Rock Historian Ed Ward

DATE April 18, 2002 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Denis Leary talks about his stand-up comedy and his
TV series "The Job"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest is actor and comic Denis Leary.

(Soundbite from "No Cure for Cancer")

(Soundbite of applause)

Mr. DENIS LEARY: `I'm not happy. I'm not happy.' Nobody's happy, OK?
Happiness comes in small doses, folks. It's a cigarette or a chocolate chip
cookie or a five-second orgasm. That's it, OK? You come, you eat the cookie,
you smoke the butt; you go to sleep, you get up in the morning and go to
(censored) work, OK?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. LEARY: That is it, end of (censored) list.

(Soundbite of applause)

GROSS: That's typical of the manic cynicism in Denis Leary's comedy. We
heard a clip of his stand-up show "No Cure for Cancer." He did a follow-up
called "Lock and Load." A lot of his fans were introduced to him through his
short comedy breaks on MTV. Comedy helped him launch his acting career. His
films include "The Ref," "Wag the Dog" and "The Thomas Crown Affair."

Leary co-created and stars in the ABC detective comedy "The Job." The final
episode of the season will be shown next week. It may or may not make it back
next season. Leary plays a detective who does good work but he smokes too
much, drinks too much and cheats on his wife. In this scene, he's worried
that his girlfriend is cheating on him. His partner, played by Bill Nunn,
suspects something's wrong.

(Soundbite from "The Job," courtesy ABC)

Mr. BILL NUNN: Come on, man. What's up?

Mr. LEARY: I don't know, man. I think she might have a guy on the side.

Mr. NUNN: Well, you have a wife on the side.

Mr. LEARY: No, no, no, no. I have a wife. I don't have a wife on the side.
I have a wife.

Mr. NUNN: With a girlfriend on the side. So why shouldn't your girlfriend on
the side have a guy on the side?

Mr. LEARY: Because that's not how it works, OK? If she has a guy on the
side, that means she'd be lying to me, and we don't lie to each other.

Mr. NUNN: Oh, you don't lie?

Mr. LEARY: No. Toni knew about my wife right from the very start.

Mr. NUNN: Well, if you don't lie, how come your wife doesn't know about your
girlfriend?

Mr. LEARY: I didn't say anything about not lying to my wife, OK? Me and
Toni, you know, it's a different story.

Mr. NUNN: Oh, I see. So it's OK to lie to your wife, just not your
girlfriend.

Mr. LEARY: Right. Hey, look, if I can't trust the woman I'm cheating with,
then who can I trust?

Mr. NUNN: I don't know, man. Satan?

GROSS: Denis Leary, welcome to FRESH AIR. Let me ask you to describe in
your words your character in "The Job."

Mr. LEARY: My character is Mike McNeil, who is based, fictionally presented
but based on an actual friend of mine named Mike Charles, who's a detective
here in Manhattan. And he was my technical adviser on "The Thomas Crown
Affair." And in the course of working with him for six months on that project,
I got to know him and I obviously got to do a lot of research with the guys
that he was working with and spent a lot of time with them.

But Mike's personal life as it existed about five or seven years previous to
my having met him was much more interesting to me than just Mike as a current
New York City detective, because back then, he was drinking and popping pills
and cheating on his wife, and at the same time, you know, was, not in his own
estimation but probably the guys who worked with him, considered to be one of
the best cops in the city and one of the most active guys on duty. Like, he
never took vacation. He was constantly consumed by the job.

And I just thought, well, this is a really screwed-up, messy guy who--it must
have been really funny to try to keep all that stuff going, and that's what we
set out to do, was to kind of display as much of a real detective's life as we
could on television, and so I can't believe network TV's letting us get away
with it. So...

GROSS: Is Mike Charles flattered that Mike McNeil, your character, is based
on him?

Mr. LEARY: I think, to begin with--I told him I was going to write a project
about a detective. So, you know, he told me stories and he opened up the
doors to his friends and the guys in his squad, and the women, and had them
tell us stories. So I think he thought we were going to come back with
something other than what we came back with, because when he finally realized
I was, you know, going to be writing around his life, he was kind of taken
aback. And then I think when he was waiting for the pilot script to come in,
he was still thinking it was going to be about kind of a heroic, you know, New
York TV cop.

And instead, it was really kind of spot on in terms of the details of his
life. So he was like, `Well, man, my ex-wife's going to kill me.' I was like,
`Well, that's kind of the point, Mike.' You know? So then I think once we got
the cast together and he started to see--and Peter Tolan came on board, and he
started to see where we were headed, I think it's like everything else--like
with the network, we are fine as long as we're funny. We can get away with
anything as long as we're funny. And that's--I mean, some of the stuff we do
is shocking language-wise or behavior-wise, but as long as it's making people
laugh, then we know it's OK, because that's what we set out to do, was to be
truthful, and in being truthful, to be funny.

GROSS: You know, how in most TV series about cops, there's at least one
episode in which an actor comes to work with the cops...

Mr. LEARY: Yes.

