When the Balls Drop

by Brad Garrett

  If you’re taking notes, here’s a good one: the key to anything in life is to be fearless. This doesn’t mean you won’t experience fear, just that you can’t let it dominate you. Especially in entertainment. And always in comedy. When I teach my sitcom acting class, I try to emphasize the Four F’s, which stand for: Fearless Freedom Finds Funny. If you want to be remembered, you’ve got to stir the pot.

  * * *

  My years working with the Righteous Brothers at the Desert Inn, and later at the MGM Grand, were possibly the most enjoyable of all my opener gigs. We had an immediate and genuine friendship that has lasted to this day.

  Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield were two incredibly gifted singers from Orange County, California, who rocketed to stardom as teenagers. They created the original blue-eyed soul with mega-hits like “Soul and Inspiration,” “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” and “Unchained Melody.” They were class acts and staunch family men and so down-to-earth. Their support and belief in me helped me grow the most as a comic during the four years I spent opening for them. They gave me the freedom to experiment and try bits and work outside of the box. And their manager of almost fifty years, David Cohen, had my back as if I were one of the Brothers. I learned so much from these legends when it came to appreciation and rapport with an audience.

  I was raised on the music of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr., and the icons of Motown, so you can imagine what it was like for me to share a stage with some of these artists whom I idolized. Sammy Davis Jr., in particular, had a special place in my heart years before I opened for him. He was one of my parents’ favorites as well, and before they divorced and my dad moved out, he gave me his favorite album, Sammy Davis Jr. at the Cocoanut Grove. It was the coolest album ever: a double set with an amazing shot of Sammy performing on the cover. The photograph was lit in black and blue hues, illuminating the profile of this true genius.

  I remember sitting with my father on the floor of my bedroom, riveted as Sammy did a medley from West Side Story, then “Birth of the Blues,” “Come Back to Me,”and his masterful “Once in a Lifetime.” His songs always reminded me of my dad because they were about personal struggles and love, both won and lost. Sammy’s impersonations were also perfect, and my pop would mimic him doing the voices, especially Humphrey Bogart. My dad’s Bogie was killer. I’ll never forget the audience on the recording howling with laughter at Sammy’s banter, followed by awed silence as he went into his signature “What Kind of Fool Am I?” I held the album close to my chest and told my father, “I’m going to work with him one day,” just to give him some hope in his world that seemed to be riddled with disappointment. He replied, “I bet you will.” That promise became a reality twenty years later as my dad sat in his own booth in the theater at Harrah’s in Reno.

  Something that always fascinated me about Sammy was that when he went on the road, half of his house literally went with him. A mini-semi would follow his tour bus, loaded with dozens of tiny suits on wardrobe racks, paintings and photographs, a couple of his favorite recliners, and a cocktail-table-size Pac-Man game that he spent hours playing, competing with band members and backstage friends.

  The only thing Sammy liked more than performing was performers. He was one of the most generous superstars ever. He would throw an opening-night party in every town he performed in, taking over either a local movie theater or the entire floor of a hotel. Several local performers would be invited; some he knew and others he would get to know. He was the consummate host and happy to make anyone feel at ease. He also had a killer sense of humor and, of course, that crazy, infectious laugh.

  One of my favorite Sammy stories came from when we were backstage after a rehearsal at the Fox Theatre in Detroit. Some of the band members and I were hitting the soda machine. It was in the late eighties, before the machines took bills. The boys all had change except for me, and when Sammy walked by, I casually asked him if he could please change a twenty.

  He looked at me with that infamous grin and, without missing a beat, replied, “Kid, a twenty is change.” That was one of the greatest lines ever.

  Sammy gave me one of the best perks as an opening-night gift. He sent me to the famous Chicken Ranch on his dime. His generosity gave me the pick of the litter. And her friend. Sadly, I was too nervous, too drunk, and too self-conscious to enjoy the full effect, and I was done so quickly that the broads felt obligated to give me a tour of the joint to show good faith. I was back in the limo so soon, the driver thought I was thrown out. This was a good example of “be careful what you wish for,” because here I had twenty beautiful girls at my disposal, and my tendency was to make jokes and offhand remarks instead of making my choice and getting down to business. Even at twenty-seven, I was hiding behind my humor to break the ice, when there was not even any ice to break. They were ready! Half naked, lined up, and they probably just wanted me to shut the fuck up so they could get it over with and move on to the next john.

