Baba Booey. Fa-fa-fooey. Ta-ta-toothy. Ma-ma-monkey. Gary DellAbate goes by many names, but his job has been the same for over twenty years: hes the guy who runs the Howard Stern Show, booking all the guests, running the shows back office, and when necessary running interference between Howard and upper management. Hes also one of the shows most recognizable on-air personalities, thanks in no small part to his iconic nickname Baba Booey, a moniker which stuck to him like glue after an on-air slip-up in July 1990, in which he repeatedly mispronounced the name of his (professed to be favorite) cartoon character, Quick Draw McGraw sidekick Baba Looey. Since that day, the name has spread like a virus throughout pop culture, popping up as a punchline everywhere from comedy shows like Saturday Night Live and The Late Show with David Letterman to news shows like Larry King Live and Peter Jennings ABC newscast, thanks to the efforts of dedicated crank callers. The title of his new memoir, which recounts some of his personal and show-related drama, says it all: They Call Me Baba Booey.
DellAbate was there throughout Howard Sterns signature run at New Yorks K-ROCK radio in the late '80s and early '90s, appeared briefly in the autobiographical Private Parts, and continued on long enough to see Stern finally escape his much-hated censors in FCC-controlled radio when he departed for the artistic freedom of Sirius Satellite Radio in 2005. Hes also outlasted many other show notables, including Jackie The Joke Man Martling, Stuttering John Melendez, and blue-collar comic Artie Lange, whose run on the show began to deteriorate in 2008, due in part to the comedians admitted struggle with heroin addiction. A vicious on-air spat between Lange and DellAbate in 2009 was one of that years many uncomfortable Artie moments, before Lange was dismissed in December 2009, and subsequently attempted suicide. As if that werent enough drama, the Stern show is now barreling towards what may be its final two months on the air, with both Stern and Sirius bosses playing chicken over the terms of his potential re-signing. Gary DellAbate recently called up SuicideGirls to talk about his impressive run on Americas most popular radio show.
Ryan Stewart: I was a little surprised that the A.J. Benza fight story didnt rate a mention in your book. You got punched in the head!
Gary DellAbate: You know, its just not that kind of book. The book is more about my personal life, growing up, some of my trials and tribulations and how it sort of led me to the show. And then some funny moments from the show, but its not really a show book. So, thats why stuff like that wouldnt necessarily end up in there.
RS: You didnt feel the need to compile every great Gary moment from the show.
GD: Yeah, I just sort of didnt go that way. As I was writing the book what came into my head is sort of what got put in there. If you read the whole book, you can see that the show stuff is just sort of dropped in where its relevant, because I didnt want to just crowbar in every single story. The story of how I met Howard is relevant, because thats how I met Howard, you know? How I got the name Baba Booey is obviously relevant to the book, and I also thought the video tape story was relevant, quite honestly, just because I cant believe how many people still ask me about that. And also, its a story about me, and I tried not to put in stuff just because it was a cool story about Howard.
RS: Is there a show-only book in your future, you think?
GD: Ive had offers to do that for years and years, and for tons and tons of money. Its something I dont think Howard would want me to do, and its also something that I wouldnt be comfortable doing. If I did a book with all the stories about what goes on behind the scenes, I think Id have a difficult time in the future. I know that I wouldnt hire a guy who wrote a book saying a bunch of mean shit about people, if he was going to then come and work for me.
RS: One of my favorite books of the last few years was the oral history of Saturday Night Live. I think that would be a great format for your show history as well.
GD: It would be an amazing format, I think youre absolutely right. Oral histories are my favorite books. I actually read a similar one about Richard Nixon. I think the reason why those books work is the same reason why The History of Howard Stern shows on Sirius work so great, because you get five different people giving perspectives on the same story. Its great hearing everybodys different angles on things. I do think that would be a phenomenal format to do a history of the show, someday.
RS: You certainly take a diplomatic line in this book, except for an expected word or two about Don Imus.
GD: I did sort of settle one score, and I wonder how its all going to shake out, because now Howard 100 News is trying to get a hold of this person and speak to them. Its a woman that I worked with who was a traffic reporter at NBC.
RS: Roz Frank?
