superman and Batman. But I was a huge fan
of Archie and Betty and Veronica. You know, they just

(17:45):
had me. They just had me, and I love that.
And I never thought in terms of it being weird,
but that if anybody ever saw my comic book collection,
they would say, what planet is this guy from? You know, Okay,
let's go back to being right. We know that there
are a lot of dummies and uninformed people in society.
What I've learned going to psychotherapy is sometimes I gotta

(18:07):
let it slide because it ends up reflecting. I mean,
I may be right, but they dislike it. Can you
let shi slide? Or if someone gets it wrong, you
gotta let them know. No, you know, depending what you're
talking about. You know, you get old enough, you don't
you know, you don't care? You know, how much of
my life am I gonna waste? You know? Like like

(18:29):
I did a roast last night, and all of a sudden,
I got the vibe that, holy sh it that you
know a couple of these guys and girls whatever the
Trump people, I wasn't gonna address it. I just want
I'm gonna address it had nothing to do with the comedy,
nothing to do with what we're doing. But you know,
I guess if I, if I had a heart, you know,

(18:50):
or at any conviction, I would have jumped in and
tried to you know, sway the boat. But now you know,
like at what point you know, I'm you know what,
I'm not a confrontational type guy. I'm really not. What
sounds funny because people thought I was so confrontational with
Howard on the show. But I you don't have to
be a confrontational type person to not put up with bullying.

(19:14):
It's a whole different thing, you know what I mean? Like,
you know, I don't get I don't care if you're
for the mets of the Yankees, you know, but it
don't don't tell my my cousin he's an assholet because
he likes the Yankees, you know. Okay, So, now in
your eighth decade, what have you learned? Because because I know,
but as we get older, as we get older, we

(19:36):
learned something. Listen, I'm in my seventh decade. I'm just
to have entre two behind you. What have you learned?
Because as you get older, you do get you do
tend to get happier, and you do tend to get wiser. Uh,
never waste the heart on, never pass the bathroom, never
trust the fart. Those are the three things that people
used to always say, and I never understood what they

(19:57):
were talking about. And now it's the fun gospel. Well
that begs a question. Do you annything begs the question?
You need a couple of new phrases. That makes me
want to ask a question. You know what that that
brings something to mind? Begs a question. You sound like

(20:17):
a fucking British politician. Okay, stress it. Do you go?
Do you take any anti pee medication? No? No, no,
no no no. Can you sit through a movie? You
mean you mean you mean, uh, to make it through
the night or something? No. I get up and pee plenty,

(20:39):
and sometimes I don't. Uh. Usually I'm fine, uh with
the movie. I'll sit there and I know there's gonna
be fourteen commercials I mean fourth incoming attractions, And when
I know it's getting close, I zoom to the bathroom
and take my quick leak and zoom back. You know,
I have no pride about that. I have And Pete

(21:00):
in a popcorn box yet. But it's been a long
you know, very rarely where you sit there in agony. Um.
But I don't. I don't take any of that stuff,
you know, to make you get when I wonder, would
it have been like the early nineties or something. Nancy
and I had moved up to our bedroom, was in

(21:20):
our attic, you know, we finished the attic, and all
of a sudden I started getting up in the middle
of night to pee, and I said, Holy Christ, my
life is over. And I was getting up like twice
a night to pee. And I hadn't changed, you know,
it didn't change my diet. I didn't have. It was
the same getting up in the morning. And I thought,
I am so screwed. And as quick as it happened,

(21:44):
it just stopped and it never happened again. And I
was like, what kind of god is that that? You know,
I really thought that it was the end of the world.
I thought I was done, you know, And but no,
you know so but now, you know, I get up
a bunch of times, you know, it was sometimes sometimes
not so much, but it's built in, you know. I
get up and a nasty taste in my mouth, so

(22:05):
I get up and I brushed my teeth, and I
take a pee and I kicked the cat. It's just
part of it, you know, instead of instead of all crap,
I gotta get up, it's oh, I get to go
back to bed. And I spent a lot of years
where I didn't get to go back to bed. To
this day, it's twenty years later, I'm still like, look
at that fucking pillow just waiting for me. Fuck everybody

(22:27):
look at this, you know, you know, but when somebody
says you do you regret leaving the Stern show, I
don't look at my bank book. I look at my
pillow and go you know what, you know it was
it was it was a toss up, you know. So
what what time do you get up? Now? Whenever? I
fucking all fit? You know, sometimes seven, sometimes as in

(22:50):
the summer. In the summer, I'm usually you know, up
at seven and go for a really nice, nice long
swim and then come back and I'm in bed with
my girlfriend and we have tea and you know, watching
TV and then at breakfast, you know, but otherwise it's uh,
you know, it's it's it's more about when she wakes up,

(23:13):
you know, she wakes up. She brings us up a
couple of cups of tea, you know, one or two
and uh, but there's no there's no pressure, you know,
never any pressure, you know, once in a blue moon.
You know, I haven't done in a while, spentional. I
don't even been to my city apartment since the COVID.
But it's so funny because once in a while I

(23:33):
would do a Q one oh four with Jim Kerr,
the morning show, all the way down in the A,
T and T Building, and you know, i'd be on
with him at like six, so i'd have to get
up at six or quarter to six, and just getting
up one day at quarter six, I'd be like, holy fuck,
and forget quarter to six. I had to be in

(23:54):
my chair in Manhattan at six o'clock living here in Bayville.
You know, I got up at twenty twenty after four
or you know, it's so funny. I got up at
four fifteen years and all of a sudden the other
day somebody goes, yeah, I can't believe you used to
get up at four twenty. I never made the connection
of four twenty before. And I was like, and they

(24:15):
thought I was kidding. They said, oh, you're foolish. I
didn't no, no, I never thought about before. You know,
how did you meet your girlfriend that you have now? Um,
it's so weird because we worked in parallel. But she
was a singer on Long Island in different bands for
thirty years or something, and then she started working with Omnipop,

(24:38):
which is a booking a talent agency on the south
shore Long Island. So we've been in the same industry forever.
And I was headlining at a club here on Long
Island called the Brokerage, and Omnipop has a division that's
in California, and they have this act that you who's
coming on strong She's kick an ask like crazy. So

(25:01):
this is like five or six years ago. But her
name was is Erika Rhodes and her her aunt is
married to Garrison Keeley. I'm sure you know that name.
And so she was opening up for me and she
was coming in from California, so somebody from Omnipop had
to pick her up at the train station and bring

(25:22):
her to the show. And Barbara brought her to the
show and said, for whatever reason, said you know, so
I'll go in, you know, and it was it's just
you know that you look back and say, it's so weird.
But it's not weird because if it hadn't happened, you
wouldn't be asking me this question. But you know, there's
nobody in the bar because the showroom is packed, and

(25:44):
I'm standing at the bar and no, she was standing
at the bar and I came walking to the bar
and he was just very pretty blonde standing at the bar.
And I walked up and said who are you? And
she said, I'm Barbara And I said, wow, you know
you're married. At the time, I'm single. You know, I
would wasn't dating anybody or anything, you know, nothing serious
going on. And I said, you know, I'm a forward jerk.

(26:05):
You know, the same old guys that are you married?
She said, Now, I said, you've got a boyfriend. She
said no. I said, well, then we got to take
a picture. And we took a picture. And I said,
now you gotta give me your email dress so I
could send you the picture or you sit or your
cell phone or whatever. And then I spent I sent
up the picture and spent the next month or so
trying to talk her and to go on date with me, because,
as you know, as my reputation filled in behind me

(26:28):
and then by too long a story to explain, I
went up with four of the best seats in the
house to a Willie Nelson concert way up in Simsbury, Connecticut,
and I said, do you want to go to see
Willie Nelson in Connecticut? It was like a three hour drive,
so she took a chance. And when he drove to
see William, by the time we got back the relationship,

(26:49):
you know, and she's and she's great, she's you know,
she's you know, she's the exact opposite of me. And
she's so gentle and so neat and so clean and
uh but she's great, you know. And you know she's
kept me alive. Okay. Are you always so forward in
every walk of life? You have any social anxiety or

(27:10):
no matter who's there, you don't get up tight. You'll
say what you need to. You know. I would love
to say yes, I don't, but I'm oh, I'm completely uptight,
completely uptight. But I just pushed past it, you know,
and and I love it, you know. I I spent
you know, eight years at the cann Film Festival and

(27:30):
Sundance and Toronto, and you know, I I'll walk up
to anybody I don't care, and I and I expect
the same. I expect people to feel free to walk
up to me, and they usually do that because they
they say, you just seem approachable, and I am, you know,
I mean, I'm certainly approachable. Now, I'm just a little
old man. But when there was a time when I
wasn't really famous, but I was known, you know, and uh,

(27:55):
people can tell you know, it's it's like with a horse,
the odds, the odd thing, and that I'm not petrified
at horses, but I don't. I can't believe that something
that big is that trust you can trust that that much.
But yeah, I think anytime I've been a little terrified
of walking up to a girl, I've I've done it,

(28:16):
you know, just whatever. I'm not saying. I didn't get
shut down a zillion times, but you know, well, you know,
you really have nothing to lose, you know, it's easy
to say that, and then you know, there must have
been a million times where I just slinked away. I
just don't choose to remember that, you know. Okay, So
what kind of kid were you growing up? Were you
the life of the party, were you an outsider? M

(28:42):
I was raised by wolves. Uh, but not really. We
were like the Waltons until say, seventh grade, and then
my father was drinking way too much. Let's go back,
what did you What did your father and mother do
for a living? Uh? My mother was brilliant, but she
dropped out of the workforce to get married in and um,

(29:05):
you know, she got knocked up. My parents got married
on July four and I was born on Valentine's Day,
you know, do the math. And my father was a
good looking guy, came out of the service and he
didn't get married. He was thirty five, she was twenty seven.
And um, my grandfather built the house I live in,
and my father and mother lived downstairs, and my father's

(29:29):
brother married my mother's sister and they lived upstairs like
the Nortons and the Crampton's. And I was the first kid,
adding the two brothers and two sisters. So for the
first two years of my life I had four doting parents.
And then my mother had another kid, my aunt had
a kid. They moved out. I went from four parents

(29:51):
to none, and I spent the last seventy years ago
and where the fund did everybody go? All? Right? My
mother was very smart, very witty, uh, unbelievably so, which
I didn't. You don't know when you were a kid,
because there's a fish not it's in water, you know.
And my father had a very political job. My great
uncle was the chairman of the National Republican National Republican Party.