  I wore protection, though I would have preferred to wear a wetsuit, I was so worried about catching something. What I did not anticipate was the inspection that the “lady” put my dick through. Before becoming a hooker, she must have worked for immigration at the Russian border. She tweaked my facile member into a garlic knot, looking for I don’t know what. I asked if she was checking me for ticks. She mumbled something and then asked me several questions about a mole I had in my pelvic region. I countered with “You’re the one fucking fifteen guys a night. When is it my turn to check out your tattered ‘coin purse’?” So much for foreplay.

  * * *

  I started opening for Julio Iglesias during his most popular period in America, following a duet he recorded with Willie Nelson entitled “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.” Julio was an incredibly charming, great-looking, suave gentleman who loved the ladies almost as much as they loved him. His harem was ever changing and beautifully impressive. I would look on with envy as he wined and dined these beauties (most of whom were half his age) in his four-bedroom suite while I stood in line at the employee cafeteria at Caesars Palace.

  He flew around the world in his private jet and had a palatial estate in Florida. His life was everything that every man prayed for, and it was happening to him as he approached middle age. I have a strong feeling he wasn’t concerned about the dropping of his balls, and trust me, if it had happened, there would have been a solid ten waiting to catch them. I prayed that just once he’d throw me a gal he was tired of shagging. No such luck. None of them spoke English, either. I heard a French model pass me after a show once and whisper to her friend, “Stupit clown.” If I had been a mime, she would have been mine.

  Julio was selling out huge venues; we did a sold-out two-week stint at Radio City Music Hall in New York. It was an amazing experience except for one small detail: like his ladies, the majority of his audiences did not speak English. Unfortunately, nobody mentioned that to me in advance. About two weeks into the gig, when very little of my material was working onstage, I asked Danny, the sound engineer who was at the board every night, if he had any suggestions. He suggested learning my act in Portuguese, Italian, or Spanish. Maybe French. All the languages Julio sang in during his concerts. I asked Danny, “If his audiences don’t speak English, why the hell does he use a comic to open?”

  “He likes to laugh before a show,” Danny said. “He howled at Roseanne Barr when she opened for us.”

  “Great!” I said. “Get that bitch back. If not, maybe he can come out to the front of the house when I’m on and run around laughing. Make it sound like a crowd.” Thank goodness for Danny. At least he got me. Once in a while I could hear his raspy chuckle coming from the board (a good indication of how quiet the audience was).

  My favorite times on tour with any act were those hanging out with the band and crew. After all, I was one of them. One night, following a really strong set in front of Julio in Jones Beach, New York, I decided to celebrate with some tequila. Those were the days when Jose Cuervo Go
ld 1400 was my juice of choice. All I could find on the tour bus was some silver tequila, which was not user-friendly, but that didn’t stop me from polishing off most of the bottle. When the double-decker tour bus pulled up to the hotel in Jersey a couple hours later, I forgot I was on the upper deck and proceeded to exit the bus by falling down and out, landing right on my face. Not the best way to exit. I woke up on the pavement with Julio’s drummer, Dave, looking over me. He was a part-time fireman in his hometown and a great guy, and he suggested I go to the hospital. He also suggested I might have a serious drinking problem. I was in complete denial, though I did agree to go to the hospital. The emergency room was packed, and after staying an hour without being seen, I left with a fractured nose and two black eyes.

  The next night I opened the show with “Take it from me, do not call Julio a Mexican. He does not like that. He’s Spanish. Which I believe is a Mexican who gets laid a lot. Never really knew there was a difference.” Then, pointing to my face: “Now I know.” This was a New York crowd, and they ate it up. It was one of my best sets on the tour.