GD: Yep. I think I gave it to her a little hard. Its pretty straight-forward, but she may not recognize that thats the way it went down. And I was joking with somebody and I said, you know, if that would have been five years later I probably wouldnt even have written it in the book, but that was such an important time for me. I was scratching and clawing my way into the business, and I was taking all this shit, which was very reminiscent of the shit I had taken from my mother.
RS: Like you said, the origins of Baba Booey is a key story in the book, and all the subsequent goofing it led to. Its amazing that you ended up hiring Sal Governale, who was a superfan who lived to goof on you. Howard used to let him on the air just to torture you.
GD: Heres the deal with that: he did really well in the contest [to win the on-air sidekick spot vacated by Stuttering John in 2004], and he didnt win, but Howard said I really like him a lot. And the funny thing in dealing with him for the contest and all the other stuff is that except when he was busting my balls in those particular instances, he was actually a pretty okay guy. The thing that became funny to everyone involved is that once Sal started working with us we came to realize that all the stuff Sal used to say about me was really about him. He was the one who was a pussy-whipped guy. He was the one in a marriage where his wife was breaking his balls and he couldnt do anything about it. So, I went from not really being afraid of Sal, but being leery of Sal, to really being more sympathetic to Sal. And my wife didnt fully understand that at first. I remember we were laying in bed one night and my wife goes How are you going to have that guy there every day? How are you going to live with that? and I said to her I gotta tell you, I can hang out with him, hes sort of a good guy. And she goes Thats impossible. But I do, I like Sal, I like him a lot. He can be goofy and he can be a nutjob, but hes also got a really big heart. Ive gotten along with him wonderfully from the day he started working here.
RS: The stuff with his wife is radio gold.
GD: [laughs] Its not that hard to get it out of him, which is why hes so great.
RS: Did allowing people to goof on you in general ever threaten to undermine your authority as the show producer? Do people understand on-air/off-air?
GD: I think most people have understood that, and most of the people who didntthereve been times that I had interns who probably thought I was a douche because Howard was treating me like a douche, but they come and go, you know? And there were times that I felt I was being undermined with Stuttering John, but it wasnt really because of that, because John would be on the back-end of that too. It was more that John sort of knew that Howard loved having him on the air, so he really didnt have to ever listen to me in the office. He knew that I couldnt fire him, because he was really good on the air. John was excellent on the air, and really not a great worker in the office. But I felt much more embarrassment from when Howard played the videotape of me [begging an old girlfriend to get back together]. I just felt like a tool, you know? And I felt like everyone in the office was looking at me as such.
RS: Would you have handed over that tape eventually, just for the show, without the money Howard and others put up?
GD: No. I am a complete and utter whore, and I am here to say right now that I would never have done that, if not for the money.
RS: When they played it on the air, it definitely made for a classic show. Another classic would be the 9/11 show, when Howard stayed on the air throughout the chaos. What part did you play in keeping things on track that day, keeping the show on?
GD: I played a part in the sense that I followed Howards lead. I knew that we were staying on the air. I knew we were going to shift gears in the way that we did the show. We were taking a lot of phone calls in the back from people, and I was trying to make sure that the right people and the right information were getting through to Howard as quickly as I could. It was almost like we suddenly went from doing a comedy show to working in a news room. Howard was the anchor and I was the guy in the back trying to feed him the right information.
RS: Did you have a sense even then that it would be maybe your most important show?
GD: I dont know that I knew it that day, but I knew it not long after. As the show went on, the mood went from Wow, a plane crashed into the World Trade Center, thats crazy, to something else. I think the defining moment of the day was when I was sitting on the couch [in the studio] and Howard was sitting at his console and suddenly the second plane hit the second tower. You know, Ive heard it said that when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald that was one of the first times that news stations had ever done an instant replay. They just reran the tape and people watching were thoroughly confused they thought multiple people were getting shot. And I remember looking at that second tower going down and not being entirely sure that it really was the second tower, and that I wasnt watching some sort of weird replay. And then we recognized it, and Howard looked over at me and said Were under attack. Thats when it hit me. I was like, oh my God, we, this country, are under attack. Only then was it really driven home to me what was happening.