(30:15):
He was Eisenhower's campaign manager, and he coined the phrase
I like Ike. So everybody in the family had a
Republican job. In the fifties, Nassau County on on Long
Island was like the forty ninth state. So we always
went to the ball games, to the World Series, you know,
and uh, we had a great, great, great life. And

(30:35):
then my father started drinking too much, and I was
I was fun. You know. People used to say, well,
you the class you know, when we first started getting
famous on the Stern Show, people had asked for just
what you said, and people will say, well, you're the
class clown. And I wouldn't just say yes, because in
my twisted mind, that would be like given myself a coronation.

(30:58):
That who am I to coornate myself if I was
the class clown? And then I was like, wait a minute.
The cover of my first comedy album is my eighth
grade class picture and I'm giving the finger and I said,
wait a minute, maybe by the fault. I was the
class clown. And I absolutely was the class clown. I
was just you know, always, always a ball breaker, and

(31:19):
then started playing the guitar in high school, you know,
like every other guy, to meet chicks and to have fun.
So you're in school, good student, Yeah I was. I
was very, very smart. Um my eighth grade math teacher,
my eighth grade homeroom teacher, my math teacher. It's a

(31:40):
very small school and I lived on the street. We
had uh excelled, uh excelled math class preparing people for college.
But you had to come in at seven thirty, a
half hour before school started, and she would call my
house to get me roused up, so I would come
in and and come to and uh I did really great.

(32:02):
But I mean I almost didn't graduate because you know,
I got so drunk for all senior high school. You know,
I got accepted in Michigan State in December. They they
passed you right away at those big schools. So I
spent the next six months drunk and missed so much school.
But I was, Yeah, I was smart, and I went
to I graduated from Michigan State University in nineteen seventy

(32:23):
one as a mechanical engineer. Yeah, that's my question. Why
a mechanical engineering is not a easy course of study
so hard? My father had been an engineer in Alabama
for a couple of years that he went to school.
I just innately knew if I didn't take a really
difficult major, did I would just get drunk and funk

(32:44):
out of college somehow. And all my craziness and all
my fog, I knew that. So here, I'm taking this heart.
I mean, my roommates, you know, taking two hours of
Shakespeare and getting four credits, and I'm spending eight hours
in the chemistry lab for four hour, I mean four
times a week to get the same four credits. You know,
it was really really difficult, you know, but I'm taking

(33:07):
atomic physics and mechanics and it's the late sixties, so
I'm going to college with bare feet, with my dog
with a ponytail, and the other guys are cheating off
my paper. You know. It was like pretty storybook, you know,
it was good. And I tuned and I turned on.
I dropped out. I missed, I dropped out a term.
I failed enough classes to miss the term, and I

(33:27):
missed another term because I I've screwed up my knee.
So I was missing an entire year of school. And
then I met Darlene and we fell in love and
I had nothing better, nothing better to do, so I
went back to school and finished. Okay, did you have
any intention of being and no intention of doing anything?

(33:47):
All I knew was I wasn't gonna get a job.
You know, the people I was graduating with, like, right,
I'm starting at Forward for two dollars and they give
me a house. Oh, I'm starting with GM and they
give me a car. And I didn't even I didn't
even take one interview. Are you kidding me? And I stayed.
I stayed in East Lansing, Michigan another two years. I

(34:09):
was there for seven years in the bubble, the bubble
that was the college town of East Lansing, Michigan in
the late sixties. I mean, talk about dying and going
to heaven. It just was. It was beyond spectacus. Okay,
but you're going to college in the late sixties and
your family is Republican, and based on your earlier commentary

(34:30):
anti Trump or whatever, at what point the Vietnam War.
What how do you turn you yeah, Vietnam. And you know,
of course, you know my father, you know, my father
was a local politician and my brother took a Nixon
bumper sticker and put it on my parents car upside
down so it said noxing and oh my father blew
a gasca, you know, like it was. But there was

(34:54):
it was all. It was all. Everybody in politics is
just on the take on the take on. My father said, listen, Jackie,
you know, yeah, Nixon's an asshole. But Nixon didn't do
anything any different than any other politician has ever done.
He just was stupid enough to get caught. And that
is running my head for a long time because my
father wasn't a dishonest guy. He was. He was a

(35:17):
stand up, great guy. You know. Um, I'm not I'm
not really a political guy. I just know I hate
Trump because I I don't you know, I I hated
him when he used to come on The Stern Show.
He's one of those people that would come in the
room and he didn't know there's anybody else in the room.
And I don't put up for that, you know, I
don't give a funk who you are. Were you anti war?

(35:37):
Did you protest the Vietnam? Of course? You know I
had a ponytail, and you know, I actually, uh, there
was a day I woke up and I had dropped
out of school, and the guy the and the social
science professor didn't know I had dropped out of school.
And we used to have h student uh not student students,

(35:59):
said instance, And what we did was Mrkin State was
so big that somebody would give a lecture, but there
would be uh satellite satellites of that lecture in different
halls around the campus, and the student assistance would going
through the room and plug in the TV and turn

(36:20):
it on, and they'd be the professor who was giving
the lecture somewhere else on campus, and all the kids
would be sitting there and at the end of the
lecture to turn off the TV and lead the discussions.
So I was a student assistant, but then I dropped
out of school, but I was still doing it. And
then when all of a sudden this should hit the
fan and everything was crazy. I actually walked in and

(36:40):
wrote on the blackboard, please do not come to class,
please stay home, you know, And of course that they
Professor Calemton said Jackie, I gotta fire you. You can't
do that, you know, and uh, and then so you
wanted them to stay home to protest. Yeah. So that afternoon,
me and my friend us go to see the movie Woodstock,

(37:03):
and we come out of wood Stock like craze hippies,
and I go by a six pack. And the professor
that had fired me that morning was having a barbecue
for all the student assistance and he was saying, Jackie,
I can't even fire you because you're not in I
want to fire you, but you're not in the in
the pace pay thing because you're not registered, because you

(37:25):
dropped out. So he couldn't stop my paycheck because I
couldn't have got one. He was having a barbecue that
night out in NASCAR's East. Let's say I bought a
six pack. Hits like to the middle of nowhere. I'm
walking along, I got a ponytail holding the six pack.
I'm drinking a beer, and an off duty cop pulls
over and comes up and says, you can't walk along

(37:47):
drinking a beer. Made me walk back to the gas station,
called the cops, made me pour out the beer's they're
threatening like they're gonna cut my hair. And kick my ass.
This Michigan in ninety eight or something sixty nine, and
the cops show up, and I have an outstanding muffler
ticket from ann Arbor from two years before. And I

(38:11):
go to jail, and I called the professor who had
fired me that morning at He left his own barbecue
and came ten or twenty miles to bail me out
of jail and brought me back to the party. And
of course I walked into the party. I was a

(38:32):
big hero, and I ran the whole story of going
to jail, just like Carla Guthrie analysis restaurant, and I
fucked the best looking student assistant. It was like one
of those days that you lived your whole life in
one day, you know what I mean. I got up,
I got fired, I went to Woodstock and I got arrested.
I went home. Oh oh, and that's not even jeez.
It always sounds like I'm making up as I go along.

(38:55):
I'm banging this girl, and they called me. They had
taken the doors down at the dormitory Snyder's Phillips Hall
in Michigan State. One side was the boys, one side
was the girls, and underneath in the middle was the
wreck room and they had taken the doors off, so
and the boys were moving them with the girls, and
the girls were moving them with the boys. And my

(39:17):
band was playing in the in the in the hall
in the middle. So I had to stop banging this
girl and go to go play with my band. And
we played like I know, if you all know, there
was a song called Volunteers of America jeplane the Jefferson Airplane.
We played it for two hours. I mean we just

(39:37):
that dad, that that dad, that bad. I mean, I
lived a life. You know, I should have been dead
five times, you know. You know, high school was crazy,
college was crazy. Graduate from college or in least lancing
for another two years? What are you doing? Uh? My
girlfriend and I broke up, and you know, I told

(40:00):
her she had to leave. You gotta leave, you gotta leave.
And once she left, uh, I was destroyed. And uh.
I had lived with a couple of guys like drunks
and heroin addicts, and they, you know, they lived, they
moved into my house. But I had some great friends.
We had a good time. And finally a friend, an
old friend, came from New York and well, a couple

(40:21):
of guys came from New York to live with me
for a while and uh. And then another old friend
came from New York. He said, look, I'm getting you
out of here. And he said, look, we'll go to
Denver and we'll say hello and uh, and then we'll
go to Amsterdam and buy some hash and make some money.
I said, all right, sounds good. He came to pick

(40:41):
me up and he's lancing. He stayed three months. I
hadn't had a car for years, so all of a sudden,
he's got a car. So we're stealing steaks, living like kings,
having the time of a fucking lifetime. Finally, my kid
brother comes out. He's nine years old. We put him
and my dog and the two of us and everything

(41:01):
we own in this tiny Babo sports car and drove
to Denver. And we stayed in Denver for six months.
That's a whole eight guys from the hometown of Oyster Bay,
Long Island living in the same condo, working construction. It was.
It always sounds like I'm making up as I go along.

(41:22):
And then my old friend that I played music within
high school and during summers in college came through and
he said, Jackie, what are you doing? And I said,
I can't do this anywhere I'm working construction. I can't
even play my guitar because my hands are all kalous.
He will also go back to New York and start
a band. I said, I'll tell you what. I'm writing
songs and I want to be funny. If we could
tell jokes and play original songs, I'm in. He said,

(41:44):
let's do it. We came back and the entire seventies,
me and the Sky had a band called the off
Our Rockers. H H O you are. And we drove
around in the seventies, in the nineteen fifty five bright
Yell Cadillac Hearsts, and we always had girls, We always
had booze, we always had pot, and we had so

(42:07):
much fun, and but we never got anywhere. Did you
did you try to get something? I wrote so many songs,
and my heart was so in it. And when it
comes to art, how much your heart is in it,
and how successfully you are at it, and how much
money you make at and how famous you get is

(42:29):
not necessarily in any way correlated to how deeply invested
in that you were. I mean, I I ground out
these songs. I wasn't looking for moon June Spoon. These
songs were coming out of my I don't know whether
you know when you're talking about being an artist, the
minute you say that word, you feel like you're full
of ship. It's like, to this day, if I tell

(42:50):
somebody I'm a comedian, I'm still waiting for somebody tapping
on his shoulder saying, no, you're not. You know, I
mean that whole insecurity comes with it. But we never
got anywhere, and we were so much fun. We told jokes,
we did routines, we played original songs. But there was
no video of that band, and we broke up in

(43:10):
n and a year later, everybody had VCRs and video
cameras and it's just beyond the pale. But the band
broke up, and I had been telling jokes and telling
jokes and playing gigs by myself with my guitar and
my jokes. And then I met some comedians and they
would come to my gigs and get up on stage

(43:31):
because there was no place to have stage time. And
like Eddie Murphy and Bob Nelson and Rob Bartlett, Richie
MINDBEDI the Bob Wood's, they've walked to my old friends.
To this day, they would just show up and I
put them on stage and you know, and we'd be horrible.
And then I started booking shows around. Okay, this was
still when you were singing songs. I was. I was

(43:54):
singing songs, but it was a comedy act. It was
it was, it was my origin, all songs, but I
told jokes. And when I started doing comedy, like I
called my official start to January nine nine, and I
went from being a uh a guy who sang songs

(44:15):
and told jokes to being a guy who told jokes
and sang songs. Now you're you're known that sounds say
said subtle. But you know, for the whole whole first
year as a comedian, I always had on my guitar. Oh,
I had a ponytail for me. You're known for telling
jokes in a rapid fire away. What was your act
back then? Just a couple of you know, I'd tell

(44:37):
a couple of jokes and it wasn't really I never
even thought in terms of an act. You know, do
you remember that you remember the jokes you told? Then? Yeah,
I told him last night. It's the same ship, you know,
I found and I got everything here and my you
wouldn't believe my, my, my garage here, and I got
everything I ever recorded, and I found out that some

(44:59):
of these old VHS tapes are okay. And my friend
Ed took a night six MR rips in Valley Cottage
and he and he saved it onto an MP four
and he said it to me, And I'm watching it
and it's the same jokes. And I'm sitting there laughing
at myself, laughing at myself, And I knew those jokes
were already old. The jokes I tell I heard nineteen.

