Comedian Joe Rogan stopped by the pod den to talk about his comedy career and how he got into stand-up comedy. We also talked about his love of Carrot Top and Nickelback and how they have impacted his life. Joe is one of the funniest people I've ever met and we had a great time talking about it. I hope you enjoy this episode, it was a lot of fun and I hope it gives you a little bit of inspiration for the new year! Cheers, sir! -Joe Rogan and the Crew Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. Thank you for listening to this episode of the pod. Please rate, review, and subscribe to our other shows on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, and Podchaser. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review! We'll be looking out for new episodes in the next few weeks! XOXOXOXO, the podlenauts podcast. -The Joe Rogans Experience Podcast by Night, All Day, by Night! Cheers! -Jon Rocha, the Crew. Jon Rogan, the Podlenox Podcast by Day, all Day, All Night! -The Rogan Experience by Night... -Jon Rogan Podcasts by Night? Jon R Rogan is a guy who does it all day, all day all day! -Joeservent and all day... Jon Rogans is a man who loves his job, all the time, and he's funny, he does it well, he's good at it all of his job well, and so much more. He's cool like that kind of stuff like that's just like that guy does it so good, so good of a good thing, so he's a good guy like that he's cool, so much of he's so good like that... so much he's great like that type of thing... he's nice like that kinda thing like that good, good things like that really good, he really does it like that stuff... so good and he really is that's good, really good guy, he s good, yeeeeeeeeee -JON ROGAN IS THE BEST OF THAN THAT'S JOE JOGAN AND HE'S GOT A GOOD THAN KEEEEEEEEeee...
00:01:53.000So I thought, you know, not only did I do my thing just because I wanted to do props, but I thought, wow, no one's going to hate me because I'm doing...
00:02:01.000I'm not doing anyone's—I mean, I'm stealing Crimewatch signs and shit and lugging them around the country.
00:02:07.000So if anything, they would say, you know, okay, he's not funny, or at least he's original, but he's not funny.
00:02:13.000But they would say, oh, no, he's—you know, everything.
00:02:16.000I just got—I would get shit for—like, I was the shit—I was just feeling the punchline.
00:06:32.000We never, I've never, my style of prop comedy is kind of an interesting, it's like an inventive, if you go back and find any prop, there's always a twist to it.
00:06:41.000So it's not just me holding up a, it's not a word, play word.
00:06:44.000Like the WID. Yeah, the WID. I've got my tubes tied, and it's just tubes all together.
00:06:50.000So Moran's trying to think of what I would have, like a microphone from Mick Jagger that has an oxygen thing in it.
00:06:57.000So it's something that's more into it.
00:08:19.000What is it like having a Vegas residency?
00:08:21.000Because I've always thought about that, like...
00:08:24.000There's people that I think did it where maybe they probably shouldn't have done it, and then there's people like you that you seem to be having a good time doing it, and then you still do occasional shows in other spots.
00:08:37.000I mean, I was telling you guys out front there a bit ago that in the beginning I was very reluctant because I was my road guy, and so I would do the road and live on a tour bus and that, and then they offered the gig, and I was like, eh.
00:08:48.000So I started doing just a couple weeks.
00:09:07.000I just wasn't ready for people sitting in, you know, like booths and eating, you know, like dinner show, eating and kind of getting slouched.
00:09:16.000And I was like, I'm used to people like, you know.
00:09:22.000George Carlin would tell me, he says, you know, you couldn't get into it.
00:09:25.000Oh, so fuck it, I'm going to go see Carlin kind of thing.
00:09:27.000So as I've gotten more fans, I think I'm getting more of my audience.
00:09:31.000But back then, there was just people that were, you know, going by a buffet, going, hey, get a Carrot Top ticket and whatever, check it out.
00:09:36.000How long have you been doing it now in Vegas?
00:09:38.00016 at the Luxor and then 10 at the MGM. 26 years?
00:10:43.000You know, it's kind of, you're there every night, you get to go home.
00:10:46.000But the road shows are, you kind of feel like a rock, you know, I took my opener with me to say, dude, this is, you know, it's like, you feel like, you know, you're in show business.