GROSS: ...because the actor's going to play a cop...

Mr. LEARY: Yes.

GROSS: ...and the actor has to figure out what it's like to be a cop. And
all the cops in the TV series think that the actor's really obnoxious and
spoiled and too much like a fashion model.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: Were you worried that you would come off as like the annoying actor
visiting the real cops when you were working on "The Thomas Crown Affair" when
you first met Mike Charles?

Mr. LEARY: No, because I actually had--there was another project, a movie,
that I was getting ready to start called "Double Whammy," And that was a film
that was written to be directed by Tom DiCillo, who was a friend of mine.
He's the guy that did "Living in Oblivion" and the "Box of Moonlight." And
so...

GROSS: And "The Real Blonde."

Mr. LEARY: Yeah, and "The Real Blonde." And he had done research with this
guy who was a friend of his, who was also a detective in Manhattan who I had
been working with. So I felt like I didn't even want to meet Mike Charles
because I already had done research with Tom on this film that we were about
to start, "Double Whammy," and I didn't want to waste the time in meeting and
getting to know another guy.

But John McTiernan, the director of "The Thomas Crown Affair," said, `No, I
insist that you meet this guy because I think you're going to really hit it
off with him.' And, of course, the first time that I met Mike, I really hit it
off with him. And then something just caught my eye. He was very funny. He
was very fast-talking. He was, you know, very up front. And when I met the
crew that he worked with, I was really enthralled because they were an
interesting group of people, and really, really funny. Then when I went out
with these guys to see how they worked together, you know, the conversations
in the car while they're killing time, which is a lot of what being a
detective is about, were hysterical. So I was desperate to get it on paper,
you know?

GROSS: What kind of editing did you get at the network? Did you have to
clear the scripts with Standards and Practices? Does Standards and Practices
still exist?

Mr. LEARY: Yeah. Yeah, you have to go through that process. But I think
because of Peter's history in television--he worked on "Larry Sanders" and a
number of television series before that--he kind of knows how to get around
them a little bit, plus they're kind of afraid of Peter and I because there's
so much that's not supposed to be in a half-hour show, a sitcom, so to speak,
in our scripts that they don't know where to start sometimes. And a lot of
the times, you know, we get stuff that we just put down the way we want to
portray it and we know that they're going to try to take something away.

GROSS: Denis Leary is my guest, and he's the star, co-creator, co-writer of
the series "The Job." And the final episode, at least the final episode of
this season, is next week.

Most of us knew you first as a stand-up comic through your show "No Cure for
Cancer" and from your MTV stand-up spots. Had you intended originally to act,
or to do comedy?

Mr. LEARY: I went to school to become an actor and a writer, and then, you
know, once I graduated--I went to Emerson College up in Boston--once I
graduated, you know, it's pretty obvious--I think it's probably the same way
now--there's not a lot of work for actors and writers. And then Steven
Wright, the comedian who went to school with me at Emerson, had started doing
stand-up, which was extraordinary because he was one of the most shy,
painfully shy human beings on the planet. And Lenny Clarke, who's in my show,
the television show "The Job," who plays Frank Harrigan, Lenny started going
up on stage. This is like 1980, I guess, or '81.

And I went and I saw those guys, and I thought, `Well, if they can do it, I
can do it,' you know? And, of course, I tried and failed desperately, and I
spent another three or four years trying to get acting work. And then finally
I just said, `I'm just going to try this thing, because I'll have some stage
time,' you know? So by the time I hit, it was hard to convince people, `No,
no, I can act. I've got a background in acting.' And that was the tough part
of the first part of my career.

And I can remember even after we did "The Ref," we got some great reviews, but
we also got a lot of, you know, knee-jerk critics who were astounded that, you
know, this MTV stand-up comedian had been paired with the great theatrical
actor Kevin Spacey and the Oscar-nominated Judy Davis, because they have to
pigeonhole you somehow, you know?

GROSS: Well, I want to talk about your persona in your stand-up act. In "No
Cure for Cancer" and your new MTV spots, I mean, you are this really, like,
loud, in-your-face, you know, often obnoxious personality. Let me play a
little clip from "No Cure for Cancer."

(Soundbite from "No Cure for Cancer")

Mr. LEARY: We live in a country where John Lennon takes six bullets in the
chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him, not one (censored) bullet.
Explain that to me.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. LEARY: Explain it to me, God. Explain it to me, God. I wanted her to
take--oh, Jesus!

(Soundbite of applause; laughter)

Mr. LEARY: Now we've got 25 more years, (makes noise). Yeah, I'm real
(censored) happy now, God. I'm wearing a huge happy hat. Jesus Christ! I
mean, Stevie Ray Vaughan is dead, and we can't get Jon Bon Jovi in a
helicopter. Come on, folks.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. LEARY: `Get on that helicopter, Jon. Shut the (censored) up and get on
that helicopter. There's a hairdresser in there. Yeah, go ahead in there.
Yeah. Yeah.'