(45:23):
You know, they're just funny. They're just timeless, you know.
And what was really funny. The reason I know more
jokes than anybody in the world is I always absorbed them.
They always stuck to me, and I don't know why,
but they just did. But then, when we had the
band in the seventies, we used to tell jokes and

(45:43):
play songs, and we played in the same two, three
four clubs week after week after week. Now, nobody ever
took the time to tell us that a comedian has
an act and he does it to a different audience
every night. We were playing to the same audience every week.

(46:04):
So we're scrounged around doing everything. We could define new
jokes and new ideas because we had to play to
the same people week after week after week, and so
I just accumulated this ridiculous but I already knew the jokes.
It's it's hard to explain, you know, if you're a
joke teller, people cannot wait to tell you a joke.
I know. That's ridiculous. They're so sure they have a

(46:26):
joke you haven't heard. Now. Of course it's the jokes
that somebody's gonna tell me. Of course, of course gonna
be something that I know, because it's popular. It's going
around as early as like nineteen seventy five. We'd be
on break and somebody come up and say, all right,
I got a joke to you, and I'd say, all right,
I'm gonna count down from ten, and when I get
to zero, if I haven't told you a punchline, I'll
buy you a drink. En seventy five, I never bought

(46:49):
anybody to drink. I got so if somebody's talking about
the Indian and the cowboy going down the river on
a canoe, I said, you know what, this is the
priest in the nun going across the desert. I just
could see the parallels, figure out jokes, and they just
they just stuck with me. I can't really explain it,
but they And then when my band broke up, what

(47:09):
I have all I knew was all I knew was
I had a zillion jokes, a lot of original songs,
and the desire to never ever get a regular job.
I was never going to be become a commuter. And
then I went up on the Stern Show and the
people that got up to commute laughed at me because literally, okay,

(47:30):
getting up so early. You know, how important is the
telling of a joke as opposed to the lines of
the joke? Uh about? So what are the keys to
telling a good joke? It's actually very simple. You you
pare them down. I remember, even very very early on,

(47:50):
I get so angry because like the Playboy jokes, you
know on the Playboy, you know the open Playboy. Uh,
the the handsome, gorgeous, voluptuous young blonde sauntered into the
bar and found herself at the bar stool and looked
over at the bartender and I said, now a girl
goes into a bar, stage is set. That's all you need.

(48:14):
A fat girl goes into a bar, stage is set.
You chop everything away, and you also tell things it's
got to be in the present. And that sounds that
once again, that's subtle. You know, a girl went into
the bar and said, it's already history. A girl goes
into a bar, A guy walks into a bar. Now

(48:35):
it's real time, it's president, it's now. I know it
sounds stupid. And the main thing, yeah, I've I've written
lots of articles for people. Yeah, I mean for magazines
and stuff. Also is you make sure that you know
the punch line absolutely cold, because you can stumble through
a whole damn joke and fudge and screw around, and

(48:58):
as long as you hit the punch line just right,
that makes up for a real lot. You know, if
you you stumble over a punchline, get a word wrong,
you know you lost. I mean, well, none of this
means anything to anybody. Nobody cares about telling jokes. But
you know, I mean, how many people people are telling
jokes all over the universe today? Oh no, no, I
know that, but they don't care about getting it right.

(49:19):
I spent I spent so many countless, countless hours at bars, parties,
getting stone, getting drunk, doing acid I would be. I
would listened to every joke that everybody ever told me.
And as the years went on, it became more and

(49:39):
more and more rare that somebody tell me something I
hadn't heard. But I I still get so excited what
I hear joke I haven't heard before. And sometimes they're
really obvious jokes that just slipped through the cracks. My favorite,
my favorite example, Uh, do you know what Mark Hudson
is the Hudson. Oh, he's a good past so so

(50:01):
Mark Hudson Um that was doing a show at Iridium
at fifty fifty one Broadway. Uh, downstairs and uh it
was called Thursdays on the Hudson, and he would he
would you know Billy J. Kramer, people like that, you know,
people who's that? What was that? You know? People of

(50:22):
note from notes past. There were always great shows and
Mark is so talented, so funny. But if you know,
if I I never could just go to these things,
I go to see somebody that's they always asked me
up on stage, and I'm always, uh funk, I gotta
go on stage. And meanwhile, then if they don't ask me,
I'm like, why didn't they ask me? You know? Every

(50:42):
performance the Saint. But I went up and uh, the
place is packed. Where and when it was doesn't matter,
but I just like it just it makes more interesting
to me. So the show is done and we go
on the back. We're hanging out in the green room
for like a half hour, and we come back out
and the place is still packed that people want to
say hellad of Mark and say he load of Billy

(51:02):
and say hello Jackie. Whatever, it's still crammed. And a
guy comes up to me and he says, Jackie, I've
been a fan for forty years, and I know you
know every joke in the world, but I got to
try one on you. And I didn't do those, but
I said listen. Of course, you know I listened. I
listen to everybody's jokes. This guy told me a joke

(51:25):
that's too dirty for my act. I tell her I
have a very, very filthy fast but it was too
It's too dirty for my act because it slows people
up because if people go oh, or they get the
least bit thront, just like Jesus. I could care less
about Jesus, but I don't do much Jesus jokes because

(51:49):
if somebody goes, oh, I get get hit by lightning,
I've lost them for the next joke or the next phrase.
You know, I don't want to do anything to slow
up put up any hurdles. Right, So this guy told
me a joke that he's one of my favorite jokes
of all time. But I can't use it my act
because it slows down what's going on, because it's so disgusting.

(52:10):
So you gonna tell it, that said, it's a joke
you could tell on terrestrial radio, and it's a joke
you could tell to a five year old kid. It's
not about it's not a scenario, think about the city,
the police, the scenario just created. It's too disgusting for

(52:30):
my act. But you could tell it to a kid,
and you can tell it on terrestrial radio. If you
tell it to a kid, will the kid laugh? You die?
A girl calls a doctor and should stock I have diarrhea?
Can I take a bath? And he says, if you
have enough, which is just so But it's just so funny.

(52:58):
It's SuperFect, and I felt he's a jackie. You don't
have to pretend. I thought, not pretending funny? My God
is beautiful. Oh I love that's just so funny. You
know I do. I do cameo dot com Do you
know what that is? I do those cameo dot coms?
I do you know? I did like three today, You
know I I love doing them and I could have
done fourteen. I could have done fourteen while I was

(53:20):
waiting to do this. How much huge? How much you charge?
I only charge fifty bucks because I'll tell you I
don't I don't get to perform. I haven't had a
show since March. This is They're like my method ome
you know what I mean. I tell three, four or
five six jokes on each of these things and have
fun and laugh. That gets me through the night, you
know what I mean. I really enjoyed doing them, and

(53:43):
uh that that diarrhea joke is always in there. It's
always in there. A lot of times I start with
it because it's really fun, you know. So you put
out your first comedy record in Augus. What happened was
I had worked in a recording studio after they liked

(54:07):
a song that we had, a crazy song called the
Pots song that Howard always played on the radio, and
my band recorded it, and the guys that owned the
recording studio asked me to work there, and I did,
and learned enough about recording to know that any idiot
can have an album. And then I told my girlfriend
they left and all my jokes. I borrowed a hundred

(54:28):
bucks from fifteen different people and made my first comedy record.
The covers my eighth grade class picture I'm Giving the
Finger and um. It was recorded at upstairs at a
restaurant with two microphones hanging and Ana Camici cassette player
with me on one side and the crowd mike on

(54:48):
the other. And uh. Then I made another album, and
then I made another albuh. This was back in the
days before the Internet. Independent distribution was difficult. How did
you get the there was there was no distribution. I
sold them at gigs, I sent them to everybody. It
was more of a promotion than anything. You know, nobody

(55:11):
was selling anything. I was the first guy by a
decade to do that. And when I first gome I'll
tell you when I want to pick up my first
thousand albums at Port Authority, it was like I was
picking up quintuplets. I mean I was. I can still
remember the aurora around my head. I was like, oh
my god, and there's even so much more to it

(55:31):
that I will not bore you with. That's really crazy,
and I never forget. I worked at Pipps in Brooklyn,
and I must have been so excited that I promoted
the hell out of it. And I think I was
making forty bucks for the night, and I sold fifteen
albums at five bucks apiece, which was an extra seventy

(55:51):
five bucks, which in nineteen seventy nine for a low
Ashlon comic. And then I would sell them after my gigs,
and the other guys used to make fun of me, Oh,
there goes Jackie with his albums. Oh, but I wanted
Jackie's out. And then one day somebody said, wait a minute,
we all made thirty dollars and he made an extra
eighty dollars. Maybe he knows what he's doing, you know,

(56:12):
Like all of a sudden, they realized, maybe I'm not
an idiot because I'm signing autographs and warming up to
people and having a great time. And then I wind
up making a second album and a third album, and
all along the way I sent him to everybody, Like
if I if I ran into you, I would say,
what's your name? What do you do? Oh, you're in
the music industry. Let me send you my comedy album,

(56:35):
so I would. I would hand them at the albums everybody.
I was so proud of it. And by this time
I actually had been in contact with Rodney Dangerfield, so
I asked him to send me fight dollars. I still
have my fight allar check from Rodney buying my album
A little bit slower. How did you make connection with Rodney? Well,
that's that's way off topic. That's but it's basically the

