Andrew: Hey there, freedom fighters, my name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart and today’s guest is that Jackie, the joke man, Martling. One of the things that fueled my ambition as a kid growing up in New York was listening to today’s guest and the rest of the gang on the Howard Stern Radio Show. I used to listen to them every morning, then record the show when I went in to school or to work, and listen to it late at night.
I mean, these are guys who they felt like outcasts which is the way I felt. But they were determined which is again is the way I felt too. I was determined to do something with my life. And these guys said they wanted to beat the most popular broadcasters in New York and I watched them do it. They said they wanted to crush the top guy in Philadelphia and they did it. I remember them going out to Philly to hold a funeral for the guy they beat in the ratings. It was huge.
Then they said they wanted to take their local radio show international or national, and then they went to Cleveland, Los Angeles, and even Canada. They took it international, that raw drive, the watching them grow just motivated me. The climb inspired me. Well, my goal for this interview is to learn from an inside guy about how it happened. Since you, the person that’s listening to me, is probably a content creator, I feel like we are content creators today, and you’re definitely ambitious or else you wouldn’t be listening to me.
Let’s both learn together from a guy who made it to the top. Jackie was the head writer of the Howard Stern Show and one of the on air personalities, the guy in the room. He publishes his jokes today on Jokeland.com. If you love offensive jokes the way I do, check out his Twitter account where he publishes a joke every day at 4:20. His Twitter account is @jackiemartling, and I should say before I welcome him that this interview is sponsored by Toptal. If you need a develop to build your site, you have to go to Toptal. That’s Toptal like talent, T-O-P-T-A-L.
I had dinner at my house, two great people were there, great developers apparently both rejected by Toptal previously in their careers. It was incredible. That’s how discriminating Toptal is. If you need the top guys, go to them and they’ll help you get them, toptal.com.
Jackie, welcome.
Jackie: I’m sorry. I got to take a break here. I got to call Toptal.
Andrew: You should call Toptal. They are fantastic.
Jackie: Before that I want to tell you how I love the name of your company.
Andrew: Mixergy?
Jackie: It’s so simple, so wonderful. I just wanted to start with a compliment because the first time I saw that I was like, “This works. This works.”
Andrew: All right. I dig that.
Jackie: Of course, there’s no indication what it is, but that’s the beauty.
Andrew: It gave me some flexibility to figure out what it was going to be. You know what I did when you first came on camera before we started? I started looking around. Right now we are seeing, I guess, your kitchen or no, it’s not your kitchen, it’s your dining area. Before I was looking at the living room, I said, “Did this guy really make it?” Did you … Let me ask you right out, did you become a millionaire from being on that show?
Jackie: Oh yeah.
Andrew: You did?
Jackie: I did.
Andrew: And then you lost it?
Jackie: I was smart. I paid off all my houses. I made no money to start. If you were a listener of the show, you know that I fought and fought, walked out three or four times and came back fighting to get my salary up. And, of course, the last historical time, they did not meet my demands and we didn’t negotiate to a settlement, so I left.
Andrew: What did they offer you? Nobody ever talked about it. What’s the amount that they offered you? Let’s be open today.
Jackie: My deal, in my mind I wanted … I was shot, Andrew, I was shot. My marriage, there was no way to end my marriage because after working five days and then going to Las Vegas for the weekend, then working five more days. And then I have a free weekend. I wouldn’t spend my week end looking for bachelor pad so I could cook on a hot plate and be making a million dollars a year. I love my ex wife. She’s two doors away and she’s dear to me.
Andrew: You are saying your marriage was in trouble, you were staying up late, you were running yourself tired by waking up early. I get all that. But what did you ask for? What was the amount that they offered you?
Jackie: The main thing of this story is everybody thinks I’m an idiot, so I want to give some background because I was totally fried. I couldn’t make myself come home and take a nap, which is the irony of that now is I’m 67 years old and all I want to do is take a nap. When I wake up in the morning, the only thing I’m thinking about is when can I lie down. But back then I’d come home, [inaudible 00:04:31], I’d work on my computer, me and Nancy would watch “Law and Order”. We’d watch “ER” and then they’d tease the news. I’d get to bed at 11:20 at 12:00 up at 4:20. By Wednesday I wanted to kill somebody.
So it’s really fried, so there was a lot of different things pulling at me. I knew I could never quit drinking if I was on the show. I wasn’t sure how bad my problem was or wasn’t, but there were a lot of intermingling of the factors. Then they put another writer next to me and there were just icky stuff in my life and I couldn’t break the logjam. And I said, “You know what? I’m going to ask for a certain amount of money.” And in my mind, I knew it was a five year deal. In my mind, I wanted to make a million dollars a year on average.
Andrew: Okay.
Jackie: When I left I was making 580. And we were printing, not we, they were printing money. Forget it, it was crazy how much money was coming in. I was making like 580 plus what I think the E-channel was giving me like 50,000 or something. And listen right now I’d kill for 50,000 or something else. I don’t mean to sound …
Andrew: Because they would also cut up the show and show video of it on E in half hour segments. So that was another 50 and what were you asking for, a million? What did they offer you?
Jackie: Well, I wanted a million on the average, so what I wanted was 809, a million, million one, a million two, that’s what we were going to ask for. So my lawyer started the million dollars a year. I was making like 578, and the first thing they offered me was, I think, six, whatever, 615 or something whatever 7% …
Andrew: I see.
Jackie: … sales ranges which is just like with the number one radio show in the history of the world, and depending on who you talk to, I was kind of valuable to the show. Some people think more than other and some people think less than others but the bottom line is that I was a necessary element. And for the amount of money we were making, it wasn’t one of those things I always tell people.
If somebody says you want to go work a week of comedy in Anchorage, you don’t say no. You say $700,000 and then when they say we are not going to give you that much, say okay. You know, it’s like saying to a girl in the bar, “Will you have sex with me for a million dollars,” and she says, “Yeah.” “Well, how about for two dollars.” She says, “Go to hell. What kind of girl do you think I am,” and you say, “Well, we already know that.” We just thought …
Andrew: I see. So you are saying, “Hey, you know what, you were pretty much ready be done but if they wanted to woo you, here is the number that would have gotten you excited.”
Jackie: But it wasn’t quite that strong. Like I did want to stay. So I wasn’t given a number like $700,000 to go to Anchorage. It was like a number I thought I deserved but I kind of drew a line in the sand for myself and say you know what, if I wind up off of the show that’s okay too because I was fried. Fifteen years getting up at 4:30, and they’re waggling money in front of my face to go Las Vegas and Chicago. And if they’re offering 10, 15, $20,000 to go have fun for the weekend, you don’t say no to that. And so then here it is Monday again and you know, of course …
Andrew: Did I hear you say right that you did with the money that you made, you paid off the houses that you have on Long Island. You didn’t end up with another million in cash, but you ended up doing well, safe and happy.
Jackie: Well, I would have done unbelievable if I had been paying attention, because I got killed by the stock market crash. I got killed by the tech crash and my divorce. My wife did not take half my money, my wife earned half of my money. We worked together. She made it so all I had to do is to be funny for 20 years which is a big deal. Look at what I just went through to get on the Skype with you. I didn’t have to work with that so long. So if I had just paid attention and cashed out a little bit when I should have, I’d be way better than I am, but at some point I said some day you are not going to have your job, pay off those houses, and we had four houses. I paid for all of them.
Nancy got three of them, and I got this beautiful home here. I’m on the water. I’m looking across at Stanford on my Long Island Sound. I got a huge garage, a huge piece of land, for being on the water and I really couldn’t be happier. I haven’t had a drink in 14 years, I actually haven’t smoked pot in a couple of months.
Andrew: Wow.
Jackie: I almost talked myself into getting off coffee and I said, “Son of a bitch I’m quitting.”
Andrew: No, you got to keep coffee in, especially if you are getting rid of everything else. So we get in to how you did it.
