Seven Dirty Words_ The Life and Crimes of George Carlin - James Sullivan [62]
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SPECIAL DISPENSATION
Habitually, Carlin came down on the side of the outlaws. That was rarely more clear than the night Specs O’Keefe came to dinner.
Joseph “Specs” O’Keefe was one of the masterminds of the infamous Brinks job in Boston in 1950. For nearly two years, eleven coconspirators planned an armed break-in at a downtown Brinks office, staging dry runs and removing various locks to have duplicate keys made. When it was time to carry out the crime, the thieves dressed in pea coats and Halloween masks, overwhelming surprised security guards inside. The immaculate heist netted O’Keefe and his cohorts nearly $3 million in cash and money orders, making the robbery the biggest in U.S. history to that point.
After a hit on his life failed, O’Keefe finally agreed to cooperate with law enforcement officials, only days before the statute of limitations would have expired. O’Keefe served four years in prison. Eight of his partners were sentenced to life behind bars.
Years later O’Keefe was in Los Angeles, working odd jobs under an assumed name. He met Carlin while making a package delivery—booze—and the comedian, always fascinated by the underworld, invited the ex-con to his house for dinner. Jeff Wald and his wife, Helen Reddy, were also invited. It was, says Wald, one of the most unusual evenings he ever spent. Both men were deeply intrigued by his background and perversely delighted to be in his company. (When O’Keefe died a few years later, says Wald, one newspaper claimed the thief had a circle of friends in show business: Wald, Reddy, Carlin. “It was hilarious.”) Carlin, of course, was looking forward to getting away with a transgression or two of his own.
THE CELLAR DOOR was a lively folk and jazz room at the bottom of 34th Street in the brownstone neighborhood of Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Richie Havens and Miles Davis had both cut live sessions at the club in 1970. Over two nights in late July 1971, Carlin made the recordings that would become his first album for Little David. He called it FM & AM.
On the radio, rule-benders were finding they had a place to experiment on the new FM band. Whereas AM stations were often rigidly formatted, playing popular hits expected to help sell commercial airtime, many stations broadcasting on the upstart FM dial were providing a safe haven where the mind was free to wander. Carlin, the onetime disc jockey and lifelong free thinker, was intrigued.
FM disc jockeys played a haphazard mix of blues, jazz, soul, and fifteen-minute acid rock tracks. Rather than stick to the logbook, they often expounded at length on whatever topic came to mind. On KPFA in Berkeley, the first listener-supported station in the country, future literary critic John Leonard debuted his free-form Nightsounds program: poetry, jazz, and satire. In New York acting hopeful Bob Fass created WBAI’s Radio Unnameable, an overnight forum in which the host featured regular phone-ins from Yippie agitator Abbie Hoffman and debuted Arlo Guthrie’s eighteen-minute sing-along “Alice’s Restaurant.” At WBCN in Boston, a classical format was gradually phased out in favor of something called “The American Revolution,” a mix of progressive rock ’n’ roll and radical investigative reporting.
FM grew so quickly that its idiosyncrasies became an instant source of parody. In a ludicrously relaxed voice, Robert Klein lampooned the aggressively nonaggressive style of the “FM Disc Jockey” in a bit by that name on his first album: “We’ll be bringing you the best in musical sounds these next thirty-eight hours.” If FM was hash pipes, macramé belts, and mellow testimonials for macrobiotic foods, AM radio was pop-top beer, white leather, and strident used car ads.
Carlin saw an apt metaphor for his own career in the two radio bands. He had come of age in the entertainment world, first as an AM disc jockey, playing Paul Anka and “Theme from A Summer Place.” As a comedian he developed an agreeable