The Rolling Stone Interview: David Letterman

Aren't those Cuban contraband?
[Cups cigar away from view] Uh, these are White Owls! You can get these anywhere!

I heard you only smoked Cubans.
You got the wrong guy. You don't know what the hell you're talking about! Call the IRS. I pay my taxes.

By the way, now that you're getting the big dough, do you have any plans to acquire a better hairpiece?
[Laughs] By God, when they build a better hairpiece, I'll buy it!

Have you spoken to Johnny Carson lately?
Not too long ago, Peter Lassally, who came to our show as an executive producer after doing the same for Johnny, told a newspaper that Carson used to come in to work at 2:00 each afternoon and that I was coming in at 10:00. And so Carson read this and started calling my office at 10:00 that day. I didn't get in till like 11:30, and as soon as I got on the phone with him, he was screaming and howling: "Oh, get in at 10:00, huh? Where ya been? Car trouble?" The last time I saw him, at the Emmy dinner, he just seemed great and happy. He's really getting a kick out of everybody else's troubles.

Are you more comfortable in your relationship with him?
I'm more comfortable now that he doesn't have a show. I can maybe relax a little bit and try to have a more honest human exchange with him. For a whole generation, he kind of established the model of how cool guys behaved. I just had so much respect for him that right or wrong, it was an inhibitor for me.

On the air, he was always inviting you to come over to play tennis with him. Ever go?
Yeah, I finally said to myself, "This is a living legend — you're stupid if you don't screw up the courage to go!"

And?
He beat me. He's very good. He can stand in one place, never break a sweat and run your pants off. But in my defense, how can you just go to Johnny's house? First of all, his house is like a goddamn Olympic venue. Johnny's court is like a stadium where they have the Davis Cup trials. He's got this state-of-the-art tennis surface — something NASA developed when they went to Neptune. The whole experience was unnerving. And his wife was very nice to me. But there wasn't a second I didn't fully expect to just kind of turn abruptly and destroy a $6000 lamp or vase. I just felt, something's going to go wrong, like I'm going to kill Johnny's wife with the ball machine. "How could you have killed his wife with the ball machine!" It's just like I'm too big, I'm too dumb, I'm too clumsy.

Is it true that for years you wouldn't watch his show?
It was too depressing for me. I know what it takes to just get something on tape. Hosting this show, I always feel like "Man, I'm struggling, I'm like a drowning man in quicksand!" And then you turn on Johnny's show and say [daunted], "Oh, it's fuckin' Johnny!" He's just easy, cool, funny. He looks good, he's got babes hanging on him, he's saying witty things and making fun of Ed. It so intimidated me that I couldn't watch it. But I guess like everybody else I watched him pretty much every night during the last month or so.

How did your own Johnny grief manifest itself?
I can remember watching that last show and just being woefully depressed. I couldn't sleep, I was up the whole night — which maybe tells you more about me than I would like. I know it sounds like I'm a complete ninny, but I felt a sadness for weeks after. It was sort of like a doctor telling you, "Well, we've looked at the X-rays, and your legs are perfectly healthy, but we're still going to amputate them." You think, "Whaaa? Why is he going?" But as with most aspects of his career, he did this retiring thing at the right time, the right way. And I look at the mess I'm in now, and I think [as Dumb Guy], "What the hell am I gonna do now?" I have no clue. But Carson just figures it out and carries it off with great skill, grace and aplomb.