Jackie: I was making 578 and I probably shouldn’t be talking figures but who cares, it’s so long ago.
Andrew: Who cares at this point?
Jackie: It was, and I wanted, and they offered me it was 616 or 620, whatever it was, and my lawyer said, “You know, we wanted a million.” And they came back and said,”All right, 650. That’s our final offer.” And he said, “All right. I think he said 900 and that was in January of 2001. We never heard from them again. And I’m sitting there on the show every day and after …
–
Andrew: And so your lawyer goes to them and says, “Hey, how about 900?” They don’t say anything and then you walk off?
Jackie: And so two months later, my lawyer says, “You know, what are we going to do. They’re at a stalemate. They wouldn’t return the call, they wouldn’t…” it was like all the way or the highway, 650 or nothing. Which in a fair way 650 is a healthy leap from 580. I mean, I’m not lying to anybody that was a lot of money, but I was shocked and just not even giving me the courtesy of negotiating. So we went in and talked to the guy and said, “Listen, Jackie is not coming in Monday, because we are at stalemate here. And he said, “Well, I think you may get a problem. I think you’re making a mistake.” And we said, “We think you are making a mistake because you know Jackie is important to the show.”
So of course, just that Monday I didn’t show up and just like every time that I’d ever negotiated, they’ve known I’m not coming in on Monday because, of course, you would negotiate this with the general manger and make sure Howard knows, of course. And, of course, on Monday I’m not there, and it’s like, “Robin, where’s Jackie? Did he leave you high and dry again, Howard? Where is he?”
Andrew: I see and you I don’t want to spend too much time on this. I wanted to get a little bit of insight into what happened when you left, but let’s talk a little bit also about the high, and then we’ll get in to how you did it.
Jackie: Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go in to such …
Andrew: No, no, I’m the one who asked. Frankly I’ve heard so much about the show, I never knew the number. I don’t think you ever released the number, and I know they never released the number so to me that was eye opening. But I want people to see too what you guys built. So what is the highest moment for you for doing that show? A time when you looked down and said I can’t believe we just did this.
Jackie: Well, Howard kept me, I mean, he’s just a monumental genius and he just kept reinventing. Like when we first started getting popular, you know, I’d get interviewed, and they said, “You guys are so great but how long can it last?” And then that was the interview after a year, that was the same interview five years later, 10 years later, you guys are great but how long can it last? When he made the negotiation to go to Los Angeles, that was a big deal, a huge deal.
Andrew: Why was getting in to LA such a big deal?
Jackie: Because it put us on two major, major coasts. You see Infinity Broadcasting already had a station out there that was doing very well. So Howard’s contract got him to be able to go a station that wasn’t an Infinity station which is a big deal. And we really hit a home run out there. One of the major things is right after we got on the E-channel and they started putting our faces up, people kind of knew us, and people around here knew us. But Nancy and I, my wife and I, went to a charity thing in New Orleans and we are up at Bourbon Street up in one of those wrought iron tables looking down at the tuba players and stuff, and nonchalantly the waiter came over and said, “Hi Jackie, hi Nancy. He not only knew me, he knew my wife.
Andrew: Who wasn’t on the show, to that degree you got to achieve fame.
Jackie: It was like, wow. We must be getting somewhere and then the premier … I mean, his book parties, the book signs, they were crazy, but the premier of the movie and they shut down two blocks in New York City.
Andrew: Yeah.
Jackie: And it was the hugest event, and we walked like a 300 yard red carpet and Howard came in the Pope mobile. That was one of those nights that it was so amazing because something like that is really hard to relate to people but they let us bring … I brought my wife, and her family, and my manager, and my record company guy. So they were right there in the throws of it, and, Andrew, it couldn’t have been more exciting until we went to Los Angeles. And repeated the same premier in Los Angeles. And that’s like, it’s one thing it’s huge in New York, but that’s your back door but when you are in Los Angeles.
What my favorite story from the Los Angeles thing is we are at the Sky Bar after the premier and we are toast of the town. And me and Studdard and John Melendez and Gary Dell’abate are at the Sky Bar upstairs, up the steps and we are talking to John Stamos and George Clooney and Dean Cain. And we are shooting the breeze, and getting drunk and then you guys because they were such huge fans of the show and they were so thrilled for us and blah, blah, blah.
And we are on fire because we were like almost equals, you know, on some level, because our movie was number one in the country. So Dean Cain and George Clooney kind of segued way off to stand at the top of the stairs because all the beautiful girls were walking up. And they are hitting on them as they’re come up the stairs. And we are drinking and John Stamos turns to me and staring John and Gary and says, “Look at those poor broads over there, they can’t make up their minds, Superman or Batman.”
[laughing]
Jackie: Superman or Batman and I was like …
Andrew: And all that from a radio show,, the money, the success, the recognition and the way that you got on the show was you sent a package like this. Actually it was your wife, your ex-wife Nancy, who did it. This is one that you sent to my house. You sent me a t-shirt …
Jackie: We did have those [inaudible 00:14:33] show what I sent, you want to see what I sent?
Andrew: Yeah, let’s see what you sent. This is …
Jackie: Can you see that?
Andrew: Yeah, what is that? What did you expect?
Jackie: What could you expect? That’s my class picture. I’m giving the finger …
Andrew: That’s the record, oh …
Jackie: I sent one record, Going Ape, and normal people, people you don’t know that well. By 1982 I had all three LPs, and we were sending copies of the record and the matching cassettes and all my promo to anybody that sneezed. And I was… [inaudible 00:15:07] in Washington DC and the owner of the club said, “This crazy man just got fired on the radio here and he’s gone to NBC in New York. I’d bet he’d love you. Why don’t you look him up.” So I sent my three records blind to Howard Stern, care of NBC and I …
Andrew: You said here, there’s the record.
Jackie: Yeah, no, no I didn’t have any idea …
Andrew: You didn’t go to the…you mailed it to them and it was one of many packages you sent like that.
Jackie: Four hundred.
Andrew: Hoping to do what?
Jackie: I didn’t know. When they first started making micro cassette recorders, I sent a package, I think, it was just my first album at that point. Every time an album came out I sent packages again. When I sent my first album to Lanner Electronics, and it was like a Japanese sperm, and they wrote me back and said, “We don’t know what you’re trying to do, but you have a lot of energy. You can have anything we have for free.” You know, it was like I was throwing so much stuff against the wall, I mean, I wasn’t looking to get on the radio. I don’t know what I was looking for.
Andrew: I see.
Jackie: It wasn’t like maybe I can get on the radio show. I’m thinking maybe he’ll have me in, I can who … I didn’t know, Andrew, I really … Did you ever hear about Columbus?
Andrew: Uh-huh.
Jackie: Story of Columbus was, he didn’t know where he was going. When he got there he didn’t know where he was. And when he got home he didn’t know where he’d been. [laughing] So that’s the same thing with me.
Andrew: That was you, trying to figure it out and you discovered America.
Jackie: And a couple of months later he called up and say, “Hey you have any big jokes? We love your records, you want to come and judge a talent contest over the radio, we are going to do a talent contest over the telephone.” So I went in 30 Rock which is a long way from Levittown, New York, and Governor’s Comedy Club, and sat down with those guys and we laughed for four hours. And at the end of the day, he said, “Man, you’re fun. Why don’t you come back next week?
Once a week for free for three years, then he called me up and said, “We are going to mornings. I want you to be part of the team,” and then we went to Pluto. The last run that was incredible was when we got the CBS show on Saturday night, to go against Saturday Night Live. That press conference, we’re doing a press conference on Channel 2. It’s Channel 2 and you know CBS TV we are a dirty radio show, we did get our own on show on CBS TV.
Andrew: You ended up on CBS I thought it was channel 9 in New York?
Jackie: Channel 9 was 1989, 90. In 1998 we did two years on Saturday nights across from Saturday Night Live.
