Right now, I'm thinking in terms of just having a good band, man. Having a good act for the stage. Being a good performer, you know? Connected to that is future recordings, and future tunes, that kind of stuff.
People who know my stage act know it's nothing but pushing boundaries.
I have what we call a 'symphony act.' I'm the only comedian, I think, in the country that does it.
Actually, because I'm so small, when I strike an open A chord I get physically thrown to the left, and when I play an open G chord I go right. That's how hard I play, and that's how a lot of my stage act has come about. I just go where the guitar takes me.
I have an act I take on the road. That's what saved me. I dont know how most actors make a living.
I was doing a bit that stupid people should be slapped. But the more I did it, the more I didn't like that connotation, the violence and all that. The more I thought about it, I thought they should just wear signs. And, man, it just took off.
Actually, I'm getting one made up with eight necks and I'm going to get a wheelwright to make a big rim around it and then I can do cartwheels off the stage.
My act's not heavy on pop culture or stories, just lots of jokes.
We have a portion of our show where we ask everybody to get up and do the Temptation Walk. People 8 to 80 know how to do that Temptation Walk.
I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.
I'm not a bleeding-heart feminist, but I do like to call out that stuff in my act. It's nice when you find a perspective that no one has hit on.
I like to do the splits onstage.
I'm gonna perform on one of the nights. Good clean fun; we're not going to jail. For the record.
I realized sometime in the early '80s that if I didn't do something - like planning for the future in a way, a kind of pension or something - that if I didn't do something there and then, I was going to be condemned to forever present my three years as a pop star, condensed, as a stage act for the rest of my life. Because that's normally what happens to people in the pop business.