RS: Have you ever thought of putting out a sort of box set of the definitive shows?
GD: Well, I dont think wed ever commercially release it, but what we do have is History of Howard, and people can listen to that. And were actually making our way up to the 9/11 years now. I get a copy of that stuff on DVD and I put them in a drawer, and I feel like one day when my kids are older and Im gone I can have handed those over and itll be like This is who your father was.
RS: And what about the Channel 9 shows? You guys have been trying to buy those back forever.
GD: You know, Ive never really been in the loop on what thats about, but it appears that its never going to be resolved, from what I can tell. I mean, if it hasnt been resolved by now then who knows if it ever will be. And I almost wonder how those shows would hold up, although I suspect they would hold up pretty well. But you have to put those shows in perspective theyre twenty year old shows. They would probably seem tame in comparison to some of the stuff thats on TV now, but for what we were doing at the time, they were completely radical and innovative.
RS: Is there anything about your off-air conversations with Howard that people might find interesting or surprising?
GD: Its funny, I was just talking to someone else about this earlier, but Howard and I communicate in a very odd way. Theres never been a time when hes sat down with me and said to me Hey, I think youre a great producer. I mean, hell say stuff like You did a great job and stuff like that, but weve never sat down and had, like, a heart-to-heart talk where hes said I think youre a great producer and then I said I think youre a great boss. But through the way we speak about each other in interviews and on the air and through emails, we know it. I dont need him to say that. I know how he feels about me. But we certainly dont have these crazy heart-to-heart conversations off the air.
RS: People always ask if Howard is the real guy on the air, or if thats an act. Do you think of yourself as having a radio persona?
GD: Well, I developed a radio persona in the sense that.I dont think I act any differently on the air than I otherwise would, but because I am on the air I get to say shit that I wouldnt get to say if I was a CPA. If someone comes on and I say God, that chick is ugly, I would never have sex with her, well, if you said that at a party you probably wouldnt be invited back to any more parties, but its perfectly acceptable to say it on the air, you know? Im not saying stuff on the radio to try and be outrageous, I just get to say things that I usually wouldnt get to say.
RS: There was a recent on-air bit where you played an IQ game and you ended up mispronouncing the word machine as mac-hine. When youre doing something like that, are you thinking to yourself: if I dont screw this up, then wheres the bit?
GD: No, no, I really didnt know that I was walking into that one, it just sort of happened. I mean, look, I did the IQ test. And I was just talking to another person on our staff about doing one and he doesnt want to do it. He said Its a losing proposition! and I said, Listen, brother, nobody could take that test who had more to lose than me. Im the producer of the show. If my IQ test comes in low, Ill never live it down. Ill never be respected again. So, I do think Im a willing participant in the fun. The IQ test was proof of that.
RS: I was going to ask why your Afghanistan USO trip didnt make the book, but it occurred to me that you made that trip with Artie, and maybe youre laying off the Artie stories for now.
GD: No, its funny that you say that because I was thinking about that as well the other day. The writer and I sat down and went through it and it just didnt fit into that part of the book, but Im actually keeping a list for a paperback slash second book if anybody is interested. And I think just having some distanceI mean, you can go on my website and see where I have a story written up. It just didnt end up in the book. And I think Ive been pretty brutally honest about what happened with Artie while we were over there, and everybody else. So, it is there if anybody wants to see it.
RS: Was 2009 a tough year in general on the show? I remember that incredibly personal fight between you and Artie, which was really a no holds barred situation.
GD: I dont know if 2009 was a tough year, but I wasnt really hurt by the accusations that Artie was making so much as I was hurt by the fact that he knew he was purposefully saying something that he knew would hurt me. It was like Artie knew what my Achilles heel was and he just went for it. That was more difficult for me than the stuff he was actually saying. I was afraid of [not performing well at USO stand-up] before we went there, but by the time we got back I knew that I had done a decent job. Not a great job, but I knew I had done a decent job. And I knew that Artie was just going there because he knew that it would upset me.
RS: Joking that he was glad Dave Attell had less time on stage so you could perform, and so on.