Andrew: I didn’t realize that.
Jackie: It was just amazing.
Andrew: Actually yes at night and then there was the Cindy Margolis Show afterwards.
Jackie: Maybe.
Andrew: Or something like that. All right. I see. So you sent those packages out. So in preparation for this interview, I went back and I bit [inaudible 00:17:44] the old radio shows, including the ones that Howard was doing back in Washington DC, the one the day after he was fired where he went on to a competitor’s radio station and said, “We got fired. We’re still perform here and then we are moving to New York to be on NBC.”
The interesting thing about that period was it looked like he was experimenting to see if he could find the right people around him. He had what do you call them, not the mastermind but something like that of … the brain, it’ll come to me later. It was a group of people who were all just there to be interesting and funny to play off with.
Jackie: When I was there the first time he said you know we used to have, not the brain trust there is something …
Andrew: I think it was the brain trust.
Jackie: The something soup whatever he was, and he said. “We are trying to recreate that here and you’d be perfect for it. It’s so funny that we can’t think of it because you know …
Andrew: But it feels like he was looking for the dynamic, who does he jive with, he had a whole bunch of people and the people who he jived with were the ones who ended up on WXRK Mornings, including you and that’s when he brought you in. Is that right? Was it that kind of exploratory period?
Jackie: What happens was he worked with Fred and then he went to Detroit, and he used to call Fred and Fred would be on air with him. And then when he went to DC, he said he wanted to bring in Fred so Fred came down and met him. And Fred was with him in DC and then like in the movies there was this woman who said, “Well, you know who’d be really good with you, this woman Robin Quivers.” And then Robin came to him, and they got it on really good. And then when he came to New York, I was sitting in with him one day a week and then I started bringing in my friends. And they’d sit down and we play stump the comedian, but all that time I was slowly but surely I was passing him notes.
Handing him ideas and passing him notes more and more and more and more and when I got the call to go to Mornings, in 20 years of my total job description he said, “We are starting in mornings. I want you to be on air with us two days a week and doing your thing with the notes.” That was my job description, do your thing with the notes. And after two days a week, he was funnier when I was there. So within about a month or maybe two months, I was there five days a week. And I was throwing lines and he’s such a genius that I’d write a line and throw up it there and it would be seamless. Nobody had any idea for so long that I was throwing him lines.
Andrew: Nobody knew and I didn’t know. I remember and that’s one of the magic, that’s one piece of the magic at the radio show. I don’t know that other radio shows were doing this. It felt like he was coming up with all these jokes on the fly but he had a writer.
Jackie: Nobody had ever done that and what was the beauty it was I used to hand him little chunks right? And then I said at some point this is stupid, so I got a stuck of 8 by 11 paper and a sharpie so I could write it decently and hand it to him and then Fred, he never passed him stuff. Fred did a lot of writing for the show, but he never passed notes like that.
He’d start writing a little scratched few things and hand it me and I’d rewrite it. And at one point I said, “Fred” and I’d put a stack of paper in front of him and I said, “Write it big and clear so I can pass it to Howard because by the time you give it to me and I rewrite it, the moment is going to be lost.” And you wouldn’t believe over the course of 15 years how many times Fred handed me something that I’d already written and passed to Howard. I mean we shared a rhythm.
Andrew: Such rhythm.
Jackie: So the point of it is, Howard was brilliant. But Howard’s brilliant but I’m writing punch lines. And the way I described it, it was like he’s driving the car and I’m reading the map. I don’t care how good a driver you are, you can’t read the map while you’re driving. So he had his sense of humor, my punch line sense of humor and Fred is from Pluto. So not only did he have three minds working, they were three good minds, if not great minds, but they were all completely different. So his sense of humor was like had so many facts that you didn’t know where it was going to come from and so many times it would just freak people out, you know.
Andrew: You know what I read that Johnny Carson was surprised when he found out that his favorite broadcasters didn’t write all of their own material. Then I found out about you and then I also discovered that people in my industry don’t write their own stuff. They don’t write their own emails, in fact, and I resisted for a long time. I said, “I have to write all my own stuff. If it’s coming in under my name, I got to write from start to finish.” And then I finally gave in and realized no the reality is behind the scenes. There is always a writer and here at Mixergy it’s April often who’ll write the stuff that goes out under my name and she’s fantastic at it. And that’s one of the secrets that people don’t talk about. I feel a little weird talking about it here.
Jackie: No, you know what, it’s show business. Steve Allen wrote a book called “The Funny Guys.” The first one he did was the “The Funny Man” I think it was and one of the stories about Eddie Cantor who’s like funny. He’s a great grandfather of a dear friend of mine, Lee Newman. And Eddie Cantor like every vaudeville guy, he’d be on the road and he’d do his seven minutes or his 10 minutes for years and years and years and then he got his own radio show.
And after three weeks he didn’t have anything. Writers have already used all the stuff. So what they did was this is comedy writing, they went to the library and they got joke books and took jokes and twisted and turned them and formatted them to fit Eddie Cantor and that’s joke writing because there is nothing new under sun. My claim to fame, one of my main claims to fame is I sold the two bagger joke to Rodney Dangerfield. Do you know what that is?
Andrew: Mm-mm.
Jackie: Johnny she was ugly. She was so ugly she’s known as the two bagger. That’s the girls, not only got to put a bag over her head, you got to put a bag over your own head in case hers get ripped. A friend of mine called me from Peru, stoned out of his head on coke. A guy from Tennessee told him this joke about this girl who’s called the Tennessee two bagger because she was so ugly. It was an old southern expression but I got it, I took the Tennessee out of it and gave it to Rodney who said best joke he ever heard.
So many of his jokes, so many of everybody’s jokes. They’ve been around forever and ever and ever. You know, I always tell people, if you think that you can come up with something about sex, or farts, or urination, or disgust, or snot, or vomit, you think you can come up with something that nobody has thought of in the time since Adam and Eve. You know, what kind of ego that takes to think that, I mean, everything you could think of has been done and it’s just …
Andrew: So I hear for copywriters one of the exercises that professional copywriters will recommend is take the best copywriting you can find out there, and rewrite it so that you get a sense of the rhythm of the writing. So that you get a sense of the structure of it, so that you get a sense of the details that you wouldn’t pay attention to if you were just reading it. What’s your process for learning how to tell jokes, how to write them?
Jackie: I don’t, for most part, I do not write jokes. My claim to fame is I know more jokes than anybody in the world and I’m pretty sure I do. The Friars, the other comedians, most comedians, a lot of them despise jokes, they look down on jokes then you go to a party, what are they doing, they are telling jokes because everybody loves jokes and the people that don’t find, these people don’t like opera, fine. I wrote some people if you don’t like jokes don’t go see Jackie, the joke man. What are you, an idiot? But there are ways to make them … people say all you do is jokes. You do all jokes, like all right here is a stack of joke books. Go take a bunch of jokes and go stand on stage and tell them.
Andrew: So what would you do, you would take the jokes, I know that you’ve collected jokes through years since you were a kid from what I read. What would you do when it’s time to write? You wouldn’t go back to those notes and say how do I twist it, what do you do?
Jackie: No, no, the irony of the whole thing was that I made my millions writing stuff for Howard on the fly that were never jokes. What I did for Howard was like if Howard’s talking to Robin and I’m there, it’s a … Picture Robin, Howard, and me are at dinner, okay? And we are having a conversation and hopefully every once in a while I say something really funny because it sounds pompous but I’m a very funny guy. I can be very funny in a situation so Robin and Howard and me are at dinner except when I think of something very funny to say, instead of saying it, I write it down and give it to him to say it. So he’s saying the funny things he’s thinking of and he’s saying the funny things that I write down for him to say.
Andrew: I see. So when you say you don’t write jokes, you kind of are because you’re taking all the jokes that you’ve rewritten over the years for your own notes or learned or heard, and then they made you funny and that’s what’s bringing out the comedy in the moment. If that’s the process.
