Tommy Chong

0:03Hey, Matt. Hey Tommy, how are you doing? Good good. Just sitting here, you know enjoying the weather. Enjoying the weather. Where are you right now? Well, actually. Ah, California. Yeah, I guess that would probably be the only place for you. No, no, I like I like I like going places, but I definitely like living here. I was just thinking more of the legalized well pretty much legalized Well British Columbia is pretty legal too, you know Well, yeah, not not as I guess officially though. Well, they're not knowing officially even here, you know It's just that it's really a don't-ass don't tell policy. Hey, I was walking down Venice Beach I have nothing wrong with me and I was offered 30 licenses in this in the span of five minutes. Oh easy

0:50Yeah, I mean that's what dealers do when they have to do it And we'll talk all about that in a little bit But I want it because you guys are playing a show Saturday here at the River Cree for those who know you as you know The activists the movie stars that 70s show. What is it? Cheech and Chong show like in person? Well, Cheech and Chong, you know, we go back with When we had records, you know back in the dinosaur days We had a record there were black vinyl things that you played on a machine that really don't exist anymore They're coming back a little bit though. Yeah, yeah, well, you know the The DJ's use them right but we We've been together, you know, we were together like 15 years from 1969 on through to 85 and then we broke up and

1:39now we're back and We've this is our second tour. We've been out once already You know when you're already and then this is our last tour and so we decided to Do bits that everybody would ask us to do and we've never done You know the request Dave's not here Santa Claus and his old lady and Harry Palms, you know the world's masturbation champion And so there's a lot of It's it's just crazy Cheech and Chong humor. That's what that's what the show is all about But you guys played music too, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, and it's funny funny songs, you know basketball Jones and You know hits that we had you know, I think we're one of the only meaty comedy group that had like Bonafide hit hit you know original hit songs and

2:28like Me and my old lady we do that one and our big hit was co-written by a gay tolorm who was an Edmonton native Well as are you are you not? Yeah, well, I was born in Edmonton, but I was kind of raised in Calgary and I grew up You know and I moved to Vancouver, so I'm a Canadian for sure. Mm-hmm How did how did what did moving to Vancouver do for you? How did that get you into show Biscum assuming? That's where we started Well, actually you're starting Calgary. Oh, we got kicked out of Calgary by the mayor and by the chief of police Who's we? The group called the shades that Calgary shades. Okay, and we had a teen club. It was amazing, you know

3:15Back there. I was sort of an activist that you know even when I was a kid and I formed a teen club And it was really a clever way to to get away with a lot of stuff What is a teen club? What do you mean by that? Well a teen club. It was like a nonprofit Organization where it was formed by the boys clubs of America to promote Teen activities, okay Which in our case was dancing and so when when the dancers got really the dancers themselves weren't rowdy It was that the kids would gather at our dance and then after the dance was over they would go terrorize the city Of course, they would like go to where girls were babysitting you know And there'd be maybe a hundred of them show up and tear the house apart

4:03You know that kind of stuff that kind of activities and so the police were trying to shut us down But they couldn't shut it shut down the teen club because we're a chartered club You know they'd have to go to court and and they'd have to show cause you know why we were a threat and we weren't So what the city did they did the next best thing they ran the band at a town They just told us you better leave town and if you don't leave town we'll make you wish you had of and so So we had to leave town and so we did when went to Vancouver and Vancouver That's where I got my street cred And you brought I cantina to Vancouver is that right? Yeah, we did we did we had a we had another club there called the blue Palace and we opened it with I cantina Turner on a Tuesday night and we got the whole review for

4:54$750 Incredible you were a serious musician back then Yeah, I still am but I was you know I found out that I'm a better comedian than I am a guitar player Well, you say you still are how come you know you don't put out records then Or do you and people still know about them first of all there's no records. Yeah, okay mp3 singles and no, I I'm a Comedian that can play guitar. That's what I like to build myself at. Okay. No, there. There are a lot of good There's too much good music out there now for me to come in there Although I am flirting with the idea now of of doing up my music like an art project Oh interesting also an artist too. What kind of art painting sculpting everything? Okay, anything and