00:10:54.000You know, sometimes you forget, oh yeah, I'm in show business there.
00:11:57.000Yeah, we had ramps and risers and pyro, and it was like, it was a big show, and people would say like, and the people that would come there to unload the truck to set up the show for that day, let's say we're here in Austin, they'd be like, all this shit for fucking, for one guy?
00:12:10.000And I said, it takes a lot of shit to make me funny.
00:12:21.000The very first club I did, they were like livid with me because I had like, and I had to do it all by myself.
00:12:26.000Back then I made, my dad was a scientist, so he made this like pedal, foot pedal, and I could hit first button, did a strobe light, and the second one was a snow machine, and the third one was something, and a sound effect or something.
00:12:38.000And a club owner came up between two shows and says, was there a fucking snow machine in the middle of the show?
00:15:55.000I was, you know, a year of sitting in—I mean, it's nice sitting in my boat in Florida, but— At the same time, you're like, I'm losing my sense of purpose.
00:21:42.000And then there was only one time in my entire career, and I mean full-on career, That I refused to go on, and it was an ACCA gig, and they had a thing in a breezeway, right?
00:23:12.000So it turns out that college and that gig and that breezeway, that guy was the president of NACA that booked me for that.
00:23:23.000The president of NACA. Well, he's an asshole.
00:23:25.000He is an asshole, but I'm saying, oh shit, of all people that I did that to, it was the president of NACA. Yeah, but that guy shouldn't be the president.
00:23:32.000If he's the guy that's making those kind of decisions, that's disrespectful to the performers.
00:24:01.000And it's not against the person, but the colleges, it's just, I think, like you just said, it's probably, I don't know, the audiences that, I mean, half my act you can't do.
00:24:11.000Like, I go back and look at stuff that I did on The Tonight Show, Regis and Kathie Lee, I still do it in my show, because fuck it, I just do what I do.
00:24:22.000I just, you know, and people, they ooh, and I go, there's worse shit coming, take it easy.
00:24:27.000But I would have like a, you know, a mousetrap to catch gay mice.
00:24:30.000It was a little mousetrap with a mirror ball on it, and it would spin.
00:25:48.000Well, even like with Dave, when all that went down, you know this probably more than I know, but they didn't show a lot of the people that were pro for him.
00:25:57.000They kept showing the people that are against it.
00:25:59.000Here's the thing they didn't do with Dave.
00:26:01.000They didn't quote any of the material.
00:26:03.000If you notice it, they kept saying it's transphobic, it's transphobic, but it's one of the very rare times where someone's being accused of something, but there's not a specific thing that they point to where they say that this is egregious, this is transphobic.
00:26:18.000It's essentially like it's a long love letter to a friend of his that killed herself.
00:26:24.000I mean, that's really what that part of it is.
00:26:27.000And he's saying that a lot of it is because this woman who he was friends with got dragged online and attacked in DMs and stuff by other people that were in the trans community that said that she shouldn't stand up for Dave Chappelle and she wound up killing herself.
00:27:22.000It's unusual for him, so I think he just wants to get his point across as clearly as possible, and then he'll move on to other subject matters.
00:27:32.000When they say it's transphobic, they're not being accurate.
00:27:35.000They're just looking at if he's covering the subject matter at all and he's doing it with humor, all of a sudden you can label it transphobic.
00:27:50.000And like you said, it's weird being such a beloved guy for so long and then you find all these people that want to come out and not love him.
00:28:56.000Dave was doing an arena, and Patton was doing another show in town.
00:28:59.000So Patton came to Dave's show, and they had a good time together, and Patton took a couple pictures with him and Dave and put it up on Instagram.
00:29:07.000And then, apparently, a bunch of people were saying, you know, how could you hang out with that transphobe, this and that, blah, blah, blah.
00:29:13.000And so the next post, he makes this long apology.
00:29:18.000He writes, like, a fucking essay on how he feels about trans people.
00:36:12.000He's like, God damn it, I sat there for 20 minutes believing you came up with by Menon and Retson.
