Playboy: Despite your success, Burns and Carlin broke up in 1962. Why?

Carlin: We didn’t work very hard and the act wasn’t growing. I think that was mostly my fault, because after we split up Jack became a tireless writer with Avery Schreiber and with Second City. I just never wanted to sit down and make up new routines, and I became a bit of a drawback to him. I guess I was subconsciously saving myself for my own act.

Playboy: You saw your future as a single.

Carlin: Definitely, and Jack always knew that.

Playboy: Did you part on good terms?

Carlin: Yes, and we’ve remained close friends for the past 20 years.

Playboy: From 1962 until about 1970, you were a straight comic with a constantly ascending career. You continued working the Playboy Clubs, became a successful opening act in Las Vegas, then broke into TV. By your early 30s, you found yourself becoming rich and famous as a mainstream performer. But, as they say, were you happy?

Carlin: I was happy about my success, but I was also frustrated, because I was sublimating the long-standing angers that I still hadn’t begun to deal with. I mean, the night clubs were full of businessmen, and I hated them madly. But I had to repress my hatred, and that took its toll. I had a number of angry confrontations, including one at a Las Vegas hotel and another at a Playboy Club, and found myself back at the coffeehouses, where I’d started. And the colleges. Before Vegas, I’d been a folk comic on Bleecker Street in New York and Wells Street in Chicago. So when I made my break in 1970, I said, “I gotta go back to those people. They’ll understand me. They’ll let me sing my song.” And those audiences did make me feel comfortable. I fed on them. I got out all the anger I’d repressed in my teens and 20s. Looking back on it, I suspect that whole period from 1970 to 1976—the albums, the college tours, the cocaine—was all just a way of completing my adolescence. When I was really an adolescent, I was engaged and in the Air Force and making adult decisions. I never really got to finish the angry, screaming, rebellious part of my youth. Then, when I was in my 30s, the country seemed to go through its ownadolescence. Anger and rebellion and drug experimentation and outrageous music and clothing—all the typical manifestations of adolescent behavior were suddenly present in American society, and I just fell right into it. The country’s mood allowed me to finish that chapter of my own life.

Playboy: Despite all the changes you’ve gone through, one aspect of your career has remained fairly constant: your Tonight Show appearances both as a guest and as a guest host.

Carlin: The Tonight Show is one of the few things I do that make me feel I’m really in show business. I used to feel that way on the old Ed Sullivan show. When the band played that theme, my stomach would drop and I’d say to myself, “Well, Ed didn’t die, so you’re definitely gonna have to go out there and do your monolog.” I still feel that way when Ed McMahon announces me as guest host. It’s exciting. Suddenly, I’m reminded that I really am part of that thing that was so glamorous when I was a kid—show business.

Playboy: Most Tonight Show guests are mainstream-entertainment types—not the sort of folks we’d expect you to choose for five minutes of casual conversation. As a host, did you ever try to get the type of guests you’d reallyenjoy talking to?

Carlin: The first time I hosted, I asked for Ralph Nader and Jane Fonda and was quickly told no. I asked why and they said, “Well, you know, we have advertisers who wouldn’t be too thrilled with them.” So I wound up with Dave Meggyesy. That was their sop to me—a radical football player.

Playboy: But do you enjoy The Tonight Show?

Carlin: Yes, and that’s something I’ve found out about myself over the past four years—my getting-well period. As harmless and uncontroversial as those conversations are, there’s a side of me that I used to deny that enjoys them. Now I let that side live, and entertain it when it needs to be nourished, and I still have my personal values.

Playboy: But don’t those personal values sometimes conflict with the overt commercialism of The Tonight Show?

Carlin: I’d never read a commercial for them. I even have trouble doing the lead-ins. When I have to say, “Hey, Hi-Ho Paste Wax,” I feel a little dopey.

Playboy: Wasn’t there a period in the early Seventies, when you were telling your club audiences to go fuck themselves, that Carson blackballed you fromThe Tonight Show?

