Modified On August 19, 2008
Kliph Nesteroff’s blog entry on George Carlin deals with George Carlin’s early years, from 1956 to 1970.
Unfortunately no official biography has been written to date on Carlin’s life. The earliest years of his career have yet to receive any comprehensive exploration. In a 1998 interview with Tom Snyder, Carlin said that he had a biography he was “working on now” in collaboration with Tony Hendra. It was the first time he mentioned the project and it has not been referred to since. Until the time when such a book comes to fruition, we can merely piece together tidbits from the several hundred interviews he conducted and some of the ancient footage that has survived in order to trace the path of the baby faced, clean cut, early George Carlin.
Lots of factoids about Carlin’s career, lots of quotes from the man himself and plenty of links to odd videos from Carlin’s appearances on multiple variety shows in the 60s.
Our favorite quote (we’re not sure where from, since it’s not footnoted):
The hardest years of my life were the three or four years when I was doing straight, mainstream, bullshit television shows,” he remembered, “I didn’t know my head was different. I didn’t understand that. If I thought about it at nine years of age [the dream of being on television] must still be valid at twenty-one, but it wasn’t– that clicked in… from the acid. Thank God for acid.