Bankrate: Where did you start doing stand-up comedy?

George Carlin: I started with my partner Jack Burns in 1960 out in Hollywood, at a coffee house. We had a good two-year run, including doing "The Tonight Show with Jack Paar." But as a soloist (later on), I couldn't afford to be traveling to Indianapolis to do a nightclub there for a week, with all the money I earned spent on living and travel expenses and agent and manager's fees. I ended up breaking even. So I said, if I'm just gonna break even, I might as well stay in New York and go to these hootenannies.

Comedy clubs now have open mic nights, but it was hootenannies then because it was the folk and post-folk era, the hippie movement. Rock 'n' roll was just starting to go electric, and things were changing. So I decided to go to the hootenannies and try to be discovered by the talk shows, and that's what happened.

Bankrate: Who else performed with you there?

George Carlin: I didn't hang out much. I was married and had a little baby uptown, so I hurried back uptown (after gigs,) but I remember Cass Elliott being over in that bar we hung out in, and Richard Pryor. Down at the Cafe Au Go Go, Richard and I would go down and work there alternate nights or weeks. Richard got his Merv Griffin interview one week, and about two weeks later they gave him a show date, and before he did his show date, I had my interview. I was always one step behind Richard, but we emerged at the same time out of the same club in the Village, and then on to The Merv Griffin Show.

Bankrate: Did you and Richard ever work in the club at the same time?

George Carlin: I think we went up on stage a couple of times together to kind of goof off, but frankly, I don't remember much of it. We probably did some ad-libbing.

Bankrate: When you made the transition from clean comic to hippie comic, where did you first get up as the "new" George Carlin?

George Carlin: This thing was not overnight. I didn't go away to the mountain and come back and say I'm different, like Bobby Darin did. I went through a two-year change in front of everybody, doing TV all the time, growing my hair longer and longer and growing my beard, and letting my code of dress become more casual.

The material also began to change a little bit, as much as it could on TV, which was very little. During this period, which was '70 and '71, I did the Steve Allen show; Della Reece had a five-day-a-week show; and Virginia Graham had the same thing. I did those three shows very frequently, and talked about these changes I was going through and how I didn't belong in nightclubs with mainstream audiences. I belonged where people wanted to hear different points of view, and wanted to hear stuff that had political or social overtones.

The first time I ever had a job like that was at Santa Monica City College. Mort Sahl was supposed to be on the bill with Spirit, the rock band, and Mort had to cancel. So I took his place, and I got a standing ovation from the college students. There was no looking back from that day on.