(56:55):
same thing. It's me reaching out to people. I've always
reached out to people. Bull Um, We'll come back to Rodney.
But what happened was I put put out an album,
put out another album, and each time I put out
an album and send it to everybody, and put out
another album and send it to everybody, and put another album.
So by Nancy, who was going to become my wife,

(57:17):
was working with me, and we must have sent out
copies of all three albums with the matching cassettes and
all the promo too, so many, I mean hundreds of people.
And the albums were expensive, and the cassettes were expensive,
and the postage was expensive, and we and we were
I was hosting a Governor's Comedy Shop, this club that

(57:39):
we started with these guys, and I mean, we're putting
everything back in and we had no idea what we're doing.
We didn't have any game plan, We didn't have any
any you know, carrot. At the end of the stick,
We're just just work. And you know, she thought I
was funny, and she thought we thought something could happen.
We liked our music. And then I found out from

(58:01):
a guy in Washington that the sky just got fired
and that he was moving to NBC and I should
send my records to him. And I had no idea
who Howard Sterne was. I just put my records in
a in a you know, mailer, and we just mailed
the records. And a couple of months later, Nancy called
up and said, Hey, that this jockey from w NBC
wants you to call him. So I called him and

(58:24):
he said, you want to come in and help judge
your talent contests over the telephone, and I said, well, sure,
I'm sitting in my mother's attic nothing nothing to lose.
That's where my first joke land was. And I went
in and sat there and it was Howard and Fred
and Robin and I sat down and we laughed for
four hours, and when we got done, he said, man,

(58:45):
you are a lot of fun. Why don't you come
back next week? So I came back next week, once
a week for free for three years. So I was
that's pretty immediate acceptance, you know what I mean? Okay?
Were you bothered by the fact that you weren't getting
paid for that three years? Not the slightest amount? Okay?
Because I know compensation although with NBC or was an

(59:07):
issue further down the line. So how did it turn
into a full time gig? They asked me to come back?
And uh I I inherently knew how incredibly valuable that was.
I mean, for fifty thousand watch UH station in the
Tri State area with him to be saying see Jackie
Martling at Governor's Comedy Shop every Friday and Saturday. I

(59:31):
knew how valuable that was. And you wouldn't believe. Comics
still come up to me and say, I can't believe
you asked me to come on the Howard Stern Show.
And I said no because I would say to somebody, hey,
you want to come join me on the Howard Stern
Show on Tuesday, And they would say, what's it, hey?
They said, what do you mean? What's it? Hey? It's
the flagship station of w NBC A m are you

(59:52):
out of your mind? And then I parlayd I told
the guys that Wrastler's Comedy Club, Look, let me do
a show on Tuesday nights. I'll host Open Mike and
I'll advertise it, and then you could pay me, because
it's worth it for me to advertise you on the radio.
And what happened was very, very very gradually I gave
him ideas. Like when I first gave him some some

(01:00:16):
ideas for one of his bits, he kind of looked
at me like, what are you doing? I don't need help?
And then I heard him doing him on the radio.
And then like the next week, it was like you
know what else you got? You know? And slowly but
surely I was just giving him little pieces of snippets
of paper and ideas. It was so gradual and so organic.

(01:00:38):
And then he got fired uh from w NBC, and
he got rehired at kay Rock, and after like a
couple of weeks he called up and said, hey, we
want you to join us again. Once a week. It
was the afternoons and when I went in, there was
actually a place for me to sit and right, and
I physically would put the notes on half of an

(01:00:59):
open loose leaf and just physically put them in front
of him, and it had it had migrated to where
I was. I had an actual stack of paper. At
one point in the NBC, I just said, this is busy.
I just got a stack of paper and a sharpie
and started writing it nice and big so he could
see it. And then once I was set up the
way I was at k Rock, Fred would give me

(01:01:20):
little ideas on a piece of paper, and one day
I gave him a big stack of paper, said look,
here's the paper, and here's the sharpie. You hit me
a little snippet of paper. By the time I rewrite
it and put it up for Howard, the moment's lost.
We're already going a hundred thousand miles an hour. So
he started doing that, and then they decided to put
them on in mornings, and all the millions of dollars

(01:01:44):
and all the millions and millions of listeners, and fifty
five stations and number one on lots of them. My
entire job description was he called up and said, listen,
we're starting mornings. I need you to come in two
days a week and do your thing with the notes.

(01:02:05):
That was my total job description, do your thing with
the notes. And I went in and the two days
I was there, he was much funnier. So all of
a sudden I was on three days, and then four
days and then five days, because it was a glaring difference. So, Jackie,
when you started to give Howard those notes, Prior to
that point, no one was performing your role. No one

(01:02:25):
was giving him any help. As far as we know,
nobody had ever ever done that. Like in the old days,
the radio Bob Hope and being Crossby, if those guys
were doing a radio show, they would go to commercial
and the writers would come over with ideas and they
try and top each other. But I actually, you know,
I coined it one day. I was getting interviewed and
I said, yeah, it's flying gag writing, and everybody made

(01:02:47):
fun of me. But that is totally descriptive to describe
what it is. I mean, obviously, I've an cities questions
a million times. If me and you and your wife
were sitting there having lunch and we're all kind of
funny and kind of all kind of interesting, and we're
having a conversation. I see something, you say something. Maybe
she says something funny. Uh, you say something funny. I

(01:03:12):
say something funny, and this is a fun conversation. Now
picture that same conversation. I'm a kind of funny guy.
Whenever I think it's something funny to say, instead of
saying it, I write it down and put it in
front of you. Now, obviously you've got to be pretty
smart and pretty quick on your feet to work it

(01:03:32):
in to whatever you're talking about, even though you know
it's right along the line. But Howard was brilliant. He
would just look at whatever I wrote and absorb it.
He would very often just read it with hardly a preread.
He just trusted me so much, and uh, it was seamless.
And then Fred, give me, give me an idea, Give
me an idea of a couple of ideas you might

(01:03:52):
give him at that point in time. You know, I
can't even give me just like a punch line for
something like it's it's too hard to give you an
example out of context. However, I do have every note
that I ever wrote, that he ever said, and my
mother's attic, and there are countless thousands of them might
be glad to whip them out. Okay, so you say

(01:04:13):
you have everything, Are you, generally speaking a hoarder, a
pack rat? No, not even a little bit. But when
I started doing it, I said, this is gonna be
no evidence of anything I've ever done. You know what
I've got. At some point, Um, I used to pull
so much stuff for you know. I'm fun, you know.

(01:04:35):
And I didn't mind that he was the big star.
I didn't care. I didn't want to be Jackie Martling show.
I didn't have any I didn't want to ever carry
the ball. I just but I like the funk around.
I'm the guy that likes to break balls. And people
would come on and Howard was it was very rude,
like a celebrity come on and sit right next to me,
and how it talked to him, but how it wasn't
the kind of guy that would say, this is Jackie,

(01:04:57):
that's Fred, how you doing? He just that's not in
his wheelhouse. He's he's he's not he's a bad guy.
He's just not. That's that's not him. So I would
get the address of the manager or the home address
or whatever from celebrities and I would send them my

(01:05:17):
either my albums or my cassettes, and later on, once
I guess it hit, I would send them c ds
of my jokes and stuff. And the musicians or the
performers whoever came in, of course love filthy jokes, and
they would listen to them and love them, and the
next time they came on the show they would forget

(01:05:39):
that they had never met me, which was great. Like Diamond,
David Lee roth And and Branford, Marsalis and uh Roger Daltrey,
Clarence Clemens. They come in and say, hey, Jackie, how
you doing, like it was so funny, and they tell, oh,

(01:06:00):
how Jackie's albums are the funniest thing in and he would,
you know, the steam would come out of his ears,
you know. But at some point I said to Steve Grill,
oh listen. I would take the funniest note that I
had written about somebody and handed the Grillo Steve and say, hey,
get them to sign it and and maybe say something silly, okay,

(01:06:21):
like one of them. I'll send you these I got.
I got about a hundred and twenty of them. And
you could not sit down and write this eclectic group.
You could not write this random a group at gunpoint,
you know, John Wayne Bobbitt, alb Michael's Um Tiny, Tim
David Lee, Roth, Branford, Marsalis um Uh, Heraldo Rivera just

(01:06:50):
names that you know, Barbara Barbara's uh streisand and sister
you know Adam West. I mean you couldn't. You couldn't
concoct the slists of people who signed right, And like
haraldough Uh he came into to announce that he just
got his own show on CNBC and the note I

(01:07:11):
wrote and put up and Howard said, your own show
on CNBC, wouldn't the lemonade stand be more profitable? All
went wild and Haralda wrote on the note fuck you,
you know, which is so fun, you know? And Daltry
did not get along with Pete Townsend and the note
I wrote that I that he signed. It was like

(01:07:32):
Roger when you guys were on stage, did you ever
hope that when Pete was doing that stupid windmill he
hit himself in his big nose and knocked himself out
And it was classic And of course they're laughing. Everybody's laughing.
Whoever know those I'm sure those lines are all on
YouTube somewhere And here I have the note, and then
he caught us doing it. He caught me doing it,

(01:07:53):
and I got braided forever and ever for harassing you know,
the celebrities, which they didn't care. They loved, you know,
we had so much fun and uh, but that that's
an example of some of the you know, like, okay,
so they he caught you sending the stuff in advance
or having that. He just got wind that we were
having people saying, oh, how can you how can you
be so rude to our guests. I meanwhile, the minute

(01:08:16):
they walked into the show, they were up in those
with a camera like for the show. You know, He's
like he has uh Barbara Streichs and sisters Rosalind Kind
and uh uh what's bigger your husband's penis or your
sister's nose? Just great? Great, Okay, So now Howard has

(01:08:38):
a team of writers. When you were finished with Howard
two thousand three or so, were you still the only writer? Well,
I wrote, and Fred would have the ideas. Fred Fred
is the guts of that operation. When I got there,
he had written every song parody. He never wrote lines
for Howard, but he did all the bits and recorded

(01:08:58):
everything and did the voice says, and he's just super
super brilliant. And I was so thrilled, and we were
we were, we were Lennon McCartney of song parodies. Just
fit like a glove. And he loved going to it
with me on the air. He wouldn't argue, you wouldn't
go to it with anybody else because nobody else could
handle him, you know, but me and him was like
an even match because we could work with each other.