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. LEARY: I don't get it. I just don't get it. I missed the (censored)
point someplace. The boat left and I wasn't on the boat. Explain it to me.
Heavy metal bands are on trial because kids commit suicide? What is that
about? Judas Priest on trial, `because my kid bought the record and he
listened to the lyrics and he got into Satan la, la, la, la, la, la.' Well,
that's great. That sets a legal precedent. Does that mean I can sue Dan
Fogelberg for making me into a pussy in the mid-'70s? Is that possible? Huh?
Huh?

(Soundbite of laughter; applause)

GROSS: Denis Leary, can you talk about the persona you created for the
stand-up act and how, if at all, that coincides with who you were at the time?

Mr. LEARY: Well, I do for stage, both with "No Cure for Cancer" and with my
last one-man show, which was "Lock and Load," I create the material from
bullet points of ideas that I have written down in a notebook, and I have to
get up on stage and sort of improv and talk them out loud over and over again.
And then from there, after a couple of months of doing it, I start to create
what is, I guess, a fairly scripted performance in my head, even though it's
never put down on paper.

So with "No Cure for Cancer," because I knew I wanted to do a show that was
about death in all its forms, in order to be really comfortable on stage when
you're creating it, you have to feel like you're in your living room talking
to your friends on a roll, so to speak. And so I ramped it up a little bit in
"No Cure for Cancer" because the show was so full of violent, rapid-fire
imagery and discussions about, you know, pop culture and death in general.

I mean, "Lock and Load," there's still a lot of, you know, fast-paced talk,
because that's the way I talk when I get going, but it's just the way it comes
out of my head, you know? And that's just, you know, it's like Chris Rock,
when he talks about wife in his stand-up act, he says, you know, `There's my
comedy wife, and then there's my real-life wife.' You know, so I think you
want to feel like you're in the living room talking to your friends, but at
the same time, you know, I happen to be a guy who talks very fast, and I get
very angry about certain issues. And, you know, sometimes people who know me
really well, if they're driving in the car with me and I get upset about
something, it could seem to them like I was the stand-up comedy guy or the "No
Cure for Cancer" guy, whatever you want to call it. But I'm obviously not
like that all the time.

GROSS: What about figuring out where the line is between, you know, something
you could say on stage and something that's in such bad taste that you
wouldn't say it?

Mr. LEARY: I don't think there is a line, but I think there's a line as
regards certain events. You know, I've never personally to this day found a
way to make, for instance--God--the death of Eric Clapton's son--that never
was funny to me. It still isn't funny to me. Whereas, you know, talking
about, I don't know why, but about John Lennon being assassinated in "No Cure
for Cancer," that was funny.

GROSS: Did Yoko ever write to you and say, `How could you have said that
about me?'

Mr. LEARY: No. I've never actually met Yoko. I've seen her. I have friends
who live in the Dakotas, so I've seen her from a distance here and there.
I've run into many people over the years that I discussed in my stand-up
shows. So...

GROSS: And you're still alive, so it couldn't be too bad.

Mr. LEARY: Well, I mean, if you don't have a sense of humor about it, you
know, then I'm just going to make fun of you again. You know what I mean?
That's the way--I mean, if you're a public figure especially, obviously you're
up for grabs, you know?

GROSS: My guest is comic and actor Denis Leary. He's the co-creator and star
of the ABC detective series "The Job."

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Denis Leary is my guest, and he's the star and co-creator of the TV
series "The Job." The final episode, at least the final episode of this
season, is next week.

In "No Cure for Cancer," you tell a story about your father having a carpentry
accident when you were 10 and he kind of saws off his thumb. His thumb's
hanging by a thread.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: He tapes it back onto his hand, drives himself to the hospital, where
it gets repaired. Did you think that that's how you were going to be, too?

Mr. LEARY: No, I thought my father was some kind of a superhero, which I
guess is what probably all boys think about their dads. But, you know, it was
also that generation of men from...

GROSS: What, stoic?

Mr. LEARY: Yeah. They looked at John Wayne as sort of like, you know, their
be-all and end-all. My father was, you know, an Irish immigrant who came to
this country--you know the old cliche--in 1950 or '51 with no money in his
pockets. And he came to New York and, you know, started to make his living.
So it's hard for me to look at my dad and not really admire everything that he
made out of his life, because, you know, basically the day that one of my
sisters was born, he was at work and they called and said my mother was at the
hospital going into labor and he drove downtown to where the hospital was and
parked at a meter, and he literally had no money. He was waiting, you know,
paycheck to paycheck. And he got out of the car and he thought, `Well, I'm
going to have to, you know, make due with a ticket here because, you know, I
have no change to put into this meter.' And he looked down and he was
stepping on a $5 bill.

And I've always remembered that story as being, like, evident of my dad's
approach to life, which is that, you know, you have the luck of the Irish,
something good will happen. You just keep moving forward and moving forward
and moving forward, you know?

GROSS: Why did he come to the country when he did, to the United States?