Jackie: Right that created a machine that everything I handed him, I don’t think I handed him a regular joke in a million years. We just saw lines and crypts and stupid things and crazy twists, and that’s how I made my money, but my day job as a comedian is just old, old jokes but over the period of time, I was the last guy at the bar telling jokes. I was a musician until I was 31. I had no intention of being a comedian. We told jokes in the band, and we were a crazy, wacky duo and stuff, but I didn’t go on stage to tell jokes as a comedian until I was 31 years old which was just … That’s a lifetime before you get to the stage.
But my whole life I told jokes and been told jokes and been telling them and telling them. So I inherently know what I can make work, if I’m telling you a joke, which means I know what can … because when I’m telling jokes to a thousand people or five people at the bar I’m telling that joke the way I know it’s going to work. You take off all the trimmings. Somebody tells you a joke in a bar and there’s so much garbage in it.
Andrew: I see. So by your practicing it in one on one conversations you get a sense of the rhythm, and what’s funny, and what needs to be changed and that’s what allows you to tell the jokes on stage. I want to ask you about one other thing beyond comedy. Something that, again, in my research I found that Bill Nosil [SP] I don’t even know if I’m pronouncing his last name right but he was a program director at WCCC.
Jackie: I didn’t hear that. That fell out at the end.
Andrew: Bill Nosil, anyway he was a program director who said that Howard was always on the phone to local TV stations and news reporters. He kept promoting. He was one of the world’s best self-promoters. Did you find any of that because it wasn’t just that you guys were funny but other people were talking about what you were doing which drew in new listeners. What was that process like?
Jackie: With him he got to the point where he hit the tipping point. So people were doing that biding for him. Just like me, you knock on doors and knock on doors and knock on doors, and knock on doors, it’s like tag you are it. You’re chasing, chasing, chasing. Chasing and all of a sudden at some point they turn around and they are chasing you.
Andrew: Are you saying that by the time you were working with him, they were chasing you guys?
Jackie: Well, he was just starting to turn. And it was an amazing thing to watch like when he got to NBC, one of the Tuesdays I was there, they were doing a television piece on him but it wasn’t NBC. It was CBS-TV doing a news piece on an NBC employee. So that’s when I said, “Wow this is …”
Andrew: This is big, so what he did if you needed or what did you guys do if you needed press, if you needed people to talk about you. Were there things that you would do?
Jackie: Well, he did like a Playboy interview and stuff but people would come to us and they couldn’t get to him, for the most part. So they’d interview me, they’d interview Fred and I was out there going to all the different markets performing, and the other markets loved me because they couldn’t get anybody else so they would take me. And we’d go from bar to bar but everybody won and after the tipping point got turned, he was not reachable which, you know, …-
Andrew: I see so what you’re saying …
Jackie: There was a beauty to that.
Andrew: To being unreachable, what’s the benefit of being unreachable?
Jackie: Well, when you’re big enough, you know what I mean, it creates desire, you know what I mean?
Andrew: I see that if they can’t get to you …
Jackie: I was not in all those decisions so I can’t take any credit for the way that they played it, but obviously, you know, he knew what he’s doing, and he would only do things where he was going to succeed and be the Channel 9 TV show people everyday still talk to me about it. I ran into Eddie Murphy at the China Club and like 1990 and I went up and said, “How are you doing, Eddie?” Because we had started 10 years before or whatever and he goes, “Jack, that Channel 9 show, that’s the funniest stuff on television. And no, I’m not going to do the show.” [laughing]
Jackie: Everybody loved it.
Andrew: What about this? Here I’ll give you an example. I was listening to an old episode where Letterman was leaving for CBS, and Howard said, “They are talking to me about taking over for Letterman and he was just talking about it and talking it about. And you said, “Oh yeah, they are talking to me too” and I sensed in that moment what you were saying is, “Hey, we are clearly puffing something here, there aren’t conversations but we are trying to get people to think that they are so that they see us bigger than we are.”
Jackie: You never knew. You never knew. I was sitting there, me and Fred are sitting there and at one point he’s talking about how Michael Jackson called him up and Michael Jackson wanted his help getting to untarnish his name, and we are like, there goes Howard again. It was true, he had meetings with Michael Jackson and said no to Michael Jackson and that was absolutely documented true, and if anything sounded like he made it up, and he says, “Oh yeah, I’m going to support the candidate for governor of New Jersey, first one to call us, ha ha, ha” and she called, who was it Christine Whitman, what was her name?
Andrew: Yes.
Jackie: She called up and he said, “I want my name on an outhouse” and she got his support and that might have helped to win, if you don’t know.
Andrew: And that would come up on the fly or did you guys write that the night before?
Jackie: All of sudden. You know, it’s so funny because so many things happened that was so huge, and so many of the things he just thought of, so many things he thought of on the spare of the moment, so many things he or me or Fred thought of on the spur of the moment, that I would never take credit or not take credit for so many things because I honestly don’t know. How could you not remember a concept like the first one calls gets me, but if you think about how …
Andrew: But would there be writing sessions where you would say, “We need to come up with a way to get people’s attention, not just to do funny bit but to get people’s attention, where do we do that, no?
Jackie: That was the elephant in the room, everything we were doing, everything he was doing was to get attention. But in a world love Carson and so he didn’t like Carson. You know what I mean? There was like, he had a small penis because that would relax men assume as much as that sounds absurd. He told everybody he was half Jewish and half Italian because he wanted all the Long Islanders to listen.
Just whatever worked and the bottom line was that that we just wanted to be funny. When I first started there and we started writing I go, “Nah, and he go, “Listen don’t ever say nah…” because he would see I had something to say and I wouldn’t say it, I wouldn’t write it down, he said, “Anything you think of, you write down or tell me, I’ll do the editing.” So I never ever held back. I remember a couple of times I passed him something on the air where he looked over me like I had two heads, like what’s wrong with you, and I’m like, man …
Andrew: What kind of things would get Howard Stern to say this is too far?
Jackie: There was a horrible, horrible story about some heehaws, some rednecks in Texas had tied a rope to a black guy and pulled him, tied the rope to him and tied the rope to the back of their truck and pulled him to his death.
Andrew: I remember that.
Jackie: It was about as horrible story as you could think of, and I wrote a note and passed it to him and he almost feel off his chair, and he said, “We’ll be right back, you know.” And all the note said was Polish water skiing, which is just so dark, but it was a joke, you know what I mean.
Andrew: And that got him to laugh and so much that he couldn’t continue but he knew that’s not what you say on the radio.
Jackie: No, absolutely not, because it was like making light but there is nothing you could do. That happened not a lot of times. That might have happened five times maybe a few more, maybe a few less but it was just so wrong. But it was crazy. I remember we were sitting in a writing session and Cher had just started dating a guy that sold bagels in Queens. Which was such a huge story, it was so crazy and so, of course, we are going to make fun of the story.
And so we are going to write a parody to “I’ve got you babe.” You remember “I got you babe.”
Andrew: Sure.
Jackie: You know the song by Sonny and Cher. So we are writing and writing, and we just throw ideas and Howard writes down what he liked, and also I just smiled then I said, no, no, and that was, I think that might have been the time when he said don’t edit this, he said what I said no, It’s too stupid. I don’t you guys to think I’m an idiot, what is it? And in the middle section of the song, the B section of the song he said,” I see, I’ve got flowers in the spring, I’ve got you to wear my ring, and when I’m sad, and when I’m down, I can tear your love around, and the second two lines of the bridge, I said I see and this was the Queens guy, Rob Familetti was singing, it was Fred singing as …
Andrew: As the bagel guy.