  * * *

  Four years ago I was given the opportunity to open my own comedy club in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, returning to my roots in the town that helped get me started thirty years earlier. Even after all this time, I still get excited by the energy and possibility that is unique to Vegas. I think it comes from so much wrong being condensed into such a small amount of space.

  If you need a vacation to kick-start the “new you” after reading this book, Vegas is the place to go. The wonderful part is that anything goes in this town, and if you’re worried about coming off bad, too drunk, or inappropriate, the guy sitting next to you probably has you beat, so no worries. You can fill your piehole at twenty-four-hour buffets, lose your children’s inheritance on a whim (they need to get off their asses and work anyway), get a happy ending from a tranny you didn’t think was a tranny, burn yourself to a crisp taking a ten-minute nap by the lazy river by the pool (also known as the “freeway of urine”), hit another two buffets just because you have the coupons, then be the proudly sketchy “old person” at a nightclub where you can use all those dance moves you haven’t broken out since prom. And when you fall into bed, happier than you’ve ever been, here’s the good news: the next day, you can do it all over again.

  Backstage at Bally’s Las Vegas, 1989. (Cashman Photo Enterprises)

  7

  Perfectly Frank

  It’s difficult to talk longingly about yesteryear without sounding like an old fart. I never thought I would be the middle-aged guy saying, “Girls never dressed like that when I was in high school!” or “That’s not music!” or “They don’t make microwave ovens like they used to!” I never wanted to be that guy. Unfortunately, it’s inevitable, because my laments about the differences from one generation to the next are valid.

  My dad was “that guy” when I was growing up, and so was his father. Things are spiraling more out of control as a whole. Elvis shook his hips in skintight pants, and Bible-beaters thought it was the beginning of the end; today Drake is singing that his “dick is so hard it’s making the metal detector go off,” and even I’ve got it on my iPod. I’m not sure why. Maybe to signal to my teenage kids that I’m not as old on the inside as I look and feel on the outside. Or maybe it’s because Drake is the only half-Jewish rapper.

  Before my girlfriend, IsaBeall, and I started dating, I sent her two Sinatra songs on an iPod that I wanted her to listen to. They were two of my favorite songs of all time, “One for My Baby” and “The Way You Look Tonight.” As it turned out, she already had both on her iPod. It was a Fisher-Price iPod, but who’s judging? The fact that she was so much younger but had an appreciation for Sinatra made me optimistic. Maybe this middle-age dweller had something in common with this beautiful, bright, and exciting gal from the Northeast. In all honesty, like most things, it was pure attraction in the beginning. But it wasn’t long until her golden heart and old soul broadsided me like the backhand of a pimp.

  Sinatra and Sammy were close friends, and they shared a lot of the same reps. When I was opening for Sammy in Lake Tahoe, some of Frank’s “boys” caught my act, and I was asked to open for Sinatra on New Year’s Eve 1989 at Bally’s in Vegas. I will never forget that phone call from my agent at the William Morris Agency, checking my availability. I was blown away that my agent actually had my number.

  I drove from L.A. to Vegas on December 29, arriving at Bally’s at two-thirty A.M. As I drove down the Strip and approached the hotel, there it was: the marquee that would for the first time make me feel like I had arrived:

  FRANK SINATRA

  with Brad Garrett

  Below my name, it read FREE SHRIMP COCKTAIL in letters twice the size of mine. That was Vegas. They knew the free shrimp would bring in more folks than Brad Garrett, so they were smart enough to roll with it.

  The next issue was: how would I go over with Sinatra’s crowd? These people had come from all over the world to ring in the New Year with the Legend. How could I get “roasty” with the front row if they were diplomats, stars, and notables wondering who the hell I was? But I had just bought a charcoal-gray tux from Charmer’s Big ’n’ Tall with a turquoise cummerbund and matching clip-on bowtie. In my pea brain, I felt ready.

