To almost anyone who has smoked a joint and to a few million who haven't, Richard "Cheech" Martin and Tommy Chong need little introduction. Possessed of an uncanny ability to tickle the funny bone of the dope-smoking Seventies, the two long-haired comics have enjoyed a phenomenal rags-to-riches success since their debut at the Troubador in Los Angeles in 1971. They have released four gold albums and are a sold-out attraction wherever they perform.
Confirmed dopers both, Cheech and Chong freely admit that their first love is to be high; and so it should come as no surprise that their humor is as different from most comedian’s as a joint of wackyweed is from a whisky sour. They are able to transform the big busts and the bad trips into horselaughs, making their audience a little happier. In addition, they have developed classic characters in Pancho and Man.
Both Cheech and Chong now live in beautiful Malibu, California. High Times Editor Ed Dwyer spoke with the pair in Burbank, where their new album was being recorded, and in Studio City, where they work out in a gym.
High Times: How did the two of you get together as a team?
Chong: Well, I was running a topless nightclub theater in Vancouver. It was a burlesque topless joint, but I wasn't really into the club as much as I was into acting on stage.
High Times: Did you admire any particular comedy acts and try to imitate them?
Chong: I copped skits from the Committee, because I was a heavy Committee fan. I used to come down to the States - this was before I was into acting - and get my kicks by going to see them and the Second City. When we began our burlesque improv thing, we called it "City Lights."
High Times: Was Cheech in the original improvisation group?
Chong: No. Halfway through the trip, after I'd put the improv topless thing together, I was looking for somebody and Cheech came along. He told me he could act. Of course, he was lying. He was evading the draft and writing for some underground paper. No one liked Cheech because he looked like a narc;. He used to meditate too, and he never got high either.
Cheech: I meditated religiously for about three years. I couldn't get into getting real high most of the time I was in Canada. I really started getting loaded when we started working down here in L.A.
Chong: We'd all be sitting around the dressing room, passing the hash, and Cheech would say no thank you, very quietly, you know, in his meditative way. But I liked him because he always watched everything everybody did and he was really into the gig. And he got the best reviews. Dig it, he really started at the bottom. When our impromptu group fell apart, no one wanted to do it anymore. But Cheech still wanted to do it and I did too. I really loved acting.
High Times: Is it freakish that you've become as big an act as you are without getting exposure on Johnny Carson's show or any of the other TV variety shows?
Chong: We've sold records. There are a lot of top-name groups that haven't sold as many as us.
Cheech: We've sold more records than the Beatles.
High Times: Sure you have. How much control over the packaging of your act do you have? For example, over album covers and ads.
Chong: We don't have any. It's called passing the ball. We don't even have a manager who we have to pay. We control our own destiny.
High Times: You don't have a certain amount of records that you have to put out?
Cheech: No. Lou Adler [president of A& M records] owns our label and he also manages us, as a favor. He gets no percentage, so if we don't work, he doesn't lose anything. He still sells other records and we can work when and how we want.
High Times: That gives you time to work up material, right?
Cheech: Time to get loaded. We just plan to do nothing.
Chong: The only trouble with California is that sometimes you get too used to laying beside the pool in the sun and then the only changes you go through are on the record player.
High Times: Do you fellas just come up with routines while you're riding down the street, getting high?
Chong: I've found that the only thing that Cheech and I have to do is be together, alone, for a certain amount of time each day, and things just come.
Cheech: For a while I had my best ideas in the shower while shaving. So, one time when it wasn't going good, I tried shaving a lot and ended up cutting myself a lot. Chong: We've gotten to the point where we are at home in the studio, and that's very important. We just go in and fuck around until we find it.
High Times: Do you like your work, aside from the money and fame?
Chong: I like being a comedian. I've hung around funny guys all my life.
Cheech: I was always funny, but I never figured that I would do this good by it.
Chong: It took us a year of performances before we could believe that we really
were comics.
High Times: What's been getting you high lately?
Chong: Colombian. I'm a Colombian fan.
Cheech: Black Afghani primo.
High Times: Anything else?
Cheech: Things that smell nice.
High Times: Things that smell nice?
Cheech: (laughs) Turns you on too? Give me a couple ...
Chong: Pink and soft and warm and cuddly...
