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Perry Como’s next hit,” he says. Atlantic, on the other hand, was an R&B and jazz label, home to giants such as Ray Charles and John Coltrane. The company had been making inroads with young rock fans, having recently muscled its way into the new arena by signing the British bands Led Zeppelin and Yes. It seemed like a natural fit. Monte Kay “loved to help people who he thought were outside the mainstream,” says his daughter. “That’s why he named the company Little David. It was always the little guys’ rights he wanted to fight for.” The label’s logo was an illustration of the young David, who slew the Philistine giant Goliath, dressed in a tunic and carrying a slingshot.

Carlin’s new managers began booking him into the old folk clubs and underground showrooms he’d effectively left behind after the Village years. Wald got him started with a meager $250 for a one-night booking at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, where Lenny Bruce was once arrested for obscenity and Richard Pryor recorded his debut album in 1968. Carlin had no complaint about the money, says Wald, “because he was doing material he wanted to do, and the audience was responding.” Before the switch, he’d been earning a few hundred thousand dollars a year, much of it in Vegas. “I always brag that I took him from two hundred fifty grand to twelve grand,” says Wald. “He was smart enough to know that if you do the work, the money comes.”

In New York Carlin played the Bitter End and the Focus. At the latter, on the Upper West Side, owner Larry Brezner saw a nervous wreck who was unrecognizable to his own fans, who had filled the place to see him. “Everyone had come there to see George Carlin, but they had no idea it was him,” Brezner said. “People walked right by him. I mean, nobody recognized him. He looked like any freak hanging out in the place.”

In Pasadena he played the Ice House, then a decade-old folk den that was starting to handle more comedy bookings. He’d just bought a new Trans Am, which he parked on a side street near the club. During his set someone sideswiped the car, caving in the door. Carlin took that as a sign, a test of his decision to change direction. He’d splurged on “a nice, new, mainstream car, an old-fashioned toy,” and now it was badly damaged. How much would he be willing to sacrifice for his comic peace of mind?

Significantly, Kay and Wilson helped their new colleague by inviting him to write for The Flip Wilson Show. Working alongside comedy-writing veterans such as Mike Marmer, an old television hand who’d written gags for Milton Berle, Ernie Kovacs, and Steve Allen, Carlin also made several appearances on the program. His first spot, in February 1971, featured skits with fellow guest Joe Namath and a two-man version of “The Newscast” with Wilson, rechristened the “What’s Happening Now News,” with the comics sitting at a pair of desks in loud plaid jackets. Carlin did Al Sleet and sports reporter “Biff Barf,” who provided some new scores (“Cal Tech 14.5, MIT, 12 to the third power”) and plugged an upcoming appearance at which he would be “presenting the National Two-Man Pallbearing Championships.”

Also that month, he returned to the Ed Sullivan Theater for an episode that would turn out to be one of the last for the host, then approaching twenty-five years on television. The comic’s new look was especially startling on the old, familiar Sullivan set. Young comedian David Brenner, also booked on the show, was a big Carlin fan. He made his manager promise not to let him leave without an introduction. After running through his own rehearsal, Brenner sat down in the theater to watch the other acts, which included the Everly Brothers, singers Shirley Bassey and Jerry Butler, and a unicycling team called the Brockways. “A stage hand comes along and he sits next to me,” Brenner recalled. “He’s got a beard, he’s wearing a cap, and he’s got on old jeans. . . . We sat there about a half hour watching the show.” During a break, Brenner rousted his manager to remind him about introducing him to Carlin. “You were just talking to him for a half