Jackie: Cher’s bagel guy and the last two lines of the bridge was, “I see London, I see France, I saw Cher in her underpants,” and Howard fell on the floor. It was the funniest line in the song. I’m sure they still play that on the air. And it was like, and I wouldn’t say it out loud because I was embarrassed how dopey it was. But that was a genius of the show we would have, Howard really know he just so talented. He knew enough to take the lowest of the low stupid and put it with this really, really smart witticism or cynicism and it just and that’s why …
Andrew: What about you as the guy who was writing, who people didn’t know was writing a lot of these jokes. How did it feel to not be recognized for the work that you’ve been writing?
Jackie: I was making money, I was thrilled.
Andrew: But you’re a performer, you like to get credit for it.
Jackie: Yeah, and I was going, it’s so funny people said, “Oh you can always tell when Jackie wrote a joke or wrote a line because he laughs so hard” which is essentially true but not true. Because I’m an equal opportunity laughter and people get mad at me for the way I talk about it because if Howard says, “Robin, I think I’m going to go buy new shoes at the [inaudible 00:37:23] I’d go, he, he, he”. Hey, Robin, and tell a funny joke, “he, he, he.” “Hey, Robin the sky is blue he, he, he> She has the same stock laugh all the time and I would laugh in accordance to how funny something is, because that’s what I’ve always done. Of course, a lot of things I wrote I thought were funny or I wouldn’t have written them down.
Andrew: So you weren’t feeling, “Hey, I wrote that. Somebody needs to have at the end of this show, a writer’s credit that I was the one who was writing a lot of the stuff that you guys all laughed at?
Jackie: Let me finish what I was telling you. So Fred is also handing stuff to me, and me and then to Howard and Howard is saying stuff on his own but I laughed at everything. But I wrote a lot of stuff so I laughed hard and I’d come home and Nancy would say,”Wow, the funniest thing you wrote today was such and such.” I’d go I didn’t write that Fred wrote that.” She said, “But you laughed so hard at it.” I said, “I don’t just laugh when I do something funny. Sometimes who said the funniest thing today was this and I would say Howard thought of that on his own because I would roar at whatever happened.
At first, it was so crazy because nobody knew it at all. And there was a great story when they were doing an oldies but goodies test, and the members of Congress couldn’t answer the oldies but goodies, because the oldies but goodies were too recent, that they could answer about Dion and about Chuck Barry but they didn’t know. So Robin was giving Howard the test so, of course, me and Fred are cheating. And Robin says, “What was some of the hits that Gary U.S. Bonds”. And Howard remembered this little girl and he couldn’t think, so I took my sharpie and I wrote, “Two colon 45”, because one of Gary U.S. Bonds biggest hits was quarter to three.
So I wrote 2, 45 and put it up and Howard said 245, and Robin and Fred screamed and screamed. And in my mind, I’m saying you know what, that’s going to let everybody on to the fact that somebody is writing this stuff and when the word is out.
Nobody ever mentioned it, nobody had any idea, and it didn’t matter. He was like you idiot, if we are going to cheat, at least, help me so it does make sense. But slowly but surely, there were no credits on the radio show. When we went to Channel 9, they said, “All right, we are going to make you guys producers or line producers. And I said no, I said we are writers and so why you can not write on credit because it’s not a guild show. I said, “You know what, we are going to be writers. In fact, I’m the last one who decides what Howard is going to see so I’m the head writer.”
And they are like, well Fred has been here longer than you, and I said, “Well, but I’m the last one to hand Howard the note.” And they go, “Fred can’t do that because he’s doing the sound”, I said, “I don’t want to be called the sound man, I want to be called that writer I’m the one that’s handing it,” and I fought for it, and they made fun of me incessantly on that show for the rest ” I’m the head writer, I’m the..” But I was.
Andrew: Even after you left?
Jackie: But I was because it was a great, great credit because it was what I always had been, but like actually said one time in an interview I was telling someone what I did and I’d hand stuff to Howard on the fly, and I said that I’m a flying gag writer, and they must have said that a thousand times but I thought that was a great description.
Andrew: I see. It sounded on the radio to me …
Jackie: We go to Cleveland, we go to Los Angeles and also we’d be doing a live broadcast. And somebody said the local reviewer would be like it was amazing. We watched Jackie Martling flying with the notes, passing the notes to Howard and that these guys were so seamless. So slowly but surely it came out but I just wanted to get paid, I was part of the greatest radio show ever and just being there and being part of it, you know. It was exciting.
Andrew: What about this? You’ve been very open in this conversation. This is something that is not very businessy, but it’s still important. You had all these women around you. You couldn’t have stayed monogamous the whole time you were doing the show, when all these women were throwing themselves at you, could you have?
Jackie: Yes, because they were not throwing themselves at me, they were throwing themselves at Howard. It’s funny my friend David Seay [SP] opened up for Frankie Valle for years, and they’re in the dressing room in the later years and Frankie Valle says, “I got a note from some girl, she said she wants to give me oral sex.” And David says, “See, that’s funny, Frank. I got the same note” and it was like and Frankie was a little annoyed he says, “You got the same note?” And David said yeah, “The note says tell Frankie I want to give him oral sex.” I mean, they would have done anything.
Andrew: You are saying you had no opportunities with all those women there, you promise right here you swear you had no extra marital activities?
Jackie: Yeah, no, you have opportunities, but it’s just like the girl, people say was it true what happened in the studio, yes. The only thing that wasn’t true was how the girls looked. You know what I mean? I don’t know radio groupies and the Stern fans that would come out, it’s not like rock and roll groupies. Like I don’t know who used to say it, but the greatest comedian in the world, you could be in the worst band, you could be a bass player in the worst band in the world, playing a low net gig, and at the end of your set a beautiful girl comes up and says, “Here’s my phone number and if you are a comedian at Carnegie Hall, and you walk off stage, a woman would come up and say, “My husband think you’re funny,”
It’s just a different level. I mean, I got many more girls in the 70s when I was a low rent horrible guitar player in a horrible band. You know, it was just a different thing.
Andrew: So no extra marital relationships for you?
Jackie: No.
Andrew: Wow.
Jackie: Well not only that, everybody wanted to get to Howard. Think about it the other way. Everybody wanted to get to Howard. So if I fiddled around with a girl what’s the first thing she’s going to do?
Andrew: Go to Howard. With all the stuff a guy gets, guys have a hard time resisting.
Jackie: I can’t believe if a girl had called up and said, “Howard, I spent the night with Jackie last night.” I’d have been guilty if the girl completely made it up. I can’t believe in all those years no girl ever called up and just said that to get us in trouble.
Andrew: You want to know something that I discovered again behind the scene stuff. Now that I’m in San Francisco, I see software developers and entrepreneurs who have what’s called god view on their app. This lets them see everything that’s being done by their users on their app. I’ve seen men connect with women that way and then end up dating them.
Jackie: Wait, explain that again.
Andrew: All right. Imagine you are a user of an app, and the founder of the company has access to what you are doing on the app, because he has something called god view because he can see what everyone is doing on the app.
Jackie: That’s not inherent to what you are buying. In other words, you’re buying something that’s going to show you how to …
Andrew: No, people just don’t recognize that founders have that kind of power.
Jackie: Wow.
Andrew: Yeah, right? Blows your mind, right? It kind of is very scary. It keeps me from wanting to put stuff in apps.
Jackie: Yeah, somebody just told me if you get that flash light out, that that enables people to follow you no matter where you go. It’s like a homing device. I never knew any of that.
Andrew: That was on Hacker News a few weeks ago.
Jackie: I would tell you something though.
Andrew: Yes.
Jackie: I will tell you to the penny how much money I made, what I did and didn’t do with women I would never …
Andrew: Why not?
Jackie: I didn’t but I wouldn’t have anyway because as low life and crazy and filthy as my act is, kiss and tell doesn’t work for anybody. Specially if I was with men, I’m notto going to tell you that either.
Andrew: Why not?
Jackie: Because you just smiled at that. That’s not true, now how do you know that’s not true? I could be a sensitive guy and be with men.