GD: Yeah, and listen, Artie could have brought along another comedian who was more talented than me. The other guys who were on the bill were incredibly talented, but what I found out there was that its not all about the shows. I wouldnt say the shows were a minor part of it, but they were really just one element of what its about, the reason that you go over there. The bigger reason is the eight or twelve hours a day that you spend walking around, talking to people, hanging around with them, thats the real gift thats being given, not only to the people there, but to us as well. When you hang out with those people you find that theyre just grateful that somebody is coming to visit.
RS: Speaking of comedy, are you still out hunting for new talent these days? Lots of people whove gotten a break on the show are doing very well.
GD: You know, I used to go to the comedy clubs once in a while, but I was never really on the ground looking for talent. Once in a while somebody would say Youve got to come and see this comedian but it wasnt the main way that we got guests. Even though in the past we have broken some new talent like Sam Kinison and people like that, its not really the format of our show. And the great thing is that you really dont have to go out anymore. I dont have to go to comedy clubs, Ive got people saying Heres seven links to my client on Youtube, you know? Thats the way that you see them. And people might say that its not the same thing as being in the club, but you can get a pretty good feel for somebody off of that. I find myself watching a lot of DVDs at home and watching a lot of Youtube videos and listening to a lot of CDs in my car and also listening to stuff on my iPod that people have sent me.
RS: Artie recently did some stand-up at a club, I read. He seems to be getting back in the swing of things. If he decides to tell his story on another show is that okay with you?
GD: I think Id be a little bummed out. I mean, listen, I think telling it to us would certainly be the most interesting way to tell it. We are the other pieces of that puzzle. Artie could tell us what was going on and we could tell him what we were thinking and what we believed at that time. So, I do think it would make for the most interesting interview.
RS: But Howard is resisting it.
GD: I dont know that Howard is resisting. I just dont know that everybody is ready to pull it together.
RS: If the Howard Stern Show is done in eight weeks, do you feel like you guys have done what you set out to do in radio?
GD: God, yes. Howard was in the history books even before he went to satellite radio. And I think that going to satellite radio just cemented that forever. When we showed up to Sirius Satellite Radio they had four hundred thousand subscribers. Now, with the company merged, they have twenty million subscribers. Its a very viable format that was not very viable before Howard Stern got there. If Howard had gone to XM instead of Sirius, Sirius would have probably just gone out of business. I mean, just the fact that Howard went to the company with the lesser amount of subscribers and managed to actually overtake the other company? Holy shit. In the last twenty-five years of radio, who has had a bigger impact than Howard Stern? Ive been glad to be a part of that. And Id love to go on. I want to keep going.
They Call Me Baba Booey is available in bookstores November 2nd..
DellAbate was there throughout Howard Sterns signature run at New Yorks K-ROCK radio in the late '80s and early '90s, appeared briefly in the autobiographical Private Parts, and continued on long enough to see Stern finally escape his much-hated censors in FCC-controlled radio when he departed for the artistic freedom of Sirius Satellite Radio in 2005. Hes also outlasted many other show notables, including Jackie The Joke Man Martling, Stuttering John Melendez, and blue-collar comic Artie Lange, whose run on the show began to deteriorate in 2008, due in part to the comedians admitted struggle with heroin addiction. A vicious on-air spat between Lange and DellAbate in 2009 was one of that years many uncomfortable Artie moments, before Lange was dismissed in December 2009, and subsequently attempted suicide. As if that werent enough drama, the Stern show is now barreling towards what may be its final two months on the air, with both Stern and Sirius bosses playing chicken over the terms of his potential re-signing. Gary DellAbate recently called up SuicideGirls to talk about his impressive run on Americas most popular radio show.
Ryan Stewart: I was a little surprised that the A.J. Benza fight story didnt rate a mention in your book. You got punched in the head!
Gary DellAbate: You know, its just not that kind of book. The book is more about my personal life, growing up, some of my trials and tribulations and how it sort of led me to the show. And then some funny moments from the show, but its not really a show book. So, thats why stuff like that wouldnt necessarily end up in there.
RS: You didnt feel the need to compile every great Gary moment from the show.
