Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir (27 page)

Remember that saxophone my mom bought me and kept getting out of the pawn shop? Playing that sax was the first thing I did as an entertainer. Twenty-plus years later I picked it up again—in Las Vegas—and it finally led me to college.

Right after
Good Times
ended I moved to Vegas, back in 1980 when the town had less than 175,000 people and all of the classic casino hotels, such as the Dunes, Aladdin, and Stardust, were still standing. I kept an apartment in LA, but Vegas became my base of operations as I played various casinos, flew around the country doing stand-up, and starred in a couple TV series that followed
Good Times
.

Living in Las Vegas is not as glamorous as people think. It is more like living in Iowa but with Times Square within driving distance. The biggest difference between Los Angeles and Vegas is that in LA you are surrounded by people involved in the entertainment business in some way or other, whether they are performers or writers or grips or hair stylists or whatever. If they are not, then they want to be. Their lives are completely immersed in Hollywood. You can never get away from the business.

In LA everybody is a star or thinks they will be one or is sure they should have been one. That may be Angelina Jolie eating at Denny’s, but her waitress knows she could have been just as big a star if she had had the same breaks. The valet parking my car could care less about Jimmie Walker. He is positive that he’s funnier than I am.

In Vegas or anywhere outside of LA people treat you as something special because they recognize you. There is a lot of “Oh wow, it’s you!” Okay, but I already know it’s me.

Moving to Vegas put some distance between me and Hollywood and also gave me an opportunity to do other things in life. Like playing music. I took out the same sax I had when I was a kid, which I had kept all through the years, and started practicing.

I was still terrible.

Nevertheless, I enrolled in the Music Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) as an auditing student. I was a thirty-something on my first day at college.

I even asked if I could be a member of the pep band. Amazingly, they said yes. The band was filled with eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds who had already been playing ten years or more. They were really good—better than the All-City band in New York that was out of my league when I was a teenager. Just among the other sax players were Cleto Escobedo III, whose Cleto and the Cletones became the band for
Jimmy Kimmel Live
, and Paul Taylor, who would later have hit jazz albums.

The instructor gave us music sheets and expected me to play like Cleto and Paul. Uh, sorry. Fortunately, the teachers and students in the music department were understanding and willing to give me the private lessons I could not afford as a kid. But I never got much better. I was what they called a “manpower player”: I didn’t have to be good—I just had to make a lot of noise! But playing that sax—my old sax—was so much fun.

We were often on the road four days a week, playing for the crowds at football and basketball games and special events. At the time UNLV was a basketball powerhouse, with future NBA stars like Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon, and Armon Gilliam. Arenas were filled with upwards of twenty thousand fans. We traveled just like the team—even had our own bus. We checked into hotels at one or two in the morning and practiced in banquet rooms during the day. We went all over the country, from North Carolina to Chicago, Maryland to New York and Houston. It reminded me of my days traveling with the Motortown Revue—and still there was that one person on the bus able to sleep through all of the noise.

I kept my “day job” back in Hollywood and went to work for a producer who was very different from Norman Lear. Aaron Spelling had already produced the hit TV series
Starsky and Hutch
,
Charlie’s Angels
,
The Love Boat
, and
Fantasy Island
(I had starred in episodes of both of the latter), and he would later be responsible for
Beverly Hills, 90210
and
Melrose Place
. What Lear was to half-hour comedies, Spelling was to one-hour dramas. As soon as
Good Times
was canceled he cast me as a former car thief trying to stay straight in a police drama series called
B.A.D. Cats
(B.A.D. as in Burglary Auto Detail).

After all of the heat surrounding
Good Times
,
B.A.D. Cats
was a welcome change of pace. Spelling was simply into the game of network television—having hits, making money, and moving his chips around. Unlike Lear, he was not trying to deliver a message. They had very different styles too. Where Lear acted like the local head of the Parent Teacher Association, Spelling acted like the president of the United States.

When he was about to visit the set, a runner informed us, “ETA on Aaron. He’s coming by to talk to you in nine minutes.” Later: “ETA on Aaron. Here in two minutes.” Then two security men showed up. Then E. Duke Vincent, Spelling’s right-hand man, with his Palm Springs tan and gold chains around his neck, walked onto the set. Finally, at exactly his appointed time, came Spelling.

“Hey, I love the show. The network thinks it’s great. Keep doing what you’re doing. Gotta go.” Then he exited with his entourage.

B.A.D. Cats
was an easy gig—two hours a day, three days a week. But the series only lasted six episodes on ABC. Today the show is remembered only for being an early role for a young actress named Michelle Pfeiffer, who played a policewoman nicknamed—believe it or not—Sunshine. Michelle was about twenty years old and always so excited. At lunch she would say, “This is great! I’m going to be in all the magazines! I’m going to buy a house in Malibu!” Turned out she did become a star, but not thanks to
B.A.D. Cats
.

A couple years later Spelling decided to give sitcoms a try and pulled me in for ABC’s
At Ease
, which was about a couple of conniving guys in the army. We had so much fun on that series. Unfortunately, the show was not funny at all. We were gone after three months.

Bustin’ Loose
, however, had a chance. Based on the Richard Pryor film, I starred along with Vonetta McGee in the all-black cast of the syndicated sitcom. I was not keen on doing another “black show” and the pressure that goes with it: Is it relevant? Is it black enough? But I had them hire Allan Manings from
Good Times
as a producer, whose experience I thought would help. I played Sonny Barnes, a former con artist working through five years of a community service sentence under the supervision of a social worker raising four orphans. I hoped
Bustin’ Loose
might go on for a few years. But after one season we were off the air.

