Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [51]
Crash Test Dummies also stunk up the joint with a cut from their album God Shuffled His Feet (off to the record store to return that album). Maybe I was judging on a curve. It’s tough to precede Aretha. All I knew was the name and the chorus of the song they were playing, which was “mmmmmmmm.” I wasn’t buying it. Aretha was coming in a week and these guys could mmmmmmmm their asses back to Canada.
Aretha was given time for three songs rather than the traditional two. She was amazing, but what a look. Her breasts were unlike anything I had ever seen; you should be able to put a key in her rump and drive them. And her bra was architecture.
Sometimes the musical guests were just unintentional comical relief, particularly in their appearances. Billy Joel was a troll of a man; I couldn’t believe how much he looked like Jackie Mason. When I saw him, the only thing that came to mind was that musicians really do get all the chicks. It was obvious why Dwight Yoakam got all the chicks—until he removed his trademark cowboy hat. His jeans were painted on and he wore ostrich skin boots and a pimpy rhinestone shirt. However, when he took off his hat, it was like Superman returning to Clark Kent. Without the hat, he looked like Clint Howard, Ron Howard’s brother.
When Snoop Doggy Dogg showed up, I brought in a photo from Spin magazine of him dressed in blue jeans, looking hard-core, with sweat dripping from his brow, and I asked him to sign it. He wrote: “To Jay, much respect, Snoop Doggy Dogg.” But he was so high he just kept on writing, covering the entire bottom half of the photo with graffiti. Maybe it was gangsta rap hieroglyphics for “You’re a cool white guy.”
Pearl Jam made me feel cool—period. When they arrived near the end of my first season, Eddie Vedder walked around with a piece of luggage resembling a bag you’d see a hobo carrying. When he opened it up, it was crammed with legal-looking papers. I had promised my future sister-in-law that I would get her Vedder’s autograph. All week I waited for the right time to approach him. We literally bumped into each other the evening of the show. I introduced myself to him and asked him if he could sign something for me. He replied, “No one…will know!” He was doing my Christopher Walken impression at me and I loved it.
Vedder smiled and asked me if I could come into the dressing room and say hi to the rest of the band, which I had no problem doing. When I walked into Pearl Jam’s dressing room, Eddie Vedder announced in Walken-ese, “Look…who I found.” The band members all launched into snippets of Walken. For the next half hour, I stayed in their dressing room doing Christopher Walken like a trained monkey.
The bassist, Jeff Ament, asked me if I played basketball. When I told him I did, he gave me his phone number at the hotel where the band was staying and said that he was registered under the name Otis Birdsong. He told me to call him the next day so we could together and shoot some hoops. I woke up but I didn’t call.
It didn’t matter. Pearl Jam recognized me, so the rest of the world could kiss my ass.
It was the next-to-last show of the year, and Chrissie Hynde was onstage performing with the Pretenders. They were playing their song and it sounded unbelievable. But Chrissie was having a difficult time with the show’s still photographer, Ken. Every time he maneuvered himself into position to snap a few shots for the hallway next to photos of the Rolling Stones and the other bands who had performed over the years, Chrissie would wave her hand and shoo him away.
During the Pretenders’ second set, the photographer brought out a ladder and stood on the top step, pointing his camera down at the band. In mid-lyric, Hynde pointed at him and screamed, “Fuck off!” Beleaguered, the photographer climbed down the ladder and slunk away.
The next day, the entire cast and crew filed into studio 8-H for the annual Saturday Night Live photo. About fifty exhausted people stood shoulder to shoulder and smiled like everything