by Chad Lehrman • December 22, 2017

Jay Leno hosted NBC’s The Tonight Show for more than 20 years. He currently stars in Jay Leno’s Garage on CNBC and performs standup in more than 200 cities a year. On December 28, he’ll be in Tucson for one night only at Casino Del Sol.

Jay Leno @ Casino Del Sol Event Center

Thursday, December 28 at 8pm

$45-$85

Buy Tickets

Jay spoke to us by phone while driving to a film shoot outside L.A.

Since you host a show about cars, I’ve gotta ask– what kind of car are you in?

Jay Leno: I’m currently in a Dodge Durango. We have to do a film shoot out in the middle of the desert, the high desert in California, so we took a practical vehicle today.

You’ve been called the hardest working man in show business. How come you haven’t ever released a standup special?

Jay Leno: You know, I don’t really like them. If people want to hear something, I will come to where you are and I’ll do it. I would rather do it ten times around the country than get paid once instead of 10 times. People say to me, “I saw so and so’s comedy special and I didn’t think it was that funny.” I say oh what’d you watch it on? “I watched it on my iPhone in my car.” Ok well yeah, it’s not going to be funny on an iPhone in your car. It’s one of those mediums that really has to be experienced live. I like the feedback– I like to be able to tell which way the joke is going. I can realize, “it’s this kind of crowd, let me move over to this type of material.” When you do a special, you write material for that special and then it just disappears. There’s no joy– you don’t get to go out and do it somewhere. To me that’s the fun part.

The filmmaker of the new Gilbert Gottfried documentary raved about how great you were to interview for the movie. What was your experience like being interviewed, and have you seen it yet?

Jay Leno: No, I haven’t seen it yet. That’s very nice of him to say that. I can’t imagine what it was I said. I think we just talked about Gilbert. You know, most people go into comedy because they have some genetic flaw. Gilbert is, by the kindest terms, an odd person. He’s got that squeaky voice… but you see the person behind it. And that’s what was fun to talk about. When you do this for a living, you have a little more insight into what other comics are like and what they’re going through. Maybe there was something I said about Gilbert that he liked, that maybe wasn’t as obvious.

Kevin Nealon said that getting on Johnny Carson is the highlight of his career– even after performing on SNL and in movies and everything he’s done. What did getting on Johnny Carson mean to you? Was that a big goal for you?

Jay Leno: Oh sure, that was THE goal. It was the only show really that featured comics. There was Dinah Shore and Merv Griffin but Johnny was the late night standard. There were only three networks, and at the time, one had movies and the other had something else. That was the show that officially put you in show business. Once you said you did Johnny Carson, that established you. Not only with the audience, but with other comics as well.

Who are the comedians that you looked up to when you started out?

Jay Leno: My hero was Robert Klein. He was about 10 years older than me, and unlike a lot of other comics, he wasn’t poor or from the Lower East Side. Just a middle class kid who was really funny. Of course we all loved Richie Pryor– Richie was the best.

Do you still like to watch standup?

Jay Leno: I do. There’s a really good show on Netflix that features four comics each doing 20 minutes [The Standups]. And the first guy, Nate Bargatze, he killed me. Really clever stuff, reasonably clean. And there’s a lot of really good young comics. Ryan Hamilton, I watched his Netflix special and he was really funny.

How did Tom Green end up as a correspondent on The Tonight Show? I really liked him but his style seemed like it wasn’t the same as your show.

Jay Leno: No it wasn’t, but neither is it a bully pulpit. People said, “this guy is different, it’s not really our style, but let’s try it out and see what happens.” Some people liked it, some people didn’t.

Did he approach you or did you guys approach him?

Jay Leno: I think we probably had him on as a guest and one of the producers said, “Do you want to try him as a correspondent?” What was happening was, putting comics on at 12:10 or 12:15 really wasn’t getting us anything at the time. People kind of turned it off. So we said instead of having them do a standup routine, let’s see if we can have them doing bits and do it at the top of the show. “Let’s go to Tom Green at so and so…” And it seemed to work pretty well then.

Did you always know who the comedians were that did standup on the show? Or were there times when you just let the booker handle that and didn’t know?

Jay Leno: Oh yes, I always knew. They would always ask me what I thought. Sometimes I’d say, “I don’t quite get it, but you guys like him? Ok, let’s try it.”

What advice do you have for young comedians starting out?

Jay Leno: I was fortunate doing it in the 70s and early 80s, you could travel around the country being terrible and it didn’t end your career. Now people get 5 minutes, they put it on YouTube and it becomes a viral sensation. Then an agent sends that person off to a venue to perform. They have to do 45 minutes or an hour and they’ve really only got that one thing that they do. And they’re not ready. You can never make it too late, you can only make it too early.

The new season of Jay Leno’s Garage kicks off Thursday, January 4th on CNBC.