00:36:18.000I said, no, I never, but I got him good on his show because I did, I did the, when he had it at his house that, that, uh, Oh, the reality show he had?
00:39:38.000I said, you don't know who Carrot Top is?
00:39:40.000It was the weirdest thing, because I'm standing there with the best of, I mean, I think I was standing there with, from Defending Your Life, Albert Brooks, right?
00:39:50.000And he just says that, and I look over at Albert Brooks, and he says, he's just being a cunt.
00:39:56.000I said, I think so, or maybe he just doesn't remember meeting me.
00:40:45.000And I'm thinking, well, not only is that accurate, but it's just a dig at me because it's like if the Rolling Stones luggage was lost, they wouldn't put on a show.
00:41:57.000I don't understand that whole concept, just in a broad sense of the idea of, let's just say, music.
00:42:02.000So if you're in your car and you're listening to music, and if you hit the country station, and you go, oh, country, and then you have rock, and then you have jazz, and you have this, and you have hard rock, you have metal, There's choices there.
00:42:23.000Why can't you have a Dennis Miller, and you can have a Joe Rogan, you can have a Carrot Top, and you can have Gallagher, and you can have Bill Maher do politics, and you can have, right?
00:42:32.000People need to, like, just let other people have different tastes.
00:44:14.000There's a great, I wouldn't say great, well, this is a documentary, or it might have been a two-part thing on HBO, I think it is, or Netflix.
00:44:47.000But I gotta remind you to tell my Hicks story, and then also, Elvis, so, um, there's a documentary, and there's a really touching, sad scene that you just brought up to me in the documentary.
00:44:56.000He goes on stage, and this is right, with his really big, bloated days.
00:47:05.000When I first moved to Hollywood, and I just got on television, and I was on news radio, and I was on the sitcom, and I got this nice place, and it had a loft, and I had a pool table, and I was like, look at this apartment.
00:47:17.000I would walk in the apartment, and I'd go, fuck, this is my apartment?
00:47:37.000Like your house, it's like all your house needs to do is be comfortable and safe and you need to have like a nice place to go to bed, a nice place to fix your meals and whatever else you're into.
00:47:47.000After you get past that, it's just a house.
00:49:22.000And so I, all I said to her was, she said something about, I didn't know he was even there.
00:49:31.000I just knew she was dating him, and I said, it was like between shows, and I said, could you just pass on to Bill Hicks that, you know, I hope I didn't, he doesn't hate me.
00:49:41.000And, because she said, it's such a great show.
00:49:44.000And I said, yeah, tell Bill, if you call him later, tell him that I hope he doesn't hate me, and I just, you know, but I'm a huge fan.
00:49:51.000And the year I won Best Comedian of the Year, he was in the running.
00:49:56.000So it was like, I almost was like, The fact that I won pissed everybody off because you got Bill Hicks.
00:51:05.000Yeah, and just, I mean, green, and it was just, and it just, but it's Bill Hicks, and I was like, and he says to me, I don't fucking hate you, dude.
00:51:14.000And I said, oh, God, she must have gone and told him, and he's staying at the house behind the condo where the club is.
00:51:20.000And I said, oh, I want you to come down here, you know, you shouldn't be getting out of bed to come say that.
00:51:27.000He says, no, I wanted to come clear the fucking thing.
00:54:59.000But there's nothing wrong with Florida.
00:55:02.000But there is something wrong with wanting everyone to behave and think the way you do.
00:55:07.000And if Florida, what they did, if you look at it in terms of the economic cost, if you look at it in terms of loss of life, and if you look at it in terms of cases, you can make a really good argument that they did the right thing.
00:55:20.000As Gene Stim would say, it was a pretty good run there, kid.
00:55:38.000I didn't want to shit on you by doing mine.
00:55:40.000I was trying to do a Ringo star impression, and the guy's like, what the hell?
00:55:43.000I did a New Year's show once at the Improv, and Gene Simmons and his whole family came to see you, and I was fucking legitimately starstruck.
