By his estimation, Jay Leno has been on tour since 1969.
“I’ve been going out two days a week since then to do stand-up,” said the 64-year-old comic, who plays Beaver Creek’s on Feb. 25. “But really, it’s the job. You go where the jokes are. You’re like a Bedouin.”
Perhaps, but for more than two decades Leno’s food and water stayed in one place. And despite an early reputation as one of the smartest, funniest stand-ups of his generation, the steady food supply groomed Leno into what many critics saw as NBC’s kept man, a reflection of the aging, mainstream audience he told jokes to as host of “The Tonight Show.”
Smirking, safe, a little sweet from time to time, but often looking (and, later, sounding) burdened by the role, Leno’s initial swagger was flattened into a schtick that seemed stiff compared with the organic contortions of the larger comedy world, and certainly his rivals David Letterman and Jon Stewart.
Still, hosting a late-night talk show for more than two decades is a protean mission of patience and consistency — just ask Stewart, whose tenure on “The Daily Show” notched the 16-year mark before . Docking Leno points for his overly coiffed persona ignores much of what he was hired to do.
“Obviously we kind of did softball interviews on ‘The Tonight Show,’ but the thing that really hurt it was the advent of publicists,” said Leno, who handed his “Tonight Show” keys to Jimmy Fallon . “In the old days, stars would come on with some stupid fashion choice they made themselves. Now everything is run through focus groups and it’s ‘Don’t say this’ or ‘Don’t say that.’ Celebrities don’t have a lot to say, so they tend to stick to a script.”
If that sounds unusually candid for Leno, it is. Studio executives like to think that mainstream TV audiences respond only to broad, pleasing personas, so Leno was contractually obligated to produce one. Becoming the face of staid America was, if not inevitable, at least understandable.
“(David) Letterman was a broadcaster who occasionally did stand-up, whereas I was a stand-up who was suddenly thrust into the world of broadcasting,” Leno said.
“The Tonight Show’s” writing staff, Leno’s tailored suits and other trappings of the job couldn’t help but bury Leno the Stand-Up under the costume of Leno the Grinning Host.
“Look, we weren’t an ambush show. And we weren’t ‘Charlie Rose,’ ” Leno said. “We weren’t trying to embarrass anybody. But if it was just more off-the-cuff, if stars would just trust themselves a bit more…”
Free from the expectations of “The Tonight Show,” Leno is doing more of that these days. He still performs every Sunday at the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, Calif., just as he has for decades.
But without a daily studio commitment in Burbank, he has more time to indulge his love of classic cars in “Jay Leno’s Garage,” a web series that is scheduled to make the jump to CNBC in May. He writes automotive columns for the London Sunday Times and other publications in the U.K. and Australia. He drops a jarring F-bomb or two in media interviews. He takes his sweet time.
” ‘The Tonight Show’ was like a newspaper: You open with the news of the day and work your way through. It had advantages and disadvantages, but you couldn’t tell stories,” Leno said. “Whereas in a live show you can sort of take your time and paint a verbal picture.”
Like presidents and popes, iconic late-night hosts have every right to rediscover some of our affection after they’ve left office, their raw, unedited personalities reminding us that they were real people all along.
That’s apparent in Leno’s knowing chuckle when asked about the publicity-mill interviews he suffered through.
“The hard part is you have like the 17-year-old supermodel who looks like a woman but is actually a girl, and you’re now the creepy old guy asking ‘So, where do you go to school?’ ” he said.
“Obviously if I’m interviewing Meredith Vieira I can do a silly sex joke and be flirtatious, but with a 17-year-old supermodel you’re sitting there and you just notice her hand shaking. It’s like, ‘Jeez, this is like poking a puppy with a stick here.’ What can you say? They’re young and you’re creepy.”
Leno’s job no longer asks him to role-play with randoms — which dovetails nicely with his newly accented apathy toward pleasing everyone.
“I played a Democratic Governor’s Association event a couple months ago, then I got a call to do a Republican retreat, so I did them both,” he said. “But it was funny because when I did the Democratic one people said, ‘He’s a flack, liberal (jerk),’ and when I did the other they said, ‘He’s a rich, white friend of Republicans!’ ”
Following NBC’s embarrassing, unprecedented 2009 “Tonight Show” controversy — in which was practically forced at gunpoint back to Leno after several episodes — Leno’s reputation received what many saw as a fatal blow.
Those people are not spending $225 to see him perform in Beaver Creek (a ticket price that even Leno thinks is exorbitant) and he can’t help that. But he can do what he’s always done.
“I’m not someone who ever did records or any HBO specials,” he said. “If people want to see my comedy, I will come to where you are and do it. I like that interaction with the audience better than anything else.”