(01:09:21):
And then a couple a couple of years before I
left that all of a sudden, how it stuck this
guy Benji right next to me in my space, and
Howard's agent, you know, just I'm sure to make me
realize that, you know, I could be replaced, as it
was like putting Robin, putting somebody next to Robin and saying,
you know, want you to do this this newscast instead,

(01:09:41):
or sitting next to friend and say, don't use that cart,
use this card. It was very unnecessary because we were
such a smooth, well oiled machine. It was like clockwork.
For years and years, we didn't even write a bit.
You know. Howard would sit down and start talking, I'd
start writing. Frederic started playing sounds been would giggle and
we were just and they'd be four or five hours later,

(01:10:03):
and you know that at the end of I'd stand
up and I go, that was a great show. And
they would make fun of me, but it usually was
a great show. You know, we get done. We'd laughed
for four hours. I go, that was a great show.
And it was just at what point? At what point
did you start to make real money? Not until later on,
you know, like, um that what happened was I started

(01:10:25):
so low. You know, if somebody's given you four dollars
a day and all of a sudden they've given you
eight dollars a day and they say, hey, we doubled
your salary, you know. Um, so I started very low
and then I walked out. I think that was the
fourth time I had walked out, um, because it just
was so unfair. I mean, they were printing money. At

(01:10:48):
one point, I had been off the show for a
couple of weeks and uh, Dominic, Barbara called me up
and she Jaggy still really needs you. What are you doing.
You gotta come back on this show. I said, Domic,
I'm not asking for all that kind of crazy money.
I'm really not. I deserve more than I'm getting. Oh,
come on, it's ridiculous. What what is it? He said,

(01:11:11):
what are you looking for? And I said, I'm looking
for four hundred thousand dollars And he said he almost
strove about that. He said, everybody thinks you're making a
million and a half and you're asking for two and
a half. I'm saying no, I was making three hundred thousand.
I wanted to make four hundred thousand. We had doubled
the amount of you know, stations. Blah blah blah. Yeah.

(01:11:32):
I had totally rational thoughts with everything I was. I
never tried to price myself out of the ball am.
I just tried to get myself into the ball game.
But you know, but it's up. You're up against city Wall.
Not only was I against city Hall, but Fred had
been with Howard forever. And Fred is the greatest guy,
and he's a sweetheart, and he would literally take a

(01:11:52):
bullet for Howard. But I would bet my life that
in forty years, Fred has never said the words I'd
like more. Now if I'm sitting there next to a
guy who's been loyal to Howard from day one, and
there's never asked for anything, and all of a sudden,
I'm well, I'm also and I'm saying, wait, I want

(01:12:14):
some more. It was like, no, why can't you shut up?
He didn't say this, but why can't you shut the
funk up and be like Fred? You know? So I
was just fighting to get some more money, and it
was I wasn't looking for unfair money. I was looking
for money that I thought I deserved. Now, when you're
talking to your boss for the company, there's always gonna
be you think you deserved this, and they think you

(01:12:35):
deserved this, and there's always gonna be gray area and
who's right, who's wrong? Who knows? But you know, I
mean then they wound up banding it about on the air.
I never heard it, but they said, oh yeah, Jackie
wanted two million dollars Jackie one three but you know,
but but you know, I asked, and and the offer
that was on the table was more than handsome. And

(01:12:57):
I actually called back a couple of months later and said,
listen to office still there. I'll take it because I
you know, what, are you a radio guy or what what?
I don't even know what you do? Radio and podcast?
Because what I didn't realize when I left the show.
It is an so abnormal, such an unreal thing for

(01:13:21):
three or four people to sit in the room and
laugh for four hours a day. It is a it's
a it's a illogical situation that just isn't created anywhere else.
And it never dawned to me. That's what you missed.
You don't miss people saying allody on the street or
having a million dollars in your bank account, but that,

(01:13:42):
the endorphins and the fun and the laughing, you know,
the actual sitting there and having fun far surpassed walking
outside and people say, hey, you guys were great today,
you know. And uh, but I didn't prace myself by
the ball. I mean, then they just didn't come back
to me. But you know, I was ready, you know,
people did. I did a podcast like last night. That's

(01:14:03):
all I can say is, oh, what an idiot? What
an idiot? What an idiot? I'm like, I'm sitting here
and I'm ten, and I live on the water in
a fucking beautiful house with a great girl, and I
lived the life of Riley and I look at my
pillow and laugh. Fuck you, you know what I mean? Okay,
were you negotiating for yourself. I had a guy, had
a great guy, I Larry Shire from Alan Grimman Dusky.

(01:14:27):
So how did you end up on one oh one
when that used to have different programming? That is the
That is the question for the ages. Um. I didn't
go out and do much um. And uh, finally my

(01:14:48):
girlfriend at the time said, you gotta go down there
opening up the laugh Factory at forty at Times Square
and uh, you know, eighth Avenue and forty two Street,
it's a big grand opening. I said, all right. I
went down there and everybody's there. I've seen people in
a long time, and they said you gotta get and
I got up and told maybe ten jokes and hit
ten home runs and it felt so good. And there

(01:15:10):
was this young guy there. He said, Jackie, I'm such
a big fan. He said, that's so great. He said, listen,
I'm doing a show on Serious ex M, a request show.
And what happens is people call in and they request
the comedian and would you come and join me at
noon a couple of days. So I went in and
it was great because people call in and say rot

(01:15:32):
Red Fox or any young men or something like that,
or if he played something like that, and I had
a story about everybody, you know, I had met them
all or for whatever reason. And it was so much
fun hanging out with this guy Phil. And at those
days when you walked into serious it was like Nasa.
I had a big map of the world and the

(01:15:52):
satellites beeping, and everything is brand new, and everyone was
so cheerful. It was so wonderful. It was so much money,
you know, obviously put into it. Everybody was. It was
just a delight. And then at some point a while later, uh,
the s guy was a friend of mine, Toby Ludwig
talked that they called me up and said, we would

(01:16:13):
like you to be the voice of road Dog. And
road Dog is a station on Sirius where I don't
know what they do now, but where they play, you know,
a big chunk of Dice, a big chunk of red Fox,
a big chunk you dirty, dirty stuff. And I was
gonna do the wrap rounds Hey, that was Dice. I'm
Jackie jump Man, two Jews going to the bar. Ha ha, allright,
is David Brenner. And it got to where it was

(01:16:37):
it was ready to be signed, and it was for
it wasn't for stern money, but it was for a
lot of money for a guy that was doing nothing.
My my, my accountant told me that when I quit
the show, it was like I took a nine eleven
to my bank account. That's what I said. So so

(01:17:00):
I'm all of a sudden they say, listen, Jackie, we're sorry,
the deal is off the table because we think we're
gonna get Howard Stern here. And I actually wanted to
say them, listen, guys, if you change your mind and
you don't want me, so what, this is show business,
but you don't have to make up some whopper of
a lie. Because to me, of course, Howard wouldn't come

(01:17:22):
to cable radio because to me, that whole show was
dancing right up to the line and dancing around the line.
You know, I go to eat at somebody's house, says, hey,
be careful with my grandmother's here. I said, what the
funk you? We were on the on the air for
eighteen years, and I we we we couldn't curse, we
we weren't allowed to be dirty. The whole point was

(01:17:44):
we're getting right up to it and stopping on the line,
and that's what was making everybody crazy. And so I
was sure there was no way he was going to satellite.
And then a couple of months later, a big headline
Howard Stern going to sirious. I was like, oh, at
least they weren't lying, right. So meanwhile, going in to
see Phil once a while. And in the course of
this that people, everybody's like, Jackie, you gotta come see,

(01:18:06):
you gotta come see. And they walked me back and
show me the Stern studios as it was in the
progress of being made and being set up and everything.
I was like, you know, like I give a fuck.
But and then, and I'll never know if this was
by design Phil's Phil's Show was at the exact opposite

(01:18:31):
end of serious from where the Stern Show is. And
one day I was on Phil's Show and I came
walking out. We came walking out of the door and
Gary Della Batti standing, He said, hey's that hell? You man? Hey,
you want to see a new studio? I said, sure,
and I don't want to getty body in trouble and sad,
so are a million times ready. So we're go walking
back and we look around it, and you know, it's impressed.

(01:18:53):
It was beautiful. Of course, it's beautiful and then we
walked out of a different door and Tim Say was there,
who at the time was running everything for the Stern Channels,
who had known for you know, thirty years or whatever,
and he goes, hey, Jack, it's good to see. He said,
how come you don't have a show on on satellite?
And I'm like, nobody ever asked me you should have

(01:19:14):
a show on satellite. I'm like, well, tell somebody I
would love that. And then he's talking to me saying, uh, yeah,
you know, come in, and i'd go in and talk
to him and like he's he's a bullshit artist. He's
just hems and whares. You know, he's rich. His whole
life is making deals. Once the deals made, he's got
nothing to do. So finally I wont I'm like, Tim,

(01:19:37):
this is bullshit. I want to show. And I turned around.
He had a big, uh calendar of the week, you know,
Monday Tuesday, when you know, in all the different slots.
I look and said, look, Tuesday five o'clock is open.
I'll take Tuesday five to six. And he goes, okay,
and so then you know you better talk to Howard okay,

(01:19:59):
And then me and Howard, you know, went out to
lunch and went out to dinner and he said, oh,
so I hear you're trying to get a show. I'm serious.
I'm like, no, you know, Tim asked me if I
wanted to show, you know, like, I'll never know whether
Gary fetched me and led me to Tim. And then
Tim asked me, because I don't know whether there were

(01:20:20):
I was gonna go on some of the station and
have a radio show and talk about who knows, maybe
it was totally happenstance, who cares at any rate? I said, yeah,
I would really like that the show. I think it'd
be really fun. And uh and that's how I went
up with the show. And then of course it became
oh yeah, Jackie came crawling to me for a gig,

(01:20:40):
So what the fuck? I gave him a job, you know,
you know, you just learned to live with that ship,
you know. And uh, so we did it for eight years.
We did four hundred and two Jackie's Joke Cunts and
uh it was an hour dirty jokes, short jokes, long
Joe pokes, listener jokes, guests told jokes. It was so funny,

(01:21:05):
so fun I had the original cast of Jersey Boys,
had Sid Bernstein, Pat Cooper, the tokens a whole a
whole smattering of of who's who's that, you know, and
everybody told the joke. I told a joke, Ian, my
co partner, My partner told a joke, the engineer told

(01:21:26):
the joke, the guy working the board told the joke,
the guy answering the phones told the joke, the guests
told the joke. It and it just was a free
for all, and with the jokes went on and on
and on and on and and they replayed they replayed
it like five or six times a week, you know,
which was great for me, you know, which I loved.
And then they, after like six years, one day we

(01:21:48):
walked in and and said that before we got a
chance to tell Tim we want to raise now they
we They made a deal with us and then paid
us much less than the deal was supposed to be.
And then we went on like that for six years.
Then we went in to tell him we want more money.
And that's when he said, we're cutting you down to
once a month, as it makes no sense to do

(01:22:11):
a show once a month. I said, just pay us
for once a month and we'll still still do it
once a week. So pay got slashed by a quarter.
And then it was like by the end of the
eighth year, close to the eighth year, they out of
a clear sky. They decided to let us go a

(01:22:33):
week before Thanksgiving and they were having a huge Now
you can interpret this, how you want to having a
huge party for Howard's sixt birthday birthday and it's a
serious x M is throwing the party for Howard. We're
not only on Serious x M me and Ian, but
we're on Howard's channel one oh one on serious x M.