00:58:22.000So, you know, so nice he says something to me, like, you know, take a picture of my crew and me and all that, and I said, you know, I'm actually going to go to London with my girlfriend.
01:00:19.000And I just know, I look over to her, she's gonna be like, it'll fucking kill you, right?
01:00:23.000And I say, we gotta go to see the studio.
01:00:26.000So they take us upstairs, and we walk by all this, you know, Queen records, gold shit records, the whole fucking house, just records and records.
01:01:50.000And since then they've come, like Brian May and them have come to, they've all come through and they can't be nicer and sweeter and bigger fans like, you know, Brian May is just like, because it's weird coming from like someone, they're beyond,
01:02:16.000It's like everything else, though, right?
01:02:18.000I mean, I can kind of imagine what it would be like playing drums in front of a large audience if I started playing drums and then started playing drums in a local band, started doing gigs, and then eventually moved up.
01:02:51.000I like when I used to go to the launches and I'd see these astronauts and they'd take you into the, because my dad worked there, they'd take you into the cockpit and shit.
01:04:50.000So if Netflix isn't going to do it, I used to be able to do Comic Street 5 in Evening at the Improv and The Tonight Show and Conan and all those shows.
01:08:54.000Well, I went to a match, this is funny, in Vegas, and this is not a joke, so I go to this, they put me right in the front of the chain, right?
01:10:14.000So people that have never been to it live before are stunned.
01:10:18.000The energy and also the fact it's so different when there's no commentary because you're kind of like watching it play out in your head and you hear, what is he doing?
01:11:07.000Not only do they all come in their private jets, but the calculations and the people and the number crunching and the shit happening during the whole race, it's unbelievable.
01:11:15.000I take a quarter pressure, quarter thing and then pull that down and crank one.
01:14:42.000So I look over, and then I look over again, and then I do it on the joke, and then I look, and the guy's like, just, like, wrap it up, right?
01:14:48.000And I'm like, I've only done not even five minutes.
01:14:53.000So I do my closer, my big, big paper cups and string.
01:14:57.000Yeah, here's one for the new call waiting, and then conference calling, and da-da-da-da.
01:16:32.000He was supposed to do 10. He did 35 minutes, and he doesn't know how to watch his time, and he needs to learn that and da-da-da-da-da this, right?
01:18:40.000Well, it's also people get real tense before they go on stage, and if they feel like you're doing something that they don't like, some comics get upset.
01:18:46.000I hope he didn't have a car with a ramp.
01:22:03.000It's just weird when you're talking to somebody for the very first time and you have your dick in your hand and they're standing like a foot away from you and they're like, hi.
01:25:08.000He's kind of all over the place with...
01:25:09.000Well, he's very liberal, but he's an old-school liberal, as in I am.
01:25:14.000There's a thing, there's a difference between liberals that are just like, they think of themselves as open-minded people that realize that not everybody starts off at the same starting point.
01:25:26.000So this idea of pull yourself up by your own bootstrings is pretty ridiculous.
01:25:49.000If we're a community, we're supposed to be helping each other.
01:25:52.000And there's a certain amount of social programs that benefit society.
01:25:56.000But he's also a guy who realizes that there's a certain amount of pushback against certain aspects of our society that become almost like cult-like.
01:26:14.000He's more of an old-school, like, being a liberal from 20 years ago was very different than being a liberal of today, or a leftist of today.
01:26:22.000Like, people today are, like, leaning so far towards socialism and Marxism that it's like, I don't know if they're doing it because they've thought it through, if they're doing it because this is the ideology of the moment, of the youth, and they think they're gonna reshape society.
01:26:37.000And change things, which is like every young group thinks they're going to do that.
01:28:23.000I was in college at the time, and I was driving like a courier van.
01:28:27.000And I remember, you know, the news came on, and I was like, what the?
01:28:31.000It was on the talk radio I used to listen to.
01:28:34.000Before we had cell phones, I pulled over and found a pay phone, and I called my dad, and he was like, just, you know, at the space center and just losing his mind.
01:28:43.000He's like, yeah, yeah, it just happened.