Carlin: Well, there was a period of about a year and a half when Carson wouldn’t use me, but that was sort of my fault.

Playboy: What happened?

Carlin: The day before one of my scheduled appearances as a guest, I went in for my pre-interview with the talent coordinator. Now, this was just when I was beginning to go through my changes. My hair was long and I was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and sandals and rapping about Muhammad Ali, and at first she didn’t even recognize me. I must have looked like I’d dropped all kinds of acid and they probably felt I wouldn’t be reliable. So they bumped me off the next night’s show and just stopped calling.

Playboy: Did you try to reach Carson personally to explain the changes you were going through?

Carlin: Sure. I went over there and visited him in the dressing room, but I was loaded up on snort and after listening to about ten minutes of nonstop chatter, he very politely excused himself. He could see I was in trouble.

Playboy: What got you back in Carson’s good graces?

Carlin: As I continued doing my new material on the albums and at colleges and coffeehouses, it became apparent that I was still a reliable, professional performer. So, eventually The Tonight Show invited me back. And from then on, they paid my air fare, which they hadn’t done before. I’ve always taken that as an apology.

Playboy: Now that it’s over, have you talked with Carson about that episode?

Carlin: No, because I’ve always understood his position. See, it wasn’t my politics that bothered him. It was me. He thought I’d become a maniac.

Playboy: Do you like Carson?

Carlin: I like the person who’s interviewing me when I’m on the show, which is really the only way I know him. During the breaks, he usually leans over to share something private with me. Never anything that relates to the upcoming conversation. I love that. He seems always to be opening himself up, showing me he cares about me sitting there.

Playboy: Your most famous piece of material from those album and coffeehouse years is The Seven Words. Of course, that piece had a lot to say about censorship, but its impact came from its shock value, a comedic tool you frequently use.

Carlin: I don’t like the phrase shock value. Surprise is essential in comedy, and if people are shocked by what I consider merely surprising, then that’s theirshock. But there is no joke without surprise. For example, if I say, “Isn’t it amazing that most of the women who are against abortion are women you wouldn’t want to fuck anyway?” it’s much more effective than “Isn’t it amazing that most of the women who are against abortion are women you wouldn’t want to get pregnant anyway?” Although “get pregnant” is the logical phrase in that sentence, because I’m talking about abortion, not sex, the word fuck, because it’s a surprise, gives the joke its light and power. If that word shocks you, it’s your problem.

Playboy: Was it that love of verbal surprise that caused you to write The Seven Words?

Carlin: Definitely. And my love of language. That piece began when I sat down one day and made a list of all the curses I could think of. Then I honed the list by eliminating all the compound words except cocksucker and motherfucker. Finally, I had seven. Seven words I felt absolutely certain could never be used, even in the most learned conversation, on network television: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits. And over the years, I’ve written several routines around that list.

Playboy: You became a part of American legal history when, because of an FCC action resulting from the airing of one of those routines, you were summoned for a command performance by the Supreme Court. How did that particular booking come about?

Carlin: In 1973, WBAI-FM, a Pacifica Foundation radio station in New York, played an 11-minute version of The Seven Words as part of a program on language taboos. A gentleman from a group called Morals in Media—a forerunner of the Moral Majority—was driving around Long Island that day with his 13-year-old son and they listened to the whole thing.

Playboy: Did anyone ever ask why he didn’t turn the dial if he found the program objectionable?

Carlin: Of course not. And when this guy complained to the FCC, that august body voted to censure WBAI, which is a serious mark against a station on its license-renewal application. So WBAI fought the censure and won in Federal district court. But that was the Nixon FCC, and they appealed the case to the Supreme Court.

Playboy: How did you feel about that?

Carlin: I felt like I was being called to the big principal’s office in Washington. I mean, getting kicked out of school and kicked out of the choir and having a couple of courts-martial—those transgressions suddenly seemed like small potatoes. That these nine men had summoned me into their presence to question my conduct absolutely thrilled the perverse and rebellious side of my nature. I thought, Even if I just become a little footnote in the lawbooks, I’ll be a happy footnote forever.