(01:22:55):
And the entire world is invited to Howard's birthday party
except for me in the end. Now you you can
interpret that? Hell yeah, I you I countless friend said Jackie,
can I be your plus one at Howard's party? And
I would tell them We're not invited, and nobody believes.
Just no, it was It was pretty pretty impossible to believe.

(01:23:16):
But not for me because I know, because I know
if one person walked up to Howard as the sixtieth
thirthday party and said, Howard, man, it's great to see
Jackie again, that would erect this fucking night. And I
know that sounds for the ultimate time. Huh. So what
is your relationship with Howard, you know there is none. Um,

(01:23:40):
I'm sure if somebody said, how's the relationship with Jackie?
Say fine? You know, people say you guys still friends,
and I'm not comfortable saying I'm still friends with somebody
that I haven't physically seen in five or seven years.
I went on the show maybe seven or eight years
ago to promote something, you know, briefly, and it was great.

(01:24:01):
And you know this and the things that sound pompous
that aren't really pompous. It's funny because I just read
about this in Jackie Gleeson's biography and it just struck
me great. I have Howard's funny bone, which sounds like
a a made up thing. But there's some people that

(01:24:22):
the chemistry between people I can make him laugh at
will I just can't just with from the same place
we have. Yeah, it's it's hard to explain, but I
can bury him very easily. Not not something ha ha
funny that anybody else would laugh at, but I got
his funny bone, and and he can't help it. But
he likes me a lot, and it's it's very weird.

(01:24:45):
And he really had Sophie's choice because he, you know,
he was already so so rich, and he had a
guy sitting right next to him that made him laugh
for four hour forget about making the people laugh, made
him laugh for four hours a day. He went to
work known he was gonna have a good time every day,

(01:25:06):
and he let that go, which is a it's a
tough call. I you know, I can never put my
finger on it, and I it's not and I'm not
flipping a coin. I mean, I can make the guy laugh,
and it's it's a little bit weird. I don't know.
At one point I said to him, you know what,
if we could make a lot, you could make a

(01:25:28):
lot of money for charity. Somebody just said, all right,
let's put Howard and Jackie in a room by themselves
for a half hour on New Year's Eve some night.
You know, I would love to say to him, let's
sit and have a talk on cable and charge money
and give the money to charity or whatever. But he
just never would do it. You know, no writers, no

(01:25:48):
extra people, no Robin giggling, just us fucking around, you know.
But he's not built for a level playing field, you know.
But it's it's a high. It's a hard thing to
put your finger on, you know, I mean I got
birthday cards from him. I'm sure that Howard's got his
take on it, but that's not where we're coming. Oh No,
I would love, I would give anything to hear his

(01:26:10):
take on it. You know, it would be stupid. He
walked away from a lot of money. I didn't really
need him. I was doing him a favor. You know,
I've never heard his take on it, but I'm sure
it would be it would be dismissive. It wouldn't be
it wouldn't be an explanation. It would be dismissive. Well,
whatever history you guys have is between the two of you.

(01:26:31):
But do you ever or since you've been off this show,
ever listened to it. That's another thing that people always
ask me. And it's very funny because I never listened
to it when I was on it. I never listened
to the best of when we're on vacation, I have
never listened to two seconds of it. And what's really
funny is the only time I really listened to the

(01:26:53):
show was when I first met him, because I had
no idea what was going on. And that's how I
found out he used to do a character, a black
traffic reporter named Mama Look a Booble Day, and I
gave him a whole bunch of black type chokes, you know,
like weird, weird stuff for that for that character. And

(01:27:17):
when I came back in the next week or two
weeks later, I handed it to him. He looked at
me like, I don't need this, you know. And then
I was listening to the show and I heard him
using some of the stuff I had given him. So
the next time I walked in and said, hey, there's
some jokes, and he was like, you know, thank you.

(01:27:38):
But what's really funny is I was listening to the show.
This is like this had to be three. I just
joined the show, and I love the story because I
was in the kitchen at the house. I was written
me and then answer were written, and I was standing
on a stool in the kitchen, a step stool, fixing something.

(01:28:01):
And the reason I remember is because I don't fix anything.
I have no idea why I was, but I was
up on this step stepping stool and Gary came in
and said, Hey, how the girl he is says he
wants to get naked, and he said, really, well, have
her come in and she came in. She said Hi, Howard.
He said hi, and he says, have a seat. He says,

(01:28:23):
who you? And she says, my name's Maria. And I
worked the door at the Comedy Factory outlet in Philadelphia,
and my favorite comedian is Jackie Martlin, and I almost
fell off the fucking stool. I have not heard I've
never spoken to one person that remembers hearing that wherever
as her. I don't know if it exists on best

(01:28:44):
of or whether it was chopped out. But I couldn't
make up that story. But that was way way way back,
and you know, I would just listen. Once I listened
and got the gist what he was doing, and I
would give him some Joe. So I didn't I didn't
listen like to see if he was using any you know,
I was just I was just trying to get my

(01:29:05):
foot in the door. That's all I cared about. You.
So out of your tenure there, what are two or
three highlights other than bullshooting with the gang and having
fun um sitting knees and you know the first actually
the second studio we had was so tiny that where
I sat, the guests sat at a forty five degree

(01:29:28):
angle to me, so close that literally my right knee
would just about be banging their left knee. And we
had James Taylor on the show, and he sat there
and sang four songs knees to knees with me, and
in between songs, I'm writing insults about James Taylor, who
I fucking loved beyond any stretch of the imagination. And

(01:29:53):
were sitting there on our knees are touching, and I
said to myself, you know, I bet and nobody has
ever sat this close to James Taylor when he sang before,
because there would be no reason for anybody, even if
they were a fan, they would never go and put
the seat this close. It was like it was. It

(01:30:14):
was absolutely surreal, and that strikes me as so great. Um.
Another unbelievable time was a guy came in. He was
sitting in the same exact place, and Howard started with
his regular crap, you know, like, hey man, thanks for
coming in, all right, hey hoy, you tell me how
big is your penis? And the guy was like, don't

(01:30:36):
don't start with me, man, you don't start with me.
I'm not your dancing monkey. Man. I'll come right over
and right away Gary and Ronnie are right behind him.
I mean, this guy went from zero to sixty in
a flash, and he was crazy hot. And I said
to myself, Jesus Christ, this this guy's gonna kill somebody.

(01:30:56):
And it was Robert Blake. That is funny. That is
very funny. Scary but funny. Oh my god. And and
one time we're sitting there and um, six fifteen in
the morning, just bursting through the door was Sam Kinnison,

(01:31:20):
Pat McCormick, Chuck McCann and Jack Riley from the old
New Heart show that Samon got done and at the
comics at the Comedy, uh, Comedy Factory whatever it's called,
the Comedy in Los Angeles, and uh, he said, come on, guys,
let's go. You see the how its stern showing. They

(01:31:40):
hupped in his jet and did coke all the way
to New York and came bursting in at six fifteen
in the morning and they were right behind me and
I'm looking at looking at the Mount Rushmore of comedy.
It was like just unbelievable, and you know, and stuff
like that just went on, and you know, we're in
England for a week. We broadcast from the room, the

(01:32:02):
room in abbey Road where it all happened, the actual
fucking room in abbey Road. I never to this day.
I got the chills thinking about it. And then we
went to the Princess Trust concert and was sitting up
in one of these little, you know, ballrooms doing radio,
and the bags sat across from me Howard and Robin
and sang a capella from from me to the screen

(01:32:26):
or you know. I mean, I could go on and on,
and I thought that ship was just like and it
was happening so fast you didn't get a chance to
digest anything, you know. I was just going through my
notes and I found a scan letter from Kurt Vonnegut
that he had written in n to his family on
an old typewriter, and it was signed, I mean, it
was a scan, but it was a scan. He must

(01:32:50):
assigned it and given it to some people because it
said seasons greetings. And there was a guy who was
a fan out and you know, these people that were
fans like, what can we do for the you know,
and they knew Howard got everything, so they sent occasionally
they send stuff to me or Fred or Gary. It
was beyond exciting, and it just it just went on
and on and on. Okay, so, who are the greatest

(01:33:13):
comedians ever? Me leaving you out of it? Bill Mahr
says the same thing about himself. We're taking you out
of it. No, there is there is no greatest you know,
and I am not a fair judge because I don't know.
You know, people say, who's to me, the new comedian
is Chris Rock, you know what I mean? I'm not.

(01:33:34):
I was the you just know I don't want to
go deep. No. I was was the you just fan
in the world of Rodney Dangerfield. And the fact that
I wound up and step with him is so beyond anything. Like.
I wasn't a comic. I had no intention of ever
becoming a comic, because it never dawned on me that

(01:33:57):
that was a choice anybody can make, you know. I
always thought show business you had to be chosen. I'll
not like there some things I remember so vague so vividly.
In my band in college. It was this big fat drummer,
Nick Petrovitch, and we had just all started getting together
and I'm I'm it just goes to show what an

(01:34:20):
idiot I am. Somebody said, Nick, what's your major? And
he said, radio and TV, and you could have knocked
me over with a feather. I was like, what, what
what do you mean that though you're major, you don't
get to choose that that chooses you. You know you don't.
It never drawn to me that was a path that
you could choose and pursue, as stupid as that sounds.

(01:34:42):
And as far as being a comedian, I never knew
it was something you could work towards. I thought they
just annointed you just like class clown. Like somebody said,
all right, you know, George Colin, you're gonna be really
funny or whatever, and uh, I had no intention of
being a comic. But I love to laugh at any
young man's jokes. And when was in the band, we
had all the Red Fox's old albums because they were

(01:35:03):
just filthy jokes, filthy jokes, and I was a great lamp.
My mother his favorite thing was to watch me watch
Red Skelton because I got such a kick out of
Red Skelton enjoying himself and laughing at himself. So she'd
watch me because I would howl watching him, and I'm
sure I became that. But Rodney, you know, he would

(01:35:25):
go on and then we'd all call each other up
and quote the lines back and forth and back and forth.
And when I first started toying with comedy, uh this
a couple of guys working at this place called Richard M.
Dixon's White House in and Dixon wouldn't pay us. So
me and this guy, Richard and Richie Mannavini, decided to
start our own show, which is where I recorded my

(01:35:45):
first album. But when we first started, I'm living at
the house with after my grandmother died, and Richie would
stay there sometimes and comics lie. In the beginning, comics lie,
it was still lie because you want to, you know,
you gotta build yourself up. And Richie came in one
night and says, hey, man, I went on the Danger
Fields tonight and I killed man. And Rodney you saw me.