Andrew: Did you feel, sometimes I feel as I listen to interviewees I think, “Boy, they’re doing something big, I need to do something bigger with my life because I’m surrounded by these people who are leaving huge marks on the world. Did you ever feel that way?
Jackie: Andrew, I’m talking to you from the north shore of Nassau County, okay? It’s the Gold Coast. This is the most amazing place in the world, down the street at center island is Billie Joel’s house.
Andrew: Are you saying that’s enough for you, don’t you aspire for more no?
Jackie: That’s the point, Billie Joel’s fortune off, and Barry the composer, the untold wealth here, the Rockefellers you name them, there is the pipe and rock country club, the Crip club is a mile down the road this is the wealthiest, this is the people that are so rich like the Baker estate, George Baker started Citi Bank. He was the guy that gave the money to the up starts to get going, the upstarts like Vanderbilt Shipping and Rockefeller Steel. He’s the guy that gave them the money.
Andrew: And they’re neighbors.
Jackie: I live in a million and a half dollar house. And I get depressed and people say how do you get depressed and I say, “People say how could you be depressed because you live better than 99.9% of the world’s population. How can you be depressed?” and I say, “Because the other point .01% are my freaking neighbors, okay? So you get intimidated.
I know exactly what you’re talking about, I didn’t do major things, I mean, Howard is at the top, the crème de la crème and I was three feet I was in three feet away from him but I wasn’t three feet away from him in the echelon.
I know how much I had to do with how big he got, and how funny he got. I talked to people that heard him in Washington DC and said, “You know what, when we heard him on DC, he was outrageous and funny, and once you started writing for him, he was funny and outrageous which sounds subtle but it’s a big difference.
If you could laugh at yourself and turn it around, some days just like with the bully, if you can make somebody laugh, people like to have you around. You know, like Howard was never self effaced and I’ll never forget when I first started in mornings he was complaining about something, and complaining about something. And I wrote a note and I can remember handing it to him and he took pause, but then he said it and you could almost see Fred and Robin gasp, because he hadn’t said anything like that before like he was complaining, complaining and all of a sudden I hit him a note he goes, “Walk a mile in my nose, Robin.”
We feeling funny but with it was self effacing and it was like, it popped the balloon and you start over. Andrew, I don’t mean to sound pompous, but I just telling, you know, where I’m coming from.
Andrew: And that would make me especially what I said at the time …
Jackie: People are doing so many things I know exactly what you are talking about.
Andrew: What I said at the top of the interview where he would get on the air and say, “You have to have a eye of the tiger, we have to,” I don’t remember how he phrased it. But we have to crush the competition, put down other people to get ahead and all that stuff, and you were there listening to this and taking this stuff in. You’ve got to feel like I’ve got to do the same thing too. Is there any other comedian in the planet who’s doing better than me. Eddie Murphy is not funnier than me, I’ve got, at least, I’ve got to beat him.
Jackie: I never had that kind of …
Andrew: No?
Jackie: I beat myself into the ground for so long. I was 31 when I started telling jokes. When I got on the Stern Show, when we went to mornings, I was 37 years old. That was my first paycheck. I was thrilled that you getting up at 4:30. Who cares? I was thrilled to be there. I was a comedian who got sleep in his own bed. It’s funny because like you talk about other people are doing better. My old friend, Rich Jenny, all of a sudden he gets a sitcom and I’m like son of a gun, look he’s got a sitcom and I’m stuck here but a year later his sitcom was canceled and we were in 10 extra markets.
So it was the tortoise and the hare, like John Mendoza got a show, and this guy got a show on and I loved all these guys. They were all my friends. And everybody was having their turn in the barrel, but my turn in the barrel was slow and steady wins the race and I could have been out of that show so many times, those three times I walked out, no there was one time I was gone for like six weeks. But it’s a very weird thing and I do see so many, I’m like how come this guy, everybody is in the movies but me but for 15 years I couldn’t do anything else. Physically, it’s not like they were calling and I was turning them down, but people say, “What would have done if you hadn’t run into Howard Stern. I would have run into somebody else.
I’d have kept sending those albums until I bumped into something. You never know. You don’t know the answer to that question, you know what I mean?
Andrew: The name the joke man, who gave that to you?
Jackie: That’s great. I started joke line. We started comedy on Long Island. I didn’t start in comedy on Long Island. When I started in comedy we started comedy. It was upstairs at a restaurant called Cinnamon in Huntington, and me and Shiviny [SP] put on a show and we’d have the comedians out from the city, and we pay them money and they’d had fun and meet girls and they were like thrilled, right? And then that grew into the East Side Comedy Club which was the first comedy club on Long Island and then on the East Coast except for the Improve and Catch a Rising Star. And it was a stand alone comedy club and all of a sudden the whole boom started.
We helped start the boom and I was like how are we going to get the people to our show at Cinnamon, and I got the bright idea which isn’t my idea at all. I’ll get a joke line, I’ll tell a joke, then I’ll say where we are going to be and then I’ll tell another joke. So I went and I asked for a certain … It’s a long story but I wound up with 516-9221, which is still going 36 years later. If somebody dials right now 516-922-9463, hello this is Jackie, thanks for using your finger this week I’m going to be at the Cutting Room in New York City on April Fool’s Day, blah, blah, blah and they tell a dirty joke.
So I started calling myself Jackie 9221 Martling and I too chose the governors and I’m Jackie 9221 Martling, Rick Dees in California was a famous disk jockey, and somebody had turned him onto 9221 and he was calling my joke line and recording the jokes and putting them on his weekly top 40 countdown. And so more story, but I’m not going to bore you with that.
But in 1979 the world was starting to change. All of a sudden it was HBO, and all of a sudden you are sitting in the living room watching television and there’s a pair of naked breasts on the television on HBO which sounds like nothing now but it was so foreign, and everything got a little naughtoer and a little naughtier so I started making 9221 dirtier and dirtier and dirtier. And one day Rick Dees called me and said, “Jackie, I have been stealing your jokes and giving you credit and putting them on my weekly top 40, but now they’re all too dirty. Can you do something clean jokes for me?”
I said okay. He said, “How about we say you are a mad man from New York who knows all the jokes and we’ll call you Jackie, the joke man, Martling. And I said fine. So the whole world thinks that Howard named me Jackie, the joke man, Martling and it was Rick Dees who was Howard’s polar opposite.
Andrew: You guys competed with and so when you heard the attacks against Rick Dees, how did you feel, the guy who gave you the name?
Jackie: Well, he named me that because he gave me that name because I was doing jokes for him. It was a business thing and it doesn’t matter what you say. People say, “How did you let Howard say the stuff on the air that you he used to you? And I would say you don’t understand, some of those things he saying to me, I’m writing. People can’t wrap their brain around here Howard, Jackie Martling is looking down, “Jackie, what kind of Moron are you?” it’s like it was theater it was all theater.
I’ll tell you when it got a little crazy, when he’d start talking about man cow’s father being dead and I want to have sex with his dead father’s skull. I wanted to hold up a note that said that everything that’s said on the show doesn’t represent the opinions of everybody in the room.
Andrew: That’s why you wanted to distance yourself. It wasn’t even the friendship that you had with Rick Dees, It was when it went in to somebody’s father dying?
Jackie: Well, it’s just a place that I wouldn’t go like but I didn’t fault him because he knew that was him. Whenever I start talking to him, I always said, I always tell people look and I don’t fault him because whatever he’s done to me or not done to me or given to me or not given to me, that’s the animal, that’s the animal he is.” You can’t have it both ways. The thing that made him that crazy eye of the tiger. You’ve got to have all the marbles, fight, fight, fight. I want it all. Step on this guy. That’s what got him where he is …
Andrew: That’s what it was and when you’re getting on the air, when he’s getting on the air and saying man cows, dad etc., that’s the inner hunger to beat the competition coming through. It’s not a show to get another few more listeners or to shock people into paying attention?
