You know it's funny that none of the regular late-night shows now use guest hosts the way Johnny did. No one talks about it much, but it's curious that they don't do it. They would each have to be asked the reason why they don't.
In 1980s, I discovered 'Late Night with David Letterman.' It was on one of the 13 cable TV channels. They didn't have 25 late night talk show hosts trying to be the most outrageous. There was the likeable television genius Johnny Carson and his mad-genius counterpart Dave. There was nothing else crazy on TV every night, and there was no Internet.
I was in Screaming Trees - I wasn't really interested in playing quiet music in a live setting. But I would get asked quite often to do a show or open for somebody, and I always said no. Finally, I was asked if I would open for Johnny Cash, and Johnny Cash was one of my dad's favorite heroes. So that's why I started doing solo shows.
I started on 'Saturday Night Live' the same time Conan started on 'Late Night.' We just had a relationship because I would be upstairs in the studio and whenever he couldn't get a guest - which was often back then since he was just starting out - he would just call me down to be a guest.
I started on 'Saturday Night Live' the same time Conan started on Late Night. We just had a relationship because I would be upstairs in the studio and whenever he couldn't get a guest - which was often back then since he was just starting out - he would just call me down to be a guest.
An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell? No, said the priest, not if you did not know. Then why, asked the Inuit earnestly, did you tell me?
I suppose the reason why I like acting is because I'm curious about human nature, and the less I know about a character on the page, instinctively, in a way, the better.
I had a period after touring the first record where I didn't agree with the way things worked in the music industry as far as how you release music, demand, the pace of everything. You don't know who's talking to you. Who's Spotify? Who's iTunes? Who are all those bloggers? Who says I have to do this? Why do you have to do all this press? Why do I have to do so many shows? Why do I have to do a regular album right now? I don't understand it.
I think that everything looks a little scarier at night, when the sun goes down. And I know I kind of want a sense of reassurance or a community. Late-night shows is a rare place because that's what we do. Increasingly, I felt like I didn't want to be that guy. I didn't want to do that. It wasn't the only reason that I stopped doing it, but it was a consideration - I didn't know how to process tragedy after tragedy and then ... it just got too much, I think.
What's annoying is we've launched a lot of shows like 'Pop Idol,' and then it goes to the States, and everything stays the same, yet they change the hosts. 'I'm A Celebrity' has been done twice in America now - but they changed the hosts. 'America's Got Talent,' we don't host - somebody else hosts.
If we are now holding late-night talk-show hosts to the same moral accountability as we hold politicians or clergymen, I'm out. I'm gone.
Mayor de Blasio wants to eliminate garbage. He believes New York City produces way too much garbage. Well, heck, forget about producing too much garbage. What about late-night talk shows?
I don't own any of these names. I don't own Johnny World, Johnny Mundo, John Morrison, Johnny Nitro, Johnny Blaze or Johnny Impact. None of it.
For some reason, people find me funny. It's quite hard to define why a thought is funny. It's even harder to define why a person would be funny. It's a word that I can't define at all. But whether I know quite what it is or not, I seem to be it.
I had to find a way to get off the streets because it was too windy. So I started organizing variety shows of street performers. I would rent a hall, cafe or bar so I could put on a show. I did that for years before the 'Tonight Show With Johnny Carson' heard about this odd thing I did with bubbles.
Of course I knew The Band's Canadian keyboard player, the late Richard Manuel, but I didn't play that night because I was there as a guest with my record executives. People ask, "why didn't you play?" If I had known I was going to be playing then I would have been prepared for it.
I did a Moonlighting episode because I was friends with Whoopi [Goldberg, who guest-starred in the same episode], and she asked me to do it and I did it. But yeah, that was my first regular on a series, and it's because I'd met Brooke Shields a number of years earlier at a charity event.