(01:36:05):
Rodney loved me. He's gonna use me on TV. It
was greatest. Man. I can't and I tell you I
when I repeat that right now, I'm still jealous. So
I said, you know what, and I sat down and
took paper and made carbons, and every joke that I told,
or that I knew, or that I could think of,
that I could put in Rodney's speak. I typed out.

(01:36:28):
I typed out six pages of jokes. One of the
jokes that I had come across. A couple of weeks ago,
a friend of mine was in Peru selling and buying
cocaine and doing cocaine. And he called me from Peru
and he said, Chief, this guy just told me the
funniest joke I ever heard. You gotta stay awake. I

(01:36:49):
know you probably drunk, but stay awake. You had to
hear this. And he told me this joke by Tennessee Bob,
and I thought it was really funny, and I wrote
it down. So among the six pages of jokes that
I sent to Rodney was this joke. I wrote these.
I wrote these jokes all out, folded them up, putting
them an envelope. And next time Richie came into my house,

(01:37:10):
I said, Richie, please do me a favor and give
these jokes to your friend Rodney. And Richie got embarrassed.
He said, oh man, he said, I lied. He said
I didn't meet Rodney. I didn't even get on stage
that night, but I did go. I swear to god,
I went this two story. You don't have to believe, Bob.
He reached his pocket and took out a matchbook and said,

(01:37:33):
you know, Rodney going, you know, one thousand one First Avenue,
New York, New York. There's the address. I just wrote
the address underneath where I'd written Rodney danger Field on
the envelope. I had already written the jokes. They were
already in the envelope. What do I got to lose?
I put on a stamp and put it in the mail,
And two days later, the phone rings, and nobody knows

(01:37:56):
the phone number. Then my grandmother's dead. Everybody she knew
were head, So who the hell would call there? Pioneer
six to five for one, you learned that when you're
three years old, your grandmother's phone number, the phone rings,
I answer, I go hello, Hello, who's this this Rodday?
He said? Rodney? Who oh? I knew you were fucking funny.

(01:38:18):
I knew you were funny. And my girlfriend's like, who
is it? That's Rodney Dangefields, just bullshit, who is it? Richiet?
Fucking Rodney? You know the funny? Shoot is I'm really funny?
This fucking two bags. The funniest joke I ever read.
You know, the joke that he fell in love with
was the girl was known as a Tennessee two bagger.
That's the girl is so ugly. You're not only got
to put a bag over her head, you gotta put

(01:38:40):
a bag over your own head in case her bag rips. Well,
he went fucking nuts for that, and he said, here,
come to Westbury, you know, come to Westbury. You know
I'm gonna buy I think four of these jokes. I
love him, you know, come on, could be my guest,
bring your girl. So I went to We went to
see him in Westbury's VENTI seven. I got a ponytail
down my back and orang jeans, and I got a

(01:39:01):
girlfriend ten years younger who was beautiful. And he's fucking
his eyes are spinning, you know, He's like, oh, she's
sucking beautiful. I have a piece of fruit, some funny
fucking jokes. You I'm gonna buy him? Yeah, you all
look at her? Wow? Not? But what's with the fucking hair?
I look at the jeans? What the fund is wrong?
She's very pretty, you know. And that was that I
was off and running. He bought four jokes for two

(01:39:22):
hundred bucks. And and here I am in step and
I badgered him and badgered humuntil he took away, took
me away with him and we went to Fort Lauderdale
for a week, in Las Vegas for a week, and
it was I'm still still pulling stories out of my
ass about those two weeks forty years. Okay, do you
ever write jokes or the jokes come to you? I

(01:39:45):
write them, but not a lot of them. Um. And
and also if you write a short choke, it's it's
pretty tough to write something, you know. As a student
of Joe books, I mean I was, I've been. I
was penn pals with a guy named Gershon Legman for
twenty years before I put one of the jokes that

(01:40:11):
I really really loved in my joke book. This guy
wrote these incredibly thick, pedantic, unbelievable joke collections, and I
came across it and all my stories away too long.
Like I said in the in the seventies, we were
doing everything we could to get material and find jokes

(01:40:32):
and joke books. And in the back of some magazine
it was like any ten books for cents, and one
of the books said rationale of the dirty Joke. I said,
so I sent whatever the other books were, I threw
them out and looked at this thing big, thick book,
and it was all went on and on about jokes.

(01:40:53):
But the guy was kind enough to put the actual
jokes in italics so you could read it like a
joke book. And the introduction was like thirty pages long.
And the guy goes on and on and on, and
at the end of introduction he had his name in
his his address, and you know me, and I'm reading
and it says, this is part two of the two

(01:41:14):
book collection. This is eight There's there's no Internet. I
wrote the guy a letter. I sent my cassettes, I
sent my jokes and everything said listen, I don't know
if you'll ever get this, but I'm a comic. I
would give anything to have a copy of that first
volume of your series. And the guy wrote me back
a couple of weeks later. I think it's like Jackie,

(01:41:35):
I really enjoy your stuff. You're so funny. I got
two copies of the first series of my book. I
don't need to I'll sell you one of them. And
he sold it to me for eighteen dollars and I
still haven't it says and signed by Gershawn Legman. It
turns out you can't read it. It's like the Bible.
It's so goes on and it's so packed, packed with jokes.

(01:41:56):
And one day I happened to notice like I had
heard the Aristocrat joke from a guy named Martin Lewis,
a comedian, a magician, comedian from Los Angeles, and I've
been telling the Aristocrats for years and I'm looking at
Legmans and the Aristocrats is the last joke on the
last page of the second volume of his series. And

(01:42:19):
I couldn't believe it. And his whole premises, you are
thoroughly defined by what you find funny, and he said,
this next joke was taught to told to me by
a magician comedian who was raised in Squalor by parents
that battled for forty years but stayed together for the
good of the family. And I said, holy funck, this

(01:42:41):
guy just described my life. And so twenty years later,
I'm writing a joke book. So I made the last
page of my joke book the Aristocrats, just like Legman had.
And then ten years later, Paul Prevents and Pendelt come
into my apartment and said, Jack, we're making a movie

(01:43:02):
about the Aristocrats, and we gotta put you in the
movie because we did a search on the web and
we only got two hits for the Aristocrats, and they
were both your website, because I had Legman's version and
I had my version. And if you look at the
poster for the Aristocrats, I don't it's every famous comic

(01:43:22):
you've ever heard of in your in your life, with
me thrown in the middle. I mean, they're all head
and shoulders above me. But it was just just just
so fucking interesting. And there was a joke that was
so Rodney. If ever there was a joke that somebody
sat down and wrote specifically for Rodney. There was this

(01:43:43):
joke and I here it is in the Legman book.
It's two guys talking in the Civil War and there's
the joke. And I'm like, and I'm I'm like, there
is nothing new, and the joke was here. You know,
you know, my wife don't know. You know that she
cut me down to twice a week, but that's nothing.
I know. A couple of guys she cut out all together,

(01:44:06):
which is so funny. And there's two several war guys
and two black guys. And one guy said, yeah, this
rash thing is crazy. They rather and they're rashed and everything.
They're rashton cigarettes and they're rast and vegetables. And the
guy says, yeah, he says that my wife cut me
down twice a week. You know. The other guy said, yeah, well,
I know some guys she cut out all together. There's

(01:44:29):
the joke. But it fits Rodney that that's joke writing, realized,
re repackaging, and reassigning. That's that's the game of comedy.
But people don't realize that. You know, I've been around
so long as it eat nothing slips by, you know,
like here and there. You know, the other day somebody

(01:44:49):
told me joke and and I said, I wrote that,
And I'm saying, you know what, I'm sure five thousand
people right, Why did Jewish girls swallow? Because they wanted
to be the spinning images of their mothers? Okay, which
is it's a funny, dirty joke, but who cares who
came up with it? Okay? How about two people who
tell tales like Dave Chappelle today or Richard Lewis. Those

(01:45:15):
are two different you know, that's as different as you know.
One guy throws batting practice and the other guy hits
home runs. And one guy pictures no hitters and another
guy plays hockey. You know, you know, they're they're all
playing sports. It's completely different, you know. I mean, I
love stories. I love I love nothing better than to
sit and tell a story. I loved writing my book
more than doing my You know, people read my book,

(01:45:37):
they're like, Holy Christ, that's that's an interesting ship, you know.
But that's not what I do. You know, what, what's
your favorite joke? I always tell people my favorite jokes,
the last joke that got a big laugh. So what's
the last joke that got a big laugh? The the
one that I liked telling when I when I do,
I do cameo dot com slash Jackie Martlin. And people say, oh,

(01:46:01):
my mother likes poop jokes. Or do this for my sister.
She's got a Jewish husband, she loves Jewish jokes. Or
do this for my uncle, or he really likes a
hand job, you know whatever, And I do whatever, and
some jokes I just and I put this in very often.
A girl goes to a high school prom and the

(01:46:22):
next day she sends her mother a text, Mom, the
problem was great, But now Mom, I'm at the beach
and I'm freaking out. I got come in my hair.
So a mother sends her back a text honey, I'm glad.
The problem is great. Listen, sometimes when you're blowing a
guy and he decides to shoot on your face and
he pulls it out of your mouth, they can't really

(01:46:43):
control work goes and sometimes some of it goes in
your hair. But it's not a big deal. Just jump
in the water. It'll wash right out. If she sends
her mother back a text, Mom, thanks for the information,
but I meant to type, gum, well, that's the same joke.