Mr. LEARY: Because back then, you know, at that time he came from a huge
family and his mother died giving birth to the last child. And all they had
was the family farm and, you know, not everybody was going to be able to make
a living off of that farm. It was going to have to be given to the oldest
boy. So he had to come here to make money, because, you know, there was no
economic boom in those days in Ireland. And he came, and not only did he end
up making a living, but, you know, he got us fed and clothed, and we all had
college educations. So, you know...

GROSS: What kind of job did he have?

Mr. LEARY: He was a mechanic. He was a car nut.

GROSS: You went to Catholic school?

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: For all of your school years?

Mr. LEARY: Twelve years.

GROSS: Wow.

Mr. LEARY: Yep, same school, same nuns, same priests.

GROSS: Were you afraid of the nuns? Do you think you were any more or less
afraid of the nuns than you would have been of lay teachers?

Mr. LEARY: We were more afraid of the nuns than we were of the priests,
except there was one priest, the headmaster, Father Reynolds(ph), who when you
were young you were afraid of him because he was a real tough guy. He was an
ex-boxer who grew up in the neighborhood and became a priest and then the
headmaster of the school. But the nuns were to this day, you know--I had one
great nun, Sister Rosemary Sullivan(ph), who passed away last year, and she
was the one who first put me into a play in high school. And she was the nun
who told me about Emerson College, which, you know, saved my life, because
that's where I basically learned everything I know about acting and writing.
So...

GROSS: Did you have to get disciplined a lot, and what was the discipline?

Mr. LEARY: Yeah, I was a terrible student. Terrible.

GROSS: Uh-huh. But what kind of punishments were you subjected to?

Mr. LEARY: Oh, you know, we had--the nuns used to love to hit you on the
knuckles with a ruler. And it got to the point, I mean, they would just whack
you in the head, you know? This is back in the days when they were allowed to
hit you without being taken to court, you know. But I look back on it and I'm
really glad, because that kind of repression where, you know, you're always in
a situation where you're not supposed to be laughing just leads to more
laughter. I mean, some of my fondest memories are my friends and my cousins
and my brothers and sisters, we were just, you know, laughing because you're
not supposed to. But it was in church or school or--you know?

GROSS: Were you at all religious during that period when you were in Catholic
school?

Mr. LEARY: Well, we were forced to be. You know, we had to go to Mass every
Sunday, and then eventually you got $200 taken off your tuition if you were in
the altar boys or the choir. So that was, you know, a lot of money for my
parents. So I was kicked out of the altar boys, and then kicked out of the
choir boys. I'm kind of proud of that.

GROSS: What were you kicked out for?

Mr. LEARY: Altar boys, for drinking the holy wine...

GROSS: Yeah?

Mr. LEARY: ...before the Mass started just to see what it tasted like. And I
was told that was a mortal sin and I was going to hell, so at that point, I
was like, `Well, I'm already going. I might as well just take as many people
with me as I can.' And then I went into the choir boys to try to get that
money taken off the tuition again, and I think I got kicked out of the choir
boys because--and I'm not trying to point the finger--somebody was smoking and
they passed me the cigarette. I had never actually took a hit off the
cigarette, but it was right at the moment when the choir director turned
around and caught us. So...

GROSS: Well, I'll point out you've taken hits off of plenty cigarettes since
then.

Mr. LEARY: Oh, yeah.

GROSS: You know, as a former altar boy and choir boy, are you surprised by
the sexual scandals in the church now?

Mr. LEARY: No. As a matter of fact, "Lock and Load" ended, the HBO version
and the record both ended with a kind of a hip-hop track with me live talking
over it about, you know, sexual abuse by priests of kids. That was 1997. So,
you know, I've been a vocal advocate of leaving the Catholic Church or having
them fix themselves for years.

GROSS: But you still like the schooling that you had?

Mr. LEARY: I mean, I really loved it. But I came from a neighborhood school.
You know, I walked to school every day. It was about a block and a half, two
blocks from my apartment. All the kids I grew up with, we all went to school
together for 12 years. We felt like we were a big gang.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. LEARY: And we felt like, you know, we knew how to handle, like, the nuns
and the priests in terms of what we had to do and what we didn't have to do to
get by. But I loved it because it was, like, I grew up in a neighborhood where
you could, you know, basically walk anywhere. And we loved playing sports,
and we loved, you know, everything about our school. And we kind of knew by
the time we were, you know, 14 or 15 that we weren't buying into what they
were teaching us, I mean, more in terms of religion. We were just getting
through until we went to college, you know?

GROSS: Denis Leary is the co-creator and star of the ABC detective comedy
"The Job." He'll be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music; funding credits)

GROSS: Coming up, rock historian Ed Ward profiles the Sonics, a very early
punk band. Also, Daniel Harris talks about his un-memoir, "A Memoir of No One
in Particular." And we continue our conversation with actor and comic Denis
Leary.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with comic and actor Denis
Leary. His ABC detective sitcom "The Job" has its final episode of the season
and maybe the final episode next week. Leary first became known for his
stand-up comedy show "No Cure For Cancer" and his short comic breaks on MTV.

Before you developed your really kind of like sarcastic, loud, on-stage
stand-up persona, did you ever, like, sing in school versions of Broadway
shows?

Mr. LEARY: Well, yeah. That's what saved me because I did. That nun, Sister
Rosemary, put me in when I was--I think I was 13. She forced me to be the kid
in "Mame," the musical. And I ended up thinking it was great because you got
the afternoons off from school to rehearse, which is the reason I really liked
it. And then I guess about--probably about three years later she put me in
another musical with a friend of mine who's a fireman now. And then by the
time I started to realize I wasn't going to be a hockey player because, number
one, I wasn't good enough and, number two, my grades were horrendous, I
started to think, `Well, maybe I'll do this acting thing,' because it was a
great way to meet girls, which I discovered in high school.

And I hated musicals. To this day I'm not a guy that goes to see musicals. I
thought it was always kind of strange that people just started singing out of
the blue. You know? I could not get the non-reality of that out of my head.
To me, a musical was like when I saw "Help" or "A Hard Day's Night" where The
Beatles would be, like, characters. And when it was time to play or sing,
they'd walk over and pick up the instruments and start singing. You know what
I mean? But it was a good thing because it put the bug in my ear about
acting.

GROSS: In No Cure For Cancer, you talk about drugs and you say, `I did my
share. I did my share and your share.' When was the period in your life when
you were doing that?

Mr. LEARY: Well, you know, I was a teen-ager from 197--well, not the entire
'70s but--I mean, I went to college from '75 to '79. I mean, that alone right
there, you know, growing up in that time period especially when punk and New
Wave hit. There was a--it was a completely different approach to life, I
guess. But it's also part of growing up and it's part of the rock 'n' roll
life as well, you know.

GROSS: Well, what drugs most suited your personality?

Mr. LEARY: Oh, God. None of them, quite frankly. The only thing I found
that suits my personality is beer, which I like. But, you know, one thing I
never did was--just from watching it, from watching--from a fashion point of
view and also from a practical point of view, I just never saw any reason to
take acid or any kind of drug that would alter your mind like that. I didn't
like The Grateful Dead, I didn't like the whole hippie thing, which I just
missed in terms of fashion and music. And I just didn't--it didn't appeal to
me. So by the time, you know, when I--the kind of music I liked kicked in,
which was The Ramones and The Clash and those fashions I liked as well, I was
kind of like, `Thank God for that.'

GROSS: It sounds like you're afraid if you took acid you'd suddenly be
wearing like pants with bell-bottoms or something.

Mr. LEARY: Yes, I was. Yeah, exactly. You know, wearing a beard and
listening to, you know--I'll never forget the guy who was the keyboard player
in Yes, Rick Wakeman, put out a live double album of him playing the organ.
And my brother used to--and his friends used to sit around and listen to it.
And I was just like, `This is a live double album of the organ player from
Yes. I mean, this is really--we've reached the breaking point here, OK?' So
that's--I was glad I missed that boat.

GROSS: So this is what you didn't want drugs to do, to turn you into a fan of
that album.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah. I remember that we--in my day, what we needed drugs for
was to fuel us, to keep us up so that we could dance. And you know, we would
go to clubs to see bands and dance. So the whole, you know, sort of double
live album approach to life didn't suit--this is in the era when, you know,
Rick Wakeman was doing the double live album, but you know, Elvis Costello and
The Clash were writing three-minute songs. I mean, much the same as kids
growing up now. I mean, teen-agers now would be, I guess, taking a lot of
ecstasy is probably their--you know, and the music they listen to reflects
that as well. So, you know.

GROSS: When you broke into films after doing stand-up, you, you know, pretty
early on started making films with really great actors.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: De Niro, Kevin Spacey, Judy Davis. Recently you were directed by Joe
Mantegna, who I think is a terrific actor.

Mr. LEARY: Yes.

GROSS: Are there things that you've learned from, you know, on the job
working with great actors that go beyond what you learned when you were in
school when you were really getting your ...(unintelligible)?

Mr. LEARY: Oh, yeah. Definitely. And one of the things--you know, I met De
Niro fairly early on. He had come to see No Cure For Cancer and he was trying
to develop some, you know, younger talent through his company, Tribeca. And,
yeah, he was obviously a hero of mine. I mean, one of the reasons I wanted to
act was when I saw "Mean Streets" the first time, it was the first time I
thought at the movies, `Wow, I know guys like that. I can do this.' You
know?

GROSS: So what did you ask De Niro?

Mr. LEARY: Oh, I've asked him so many questions over the years it's not
even--I have to really think about that.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. LEARY: But I mean, he's the kind of guy, he's got a big production
company and he's been at it for years. So he's a good source, as is his
partner, Jane Rosenthal. He's a good source of any kind of question from
financing to, you know, budget to location. I mean, it's all practical stuff,
you know.

GROSS: Now I understand after you leave the studio, you're going to throw out
the first pitch of the Mets game?

Mr. LEARY: Yeah. It's kind of an astounding situation that the Mets have
found themselves in. They've got possibly the Red Sox's biggest fan throwing
out the first ball at their game. So, you know, it's ironic to me that I will
be throwing out the first ball on the same field where, you know, the Bill
Buckner incident occurred.

GROSS: Now you're not worried about, like, throwing a wild pitch or anything?

Mr. LEARY: No. I was a little bit worried about that, but it's--it's the
whole cast of the show throwing out the first ball. So when you do that they
move you in closer to home plate. I'm more worried about just, you know--I
don't know. I would hate to--my instinct as a Red Sox fan is to do something
that will make the crowd in the stands very upset. But I've been told I
should shy away from that.

GROSS: And after the Mets game, you're getting inducted into--What?--the
Museum of Television and Radio Hall of Fame.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah. Yeah. Which is, you know, pretty amazing. But, yeah,
that's going to be fun. No matter what happens with the show, in that
building here in Manhattan, there will be a plaque and some photo of the cast
for--into perpetuity. You know?

GROSS: Right.

Mr. LEARY: So I'll be able to take my relatives and say, `See, I had a TV
show once.'

GROSS: Denis Leary recorded yesterday. He's the co-creator and star of the
ABC detective comedy "The Job." The final episode of the season airs next
week. Leary doesn't yet know if it will be renewed. In this scene from "The
Job," he and his buddies have been using a telescope to spy on a naked woman
practicing yoga. When their view is blocked by furniture, they disguise
themselves as building maintenance workers and go to her apartment.

(Soundbite of "The Job")

Mr. LEARY: I think, ma'am, we definitely have to move this piece of furniture
because it's blocking a vent and it's trapping fumes and that's a very serious
situation.

Unidentified Woman: Has this been a problem for anyone else in the building?

Mr. LEARY: Oh, yeah. A whole bunch of people, yeah. You know the old lady
upstairs?

Unidentified Woman: Which one?

Mr. LEARY: The old one with the gray hair and the really old face.

Unidentified Woman: I haven't seen her for ages.

Mr. LEARY: That's because she's dead. And we have reason to believe that her
death was definitely fume related. So what do you know. What are the odds?
There actually is a vent here.

Unidentified Actor #1: I know.

Unidentified Actor #2: Well, that's quite an improvement. It really opens up
the energy in the room.

Mr. LEARY: We've got to go up and do the heating element fixture thing on
the 23rd floor.

Unidentified Actor #2: Right. Yeah.

Mr. LEARY: Thank you. And we will be in touch.

Unidentified Woman: You're going up to the 23rd?

Mr. LEARY: Yeah. We've got a thing to do up there.

Unidentified Woman: This building only has 18 stories.

Mr. LEARY: Right. Right. But we have a code. We say 23; we mean 18. We
always add five floors to--thank you.

Unidentified Woman: Why?

Mr. LEARY: I'm not really at liberty to tell you about that. It's a secret
janitor thing. So thank you and we'll talk to you later.

GROSS: Coming up, rock historian Ed Ward on the early punk band the Sonics.
This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Daniel Harris talks about his new book, "A Memoir of
No One in Particular"
TERRY GROSS, host:

Daniel Harris set out to write an anti-memoir, a book that would satirize the
vogue for memoirs and probe the typical banalities of daily life. But he
realized that little about his life is typical. He describes himself as an
effete homosexual who spends six days of the week reading and writing, who
lounges around for most of his waking hours in a house robe and pajamas and
who ekes out a subsistence living.

His book turned into an unconventional memoir in which, as he puts it, he
examines how his wardrobe and sex life have evolved, how his relationship to
books has changed and how he cannot lie with the same poetic license that made
his childhood fibs so colorful. The book is called "A Memoir of No One in
Particular." I asked Daniel Harris to do a short reading and to introduce it
for us.

Mr. DANIEL HARRIS (Author, "A Memoir of No One in Particular"): My father was
a therapist, a very liberal Jewish therapist. My mother was a disaffected
Baptist director of a large day-care center. So they were both involved in
social service organizations. And so they instilled in me really intensely
democratic principles that were somehow at odds with my homosexuality and
that's what this passage is about.

(Reading) `My parents' belief in the importance of social service
organizations, along with the radicalism of the counterculture fostered in me
a fiercely egalitarian commitment to helping the poor and fighting for
minority rights. My politics, however, simply did not gibe with an aspect of
my life that pulled me in exactly the opposite direction--my homosexuality. I
grew up taunted by the very people I now hope to serve, the sons of Wisconsin
farmers, gang members in Buffalo and rednecks in Appalachia, bigots whose
scorn I met halfway with my own contempt, a self-protective superciliousness
I cultivated by embracing the very things my peers despised, most notably,
literature and art.

`I became a snob, a elitist, a dandy who, during one mercifully brief period
in early adolescence, adopted a cane and, during a much longer period, in
fact for the rest of my life, a faint British accent. But at the same time
that I was looking down my nose at the unwashed masses, I was kissing their
children, malnourished six-year-olds who came to the day-care center starving,
with black eyes, distended bellies and rotten teeth. Early in my adolescence,
I was torn between the political lessons of equality that were a key part of
my moral education and my survival tactics as an effeminate teen-ager, my use
of books, culture and an air of sophistication to project the kind of power my
heterosexual schoolmates found on the basketball court and the football
field.'

GROSS: You say in your book that as a kid you used to listen to tapes of your
voice and kind of ran this self-imposed language lab. What did you hear when
you listened back to your voice when you were young?

Mr. HARRIS: I'm not sure that I really remember what I heard. We moved from
Wisconsin--a small town in Wisconsin to Ashville, North Carolina. And we had
visited several times before we moved down there and I got one--I heard the
Appalachian accent, which is not one of these luscious, Deep Southern brogues.
So I brought with me a tape of all of the vowel sounds and the consonants and
a few key sentences that I played back and so that I would not get a Southern
accent. And I was just determined not to get a Southern accent.

And I did succeed, but what I have created is really artificial, as one can
tell, a very artificial kind of delivery. And I do not have a Southern
accent. My accent is not like my parents. So where did it come from? And I
think that the answer is that it came from popular culture, which is one of
the ways that homosexuals did create their sensibility and their demeanor is
by imitating the false Brahmins of old Hollywood films, who do speak, oddly
enough--even though they live in California and were born in the Bronx, they
all speak with a refined British accent. And I adopted this refined British
accent straight off of the silver screen.

GROSS: You devote a chapter of your memoir to lying. What kinds of things
did you once lie about?

Mr. HARRIS: Well, when I was a child, I took real poetic license and lied in
very extravagant ways. In fact, one of the most embarrassing lies I made was
I--it started in I don't know what grade, I was very young. And other kids
were getting glasses. And my vision was perfect, absolutely perfect. There
was nothing I could do. So I decided I would feign that I failed the eye
exam. Well, I did fail the first eye exam. I was taken to a specialist. I
gave such erratic, such inconsistent responses that I was taken to yet another
optometrist, and finally was taken out of state to a specialist who exposed me
and said, `You're lying.' And all I was trying to do--at first, all I wanted
was glasses. But it choired a kind of momentum because I was so thrilled by
being this dying Camille(ph) character with a tragic illness and that I would
be blinded by the time I was 15.

So it was really an attempt to create for myself--which is, I think what this
book is about--an alternative identity, an identity I did not have. But I
think that really through lying, you create the sort of mobility to get out of
circumstances that you shouldn't be in or you don't want to be in.

GROSS: You spend most days working home alone...

Mr. HARRIS: Right.

GROSS: ...writing, reading. And the book that you've just written is a book
all about yourself, because it's a memoir that details the objects and habits
of your daily life. So what do you do to prevent a unhealthy level of
self-absorption?

Mr. HARRIS: Well, it's true, this book is really navel gazing taken to an
unnatural extreme. But who says that my life is not pathologically
self-absorbed. I am pathologically self-absorbed. And the one thing that I
feel is that I am somebody, as I've mentioned, who considers himself no one in
particular. I was self-created. I did not have--my self did not come out of
my religion or my family or the community that I lived in, doesn't come out of
my job. All of the things in my life, all of the structure in my life is
self-imposed. I have created this vast edifice of habits that--from getting
up in the morning to when I go to the gym in the afternoon to what I do at
5:00 in the afternoon. And it is really an attempt to create a structure in a
life that has no structure whatsoever. And I could easily simply put down my
pen and never pick it up again and I can assure you nobody would make too many
complaints about me having done that.

So it's all really my own initiative, this life. And it is extremely--it's
very taxing. And one of the things that I find about my--the solitary nature
of my life is that because it is a creation of this edifice of habits, the
habits become very self-punishing. And I really am a taskmaster in fulfilling
them. If I do not go to the gym in the afternoon, I am miserable that
evening. So there--and if I do not--if I gain two or three pounds, I'm
miserable about it. So that these habits really have--acquire a life of their
own in a life that emerges out of a kind of vacuum as mine does.

GROSS: Now your memoir ends with you saying that you've retreated to a
somewhat tragic view of life. In what sense?

Mr. HARRIS: I think that I was a child--I was a bright kid and I got--you
know, I was always in the 99.9 percentile of all of the tests. And I was told
I could be anything I wanted to be. My father was a psychologist who really
was very heavily influenced by the human potential movement and the notion
that one can achieve anything. And as I have grown older, I've realized how
false that promise is, that there--that I cannot, for instance--I have never
achieved my aspirations of securing a readership for my writing. I have no
control over these things. And it is--the book is partly a rediscovery of
these absolutes in a culture that purveys myths about the omnipotence of the
individual.

GROSS: So how old are you?

Mr. HARRIS: I'm now 44. When I finished the book I was 43.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. HARRIS: I used to have a stage age, though.

GROSS: A stage age?

Mr. HARRIS: Yes. I did used to cut years off of my life, especially--you
know, not necessarily with men, but with editors. That's how oddly ambitious
I was because it was very, very difficult for me to relinquish the myth of
precocity that haunts contemporary cultures that I think is really--I've
learned is a kind of marketing ploy, an attempt to create the illusion that a
publisher is publishing the latest writer, the writer of the future. And as
I've become older and older and never qualified as the writer of the future, I
have become very, very skeptical about the notion of preciosity and precocious
writers. I think that writers have--the apprenticeship for a writer is 10 or
20 years. I don't think writers become good writers in their 20s.

GROSS: So you have to find a way of being comfortable with the fact that
you're not the young, next hot thing.

Mr. HARRIS: That's right. I'm an old hot thing. I'm the oldest living
hottish thing.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. HARRIS: Thank you.

GROSS: Daniel Harris is the author of "A Memoir of No One in Particular."

Coming up, rock historian Ed Ward on the proto-punk band the Sonics.

This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Profile: Proto-punk band the Sonics
TERRY GROSS, host:

There was a British music press headline from the 1960s that read `Would you
let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?' But compared to the wild punk
rockers who ruled the Pacific Northwest, the Stones were pussycats, says Ed
Ward, who thinks that letting the daughter marry a Stone would be far
preferable than her marrying a member of Tacoma's wild band, the Sonics.

(Soundbite of "Louie Louie")

SONICS: (Singing) Oh, Louie Louie, we gotta go now. Louie Louie, oh, yeah.
We gotta go now. My little girl...

ED WARD reporting:

When we talk about punk rock, we should remember that the term was invented by
writer Billy Altman in the early '70s, well before The Ramones came onto the
scene. He was describing a type of music which flourished in a number of
different places in America like Minneapolis, Chicago, Texas and particularly
the Pacific Northwest. Many bands came and went, but probably the greatest of
them all were the Sonics.

(Soundbite of a song by the Sonics)

SONICS: (Singing) Hey, little girl. What's the matter with you? Don't you
like the things I do? You're wearing a frown. I've been shot down.

WARD: The Sonics were high school kids from Tacoma, Washington, and formed
around 1963 to play teen dances, inspired by the area's other highly
successful band, The Wailers. Soon, they were playing all over the Northwest
in Washington and Oregon, moving from the teen clubs to actual rock concerts.
Naturally, they wanted to make a single, so they piled into a studio and cut
"The Witch."

(Soundbite of "The Witch")

SONICS: (Singing) Oh, there's a honey who's new in town. You better watch
out, or she'll put you down. 'Cause she's a crazy chick. Oh, baby, she's a
witch. She got long, black hair...

WARD: Because they had no idea if they'd get another chance, on the B side
they added another classic.

(Soundbite of "Psycho")

SONICS: (Singing) Oh, baby. You're driving me crazy. I said, baby, you're
driving me crazy. Oh, when you turn me on, then you shut me down, a-well,
tell me, baby, am I just your clown? Psycho, ow. Oh, baby,

WARD: Early in 1966, they went into the studio to make a album for their
label Etiquette, which was owned by one of The Wailers, their idols. They
recorded a lot of other people's songs, unsure that their originals were any
good at all. Silly kids.

(Soundbite of "He's Waiting")

SONICS: (Singing) Somebody knows what you have done, about your carrying on
and having fun. You knew it was wrong, but you had to ...(unintelligible).
Now you're going to learn that lying don't pay. It's too late. It's too
late. To lie. To lie. Not even. Not even. ...(Unintelligible). You did
it. You did it. ...(Unintelligible). He's waiting. He's waiting. He's

waiting. He's waiting for you. Whoa! You stayed out late.

WARD: "He's Waiting" is one of the evilest of the Sonics songs. Who's
waiting? Why Satan, of course, who punishes all girlfriends who stray. The
song showcases Rob Lind's throat-shedding vocals, a style used by a lot of
Northwest groups, but none ever did it better.

(Soundbite of "Strychnine")

SONICS: (Singing) Some folks like water. Some folks like wine. But I like
the taste of straight strychnine. You may think it's funny that I like the
stuff. But once you've tried it, you can't get enough. Whoa! Wine is red,
hey. Poison is blue. But strychnine is good for what's ailing you. Whoa!

WARD: The Sonics' "Boom" was the result of one of the highest energy albums
ever released in this album until the double Detroit punch of the MC5 and The
Stooges. With radio still being largely regional, the Sonics hit big on their
home turf, as well as Cleveland and Pittsburgh, but never really made the
national scene. Eventually between the British invasion and psychedelica,
their hard-edge style fell out of favor. Members left the band and eventually
they disappeared, reuniting for a legendary show in 1972. They may never have
became the stars they deserved to become, but they're still revered by
musicians to this day.

GROSS: Ed Ward lives in Berlin.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of song by the Sonics)

SONICS: (Singing) Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, everybody. I'm looking for a
girl. She's the sharpest one in the whole wide world.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.