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Lenny Interviews Dennis Miller

When you think of comedians, you usually think of a funny guy or gal who makes you laugh — and you’d be right. But when it comes to Dennis Miller, who will be appearing at The Orleans May 15-17, the reaction to him ranges from laughter to downright anger. The reason for the anger is his political views that have changed over the years from liberal to conservative, although he clarifies that by saying, “Not on every issue.”

But whether you like him or not, he’s a very funny guy who makes you think. I caught up with him last week after his radio show, a three-hour nationally syndicated talk show that just celebrated its second anniversary and which is now heard on 224 stations in the U.S.  Miller says, “I didn’t know quite what to make of it at first, but I love it and I find it cathartic. It’s the same stuff I used to tell a shrink for $200 an hour. I hope it’s the last job I’ll ever have. I’ve certainly had my ups and downs, sideways and diagonal in show business. I never know, but I’m enjoying it immensely.”

You would think doing a daily show would restrict him from pursuing other things, like his gig at The Orleans, but Miller says it really has no effect.

“There’s a studio in every city in America and I can go there in the morning and do the show, then I do an hour at night. Listen, I’ve had two gigs that took 12 hours a day at times in my life when I was in the real world, so when people ask me what it’s like to talk for three hours, then go on stage for an hour at night, I look at it as just four hours total.”

With his appearances on FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly show, Miller has become known as much for his political commentary as his comedy. He says that came about over time.

“I started out as a comedian who told more of a general nature of jokes, but then I got onto Saturday Night Live and that moved me into the topical joke forum. Then I guess the political stuff really came into prominence after 9/11 and people saw that my politics had changed on a couple of things, mainly the need to preemptively croak radical terrorists,” who he says, are the greatest threat to the world today.

“When it comes down to it, at the end of the road, if you ask people are they more afraid of global warming than radical Islamic terrorists, I think I know what the answer will be. Global warming is like a hurricane coming. You at least get a warning, where as radical Islamic terrorism is like an earthquake. It happens — like that. You never know when it’s coming. I’ve always been more afraid of earthquakes than I have of hurricanes.”

Miller also is known for his vocabulary and his obscure references. I asked him where his love and knowledge of language came from. “When I was young, my mom told me to look up a word a day and that stuck with me. You know, it’s funny how things so basic can help you through life. I remember at the time, thinking, ‘what’s that gonna do?’ But it allowed me to make a living.”

Another path in life saw Miller signed to be an NFL commentator on ABC’s Monday Night Football, co-anchoring with football great Dan Fouts. “We lasted two seasons. It seemed like half the country hated my guts and half liked me and I was fine with that. I’ve never been an across-the-board purchase for mainstream America. I tried my best. I had fun.

“But I remember when Madden left FOX, I said to Dan, ‘I bet we get fired today,’ even though we had just signed for a third year. I knew that if Madden wanted the job, he’d get it. Sure enough, eight hours later, we were gone. But I’m a fatalist about show business. I’m kind of like G. Gordon Liddy” he says laughing. “Just tell me what corner you want me on if you’re gonna whack me. I don’t want any innocents getting hit in the crossfire.”

Miller has never let any grass grow under his feet. Along with the above-mentioned achievements, he was also the Weekend Update correspondent on Saturday Night Live for six years, before exiting in 1991. He has also been cast in films, usually in dramatic roles, most notably in 1994’s Disclosure, 1995’s The Net, and 1996’s Murder at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

He is a five-time Emmy-award winner for his critically acclaimed half-hour, live talk show, Dennis Miller Live, which had a nine year run on HBO and was the host and executive producer of CNBC’s Dennis Miller, a topical interview talk show.

Miller also distinguished himself as an author, publishing the four editions of his popular rants — The Rant Zone, now out in paperback and  I Rant Therefore I Am; Ranting Again and The Rants, all making The New York Times best sellers list.

Despite how busy he is, Miller has taken the time to become the spokesman for USACares, an organization that is involved in the quality of life issues of military personnel.