Cheech: A little bit slippery (laughter).
High Times: Do you perform high?
Chong: Yeah, and usually the times that we don't we are our worst. Really.
Cheech: The thing is, if you do a bad show when you're stoned, you kind of crack up at the fact that you're really bad. From that moment on you usually can save it, because you come to grips with what is really going down.
High Times: This runs counter to the notion that weed makes you goofy and ruins your act.
Chong: Absolutely. That's what we say in our act about weed. A lot of people don't understand that not everybody should get high. If you smoke dope and it makes you paranoid and gives you diarrhea, or whatever, don't do it.
High Times: Have you ever done any of those radio or TV anti-drug spots?
Cheech: No. We're more or less a walking antidrug message.
High Times: Do you think there is such a thing as a "bad" high?
Cheech: If you want to get picky, yes.
Chong: (laughs) We're flickers, not pickers.
High Times: I've seen people throw you joints when you're on stage, and you light them up. Is this weed as good as the stuff you're used to smoking now?
Chong: Sometimes it can be dynamite. But in any case, it's present weed and we can't turn down a present.
High Times: What do you dig about being high?
Chong: It's simple. When you get high smoking weed, you do nice things to your body. You get things to taste good, smell good, sound nice and feel good.
High Times: California is your home base, and I understand that its pot laws changed January lst. Will that affect your lives or comedy?
Cheech: To be very honest with you, even though the law is changing it's so after the fact that it's pathetic, because even when you could get the death penalty for smoking, I used to smoke, and practically the same amount I do now.
High Times: Isn't it after the fact in your humor?
Chong: Yes, it really is. We went through all the paranoia of getting busted and we did the whole trip in our albums.
High Times: Why the current rash of dope jokes from comedians?
Chong: Because it's what everybody in the audience is doing, you see. A comic can't ignore that. The old schtick was based on a booze mentality. You had to be drunk or know a drunk or drink in order to laugh at this humor. All those veteran comedians, including George Carlin-and don't get me wrong, I've laughed at George Carlin for years, his weather report routine is a classic-used to rap about the drunk. Then it was the beatnik, you know, the finger-snapping beatnik -they always showed him with bongo drums, like Maynard Krebbs. But now there is a whole different head. And so Cheech and Chong comes along because we realize that there is pure humor in weed.
High Times: So you are convinced that you couldn't have made it if it hadn't been for people getting high and smoking dope?
Cheech: Yes, without the grass head, man, if two guys like us got on a stage in Vancouver and tried to be funny, they'd probably be dragged off by a mob of loggers and lynched.
Chong: I've been there when people didn't smoke marijuana. I grew up in the Fifties. It was terrible. Guys would walk around and punch walls; they just put their fists through walls regardless of what kind of a wall it was. Those were the days of the booze mentality. Then people starting turning on, and when you get turned on you get turned in, too. You start getting into yourself; you don't want to fight. That's why a lot of people got divorced and changed their jobs and ...
High Times: Started laughing at people like you?
Cheech: Yeah. Cheech and Chong, and giving up everything.
High Times: What is there about what you do on stage, or in a studio, that makes you funny and makes another freak not so funny?
Chong: The difference is that we've taken dope humor off the streets and put it into the studio or on stage. That's all. Obviously, not too many people were willing or inclined to do that.
Cheech: I think that's where art is: creating a frame of reference for something that hasn't had one.
High Times: How does the momentum of your last five years strike you?
Cheech: If I can make an analogy, it's like surfing. The first time we got into the water, we caught this big wave. Most of the time you'd have to wait all day for a big wave.
High Times: Was this wave the new popularity of getting high?
Chong: Exactly. And now that we've caught it, we see all these other guys trying to catch it, too, and they're not making it.
High Times: But a lot of big name comedians are now doing routines about dope. Where is the difference in your appeal, as opposed to someone like George Carlin, or Robert Klein?
Cheech: Carlin and those other comedians are just that-comedians. They make light of whatever is happening at the time, whatever is in the news. They're professional comedians-we're professional dopers. That makes a big difference with our audience. Because if dope wasn't around, we wouldn't be around. We didn't latch onto something, we talk about something that's always around us and everything we do revolves around it.