GD: Yeah, I just sort of didnt go that way. As I was writing the book what came into my head is sort of what got put in there. If you read the whole book, you can see that the show stuff is just sort of dropped in where its relevant, because I didnt want to just crowbar in every single story. The story of how I met Howard is relevant, because thats how I met Howard, you know? How I got the name Baba Booey is obviously relevant to the book, and I also thought the video tape story was relevant, quite honestly, just because I cant believe how many people still ask me about that. And also, its a story about me, and I tried not to put in stuff just because it was a cool story about Howard.
RS: Is there a show-only book in your future, you think?
GD: Ive had offers to do that for years and years, and for tons and tons of money. Its something I dont think Howard would want me to do, and its also something that I wouldnt be comfortable doing. If I did a book with all the stories about what goes on behind the scenes, I think Id have a difficult time in the future. I know that I wouldnt hire a guy who wrote a book saying a bunch of mean shit about people, if he was going to then come and work for me.
RS: One of my favorite books of the last few years was the oral history of Saturday Night Live. I think that would be a great format for your show history as well.
GD: It would be an amazing format, I think youre absolutely right. Oral histories are my favorite books. I actually read a similar one about Richard Nixon. I think the reason why those books work is the same reason why The History of Howard Stern shows on Sirius work so great, because you get five different people giving perspectives on the same story. Its great hearing everybodys different angles on things. I do think that would be a phenomenal format to do a history of the show, someday.
RS: You certainly take a diplomatic line in this book, except for an expected word or two about Don Imus.
GD: I did sort of settle one score, and I wonder how its all going to shake out, because now Howard 100 News is trying to get a hold of this person and speak to them. Its a woman that I worked with who was a traffic reporter at NBC.
RS: Roz Frank?
GD: Yep. I think I gave it to her a little hard. Its pretty straight-forward, but she may not recognize that thats the way it went down. And I was joking with somebody and I said, you know, if that would have been five years later I probably wouldnt even have written it in the book, but that was such an important time for me. I was scratching and clawing my way into the business, and I was taking all this shit, which was very reminiscent of the shit I had taken from my mother.
RS: Like you said, the origins of Baba Booey is a key story in the book, and all the subsequent goofing it led to. Its amazing that you ended up hiring Sal Governale, who was a superfan who lived to goof on you. Howard used to let him on the air just to torture you.
GD: Heres the deal with that: he did really well in the contest [to win the on-air sidekick spot vacated by Stuttering John in 2004], and he didnt win, but Howard said I really like him a lot. And the funny thing in dealing with him for the contest and all the other stuff is that except when he was busting my balls in those particular instances, he was actually a pretty okay guy. The thing that became funny to everyone involved is that once Sal started working with us we came to realize that all the stuff Sal used to say about me was really about him. He was the one who was a pussy-whipped guy. He was the one in a marriage where his wife was breaking his balls and he couldnt do anything about it. So, I went from not really being afraid of Sal, but being leery of Sal, to really being more sympathetic to Sal. And my wife didnt fully understand that at first. I remember we were laying in bed one night and my wife goes How are you going to have that guy there every day? How are you going to live with that? and I said to her I gotta tell you, I can hang out with him, hes sort of a good guy. And she goes Thats impossible. But I do, I like Sal, I like him a lot. He can be goofy and he can be a nutjob, but hes also got a really big heart. Ive gotten along with him wonderfully from the day he started working here.
RS: The stuff with his wife is radio gold.
GD: [laughs] Its not that hard to get it out of him, which is why hes so great.
RS: Did allowing people to goof on you in general ever threaten to undermine your authority as the show producer? Do people understand on-air/off-air?
GD: I think most people have understood that, and most of the people who didntthereve been times that I had interns who probably thought I was a douche because Howard was treating me like a douche, but they come and go, you know? And there were times that I felt I was being undermined with Stuttering John, but it wasnt really because of that, because John would be on the back-end of that too. It was more that John sort of knew that Howard loved having him on the air, so he really didnt have to ever listen to me in the office. He knew that I couldnt fire him, because he was really good on the air. John was excellent on the air, and really not a great worker in the office. But I felt much more embarrassment from when Howard played the videotape of me [begging an old girlfriend to get back together]. I just felt like a tool, you know? And I felt like everyone in the office was looking at me as such.