01:30:17.000He's driving a Honda, and he's being interviewed.
01:30:21.000By this guy and he's worth at the time he was Amazon was just taking off and he was worth Approximately eight billion dollars and so the guy says to him.
01:30:30.000Yeah, this is it play this 1999 play this somewhere in the vicinity of nine or ten billion dollars today I Only say that because I've got a follow-up question.
01:37:26.000My friend Steve Stroop is building me a 1969 Nova.
01:37:30.000Look, when I was in high school, man, I was obsessed with cars, and I was obsessed with muscle cars.
01:37:35.000And at the time, that's what it looked like in the rough, but there's newer images of it where it's like finished, where you can see the shine.
01:41:14.000It's a 69 Nova on the outside, but Steve took the fenders of a 1969 Camaro because they're wider, and he fused those to the body of the 69. Yes, that's what I like.
01:41:29.000So the reason why I'm saying Icon is because what Jonathan Ward does, he takes it like many, many, many levels past where a normal person would take it.
01:41:38.000And he does these incredible cars where it's like incredible engineering.
01:41:44.000He works on these things for fucking years before any car ever gets made.
01:41:48.000And he's designed these Thriftmasters and they're fucking drop-dead gorgeous.
01:46:20.000It's so different than Vegas, though, because Vegas is so uptight, and Reno's a little more loose.
01:46:26.000I was just watching a video, see if you can find this online, from 19...
01:46:32.000I want to say it's like, the early 1900s, Jack Johnson defended his heavyweight title, I think it was against Jim Jeffries, and it was in Reno.
01:47:26.000Miles around to watch Jack Johnson fight Jim Jeffries.
01:47:31.000Jim Jeffries, he went into training camp for six months for this fight because he had taken many years off of fighting and he had ballooned up to over 300 pounds.
01:47:40.000And he lost 100 pounds to get down to fighting weight.
01:50:07.000I was reading that the amount of money that they print every day because of COVID and the economy's crashing and all that shit, it's some staggering amount every second.
01:50:21.000Like hundreds of thousands of dollars.
01:51:15.000But if you did sit around and think about it, I've had people explain it to me, explain finances to me, and explain the economy to me, and it's...
01:52:23.000I do a bit in the show where I go, one thing I liked about when he would do speeches and stuff, he would always announce people in the audience that were out there.
01:52:32.000It's always an interesting reaction when people like it.
01:52:35.000I said, do you remember him going like, Sally, where's Sally?
01:52:47.000But it's interesting how crowds, some nights they laugh, some nights they just go, they do that, they're kind of like, are we allowed to laugh at this?
01:53:56.000He starts going on about the scientist thing when he goes, people, we paid these millions of dollars for people to do one thing, then research, development,
01:54:11.000or whatever, and I hope I'm doing it better, Lewis Black.
01:54:14.000And he says, and they get the thing, and they get the information, and they get it all together, and they gather up, And they give it to us!
01:54:20.000And then we get it and we go, eh, I'm not buying it.
01:56:27.000But, I mean, if there's something like...
01:56:30.000The last comic, I think I went and saw Chris Rock, and, you know, I went to the whole Nine Yards, you know, waited in line, turned in my cell phone, been a baggie and all that, and...
01:57:46.000It's a smart idea because he has access to all these brilliant comedian minds and then they'll say, when you're doing that, here's what I've thought.
01:58:12.000Come to the comedy store and he would bring a couple guys to watch him and then they would go over the material afterwards and try to tighten it up.
01:58:22.000It's also because he's putting that much more time into it.
01:58:25.000Sometimes it's just a matter of how much more time are you putting into the material.
01:58:29.000Because so many comics, they get their act, and then they just fuck off for the whole day, and then they look at their notes briefly before they go on stage, and then they go up.
01:58:38.000But if you're working on it like that, where you have a group of guys, and you're saying, hey, that bit about the pot and the kettle and all that jazz, and write that, and what about the bit about the parking ramp?
01:58:49.000And, you know, you just go over the material and just that much more focus, that much more time.