Chong: Guys like Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin made their living wearing a tuxedo. We can wear tuxedos if we want to, but we don't want to or need to.
High Times: What do you think qualifies a comedian as a "stoned" comedian?
Chong: I think maybe whatever comic people hear while they are stoned can be for them a stoned comedian. But when we first came on the radio with our shit between the music, all the stoned listeners went "Hey..."
High Times: That's right. I had no idea who you were when I first heard your routines on FM radio around, say 1971. 1 just knew that you were funny.
Chong: That’s the main thing, the unwritten criteria. If you can get by that, then it doesn't matter.
High Times: Aren't you afraid that success has removed you from the kind of contact you need to stay on top?
Chong: No. You can only stay on the street for so long. But you always carry the street mentality with you. Going into other people's homes and getting going into the rich thing and seeing how they live and relate is a whole new world. Eventually it filters out in our act.
High Times: Do you ever get the feeling that you are entertaining just your selves-that maybe you're not connecting?
Chong: No, really, because our tastes are not unusual at all. We're very, very direct and we like a lot of things. Like musically, we listen to just about everything.
High Times: I suppose that you're considered "up" comedians, whereas some comedians are considered negative.
Chong: Yeah, but that can be appropriate too, though. I admire some of the dudes who do that. I can't do it. When people used to say comedian, that's what I used to relate to. I think Lenny Bruce was one of my favorite funny guys, not for any kind of social meaning he had, but just because he was funny.
High Times: Where do you think your appeal is now, after five years of up-from-success?
Cheech: I imagine it's the same people. I don't know of anyone that got hurt by Cheech and Chong.
Chong: It's hard to imagine who digs us out there, because we've met so many different kinds of people, just like the kinds of people who get high. They say, "I really dig you" for one reason or another.
High Times: What kind of different reasons?
Cheech: Well, we've had some pretty touching ones. One was this girl whose parents were down on her and her old man left her, and she was really down, and she was thinking of offing herself. Someone turned her on to us, and she laughed; we were her therapy until she got over the hump. Now she's cool. This is the absolute truth.
High Times: What did you think of that?
Chong: It's heavy, man, we actually saved her life. You know, blew her mind.
High Times: What is your concept of the hard-core Cheech and Chong fan?
Chong:(laughs) Let me tell you a story. Once we were asked to a party and we went halfway there when the driver, who invited us, says: "Are you ever going to love this party, man, they really dig you. All they do is play their records." We thought "Oh shit" to ourselves. When we got there everybody was draped all over, boozed out, doped out and smoked out. We had no idea whose house it was: who cares, right? They had Los Cochinos on full fucking blast, but the party noise was louder than the record. All the record did was make everybody talk louder.
Cheech: It was one of those parties with aluminium foil on the ceiling and a revolving Christmas tree light for color going around.
Chong: So dig what happens. The record ends and over in the corner some guy who sounded just like Man or Redfreak yells "turn it over." Is that hard core, I ask you?
High Times: I read in Ladies and Gentlemen: Lenny Bruce!! that Lenny picked up part of his schtick from the characters that he palled around with in New York. Like Joe Ancis and Rodney Dangerfield. 'Have you consciously picked up on characters from real life?
Cheech: Oh sure, we had a guy who did the lights for us when we had the improv company in Vancouver. His name was Strawberry, and he was basically Red-freak and Man.
Chong: Strawberry was totally incompetent. Just like Man. He had big holes in his shoes, and a tattered overcoat, but we got him into lighting. He missed our blackouts all the time, and everybody would come back and start yelling at him. He'd just laugh and say (in the voice of Man) "I'm really flicking drunk." Or he'd tell us what we were doing wrong; tell us right up front we were terrible, and he really had some pointers to make, too.
High Times: How does this kind of doper survive?
Chong: He does pretty well on blind faith.
High Times: Whatever happened to Strawberry?
Chong: Strawberry got his act together and turned into a vegetarian artist, with a hippie old lady, real pretty, earth momma type.
Chong: I dealt on a very funny level, the same as a lot of people. You know, favors for dealers. I would take all the risk, got no money whatsoever. I knew they'd leave me a couple of lids for the favor. So I made out OK, but I never dealt for a living.
High Times: But incidental dealing plays a large part in this whole weedhead culture. Everybody at some point becomes a dealer. That spreads real wide.