Jackie: All of the above.
Andrew: All of the above.
Jackie: I was hoping that people didn’t think I was writing his something to say. I want to have sex with his father’s skull, I mean that was not …
Andrew: Internally, when you guys were fighting for the ratings, when you guys were fighting to get more, what was that in those meetings like internally, how do we crush the competition, what was that like?
Jackie: We just come up with stupid idea after stupid idea. It was just be funnier and be wilder and come up with all kinds of crazy stuff. All roads led to Rome. It wasn’t like there was a plotted out plan, and it was funny because he would attack a guy and then we go to another markets and then after a certain amount of markets, you couldn’t attack everybody. So we kind of backed of because you couldn’t … there was too many other markets just like a spearhead.
Andrew: They were still confusing to keep track of all the people you guys were competing with. Who was he attacking today? Wait, what market was that? There was a guy in Cleveland, but what about the guy in this other city. Well, I don’t even know where that city is.
Jackie: Right, there was like it’s just stop because …
Andrew: But internally did you feel that way too?
Jackie: What’s that?
Andrew: Internally did you feel like we have to crush the competition? Why are we not working harder, why are we not writing more jokes, why is
…
Jackie: I never, in my mind, it was never about crushing the competition. In my mind it was the funnier we are and more entertaining we are that’s going to do the job.
Andrew: I see.
Jackie: But he knew how to go about it his way and I knew what I could contribute was making it funnier.
Andrew: There were daily writing sessions after each show too?
Jackie: For a long time, not toward the end we would just such a smooth operation. We just all walked in and sit down and he’d open his mouth and at 11:30 he’d shut up. I mean, it was, we were such a finely tuned mechanism that’s why everybody is mad at me for leaving but I didn’t leave I just wanted a little bit more of the pie. I didn’t want to break up the … they always made fun of me because like all this, the Beatles of radio, but Jesus we were the Beatles of radio.
We really were and I wanted to get paid more and it was like well, Jackie, you getting paid plenty, and it was like telling Ringo you are getting a lot of money. You are a drummer and you’re making a lot of money for a drummer. It’s like no, “I’m not a drummer, I’m the drummer in the Beatles.”
Andrew: I’m a Beatle, I need … So how much money did the show make? You were starting to say that at the top of the interview and I cut you off.
Jackie: I don’t know.
Andrew: You don’t know.
Jackie: They were just printing money, just printing money and at the beginning we would after the show, Howard would sit there. Me and Fred would sit there and a couple of people flowing in and out and if we had a guest they’d hang around for a few minutes.
Sometime Robin would hang around for few minutes, maybe the interns. But Howard would sit there and me and Fred would throw ideas and Howard write them down. We’d throw ideas and maybe we would come up with an idea for a song, or maybe me and Fred would bring in ideas for this and that and we’d sit there sometimes so, sometimes we wouldn’t sometimes we’d sit for 10 minutes, sometimes we would sit for an hour but it was a joy. It was a writing session but it was me, Howard, and Fred hanging out and laughing our balls off, you know what I mean?
It was just and telling stories and it’s really funny, Andrew, because we’d sit there and Howard would tell a story, and Fred would tell a story, and then I’d tell a story and it seem like those guys sat and watched television for their childhoods. And I was out being an idiot. So my stories would always trump them and I would be in a middle of one of my stories and I’d see Gary and Fed and Howard looking at each other, kind of rolling their eyes like there he goes again. The most famous stories I told on the air, they didn’t make it to the air.
For months and months I’d tell them a story and then it took them enough time of getting to know me to where they were like, you know what, I bet that story about throwing urine in his mother’s face is true which it absolutely was but when I told it, they are like oh boy you know, there he goes with another one of his whoppers and then it got to the point where they knew when I was telling a story I didn’t have to exaggerate. I wasn’t especially proud of my stories, but they were things that really happened. So the way the whole thing developed it was just, it was story book. Really story book it just …
Andrew: It really was.
Jackie: It was Dorothy on the way to Oz. Howard got Fred, and then he got Robin and then he got me, and then Gary and then John it’s … I was surprises that nobody ever said why don’t we make a movie where it’s the wizard of radio.
Andrew: Kind of did, “Private Parts” was like that. By the way, I see that more sun is coming in your face. Do you want to tilt your computer a bit?
Jackie: You tell me.
Andrew: Yeah let’s do it, let’s tilt it out, I want you to feel comfortable.
Jackie: No, you don’t know what it’s like. It was seven degrees here two days ago so the sun couldn’t be more welcome where I am. Is that better?
Andrew: Yeah, oh that’s great, that’s fantastic. So what are you up to now?
Jackie: We have a meeting tomorrow because we are going to create the joke land screaming streaming podcast. We are going to video tape, audio tape and just I have a couple of guest bedrooms and we are on the North Shore of Long Island and this is a beautiful home, and a great place to hang out. And we are going to have dinners and parties and video tape everything and do a podcast broadcast. We don’t know exactly what we are going to do, but we are going to try …
Andrew: But you are trying to create your own podcast too?
Jackie: Right and so I own my content. And it’s funny, I don’t know what’s exactly happening but my comedy star is kind of going up again. It’s like kind of Henny Youngman like people made fun of him and made fun of him and also all of a sudden one day people were like wow that guy is really funny. Like I have been in a bad show for 40 years. I’ve just been killing audiences with these stupid jokes.
And I love them and people love them, and all of a sudden, you know, kids are hearing the jokes on Pandora and Spotify and I’m serious 99 road and it’s like 23 year old kids like emailing me saying who the hell are you. My father never told me about you or my grandfather never told me about you. So because the jokes are the jokes, you know, I was laughing at these jokes when I was 12 years old. So I’ve done a little bit of a resurgence, so I’m getting some gigs that are really, really fun. I was just out in Las Vegas at the South Point for Super Bowl weekend and it was me Bobby Slayto and it was just like it was like the old days at the rib. I mean, we were killing and hanging out. No, Andrew, there were no groupies. [laughs]
Andrew: I don’t buy that.
Jackie: You shouldn’t.
Andrew: You know why I don’t buy it because I remember being an awkward Internet guy going to Vegas. And oh actually I never sex in Vegas with anyone there either, but women were interested in me. I didn’t even know what to do with it.
Jackie: You didn’t know how to pull the trigger?
Andrew: Yes, so that’s why I say look you are up a guy who’s up on stage. Any performer anyone who can speak comfortably anyone who’s had the experience that you’ve had, must have tons of women coming to you.
Jackie: I’m up there telling filthy jokes. You know what? I’m going to send you pictures after my next show. I’m going to send you the pictures of the people that came up and like, hey you want to go for a beer?
Andrew: Okay, all right. I’d like to see that.
Jackie: And the pretty ones are not there alone.
Andrew: Makes sense, plus it sounds like you are not going clubbing afterwards.
Jackie: No, but I did it. You start playing guitars so you meet girls. Or meet more girls or meet a better class of girls, you know. The day you put down your guitar, you might as well slice off your Johnson at this point in time.
Andrew: So the podcast is going to happen from your place, you’re self-publishing it. You are not going, I don’t understand some of these publishing networks, they give you nothing. They …
Jackie: Yeah, that makes no sense, especially in this day and age. What’s so funny is I was the king of the home grown. Nowadays you can’t go to a comedy show where the comedian doesn’t sell his CDs or his albums or something. I was the first guy that ever did that. Because I worked in a recording studio in the 70s and I was only in comedy for six months. There was no such thing as a comedy club yet. And this bar where we promoted these shows, I recorded my first album on a cassette player in a bar room.
And my album came out six months later and I’m standing there. The guys would make fun of me because I’d be standing and working my albums. And all of a sudden one day you could hear them go like, wait a minute, we made $40 a piece tonight and Martling made an extra 75 because he sold 15 albums and also …
Andrew: Where did you get the guts to do that, that actually that people laugh at that? Or they did on the show but that takes guts to take yourself off the stage, where most people are nervous anyway and to stand out there and say, now I want to sell you something. Now this guy who you had this vision of greatness for is going to try to get money from you. That takes a lot of guts.