RS: Would you have handed over that tape eventually, just for the show, without the money Howard and others put up?
GD: No. I am a complete and utter whore, and I am here to say right now that I would never have done that, if not for the money.
RS: When they played it on the air, it definitely made for a classic show. Another classic would be the 9/11 show, when Howard stayed on the air throughout the chaos. What part did you play in keeping things on track that day, keeping the show on?
GD: I played a part in the sense that I followed Howards lead. I knew that we were staying on the air. I knew we were going to shift gears in the way that we did the show. We were taking a lot of phone calls in the back from people, and I was trying to make sure that the right people and the right information were getting through to Howard as quickly as I could. It was almost like we suddenly went from doing a comedy show to working in a news room. Howard was the anchor and I was the guy in the back trying to feed him the right information.
RS: Did you have a sense even then that it would be maybe your most important show?
GD: I dont know that I knew it that day, but I knew it not long after. As the show went on, the mood went from Wow, a plane crashed into the World Trade Center, thats crazy, to something else. I think the defining moment of the day was when I was sitting on the couch [in the studio] and Howard was sitting at his console and suddenly the second plane hit the second tower. You know, Ive heard it said that when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald that was one of the first times that news stations had ever done an instant replay. They just reran the tape and people watching were thoroughly confused they thought multiple people were getting shot. And I remember looking at that second tower going down and not being entirely sure that it really was the second tower, and that I wasnt watching some sort of weird replay. And then we recognized it, and Howard looked over at me and said Were under attack. Thats when it hit me. I was like, oh my God, we, this country, are under attack. Only then was it really driven home to me what was happening.
RS: Have you ever thought of putting out a sort of box set of the definitive shows?
GD: Well, I dont think wed ever commercially release it, but what we do have is History of Howard, and people can listen to that. And were actually making our way up to the 9/11 years now. I get a copy of that stuff on DVD and I put them in a drawer, and I feel like one day when my kids are older and Im gone I can have handed those over and itll be like This is who your father was.
RS: And what about the Channel 9 shows? You guys have been trying to buy those back forever.
GD: You know, Ive never really been in the loop on what thats about, but it appears that its never going to be resolved, from what I can tell. I mean, if it hasnt been resolved by now then who knows if it ever will be. And I almost wonder how those shows would hold up, although I suspect they would hold up pretty well. But you have to put those shows in perspective theyre twenty year old shows. They would probably seem tame in comparison to some of the stuff thats on TV now, but for what we were doing at the time, they were completely radical and innovative.
RS: Is there anything about your off-air conversations with Howard that people might find interesting or surprising?
GD: Its funny, I was just talking to someone else about this earlier, but Howard and I communicate in a very odd way. Theres never been a time when hes sat down with me and said to me Hey, I think youre a great producer. I mean, hell say stuff like You did a great job and stuff like that, but weve never sat down and had, like, a heart-to-heart talk where hes said I think youre a great producer and then I said I think youre a great boss. But through the way we speak about each other in interviews and on the air and through emails, we know it. I dont need him to say that. I know how he feels about me. But we certainly dont have these crazy heart-to-heart conversations off the air.
RS: People always ask if Howard is the real guy on the air, or if thats an act. Do you think of yourself as having a radio persona?
GD: Well, I developed a radio persona in the sense that.I dont think I act any differently on the air than I otherwise would, but because I am on the air I get to say shit that I wouldnt get to say if I was a CPA. If someone comes on and I say God, that chick is ugly, I would never have sex with her, well, if you said that at a party you probably wouldnt be invited back to any more parties, but its perfectly acceptable to say it on the air, you know? Im not saying stuff on the radio to try and be outrageous, I just get to say things that I usually wouldnt get to say.
RS: There was a recent on-air bit where you played an IQ game and you ended up mispronouncing the word machine as mac-hine. When youre doing something like that, are you thinking to yourself: if I dont screw this up, then wheres the bit?
GD: No, no, I really didnt know that I was walking into that one, it just sort of happened. I mean, look, I did the IQ test. And I was just talking to another person on our staff about doing one and he doesnt want to do it. He said Its a losing proposition! and I said, Listen, brother, nobody could take that test who had more to lose than me. Im the producer of the show. If my IQ test comes in low, Ill never live it down. Ill never be respected again. So, I do think Im a willing participant in the fun. The IQ test was proof of that.