“Say a veteran or soldier is going to lose his house, for instance, they step in. USACares looks at specific needs of our military men and women, to see who needs help. I don’t get involved with that process. I’m just the front man for them. They do a great job and 90 cents out of each dollar goes directly to a veteran to help him/her in a specific situation at that point in their lives. It’s a great organization and I’m proud to be part of it. And everyone can help by going to USACares.org.

Miller has been married for 20 years to a former model and they have two boys. He attributes the longevity of his marriage to “picking the most beautiful, sexy woman I’d ever seen in my life who turned out to the nicest too. So you can’t go wrong with that as a starting point.”

If you want to see more of Dennis Miller, all seven of his HBO Comedy Specials are available on DVD from Standing Room Only Entertainment, in this complete Collector’s Edition 3-DVD Set. Dennis Miller: The HBO Specials is now on sale for a suggested retail price of $29.99.

Lenny Interviews Engelbert Humperdinck

Engelbert Humperdinck

(Engelbert Humperdinck will be appearing at The Orleans June 11-14.)

When you were a kid growing up in Leiscester, England, did you ever dream you would be where you are today?
I had my dreams but never realized the magnitude it would get to, but as a kid you always dream and I was always a dreamer.

You started out playing the saxophone. Do you still play?
I dabble a little bit. I actually got quite good because I played from age 11 to 17. I still own a sax but I drive everyone around the house crazy when I play it.  I also know chords on piano which helps a lot when I’m writing music.

Have you always been interested in writing?
Yes, and I’ve recorded quite a few songs I’ve written, but I never really got into the writing to a point where I wanted to write all my songs. I rather like recording other people’s material, because I can interpret it in my own specific way.

How do you go about choosing material for a show?
Choosing material for a show is a very difficult task. It takes me a few weeks  to make the selections before I begin a tour. I will include a few songs I have not recorded just to see how the audience will react. It works great and I think it’s important to do that to give them a little change.

When you were 25 you contracted tuberculosis, which really put you on your ass and halted your career. How did you cope?
I didn’t know anything about TB at the time so didn’t realize the seriousness of it. One day a priest visited me and said a few prayers, which I thought was nice of him to do. Later, I told my mother about it and she said, ’Son, he was giving you the last rites.’  It was a long recovery. I was supposed to stay on my back for six months in the hospital, but I would get out of bed and go to a room they had for people to relax and in it there was a piano that I’d play. But it was a very long recovery and hurt my career, because at the time, I’d made quite a name for myself in England under my own name Gerry Dorsey and even had my own TV show.

It was after your recovery that you changed your name to Engelbert Humperdinck. How did that come about?
What happened was that when I recovered I went to see record agents and producers and no-one was interested in me because of the TB. They thought they’d be taking a big chance on hiring me. But Gordon Mills, my manager,  was a very persuasive man. I’d written a song called Stay at the time and we went to the studio and recorded it. Gordon took it to Decca Records where he’d already signed up Tom Jones and said, ‘I’ve got a guy here who is going to be as big as Tom Jones. His name is Gerry Dorsey. ‘Oh, we know about him, he’s old hat’ they said, so Gordon left, changed the name to Engelbert Humperdinck after a German composer, and after listening to the record, they signed me up immediately. So there you go, ass they say, ‘What’s in a name?’

You once told a writer for the Hollywood Reporter, and I quote: “If you are not a crooner, it’s something you don’t want to be called. No crooner has the range I have. I can hit notes a bank couldn’t cash. What I am is a contemporary singer, a stylized performer.” Brash words. Do you still feel the same way?
I’ll tell you what. The reason why I said that is because you have to determine what you are. I have a two and a half to three-octave range and a crooner doesn’t have more than an octave or an octave and a bit. It’s like calling a tenor a baritone. They want to be distinguished as to what they are.
I am a contemporary stylist. I have a large range and I can hit notes a bank couldn’t cash. And thank God I can still do it to this day.

You are at an age where many would pack it all in. Ever feel that way?
Well, I don’t do the amount of work I did 10 to15 years ago. Then I was doing in the neighborhood of 200 shows a year, now I do just over 100. I’m fortunate that Release Me gave me a global career immediately so all my albums are released around the world. Because of that, I perform around world so that they can see the man in person whose music they’ve been listening to over the years. I don’t want to quit. I think it would be a shame if I did stop now. I have accumulated such a wonderful following and these people expect to see me and I enjoy seeing them.