(01:47:03):
You know, the joke about the person who's tapping your WiFi.
You know that one, right, But then of course they're
you know they anything's mixed and matched, you know. Okay,
so you know we live in the politically at correct era.
Can you tell these ethnic I don't care, you know,

(01:47:26):
I backed off. I just do what's funny, you know.
I know my act now is like fifty minutes or
an hour joke. So I don't do a lot of
black jokes, a lot of Jewish jokes. But but I
don't say Polish so much. It's not that I care,
you know, it's not even necessary. You know, I'm old now,
you don't you don't need to be too Jewish. Guys

(01:47:47):
going down the street in the car. There were two
guys going down the street in the car. It's it's
just as funny because we're all old, all confused, you know, Um,
have you gotten in any trouble for telling? Ever? Ever? Ever?
One time, when I just started, I got a job

(01:48:11):
working a bachelor party. And I where I come from,
it's weird, Long Island's crazy, we're all horny, we're all
out of my mind. But nobody really had bachelor parties
with strippers. And that was like a New Jersey thing.
And I get invite. I'm gonna do this bachelor party.
It was a lot of money. I think it was
like seventy five dollars, which was a fortune back then.
I wasn't on the radio. Nobody knew who I was,

(01:48:33):
and no I would take my amplifier and sit on
the amplifier and play songs and tell jokes. I brought
my friend Red with me. I said, come on, we're
gonna go do this bachelor party. And I sat there
on my amplifier and was about maybe twelve maybe twenty
guys in a semicircle standing there in front of me,

(01:48:54):
watching me, and I'm doing my jokes. And then insulting
the crowd, you know, with the guy saying something. But
and I played a song and I looked up and
I said something insulting, and this guy walked through the
crowd and grabbed me and bent me over my amplifier
and said, you motherfucker, you talk like that to me.
I'm like, man, I wasn't looking at anybody. This is

(01:49:16):
my act. I was just fucking around. I wasn't talking
to you. That's the only time in forty years anything
like that ever happened. And it was I thought, Wow,
this is this is things to come, because you hear
about Jackie Gleason getting beaten up and Rickles getting his
nose broken. Everything mean, while the I get done doing
my thing, and then the next thing I know, we're

(01:49:37):
all sitting there and chairs and there's this little stage
and the girl comes out and the lies down, the
groom lies down, the groom and pulls down his pants,
and I'm sitting beside the groom's father and the groom's
fucking father in law to be, and They're sitting on
either side of me and this girl so box the

(01:50:00):
guy's cock and all the guys that cheering, and I'm
like what fucking planning them? And then she went in
the bathroom and the guys rolling line. I'm like, what
what I was like? I was in pludo, you know,
like it was the oddest thing, you know, and I
that was one of those crazy days. I thought, Wow,

(01:50:20):
I got a lot coming up into my future here,
and nothing like that ever happened before or since. I
mean lots of sex, lots of craziness, but not like that.
I mean his father bad enough for his father in law,
you know. Like so so that was, you know. But
one time the people from the Polish Eagle and West
Orange uh wrote to me and threatened me and said,

(01:50:44):
look we shut down John Rivers will shut you down.
We hear what you're doing. Blah blah blah. Yeah, got
gayak you hate the pope, the Polish Pope, you make
And I said, I don't know what you're talking about.
I think I wrote him a letter said to just
come by, just come by the show. The next time
I was at Rascals, a bunch of these guys came

(01:51:06):
by the show, and they came up afterwards and said,
you told jokes about everybody. It was the funniest act
we ever saw, and so I told you, and and
that was that. The Polish Eagle their their newsletter was
memeo graph Are you all enough to remember me? The
whole thing at school smell? But I skated, you know,

(01:51:30):
And I never changed things. You know, if I was
telling a black joke, I would look at the black guys.
The one time in my life that I actually skipped anything,
I was I was packed shell like four people in
Boca ratone at the New York Comedy Club, and I
killed that. When I went there, I had so much fun.

(01:51:52):
And I looked down and sitting ringside right in fuck
in front of me was a midget couple. Not a midget,
a midget couple, I mean in their legs with dangling
and I had like, like, you know, five six seven
midget chokes in a row in my act, and I thought,

(01:52:14):
you know what it's gonna look like. I threw that
in just to be mean to them, and I and
I just leaped over that. I didn't, you know, I
got enough stuff. I can go on for hours and
hours and hours, and I just I always felt a
little hypocritical that I skipped that because I maintained it.
I'm just working around and you know, usually a midget
of that's that's really funny. You know, so who knows?

(01:52:35):
But it never it never stops being interesting, Baba play
that never stopped being Okay, So now what do we
got in the sense of years of Jackie Martling's life.
They just finished the documentary on me, which is so fun. Uh,
Willie Nelson, Mark Cuban pen Gillette already lang cast my

(01:52:57):
family cast of characters. I'm sure you'll really enjoy it.
I put out my autobiography, which I would love to
send you the joke Man about a Stern. I just
got a deal to do the second half of that,
which has already written. I had too much for one book.
I'm doing the cameo dot com, which I love and

(01:53:18):
selling a lot of those things that people are getting
up on him. Um, you know, I'm not. I'm never
gonna stop doing my stupid act once the COVID lifts,
you know. I sometimes I make a lot of money.
Sometimes I don't make so much money. But I you know,
I'll do a firehouse, I'll do a club, I'll do
a theater. I I actually I actually enjoy it, you know. Okay,

(01:53:41):
any goals that you still have at this point, I
was always sad that I didn't have, you know, I had.
I had a little role on Leverage one time and
I did so good, and then they wrote me into
a whole episode and I said no to it because
my nephew was duating from college and he's his father

(01:54:02):
had passed away, and like, I don't God knows where
that might have led. I never got. You know, people
every day like, why don't you doing cartoons? Why don't
you doing voiceovers? I'm like, I don't know. I auditioned
for a million of them. You know. I stand in
the line to bank people turning around and said, Jackie,
are I know that voice anywhere? Why don't you doing cartoons?
I never did, you know. I always wanted to put

(01:54:23):
out a sne of my songs. But I certled, circled
around and did that. And I would love to send
you that. You'll get a kick out of that. Um.
You know, it was with the best players in the world,
so it's really fun. But um, I'm sure you know.
I just got offered this thing. I think I'm wind

(01:54:44):
up doing a streaming show of some kind with either
with young comics or old comics. Are talking to people.
I love to talk about old show business, but everybody's
not enthralled with them. I am voracious, so I wouldn't.
I would have had a working iPod if I hadn't
to spend four hours this after reading about Jackie Gleason,
you just did. It's all fascinating, the old old stuff

(01:55:05):
when they were first starting. You know what, what what
is fascinating about it? Just because because every you think
you went through a fight, you went to you think
you went through amazed, you went through craziness. Nobody just
walked down the day aisle and walked up on the stage.
You know, everybody has their story and it's it's it's

(01:55:28):
just interesting. It's just interesting to me, you know, and
it it inspires you, makes you glad you kept going.
I'll tell you my life is a pinball machine. It
just was like bing bing bing bing. You know. I
started playing the guitar, then played guitar in high school,
and played guitar in college, and play guitar in the seventies.

(01:55:49):
And I didn't go anywhere. So I started telling my
jokes on stage and then I stumbled into Howard Stern
went up in the radio. But I kept doing my
comedy and put my CDs out and then end up
being a comedian without ever looking three weeks and well,
I know is when I started telling my jokes on
stage in nineteen seventy nine. After every three or four months,
I would look back and I realized, I would realize

(01:56:13):
I had made more money than I had the previous
three months. So I just stayed on the path. I
got lucky at bumpthing to how people are like, oh,
You're so lucky you bumped into Howard Stern. I said, yeah,
I am, and he's lucky bumped into me, which once
again is pompous, but I don't care. It made a difference. Okay,
so let's just assume you never worked again. You've got
enough money to get to the end. You know what

(01:56:36):
Jackie Mason says when you asked them asking that I
never have to work again unless I want to buy something. No,
I'm find my house is paid. Well, I got a
million dollar house here on the water, and you know
I got my after and uh, you know, and then
I would never not work. That's not you know, if

(01:56:58):
I'm not working, that means I'm dead, you know what
I mean? So do I have to work? Not really.
You know, I got I got so much stern memorability.
At some point I'm gonna start selling that off with
just just for the fun of just and everybody off.
You know. Okay, Jackie, this has been wonderful. We could
go out for another two hours. Maybe we'll do that

(01:57:18):
at another time. It's great to hear the story. And
I think we covered some stuff that's not in your book?
Is that true? What what I always tell interviewers, excuse me,
I'm sorry you were the first. What I always tell
interview is this, listen if your listeners happen to enjoy
this interview. And number one, they might not believe something,

(01:57:40):
or they might want to hear more about something, or
they have a question about something that they didn't hear
anything about. I always say, do me a favorite. Just
tell them to write you questions and next time we
do this, you know, they might think the questions that
you wouldn't necessarily think of or you wouldn't realize they
want and and we'll go into the questions and I'll

(01:58:00):
have a merry old time. I could do this for hours.
You know, people come up to me and said, oh
I love John Howard starn Show. But I'm sure you
get sick of hearing that is that if I have
to get sick of here and I put a bullet
in my head, you know, I love it. It was
great fun and it's still great fun. One other thing,
I got a guy that answers all my email me.
So anybody that writes me I right back. Joke land

(01:58:25):
at a l dot com, j O K E l
A n d at a old dot com right to me,
I'll write you back. I love hearing from people and
old girl friends. You know that's so funny because you
were saying you ever hear talked to old people and
blah blah blah. And then we took a break and
I came out and picked up my phone and it

(01:58:47):
was this girl that I was so in love with
in the seventies that I wrote most of the songs
that I wrote in the seventies, And yes, she is,
I said, I was just talking about not you, but
about the concept of you. You know, there's a song
for the concept of you. You better tell me to
shut up, Bob, because I'll just keep Okay, do you

(01:59:08):
hear from this woman on a regular basis? Now? It
just happened to get in touch about six months ago,
a year And okay, so did you see each other
face to face? No, no, I haven't seen her in
twenty years, thirty years. But she was great, you know.
And it was at the high time when my band
was really cooking and we dinagle the house on the water,
and she lived two houses away, and she was a

(01:59:30):
school teacher. You know. I was twenty nine, she was
twenty seven, and but I had no money, and I
was a bomb and I was a drunk, and she
came from a house full of drunk so she, you know,
kept me at arms length, which we all know attracts
a man like nothing else. So and then, you know,
this used to be a cash business. So I assume
it was a cash business during your career prior to

(01:59:53):
Howard Stern. Uh, it wasn't. It wasn't, um no, no.
Once I hit the Star and Show, yes, it actually
stopped being a cash becausiness still sometimes well yeah, before that,
oh yeah, no, My first paycheck was from k Rock.
You know, I never got a paycheck from NBC. You know.
Actually The Governors was cash, but that was that was

(02:00:16):
on the books. That was a comedy club where we
actually made good money. Me and my girlfriend Nancy booked
the acts, hosted the acts, etcetera, etcetera. But there was
a lot of a lot of cash. At one point,
I had so much cash and all of a sudden,
you're looking, it's not there. You know, that's a nature
of cash. Okay, I'm gonna cut you off because we
will go off forever. Jackie, thanks so much for doing this.

(02:00:37):
Until next time. This is Bob Leftsons

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling