I’m interested in the transition from music to comedy: How do you switch from one form of entertaining to another?
My love of comedy was stronger then my love for music. I played because I could. It was something I could do and people needed me, but I was always a backup guitar player. I never said a word while I played. The singer would do all of that. I would just be back there messing with my amp or something. I never talked, but when I started doing comedy, it just came so natural. Musicians are the best comedians because of their timing. When you’re a musician, you have to know your chord structure and composition, but you have to have timing to be able to keep a beat, a rhythm, and you have to know when the crowd is ready to hear a certain tune. Even Miles Davis, who was renowned for his contempt for audiences, had impeccable comedic timing.

So you’re making people laugh but now you’re in the spotlight, you’re not in the background: How do you deal with that change, being a guy up there on your own, not hiding in the shadows?
It’s a high, it’s an ego blast. When I found out I could entertain without carrying a fucking guitar around and a microphone and speakers and a drummer who’s got family problems… when I found out I could just walk on stage by myself and control a show, I became the happiest guy in the world. I watched Richard Pryor every night for a week once and I watched how he constructed his show. People said, “He is doing the same bit,” and he would do the same bit but it would be different every time he did it. He taught me how each moment has its own precious time and it’s only at that moment and then it’s gone forever. So I learned how to keep it fresh, keep it live.

You and Cheech hooked up and things really started to roll with your albums?
Well, it took a year. We struggled for a year. Every good thing… it’s like cooking a meal, you prepare and then you put it on the fire and you cook it. We started making records first. We found the formula: make a record, then you tour. You tour behind the record so you have something to sell and something they can hear on the radio and there’s a reason for people to come and see you wherever you perform.

How did you and Cheech keep it going together for so long?
I think what happens is that you develop a brand and if you’re smart you protect that brand. Like John Wayne. He tried to do Shakespeare but it didn’t work out for him; he’s much better being John Wayne. You protect the brand: if you’re smart you don’t walk out of the house unless you’re wearing the brand.

I want to talk a little bit about your arrest.
I went to jail for nine months because I did Up In Smoke. They put that in the indictment. They said that I made millions by making fun of law enforcement agencies. That is an American right, a freedom. We are supposed to revel in the fact that we can make fun of the people who are the so-called rulers, the establishment. Besides, if they thought my movies were bad, what about Police Academy?

What was it like being in prison?
When I was in air cadets, I spent six weeks in Vernon, B.C. every year for three or four years. Prison was like Vernon but easier because I didn’t have to march, didn’t have to work. I had to get up early and work for an hour and then go play in the garden, carve, create pottery or whatever I wanted to do.

Sounds sort of like a meditation retreat.
I really went into a spiritual trip but you have to be counted every four hours so you couldn’t really get a groove going. I studied people, I wrote a book. Among my fellow inmates I counted eight doctors, good doctors, some lawyers, some very brilliant people.

I also read that you have been on a pot fast since being released as a protest?
Well, I called off that pot fast. I thought “pot fast” was a very funny thing to say. But the truth is that I was at Hunter S. Thompson’s house a year after he killed himself and we had a party there and that’s basically when I broke my fast.

Coming back to Alberta, what do you remember most or miss the most when you think about Alberta?
The extreme cold, waking up in the dark to go to school and then coming home in the dark. I remember the middle of winter because I went through 20 of them. I also remember the crocuses. When you saw a crocus you knew spring was right around the corner after nine months of cold-ass winter. They are the most beautiful flowers in the world. U

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