Jackie: Well, let me tell you where I was coming from. I’ve always told jokes, I’ve heard them, repeated them, hones them down and when I’m telling you a joke I’m not telling you a joke because I want you to hand me a quarter. I’m telling you a joke because I want to make you laugh. But you …
Andrew: But you are not handing them CDs, or records or whatever, you are selling it that and that takes guts, doesn’t it?
Jackie: Well, I’m telling you jokes and the dirtier and crazy and fast as they are is like punching you in the stomach. If I can make you guffaw that makes me very happy. And the idea of sharing these jokes is a great thing so I’d always done it my whole life. So all of sudden I’m on stage. I came home one night from the bar room, and I said to my girlfriend, I said, “They laughed at every single joke. I should make an album.” And she goes, “Yeah, you should make an album. Why don’t you do it?”
So I did it and I borrowed a $100 from 15 different people, took my class picture with me giving the finger in eighth grade and chopped it up, edited it, put the whole thing together, sent it to Nashville. When I went to pick up my albums at Port Authority, you would have thought I was picking up my triplets, right? And I was so excited but to me when I was selling my albums I wasn’t saying take Jackie home with you. It was take these jokes home with you. I don’t know if that was a conscious thing but it wasn’t like here take home a picture of me. Do you want to want an autographed picture? It was like, you know, because people say God, those jokes are so great, I wish I could remember some of them and here is an album full of them so it wasn’t like …
Andrew: It just didn’t feel to you like something that was awkward or should have made you nervous. You just felt comfortable with it?
Jackie: It took me 30 years to collect these jokes and I’m handing you the best of what I got for five bucks on a record. I did all the work, all you got to do … and people loved to take something home and sometimes they would ask you the other comedians to sign them too. After they’d just gotten done goofing on me, you’d see how much they’d light up signing their name because they …
Andrew: You know what I do see today when I leave a comedy club or leave the show within a comedy club, there is a guy often standing there with his CDs and I’ve never seen them feel confident about it. I’ve never seen them say, “Hey, I’m selling this.” It’s almost like if you look their way then they hint that they are selling and then they maybe show one to you and hope that you say are you selling it can I give you my money, which doesn’t happen.
Jackie: Do you want to hear the 180 degrees to that?
Andrew: Yeah, what’s that?
Jackie: When I do my show, at the end of my show, I play stump the joke man, stump the joke man t-shirts.
Andrew: Yep, I know it.
Jackie: I bring girls up on stage and I insult them and talk to them and have fun with them. Then I play with the guys. The guys raise their hands, ask a joke I say the answer and if I don’t know the answer, they get the shirt and it’s always fun, and always funny. And I’ll do the girls and if there is four girls on the stage, what’s your joke blah, bah, blah what’s your joke, blah, blah, blah, what’s your joke and I get to the last girl, I hand them all CDs or DVDs, hand the last girl a microphone and I say, “Stand there” and I pick up my bags and they say, “What are you doing,” and I say “I’m going to the back of the room, so I can be standing there when the show is over.”
So these people can feel guilty walking past me if they don’t buy something.” I turn it, I put it right in their face, and I go out there. The girl yells the joke, I yell a punch line. I yell good night and the people scream and they come walking past me but they’re not intimidated. They shake hands, they take a picture. Sometimes they buy, sometimes they don’t.
Andrew: So you make it part of the act?
Jackie: But I don’t have any qualms about it you won’t buy something but here I am.
Andrew: Oh, that’s cool. All right. So the podcast I’m guessing it will be on jokeland.com?
Jackie: Yeah and we are going to scream it from the rooftops because I know a lot of people. Radio stations love that music guest because they all want to ask questions about the Howard Stern show and as you can see I’m always willing to talk about it. I don’t think …
Andrew: I love that you are out there talking. Frankly I don’t listen to radio any more, I listen to podcasts, I hear you on podcasts. I’m into it.
Jackie: It’s so fun I’ve done I did Penn Jillett’s the other day with Bobby Slayton. I did Louie Anderson’s. I had Anthony come here from Open Anthony. He offered me my own show on his channel, but I said, you know what? It makes no sense go to work for somebody else. There’s a lot of great, great podcasts out there and the guys are all so funny.
Andrew: Yeah and then you go, you become a guest on all the other joke podcasts the comedy podcasts. They always will refer back to you and your show. You’ll get people to come and watch and listen, Actually you are not going to do video, you are going to do audio, right?
Jackie: We’ll do both but it’s incestuous because everybody helps everybody because once you listen … I worked today for two hours and all I could hear is the thing which is just amazing.
Andrew: It’s really good.
Jackie: And then Radio Lab and This American Life and Kevin Pollock is amazing and there’s just so many great ones, just so many great ones and I want to be part of it because it’s so funny. I’m listening to Kevin Pollock and it’s so interesting and he’s interviewing Billy Bob Thornton. And Billy Bob is telling a story about when he was a waiter and how he was waiting on just the creme, the creme of Hollywood, by accident and Billy Wilder says to him, so you want to be an actor, and he goes, “Yeah how did you know?” He said, “Well, you are a waiter in Hollywood.” Billy Wilder took a shine to him and took him to some thing where he won an award.
And he said Billy Wilder didn’t … he went to the microphone and he didn’t even thank anybody. All he said was … and then Billy Bob just told the joke that Billy Wilder had told. And it was a simple mundane joke like I must have heard 40 years ago and everybody in Kevin’s room went crazy because everybody loves a joke and that just cemented, you know, like and there so many stories about him. So ye, it’s going to be a great podcast, great fun and we are going to get people from my twitter, tell them my twitter, my friend.
Andrew: Twitter is @jackiemartling and it’s J-A-C-K-I-E M-A-R-T-L-I-N-G.
Jackie: Everyday at 4:20. That would be very off color. You know, what’s really fun, Andrew, is a lot of these one liners, it’s simple. When you take a long joke and you cram it into 140 characters, that’s a great challenge. I really get a kick out of it.
Andrew: Yeah, I like how quick it is, I can go in and I can read a bunch of them right now and anyone who’s listening who’s not actually frankly if you usually offended, then go check it out especially because you need to loosen up.
Jackie: Last thing, if people love jokes and you want to come see it great dirty jokes show, all you have to do is email me and you’ll get an email full of filthy jokes one or twice a month and it’s jokeland@aol.com. Everybody else but me is with AOL. So why don’t you join into the fracas.
Andrew: I would you say you’re the last person to still have an AOL account, but it makes it easy to remember jokeland@aol.com.
Jackie: I know I’m long winded, but I had a great time talking to you.
Andrew: I love it. I could have you back on every week, I can see you why Rick Dees would want you to continue, I could see why Howard Stern had you continue and continue and continue …
Jackie: I’ll tell you the longer story about Rick Dees then, and I’ll tell you some more crazy stories. I wrote my book but I’m haven’t published it yet, and also what is it? KATG, Keith and the girl your sister’s podcast.
Andrew: My sister’s stuff yeah.
Jackie: Her podcast, I had so much fun with them too. So I want to throw all of them an applaud.
Andrew: I heard you on there, it was fantastic.
Jackie: Khemda.
Andrew: Khemda.
Jackie: Khemda.
Andrew: That’s her name.
Jackie: Andrew, thank you so much, man.
Andrew: Thank you so much for being here. I’m going to say it one more time, to close it out go to Jokeland.com. Thank you all for being a part of it, and I would even recommend I always say go and email the person who I’ve talked to and say thank you. Jackie is so freaking accessible surprising and there he’s got 9221 mug up on his screen. All right. Thank you for doing this, Jackie. Thank you all for being a part of it. Bye everyone.