RS: I was going to ask why your Afghanistan USO trip didnt make the book, but it occurred to me that you made that trip with Artie, and maybe youre laying off the Artie stories for now.
GD: No, its funny that you say that because I was thinking about that as well the other day. The writer and I sat down and went through it and it just didnt fit into that part of the book, but Im actually keeping a list for a paperback slash second book if anybody is interested. And I think just having some distanceI mean, you can go on my website and see where I have a story written up. It just didnt end up in the book. And I think Ive been pretty brutally honest about what happened with Artie while we were over there, and everybody else. So, it is there if anybody wants to see it.
RS: Was 2009 a tough year in general on the show? I remember that incredibly personal fight between you and Artie, which was really a no holds barred situation.
GD: I dont know if 2009 was a tough year, but I wasnt really hurt by the accusations that Artie was making so much as I was hurt by the fact that he knew he was purposefully saying something that he knew would hurt me. It was like Artie knew what my Achilles heel was and he just went for it. That was more difficult for me than the stuff he was actually saying. I was afraid of [not performing well at USO stand-up] before we went there, but by the time we got back I knew that I had done a decent job. Not a great job, but I knew I had done a decent job. And I knew that Artie was just going there because he knew that it would upset me.
RS: Joking that he was glad Dave Attell had less time on stage so you could perform, and so on.
GD: Yeah, and listen, Artie could have brought along another comedian who was more talented than me. The other guys who were on the bill were incredibly talented, but what I found out there was that its not all about the shows. I wouldnt say the shows were a minor part of it, but they were really just one element of what its about, the reason that you go over there. The bigger reason is the eight or twelve hours a day that you spend walking around, talking to people, hanging around with them, thats the real gift thats being given, not only to the people there, but to us as well. When you hang out with those people you find that theyre just grateful that somebody is coming to visit.
RS: Speaking of comedy, are you still out hunting for new talent these days? Lots of people whove gotten a break on the show are doing very well.
GD: You know, I used to go to the comedy clubs once in a while, but I was never really on the ground looking for talent. Once in a while somebody would say Youve got to come and see this comedian but it wasnt the main way that we got guests. Even though in the past we have broken some new talent like Sam Kinison and people like that, its not really the format of our show. And the great thing is that you really dont have to go out anymore. I dont have to go to comedy clubs, Ive got people saying Heres seven links to my client on Youtube, you know? Thats the way that you see them. And people might say that its not the same thing as being in the club, but you can get a pretty good feel for somebody off of that. I find myself watching a lot of DVDs at home and watching a lot of Youtube videos and listening to a lot of CDs in my car and also listening to stuff on my iPod that people have sent me.
RS: Artie recently did some stand-up at a club, I read. He seems to be getting back in the swing of things. If he decides to tell his story on another show is that okay with you?
GD: I think Id be a little bummed out. I mean, listen, I think telling it to us would certainly be the most interesting way to tell it. We are the other pieces of that puzzle. Artie could tell us what was going on and we could tell him what we were thinking and what we believed at that time. So, I do think it would make for the most interesting interview.
RS: But Howard is resisting it.
GD: I dont know that Howard is resisting. I just dont know that everybody is ready to pull it together.
RS: If the Howard Stern Show is done in eight weeks, do you feel like you guys have done what you set out to do in radio?
GD: God, yes. Howard was in the history books even before he went to satellite radio. And I think that going to satellite radio just cemented that forever. When we showed up to Sirius Satellite Radio they had four hundred thousand subscribers. Now, with the company merged, they have twenty million subscribers. Its a very viable format that was not very viable before Howard Stern got there. If Howard had gone to XM instead of Sirius, Sirius would have probably just gone out of business. I mean, just the fact that Howard went to the company with the lesser amount of subscribers and managed to actually overtake the other company? Holy shit. In the last twenty-five years of radio, who has had a bigger impact than Howard Stern? Ive been glad to be a part of that. And Id love to go on. I want to keep going.
They Call Me Baba Booey is available in bookstores November 2nd..