Other than the obvious, did fame and fortune change you to any degree, and is there a downside to it?
It changes everyone to a certain extent. Yes, you can afford the luxuries of life, but I never went over the top, never did extravagant things. I took care of my family first, including brothers and sisters and that gives you a piece of comfort that you can do these things.
The downside is being handled by people who you thought were your friends but turned out to be crooks, and this has happened to most people in show business. I dedicated my life to my business, being the person on stage and being the person in the recording studio, so you neglect the business side of it and sometimes you turn around and find out somebody’s screwed the hell out of you.

What are you most proud of as you look back over your career?
I’m pretty proud of everything that’s happened in my life. I’ve recorded 76 albums. In my homes in Los Angeles and England, both have two very large rooms stacked with gold and platinum albums and when I look at them, I feel really proud to think of all the blood, sweat and tears I put into them and now they’re sitting in the homes of people around the world who have appreciated my music and bought it and made me what I am today.

Lenny Interviews Marty Allen

What do you get if you take a funny Jewish guy and a Southern Belle? If you’re Marty Allen and Karon Kate, it’s the best comedic couple to hit the stage since Burns and Allen or Stiller and Meara.
This delightful pair will be performing at the South Point Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas June 11-12. For the past nine years, the Las Vegas couple have become a fixture on the cruise ship circuit, performing some 600 shows (“We’ve been on every ship including the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria,” Allen says).
I caught up to Marty and Karon the other day in their dressing room to talk about their careers.
Marty, who has made “Hello dere!” household words, and whose hair looks like he put his finger in an electrical socket, said his career in comedy actually started when he was a kid in high school who made everybody laugh. “But I loved to write and I always wanted to be a reporter because I looked great in a trench coat,” he says laughing. “But seriously, I did want to be a journalist, but I started to do comedy and moved to California from my home town of Pittsburgh, with my cousin.” An avid sports fan, Marty says he sleeps wearing a Steelers helmet and he was wearing a baseball cap with the Steelers logo when we talked.
“When we got to LA I played little clubs, did comedy, sung parodies, did a little bit of dancing. It was all good training. Then I went back to Pittsburgh and I was like the local comic. One day, the owner of club tells me they’ve got me booked with a girl singer. As I was always booked with a girl singer, I didn’t get that excited about it until he told me it was Sarah Vaughan.
“I worked with Sarah, she took a liking to me and as it turned out, she was a good friend of Nat King Cole. She was talking to Nat one day and told him she had a comedian that opened for her and said she thought I’d be good for him, because in those days name singers always used comics to open for them.
“So I started opening for Nat. At the time, Steve Rossi was a production singer at the Sands and he told Nat he’d like to do something different. Nat says, ‘Martin and Lewis are hot. I’ve got a comedian that works with me and maybe if you two got together…’  Steve called me, and we decided to meet. He looked like Rock Hudson, sang great, so we decided to give it a try and began playing small clubs. Their show clicked andthe combo of Allen & Rossi became one of the hottest acts in show business for the next decade.
“And then,” says Marty, fondly looking at his wife, “I got lucky. I found Karon.”
Karon, a Mississippi belle, had carved out her own career as a singer who also played piano. She had become tired of working alone and had returned to Los Angeles where she had been living before going on the road. “A friend of mine offered me a job at Cyrano’s, the famous LA restaurant, as a daytime manager, so I took it and soon after, Marty walked in one day with his agent who was a frequent customer. While waiting for his lunch, Marty had written all over his menu, so I asked him if he would sign it for me. While we talked, he found out I was a singer and asked me to work with him. That was it. That was over 20 years ago.”
Of Marty, who just turned 87, Karon says, “He’s forever young. The minute he walks out on stage he becomes this childlike character. His whole being changes.”
“Now if I could only do that at home,” Marty interjects, laughing.
As for relaxing, when they have the time, Karon loves to garden, sew and cook while Marty loves to swim. “If we had a pool, it would be even better,” he says. He’s also an avid sports fan with football topping the list, but admits he’s not much of a gambler.