  I had learned early on that to make a splash as an opening act, you had to do stuff a lot of the other guys weren’t doing, as in schlepping out and doing twenty minutes of observational material to the back wall. As far as the crowd was concerned, you were the time buffer in case the wife was running late or traffic sucked. They were not there to see you, and the sooner you understood that, the sooner you could get down to business.

  At nine-thirty P.M. on New Year’s Eve, Gino, Sinatra’s road manager, came to me and introduced himself. He was pretty much what you’d expect: a congenial, no-nonsense goombah from Brooklyn with hands like canned hams and a slight waddle from either a holster or knee injury. I wasn’t going to ask. He was inviting and to the point. He said, “We’re holding ten. His jet was a touch late leaving the Springs.” I nodded like an idiot. What did I know?

  The forty-piece orchestra started to assemble.“Why are they setting up now?” I asked, thinking they had forgotten that I was going on.

  Gino looked at me quizzically. “To play you on, schmuck.”

  I paced around backstage as I looked at some notes, too nervous to sit down or hang out in the nice dressing room that had been set up for me. I owed that courtesy, and the majority of my career in Vegas, to Richard Sturm, the president of entertainment at Bally’s at the time. Minutes later, backstage got oddly quiet. I saw a man being whisked in through the doors, flanked by other very large men who made me look petite. Then I heard the whisper of a man’s voice that was undeniable. It was Francis Albert himself. Afraid to look at him or even move, I stood in the wings and prayed to blend in as I tried to get a glimpse of the front row. That was when I heard Sinatra grumble, “Where’s Dreesen?”

  Jilly, his best friend and main confidant, responded, “Remember, Frank, he’s opening for Glen Campbell tonight.”

  “No one told me,” he said. The crew looked at each other, knowing full well that this information had in fact been given to “Mr. S.,” as all information always was. He added, “Why the hell would you hire someone to open who I’ve never seen before? And on New Year’s Eve?” I felt a bead of sweat that smelled like vodka roll off my brow and into the corner of my very dry mouth. My ears tried to leave my body. My penis retreated into the darkest part of my zoobag.

  “We saw him with Smokey [Sammy]. He does good,” Gino added. Frank walked off.

  In those early days, I usually had a couple drinks before a show, but on this night I didn’t want anything to blame if I wasn’t on target. After hearing that conversation, I wished I hadn’t made the responsible choice. I was sober except for a mild hangover from the night before, where I had lost eighteen hundred dollars in roulette after downing about twelve
shots of Rumple Minze (hundred-proof schnapps). That was a big hit to take for an opening act, especially considering I had 25 percent in commissions coming off the top of my wage. As my dad used to constantly explain to me, “If you want to blow two thousand gambling, you’ll need to make about thirty-eight hundred in order to do so.” My father always tried to drill into my head the difference between what I made and what I brought home after everyone dipped their beaks. In other words, I worked for free those three nights. But I was in Vegas opening for Frank, so who cared, right?

  As Frank Sinatra Jr. slunk by me to conduct the orchestra, I asked Gino, “How long do I do out there?”

  “I don’t know. Ten, twenty. You’ll know,” he said.

  I blanched. “What do you mean? How will I know?”

  “I’m not following,” said Gino.

  “Well, with all due respect, there’s a big difference when a comic is supposed to do ten minutes as opposed to twenty, because my opening bit depends on—”

  “Whataya worried about? Have fun.” Gino snorted. “It’s New Year’s Eve, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Thank you. It’s just—”

  “When Frank’s ready, we’ll let you know. Simple.” Again my idiot nod.

  Just then the most amazing orchestra I had ever heard started to play a medley of Frank’s iconic hits. I had a vomit burp and loosened my fifteen-dollar cummerbund. Some turquoise glitter got on my thumb. It was a six-minute musical prologue that ended with “The Summer Wind” and a drumroll that I felt in my anal cavity. Then the announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, happy New Year and welcome to Bally’s Las Vegas, where we are honored to present Mr. Frank Sinatra! A Man and His Music!” The applause and screams were so fucking loud it was as if the walls were going to come down. So loud that “But first . . . please welcome Brad Garrett” was impossible for the audience to hear.