All along I was also doing game shows, which gave me tremendous exposure and helped promote my club gigs across the country. Shows like
Hollywood Squares
proved that I could ad-lib. I know they gave funny answers to some of the stars—Paul Lynde, Rose Marie, and maybe one or two more—but not to the others, not to me. Those shows also kept me in touch with friends from my days at the Improv in New York, such as Stiller and Meara, who were frequent guests and brought their kids, Amy and Ben, along. Amy wanted to be an actress and Ben wanted to direct films. He had a Super-8 camera constantly in his hand, shooting something or other.

“Ben, take it easy,” I told him. “You’re only eleven years old!”

He always chatted with me and Nipsey Russell, and he especially loved to hear Nipsey’s little raps:

I am a bachelor, and I will not marry
Until the right girl comes along.
But while I’m waiting, I don’t mind dating
Girls that I know are wrong.

Next thing I knew, little Ben was a regular on
Saturday Night Live
. After that, he was starring in movies like
There’s Something About Mary
and
Meet the Parents
, and also directing, like he always wanted. A few years ago, when
Parade
magazine asked him for his comedy inspirations, he named Robert Klein, George Carlin, and me. I was flattered and surprised. I had no idea he had been paying attention.

Ben grew up in the ’70s, watching the Golden Age of stand-up. But it was in the ’80s when stand-up truly exploded onto TV screens. All you needed for a TV series was a brick wall, twenty comics, and an audience. Producers taped everything, chopped it up—sometimes joke by joke, not even comic by comic—and, magically, they had a series of half-hour gangbangs, uh, I mean shows. They were everywhere, network, syndicated, and cable, on Showtime, HBO and Ha! (the predecessor to Comedy Central), from
An Evening at the Improv
and
Comedy on the Road
to
Comic Strip: Live
. I thought the phenomenon was great, and I was on many of those shows—multiple times too. What could be bad about comics getting more exposure?

Turned out there was a lot wrong. The good comics were on too much—familiarity breeds contempt. The bad comics were on too much—not being funny breeds contempt. Comedy clubs across the country suffered as well. People would not pay to see stand-ups when they could see them perform for free in the comfort of their own home. So by the end of the ’80s, clubs were going under.

What was a road comic supposed to do then? I returned to my first arena of professional show business—radio. Some twenty years after my only on-air gig in Norfolk, Virginia, I would once again have my own show. But it was politics, not comedy, that put me behind the mic.

I had written guest columns for the
Los Angeles Times
op-ed section explaining my thoughts on national and world events. Readers noticed them and so too did various radio talk show hosts, mainly conservative ones, who invited me on their shows as a guest. Though I don’t call myself a conservative—we don’t agree on everything—obviously I am not a liberal. I was officially a Libertarian for a brief time, but they never win anything. I say I am a Logicist. I believe in logic and common sense.

On the air with folks like Rush Limbaugh, I talked about my belief in smaller government, personal responsibility, free-enterprise capitalism, and America in general. My opinions on race, not typical from a black man, really stirred the pot, everywhere from TV’s
Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher
to Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity on both radio and TV. I said that instead of our obsession with racism, blacks should focus on economic development. I said that the War on Poverty did little for the poor precisely because the bloated federal government was in charge. I slammed Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and every other black leader who picked up a protest sign at the drop of a hat if it would get them on TV. Like me, many conservatives also emphasized the need for education and were tough on crime. I wasn’t afraid to say, even though I was a black man, that I agreed with them.

I taped the radio shows and sent them to people in the talk industry. Andrew Ashwood, probably the most insane man to ever program talk radio, contacted me. Most programmers are clean-cut, suit-and-tie, corporate types. Ashwood was different: He wore tie-dyed T-shirts; had a beard and long blond hair; smoked pipes, cigars, and cigarettes; drank in the studio; and was overweight and out of shape. He liked what he heard on my tapes and arranged a three-week try-out at WLS in Chicago, where I was partnered with someone else they were testing out, Roe Conn.

Our show was down and dirty, bashing, banging, talk radio. I trumpeted my support for the death penalty, especially for audiences who don’t laugh at my jokes. But I went further: I said I was all for bringing back public hangings. Every Sunday, in the park, bring the kids. Now that would be deterrence. Forget scared straight—that’s scared stiff.

But the station kept Conn, who became a fixture on Chicago radio, and released me. That did not deter Ashwood.

“Hey, man, heard the tape from LS,” he said. “Loved the liveliness. Fuckin’ great! You didn’t get hired, but fuck it, man—you were great!”

Later Ashwood was programming WOAI in San Antonio, Texas. He launched “The Great American Talk-off,” in which well-known people from across the country competed for the station’s early afternoon talk show slot. Fred Goldman, father of murder victim Ron Goldman in the O. J. case, was one of them. So was I. I didn’t win, but Ashwood thought highly enough of what I had done to make demo tapes of my performance and send them out to other programmers.

He pounded on Neil Nelkin, the program director at KKAR in Omaha, Nebraska, to hire me, and I was given a one-year contract. I moved to Omaha and was put in the same lineup with Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Dr. Laura, and Hannity.

The slogan for my show was “Give me an hour and I’ll give you the power.” Omaha is middle America, and I consider myself a mainstream American.

America is not perfect. We have made some bad decisions in the past and will continue to make some bad decisions. Nor is America the land of opportunity for everyone. I know a lot of people who have worked hard and been honest but have not succeeded—people who busted their asses and ended up homeless. They are like comics I saw at the Store who tried for years and never got on that stage. On the other hand, there are people who have achieved fame and fortune and never worked a day to deserve them. That’s life, and life is not always fair.

But I believe in America. This is a great country. Because we are free. I did not always appreciate that. You do not learn patriotism living in the projects. Once I got out into the world, met people who were different from me and worked with them, I grew to appreciate how you can make choices about your life. The choices do not always work out, but in America you have the freedom to choose—and you have the freedom to speak about your choice.