The Moment Cheech & Chong Was Born | Joe Rogan

Wow. The police were there. And when did you start doing albums with Cheech? Cheech? 71. How'd that all take place? Well, we came to LA in 70 and we struggled. All the places we could work. Then we started being a regular at the Troubadour. They had Hootnanny night, Sunday night. What's that mean? What's Hootnanny? It was when folk singers would get on stage and sing a song. Hootnanny. Hootnanny. The Hootnanny night. So all the singers would sing. We would get up and do comedy. Of course, we became regulars. In fact, Troubadour would phone us up and say, are you guys coming? Because they had a lot of requests. How did it turn into this weed-based comedy? Well, it was the only thing that worked in this audience. The weed. See, when we were at the City Works, it was all T&A. Right. But when we got down here, we had to go right for the Stoners because that was what was going on. We played a club in Resita, Irma Hotel. That's what it was called. It was owned by a crazy, big fan. He saw us work somewhere and so he hired us for two nights. The first night, we had to do two shows, but it was a dance club. The dancers had to stop dancing, sit down, watch us do a show. That was not a good combination. The first show didn't go very well because we were doing T&A stuff and it just didn't go over. The second show, Cheech and I got together. I said, Cheech, come on, man, you're from here. There must be a character you can do. The night before that, we were standing outside and this lowrider pulled up and he goes, hey, man, tell me how to get to Resita Boulevard. And Cheech says, oh, you're on it. He goes, oh, thanks, man. And he drove away. And it was that character. And Cheech says, yeah, well, yeah, we can do that character. And then I showed him the carpet. That's an old black comedian showed me, Sir Pineapple. He showed me this old taking a girl out on a date and he just make the car appear by pretending to wash it, wax. Just do the mime and the car would appear. And then Cheech got in the car and he's driving. And then he goes, hey, Red Freak, one of the right men. And then I would come out and we'd do our skits. And it went over really well. As soon as we started doing weed and pills and stuff like that, everybody related. So you feel like you had that and then you just ran with it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then we just improved, improved, improved, improved. And so when we met Lou Adler saw us and we never thought about doing a record until we went to meet in his office. And he's got gold records all over the place. And we said, yeah, we could do a record. I was a big Lenny Bruce fan anyway, because when I got high the first time, the guy gave me a joint and a Lenny Bruce record. So I studied that record for months. And so that was ingrained in my head. And so then when we started doing the first bit we did was an accident. And Cheech got locked outside the mix down room that we were on La Brea, you know, old Charlie Chapman studio. And it was a little courtyard where the sun was beating down. It was like noon and it was hot. And Cheech is a method actor and he had to put on all the costumes, you know, to get into character. So he's got all these costumes on, he knocks on the door. And I was working the tape recorder and when he knocked I looked up at the door and I didn't see if the needle moved or not. And so when he knocked, I didn't answer. And then he knocked again and I saw the needle moved. And so I said, who is it? And I was supposed to just open the door and let him in. And so there was a pause. It's me, man. It's me. Let me in. Come on, man. So then... Is that where Dave's not here came from? Yeah. So I waited and then he knocked again. And a long pause. The pause. Who is it? And he's getting mad. Come on, man. It's me. I think the cops saw me. Come on. No. You know, they went into character. Then I just wait. I wait, wait. He's waiting for me to open the door. Then he knocked again. And then finally he goes, it's me, Dave, man. Dave. I said, Dave? And he goes, yeah. And he goes, Dave's not here. He blew it. Kicking the door, screaming, open the door. You almost punched me. And but I said, listen, listen, listen. We played it back. And then Lou heard it. We recorded it. Not as funny, but we recorded it. And next day, it was all over America. Wow. The song was born. Wow. And then how long after that, you start doing the movies? Seven years. 78. We started doing the movies because I got tired of going to Australia. Did you guys get accused of promoting pot? Oh, yeah. Like, did you get accused, like, you guys are a bad influence, the youth. And what was that like? Nothing, really. It was more publicity, basically. You know, it's just people. You know, you know what really got what really I noticed anyway, it was the the comedy establishment, the committee and the second city and all those guys. They hated us. Really hated us. Why? Except Belushi. Belushi was the only one that loved us because Belushi was young enough that he heard our records and it influenced him. But these other guys like what's his name? Can't even think of his name now. Maybe it's better. I don't even name him. But they Howard Hessman, he was one of the committee members, you know, WKRP in Cincinnati. Sure. He was a big and I got influenced by him big time because I saw him doing the committee in San Francisco and they had a top notch improv group there. And they were incredible. And that's where I got the inspiration to go up and turn the strip club into improvisational club because I love improv. But why didn't those guys like you? What was because we were successful. We took what they were doing and took it out of that that snotty Seattle, Seattle. You know, I'm so I'm so evolved theatrically that who does records, you know, that kind of thing. And next thing you know, records were bad back then. Well, they ended up trying to do a record, but they had they had no clue. You know, see, I'm a fighter man. I've been in the trenches forever. You know, I've been playing black clubs long as I can remember. And so I've seen a lot of humor, a lot of stand up comics. You know, Red Fox is a real good friend of mine. Did you ever do his comic club? His. Yeah. Yeah. You ever hear those Richard Pryor tapes from the Red Fox comedy club? They would record him like doing his workouts out. Fucking amazing stuff. Amazing. Oh, yeah. Richard. Richard was a big friend, big fan. Now, see, we had fans like that when she said I did the comedy store after Up and Smoke. We broke up with Lou. We're broke. We had a hit movie. No money. Nothing can happen. They stole your money with Lou. Yeah. Who's Lou? Lou Adler. Lou Adler, producer and director of Up and Smoke. And although I wrote it and directed most of it, especially the ending, I directed it. Like again, like I said before, I'm not into the money part of it. But how were you guys broke? Well, we weren't getting any money from our lives because we had to stop touring because of the movie. And so we had no touring money coming in. Right. And so and then we got paid a little bit on the movie, but nothing compared to what we were making on the road. But it was a hugely successful movie, right? Totally. Totally. But that's the way it is. The giant. Just they took all the money. Yeah. I mean, we got we got drips and drabs at the end of the accounting. Hollywood accounting. Yeah. At the end of the period of, you know, when you forget when you're gone on to something else and then you get a check. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. But so Cheech and I went to the comedy store to get our act again. And Richard Pryor helped us out the stage. We had about five sold out shows. Paula Shore was a little guy up in the light booth and watching us because he was too young to be in the in the crowd. And as we walked up the stage the first night, Richard Sarah, he held out his hand. It was the greatest compliment ever.