01:58:55.000He's a guy who took, I think Chris took like 10 years off of stand-up.
02:01:18.000And I had been filming a couple days and he was the main guy in the movies, like the bad guy that's taking over the company.
02:01:25.000And I'm doing the scene with him and I'm used to working theaters, you know, so I'm doing everything big, like, you know, like, but when you're in a movie, it's, you know, this, not this, right?
02:01:41.000So we go to the dailies in the trailer and they start watching the dailies and there's one scene where Larry Miller literally just goes like that.
02:04:55.000I was an old guy and all these makeup things.
02:04:58.000So most of the time I'd spend on the makeup trailer.
02:05:01.000So it's a scene where I'm an Indian guy like, you know, we got to figure it out because we're trying to, you know, trick this Don Rickles that I'm, you know, whatever.
02:05:11.000I have this root that we're trying to sell.
02:05:13.000And so anyway, I did the scene cut and something didn't work.
02:05:18.000The machine or something I was supposed to hold up didn't work.
02:05:20.000So I said, fuck, that was a great scene too.
02:06:18.000And then I saw him years ago, right before he died, literally, which is going to be weird again, there's like that, what do you call that Kevin Bacon separation thing?
02:06:53.000I mean, you know, I'm kind of, believe it or not, in person, I'm kind of a shy, I don't want to walk in front of a fucking tent in there, you know, approaching him all night probably.
02:07:00.000So I said, Don, hey Don, Carrot Top, and he looks at me, he says, He goes, really?
02:08:31.000But I can answer that by telling you that in those lovely moments, I play Daphnis and Chloe, or the Sunken Cathedral, the Engulfed Cathedral, all that kind of classy jazz.
02:08:43.000I don't fool around with all that other stuff.
02:08:47.000Hey, look, I know you're going to do another number with the band, because I know you've got a recording session tonight, and really, I'm going to have...
02:13:30.000So anyway, I go back and I watch one of his, very similar to that.
02:13:35.000So he said Red Foxx was going to play in Las Vegas.
02:13:39.000And so he flew from LA to Vegas just to see Red Foxx.
02:13:43.000It was like at midnight at the, you know, whatever, Stardust or whatever hotel was at the time.
02:13:47.000And of course, he'll tell the story better, but he says, so I get on the plane, I go there, and I look and I say, oh shit, it's at midnight, so I have to set my alarm and take a nap.
02:13:57.000So he sets his alarm for like 11.30, gets up, goes down, gets dressed, goes down to the club, walks into the comedy club where Fox was going to play.
02:15:22.000And these recordings, they're really interesting because it's not...
02:15:26.000It's not like the most produced recordings, but you hear glasses clink and you hear ice cubes and stuff, and Richard Pryor is fucking around.
02:15:49.000He's certainly an argument as the GOAT. It's hard to say, like, who's the greatest because you have to always go back to, like, Lenny Bruce started it.
02:15:57.000If it wasn't for Lenny Bruce, who knows where the art form of stand-up comedy would be today?
02:17:27.000It's right up there with Eugene Simmons.
02:17:28.000Did the man just say nothing in the mood?
02:17:31.000And he says, if you can find, I'm telling you, it's brilliant, not only just the writing of it, Timing.
02:17:41.000It's timing and how they fucking, and I think the movie's okay, but I mean, you go back and you're watching, it's like, God damn, it's funny, but now the key's in the car.
02:18:19.000Although every scene they do together is great, but the highway one, for some reason, makes me laugh because it just starts right from the beginning.
02:22:08.000Different time I wonder I wonder I wonder to like you said that like With with movies and comedy and all that you have to really think it's like they were best friends Yeah, they were they just they wouldn't even like it was ad-lib was perfect It was a different time in about like what's funny and what's not to like things were funny people were more innocent then than they were now Well,
02:22:33.000remember Eddie Murphy's special when he said about Bill Cosby calling it, remember?
02:24:16.000The club owner said to me, I did the first night, and the next night I came in to set up, and he says, maybe you've heard this term, but he says, Could you maybe pull the fucks a bit?