5:43Photographs more more I lean on the photographs although I'm getting into painting because I love it. It's easy, you know I hear it's very therapeutic too. Oh very to all incredible. Oh, yeah Who's the way it does it gives you things to do while you're really high, you know And we'll get to that though. Don't you worry? Yeah, I want but I'm fascinated by the by the heyday of your music career because you knew everybody Yes, I got to meet everybody. I think one of my biggest accomplishments was sitting Almost on top of Westmont gummies guitar amp Mm-hmm, and he played in a club in Vancouver where everybody was passed out except me and I think the waitress and And West had to play another set and so he literally played the set for me because I was

6:34That was still standing Everybody else is kind of like you know a lot of junkies in Vancouver and so it was a really late at night And it was his last set and I set and he played a whole hour with me Sitting right in front of him and talking in between songs So I got a guard left and and a concert from Westmont gummy How did that evolve into teaching strong? How did how did music and I guess evolve into comedy? well, I My first band was mostly black guys from Calgary, you know Bernie Snead Tommy Milton and we The black culture and it was very small but great in Calgary a lot of dancing we went to dances a lot

7:23That's why I met him. I was a dancer, you know, jive, you know the Lindy hop kind of dance answer and And I had a black girl partner Edie Walton and and we were dancing winning dance contest and then Tommy Milton the Football he was a football star at the time for the Bronx and he was going to go on to play pro But he heard his knee he was a singer and so he found out I played guitar and so we hooked up and we put a band together It was the first R&B, you know rhythm and blues band in in Alberta and probably in Canada And we played music that no one heard in Calgary or Edmonton before you know It was called race music at the time. It was bow diddley and yeah, what year was this it was back in 55 oh wow

8:15Yeah, 55 56 and then We had a band by 57. We had a band and then we got run out of town 58 the rest of the time in Vancouver, you know practicing, you know doing our band doing we were a show band more than a Dance band like we did tricks like Tommy could do the splits and flips and And we danced around and I played the guitar behind my back and Bernie put his foot up on the piano like little Richard All of crazy show stuff And so so our music and that's how I got into comedy because you know with it with the black guys You know the white guys were always serious, you know, they're always looking either to eat or to fight And they were like, you know the you know, there was always they took everything serious black guys

9:07We're always about laughing and fun and dancing and they could fight But they never they didn't like to fight because they were you know, they were like most of them like Tommy was a trained Boxer, so you know legally he couldn't fight right and Bernie and you know Bernie was a bodybuilder and it was a fun band but we We just and and laughed at each other and that's how we we dealt with, you know the racial Tripsion like if someone came down on us because of our color or you know ethnicity. We would laugh it would be funny You know and and I just when teaching I got together. I just transferred that you know what I learned and you know as a blues musician into

9:57Stage and it just worked out great. How did you meet him? Cheech was up in Canada during the Vietnam War Now a lot of people would say say he was a draft archer, but he was really up there He was part of a secret army that was up there just in case of Viet Kong attack from Alaska Really? Yeah, and you know the secret army hung out in bars a lot. Yeah, I had a topless bar Where I was doing comedy, you know I turned a topless nightclub into into a Improvisational nightclub with with the girls getting naked, you know at the end of the for the joke and Allarious joke and I had a straight man, but his wife like I hired real actors because they're so inexpensive and they

10:46And then the wife of one actor found out what he was doing is she made him quit He was a church going amazing. Yeah, she didn't run around all these naked women and so I was looking for a straight man and mutual friend suggested this little Chicano and Longcome Cheech and at the time I didn't know what a Mexican was you know He was the first Mexican I'd ever met you know, how did um, how did the act become so weed centric? The audience the audience, you know when we first got together We did a lot of ass jokes and a lot of sex jokes and you know because we had uh we had to entertain, you know bikers and that kind of crowd and then we came down to LA and

11:33Everybody was you know, it's the 60s and everybody was into smoking weed and you know Woodstock had just happened and you know Hendricks was happening so So it was just natural that we started doing bits, you know about weed It really started when Cheech discovered the lowrider character We were in a club one night and it was a dance club And so the dancers weren't that happy that we were going to stop them from dancing so we could do our show And so we never had that receptive audience. We were used to them. So we had to work and And we had to do two shows in that one night and so the second show I was telling Cheech I said come on, man, you look you're from here. There must be a character. We can do that these people will you know go crazy over and

12:23He said well, there's one but you know, you know, and I said why he was kind of you know detrimental to the you know Do the Mexicans and I thought that's our job And so he did that lowrider and it just changed it became our signature bit and It was about you know, you know, lowrider getting high with a hippie an old donor hippie And that just took off and that became our centerpiece from that From that point on that was our that was our identity What has impressed me most we've been talking about 10 minutes now your memory Considering everything I hear about how we'd affects the memory your memory is still dead on Yeah, it is. Well, you know I'll forget I'll meet someone one day and I'll forget him the next morning, you know, right?

