Joe Rogan | George Carlin's Lost 9/11 Special

You know what gives me serious anxiety? When I find out that someone got a Vegas residency, I go, how many nights a week? Six, six nights a week at the stratosphere. It sounds, I mean, someone told me David Spade was thinking about doing one. And he went to go see Louis Anderson, who was doing one. This was before Baskets. And he was like, it was just the saddest thing I'd ever seen. That was like, Carlin's last stand was a Vegas residency. Did he have a Vegas residency? Yeah. Where was he at? I forget where he was, but he had like a meltdown where he like went off on the crowd, just like calling him all pieces of shit. Really? And yeah, and then had to go to rehab. Was like, I'm addicted to painkillers. And then I don't think he ever performed again. Well, he died before, like he died, like he was performing when he died. I mean, I think he was at a hotel. I'm pretty sure he was sleeping in a hotel that he was performing at when he died. I don't believe that. But I, because that last special he did was terrible. He's like reading half of it. Oh, I didn't see that. It was, it was, it was just like a, you know, a swan song for him. But I think that was after the Vegas residency. So he must've been doing more. Yeah. His schedule was very, very hectic and unusual. He was doing one hour a year. An hour specialty would film and he would write it all out. Like he would write it all out and then tweak it a little bit. But it was more of a monologue than it was like set up punchline jokes. And he seemed to be, he was falling into this more like a, more of a social commentator in some aspects than he was a standup towards the end. You know what I mean? Oh yeah. And someone told me that he, a lot of the reason he did an hour every year was because of the tax problems. Oh yeah. The IRS was coming out of hard. And so he had to be working that much and it kind of made him miserable. You know the story about his 9-11 story, right? Tell me. Where he recorded a special called I Kinda Like It When A Lot of People Die. That was the name of the special. Oh, that's right. And he has this whole, it closes with a big long 20 minute thing about like, when he hears about people dying, he like the more, the better. When he filmed it on like September 10th. And then the next day came in and was like, we've got to, we've got to cancel this. No one can ever see this or hear this. And now you can get the album, but even in the album he's reading it, they like, they destroyed the actual footage from the taping. Really? Yeah. They destroyed it. Oh, he was just like, no one can ever see this. Wow. He recorded it in Vegas. I did MGM grand on September 9th and 10th. September 9th and 10th. That's crazy. Yeah. What was it called? I kind of like it when a lot of people die. Jesus Christ. He must have woken up the morning of September 11th and go, did I manifest this? Yeah. Look at that. I kind of like it when a lot of people die. And so the audio CD, it's just him talking. It's like him working out the, wait a minute. It says streaming. Like the audio streaming with Amazon Prime audio. So there's no video of it on? I don't know. See if there is some person who works somewhere might have preserved it. I mean, I feel like I would have heard about it. I mean, I listened to the bit and it's, if he's like, I've got to read, this is how I do it. So it's like a very early version of it, but it's not great. But I mean, I can't, I can't even imagine taping a special on September 10th. He had some dark moments in his career. I took some friends to see him in 1988 at the Hampton Beach Casino. I think that's what it was called in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. It's like a place where people would go up for vacation and we went to see George Carlin there way back in the day. And he always had the same opening act and the same opening act. I kind of knew even back then, because I was, I guess I was an open miker then. I was just starting out. I knew there were certain guys who took people on the road with them that were terrible. They took people on the road with them that just didn't, they weren't good comics, but they made them look like heroes. They were friends with them or because they just wanted to have like the worst comic ever go up before them? It's a good question. You know, you'd have to, I guess it would vary, but for sure there's certain comics that like it when people go on in front of them suck. They do it, they want that. You know, there's certain comics that you see them taking people on the road and you look at it, you're like, what the fuck? You're taking that guy with you? Like what are you doing? Why are you torturing people like that? But the opening act did better than George. He had a terrible set. He had this whole rant that he was doing, because he had, and he unquestionably one of the greatest comics of all time, but he had hours that were just not good. And there was a period of time where it seemed like he just missed it, like it was missing, whether it was his personal life was off or whatever it was. But he had this whole rant that was like, fuck this. And he was like, and fuck Israel, and fuck comedy clubs. Like he was saying fuck comedy clubs. Like this is like this whole bit and he was reading it off of a yellow legal pad. And the whole audience was like standing there like not understanding like where this was going. Like we're waiting for the jokes. Where's the hilarity? Where is it? And it wasn't, it just didn't exist. And my friends were mad at me. I had taken them from where we live. We lived in Revere and we all drove all the way up to New Hampshire, like yeah, we're going to go see George Carlin. This is going to be awesome. And it was terrible. It's funny, I remember Louis CK in like an interview years ago was talking about how he took the pressure, it came off of him to always have a good show. But he said audience members love saying, oh, I saw George Carlin once and he was awesome. But they really love saying, you know, I saw Carlin once and he was horrible. They still get the experience and the story of it. And that it's there's forever. You don't have to worry about doing a bad show. It's way better though if they say you were funny. I think to see a legend bomb would be great. Well if you were a Carlin fan you got to see those. If you went to see him live a bunch of times. He had those rough spots, man. You know, it's one of those things if you're going to do an hour of stand up every year, you're going to have some rough ones. There's no way around that. Oh, 100%. It seems like that's just, I mean, it can be done. I think it can be done. I mean, I think you can put together like I'm six months in from my last special. I think I could do another special in six months, but it wouldn't be as good as my last one. I don't think. Yeah, I just don't think it would. I just think you need time. Yeah. One a year is crazy. One of your it's insane. And like there are guys like Jimmy Carr who while they're touring, they're writing jokes and just putting them away. So at the end of the tour when they taped the special, they have all these jokes they can go through and look at and then start the new tour. From that, that seems like I like to sit in my set. You know what I mean? I just want to be focused on that and not always be writing the next thing. But some people who are just like, I'm just going to go up and talk. It's happening a lot now. I think with like the prevalence of Netflix specials, people just want the money and they're famous enough they can just go up and just get through it. I'm like, this is your legacy. Why would you want to put out a bad special ever? I don't care what they're paying you. Make sure it's great. I feel the same way. And I feel like those people that watch that when you do do that, man, if you don't acknowledge that you fuck them over, they're never going to trust you again. If you don't say, hey, look, that one wasn't a good special. I gave it a shot. It just wasn't right. It didn't come out right. I thought it was pretty good. And then the taping didn't go well. And if you don't do that, they're not going to listen to you, man. They're like, this is my best work. Like this is all this is your best work. Yeah. Well, the fuck you can like fool them once. Yeah. I mean, like if I want if I went on tour right now and just did the same material from the special, like people would be like, okay, but they're not coming back the next time. Right. You know, they're going to get mad at you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.