Chong: Yeah, but I can't say that all dealers are cool. For some, it's a scam and nothing else.
High Times: But dealing and the dealing/criminal head is something that you target in your routine?
Chong: Yeah, we do. It's their mentality that’s important; it's catching how somebody thinks that counts. For example, some of the greatest comedians are in prison. They're faced with a real-life drama that is happening everyday and the only way they can cope with it is with humor. Sick humor or whatever you call it. They even think of funny ways to kill a guy, you know.(Laughs) Really. I read in the paper about the dude who was in Zabriski Point ...
High Times: Mark Frechette?
Chong:I think so. They said he died in a weight-lifting accident. Now dig this ... a weight-lifting accident! He was found with 160 pounds across his throat.
High Times: Fell down.
Chong: I've been lifting weights for years, man, and the only way is that some guy dropped that weight there.
High Times: Do you have a following in the prisons?
Chong: Now we do, but I remember once we played a benefit in a minimum security prison; it was about four years ago, and it was really a weird trip. We went in there thinking, "Ah, we're in the joint, these guys will really love us and everything will be cool, you know"-but it wasn't like that at all, man. A lot of these guys had been in for so long they didn't even know what the styles were. One con said to another, "Is that what they look like on the outside?" They were offended by our long hair, but we cracked them up anyway.
High Times: Were your jokes to their liking?
Cheech: It wasn't so much the jokes but what we were.
Chong: In fact, some of our goods come out of prison now. Now that we play the prisons, we come up with prison material.
High Times: Were you ever busted?
Cheech: Once, in Tampa a few years ago for obscenity. It was a jive rap. There was a $5,000 peace bond posted and if we did anything to upset the tranquility of the hall or whatever, they kept the five grand. They figured our act upset the tranquility of the hall.
Chong: They put handcuffs on us and everything.
High Times: You're probably the most visible dope comedians today. Do you ever get paranoid?
Chong: Not at home, no. Look at it this way. Why would they want to fuck with us? It's not going to do them any good. It's like hunting season: pot heads are out of season now.
High Times: Do you intend for your comedy to change people, or change the system?
Chong: We have no evangelistic trip at all. I mean, if you have only an hour and a half to entertain people, why put them through bummers? We just show people that it's good to do what you do best, because that's what's going to make you happy. For some reason or other we ended up in comedy. We're not equipped to be revolutionaries any more than they're equipped to be comedians. I don't think we're on anybody's death list, and surprisingly enough, we've gotten away with a whole lot of shit. If the heat had really been on us, we might be long gone.
High Times: When is your new album coming out?
Cheech: We've got to get it out before Christmas They're still working on it.
High Times: Do you plan a 'best of Cheech and Chong" album?
Chong: I guess we could ...
High Times: But aren't they usually just money makers-that the only reason people put them out is to stall for time?
Chong: Well, we're not above that (laughter)
Cheech: No, because we were just about to do that, you know.
High Times: You're planning a movie?
Cheech: We're in the process of making one. A regular feature-length film with a plot and everything.
High Times: When do you think that will be out?
Cheech: I don't know for sure.... Summer?
High Times: Are there any other areas of media you'd like to get into?
Chong: I think a lot of our stuff should be animated. I think it would be great: the dogs, Sister Mary Elephant, Poncho and Man, all of them-they'd be just perfect for animation.
High Times: Didn't someone do an animated "Basketball Jones"?
Chong: Yeah, but it wasn't as professional as it could have been. I'd like to do something even more far out and progressive.
High Times: How do you feel about High Times’ approach to getting high?
Chong: What blows us away about your magazine is that it's, like us, saying a lot of things that are so-called taboo, but yet are the only relevant things in a lot of people's lives. I imagine High Times is going through the same thing as we did when we started. That's why we can relate with you. You're still riding the first flash, and everybody is saying, "yeah, they're all right now, but can they hang on? What happens when this happens or that happens, blah, blah, blah.. " We like you because you're a good-time magazine.
High Times: Do you ever suspect that you’ve ripped off the street or the dope humor for the buck?
Chong: Not at all. We don't apologize for anything. We earned it, we worked hard for it. We started out with nothing and now we've got something.