13:13But I think that's most people but I can know I can recall well, you know, everything that happened to us was so special You know, it was so monumental. I mean like I played with Hendrix that you played with Hendrix Yeah, we we he came and sat in We had a band I was when I was with Motown. I went we went to England to back up Chris Clark This female singer girlfriend of Barry Gordy's And while we were there we played a set on our own in this little little club and the club was empty It's speaking to you was called and the club was empty and then the doors opened and income Hendrix and he had about maybe a hundred people behind him follow he was like the pipe-piper and

14:00He walked in and he walked up to the stage and he said hey Tom and like he knew me From from Seattle like he used he I didn't know it at the time But he would come up from Seattle to Vancouver to hear our band and yeah He was a paratrooper one time and in the service and so he knew us and so he said hey you might have by sit in This is Jimmy Andrew You mind about sit in and I just had the urge you know like in Vancouver You know we used to tell the guys the one that sit in how maybe the next yeah last set Yeah, I felt like saying sure Jim but the last thing you can come in the encore if you want yeah But I of course I handed him my guitar and he's the left hand of guitar players So he said let me play bass and so he played bass instead and so I actually played guitar with

14:48Henry's playing bass that's insane. It's my backup. Come on Jimmy It's in he driving a little harder, bud. Yeah. Yeah, come on a little louder. Can't hear you We had fun and then I met you know all sorts of people you know my career It's I just been blessed, you know, I just really blessed Were you ever nervous about being a poster boy from marijuana? Did it ever scare you? I guess in recent years? It's kind of done some things but opposite I purposely wanted to become a poster boy for marijuana simply because I know I'm right You know what do you mean when you say you know you're right wait for people who who need to hear you say it? What what do you mean? Well, you know years, you know the marijuana laws

15:35With the racist law in the beginning First of all the Constitution of the United States was written by potheads and they wrote it in such a way that That you weren't supposed to make marijuana illegal, you know, it was it was a crop that that You had to grow it, you know, everybody was told to grow hemp, you know, and which is pot and And so when they come up with this stupid law in in the you know in the 30s my birthday by the way 38 What they were trying to do was get it off the market so that the petroleum companies You know the the chemical companies could take over the rope in in fabric industry Interesting

16:21You know subsequently did you know canvas Get his name from cannabis That's where the word canvas came from hmm. Yes canvas was made by the cannabis plant, right? the blue jeans You know rope all the rope in the Navy's all the Navy's around the world Rope was more important back in those days than then oil Does it make sense? Everything was under sale and so you needed hemp for the sales you needed hemp for the rope And so the oil companies in that you know, they were coming up to this fabric in this rope that was inferior, but They couldn't compete with hemp and so her also wanted hemp off the of the

17:10market because His newspapers were using forest, you know blocks of force that he owned and And you know and hemp made the best paper always did always well And you know everything was written on you know first Bible is written on hemp the first The Constitution was written on hemp. It was it was a perfect product and so they wanted to Demonize it and so when they found a way to demonize it using the marijuana You using the Mexican term for hemp marijuana then they could demonize it, you know They could bring you know saying that that hemp or marijuana made black guys horny for white women

17:56And they use the same line with cocaine and heroin You know to make those drugs illegal same same racist fears And this is back in the 30s, you know when it was illegal to be black So that's that's why it got illegal now went something is made illegal and then society sort of forms Like a like a wound, you know, they sort of formed the callus around the wound It's very very tough to change that law because racism still exists in America You know big time, you know, it's gone down, but it's still there. No, it's still there. That's for sure Yeah, and so so And it was a perfect hemp or marijuana was a perfect scapegoat for for right-wing idolato