Playboy: How did the case turn out?

Carlin: We lost. The Supreme Court found that the FCC did have the right to restrict a radio station from playing indecent material at a time when a child might be listening. The word obscene was kept out of the case, because obscenity is defined according to community standards. The word indecent has never been defined legally. And the Court never established how old a “child” is or exactly which hours a child might reasonably be expected to be listening. So the FCC still doesn’t have the right of prior restraint.

Playboy: In other words, there’s still no official list of words you can’t say—which is what your Seven Words piece was all about.

Carlin: That was exactly my premise. All I want is a list. When I was a kid, nobody would tell me which words not to say. I had to go home and say them and get hit. As a result of the WBAI case, the Supreme Court has put the FCC in the same position as the parent. It can punish you after the fact, but it can’t tell you beforehand exactly what the restricted areas are.

Playboy: So American broadcasters continue to work in constant jeopardy—leading, of course, to self-censorship.

Carlin: That’s right. And they have to be extra careful with those two-way words. I mean, they can prick their finger, but they can’t finger their prick.

Playboy: That Seven Words case brought you together with Hollywood’s left-wing establishment—another group of folks with whom you don’t normally associate.

Carlin: Norman Lear called me up and said they wanted to make me one of the A.C.L.U.’s Persons of the Year or something, because of the Seven Words case—which I really didn’t have that much to do with. WBAI was fighting all the battles and doing all the work and nobody was throwing testimonials for it. The A.C.L.U. was also honoring Lily Tomlin and Garry Trudeau that night. I mean, what the hell have two comics and a cartoonist really contributed to the cause of freedom in America? But that’s Hollywood liberalism for you. And because my ego was obviously involved, I said, “OK, that’s cool, I’ll go.”

Playboy: Who else was there?

Carlin: The usual sad, stale Hollywood liberal crowd, these tired idealists. I don’t have to name them. They’re famous performers and you see them at every fucking rally. Only the button in their lapel changes.

Playboy: Did you wear a tuxedo?

Carlin: I wore a dark suit. That’s as far as I go, even for the First Amendment.

Playboy: In addition to being honored, did you perform at that function?

Carlin: While all the other assholes were speaking. Lily Tomlin and I had fun just doing looks at each other across the table. She’s great. But then I got up and actually performed The Seven Words. And as liberal as those people were supposed to be, and as interested as they were in the Supreme Court case, they just couldn’t handle it.

Playboy: You mean after all that, they didn’t laugh?

Carlin: Oh, they laughed, and at the end they applauded. But I’ve been a performer for a long time and I know when people are laughing from their guts, from the inside, and when their tuxedos are laughing.

Playboy: Shouldn’t a lifelong radical like you be more sympathetic toward liberal activists?

Carlin: I have no patience for anyone who sits and mouths clichés. Everybody’s got a fucking easy answer for all our problems. But there are no easy answers, because you can’t change just one thing, you have to change everything. We’ve come that far in our destruction of this poor green planet. And I just feel removed from that.

Playboy: Which leaves you open to the criticism that you’re copping out.

Carlin: I love that phrase: copping out. It actually means to admit guilt, not to get off the hook. And, yes, I do cop out. I cop out to not having glib and easy answers like all those wonderful professional crusaders.

Playboy: Would you include Ralph Nader and Barry Commoner in that sweeping condemnation of American social activism?

Carlin: I see them as giving heart to yet another generation of misguided idealists.

Playboy: And is that so bad?

Carlin: I think, strategically, it is bad. Because the function the crusaders and the investigative reporters really serve in this society is to show the true enemies of humanity—the people on top with the power—where their weak spots are. And then the establishment moves in quickly and silently with a little cement and covers up those holes. And the story goes away, and a few people are never heard from again, and the juggernaut rolls on—stronger than ever.