18:42The these guys that want to start wars, you know, and so so that's where the hippies, you know You know they they would protest the Vietnam War for instance and and they would be the pot smoking hippies Mm-hmm and so they demonized it that way and and Canada's one of the worst, you know for demonizing People, you know, because they follow the United States lead. Yeah, we almost had it. We almost had it our last prime minister Yeah Coachean yeah, I read a quote of him saying he can't wait for the day when he's old and retired and gets a smoke of joint miss balcony Yeah, yeah, no everybody that retires, you know everybody smokes it But it but it's a political bomb, you know like Jerry Brown in California

19:27He was the one that decriminalized it to the point where it was just a misdemeanor to have pot and now he's the governor of California And before that the attorney general of California and he was against legalization Because it's a political suicide if you if you open, you know, if you go for it What do you think the right answer is to decriminalize a legalize? Oh I had to leave it alone just decriminalize it. Just leave it alone It's so it's a weed you can't control it and then what tax it and make money and sell it in stores like they do alcohol Well, well another thing is you get your taxes From the effects apart like I don't know if you've ever gone shopping high, but you will buy anything You will consume, you know, you'll eat you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you'll hear a record

20:16You'll have to buy it, you know, so there's many Positive aspects of it. No leave it alone. First of all, it's a medicine It's a proven medicine and from China for five thousand years, you know They've been using it as a medicine in China and India and all the all the you know places where they have Civilizations been around forever. It's a medicine and treat it as a medicine, you know if someone comes up with a cute package And they want to sell it Commercially and you can get your business tax so be it but save your money on the law enforcement savings and the jails You know, that's where you save money, you know, because right now They're spending billions of dollars building new jails and putting people in jail and taking them off the streets and you know

21:06Porting them on welfare. So leave it alone. Just it's a weed Hmm do you think treat it treat it like it is do you think it should just be pot that's decriminalized or more drugs? Well Yeah, I mean if you if you really want to you know be civilized you do what they do in other countries, you know, like where they tried You know having a heroin Situation like in Amsterdam and Spain and so in some respects Canada, you know the Canada has you know needles You'll exchange but it's still the heroin problem is very sad because that's It's like the cigarette problem, you know, it's an addictive It's an addiction that you cannot you cannot break. It's very hard alcoholism is a real real

21:58drain on society and on cultures You don't think there's any addiction to marijuana There's what they call psychological addiction, but I mean you can there's more addiction to sugar than there is to marijuana You know, there's more addiction to salt. There's more addiction to Running yeah people have to get up running the middle of a winner. There's more addiction to To adrenaline, you know like that's what gambling is gambling is an adrenaline addiction Don't know marijuana is is a medicine you can't sure you can know There are people that you know have to go to clinics to get rid of their marijuana habit But they're the in and out so fast. It's a joke because it can be out of your system

22:45You know a week like I was in jail and I'm gonna say what's the longest you've gone? I've gone three years without okay now or or in the past in the past I went through you know the year be I got busted and then for the year that year it took a year for me I went to go to court and everything and then The year or nine months I was in jail I never smoked and then a year after that. I never smoked. How come you didn't want to when you came out were you scared? Well go back out on probation And if I had violated the drug test they drug test me every time I went in For my meeting and if I if I violated it, I'd have to go back to jail for a year You know so so no

23:31It was and I wanted to make a point I wanted to prove that yeah And I flourished by the way when I quit it was good. It was good for me. So how come your I assume you're back on it? Yeah, oh yeah, totally So when you said you flourished how come you don't want to continue flourishing that way well because I can still live the lifestyle I in fact I can flourish even more You know I you flourish in jail. You don't want you personally you don't want to be I am me anyway personally. I wanted to be aware of everything that went on in jail, you know because I'm a writer I used to do a Retreat basically religious retreat I got into a lot of spiritual books And I studied, you know like the sweat lodge of the Lakota Sioux right

24:21studied metaphysics with You know with different guys Emmet Parks Joe Goldsmith and And and you know and when you're into that world It's best that you are totally clear of everything and then went but once I got out and I got into my heart And it was like whoa here we go This is fun. Hold on just a minute. Yeah So I'll just wrap it up. We do something on the show call five questions five quick questions one more answers Okay, got you What do you prefer acting or stand up? Stand up Lenin or McCartney What's more important in comedy timing or the punchline? timing Your favorite term for marijuana a

25:07Changer Well, I guess it's named after you I couldn't be and in one word Tommy Chong