Interview with Tucker Carlson
Contents
Tucker Carlson is a writer and the host of Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Writing Tips and a Schvitz
Max Raskin: You’ve said you write 2,000 words a day – what kind of writing habits do you have?
Tucker Carlson: You accumulate habits as you age – it’s a little bit like polo shirts or neckties. After my 30th year, I have a lot of writing habits, but my main ones have to do with diet and sleep.
Writing is one of these activities where you're not fully in control of it. I have found a couple of different antidotes to writer’s block just because we have to produce this show reliably every day. Mondays, I always start on Sunday night. I keep a file on my phone – I write mostly on my iPhone and an iPad. I don't have a computer or laptop.
MR: Do you type or dictate?
TC: I type with two fingers. I'm left-handed and dyslexic, so typing is just a beautiful thing. For me, it was the key to expressing myself. I keep notes on my phone of ideas that occur. I'm running out of ideas as I age, so I don't waste them anymore.
Every morning I write a memo to the producers about what I want the show to be. And on Sunday night, it's usually much longer. This week it was 1,500 words. If the ideas come to me, I try to write part of the next night's or that night's monologue in the email. So this morning at 10:30, I wrote 500 words in an email to the staff. That will form the corpus of tonight's opening script because it just came to me.
Usually in the early afternoon I do calls, then around three or four I take a sauna, which is usually an hour and a half.
MR: You have a schvitz every day?
TC: Yeah, every day, seven days a week. I mean if I can. If I'm traveling, sometimes I can’t, but I usually try and find places that have saunas. That's a huge part of it both because I grew up taking saunas for cultural reasons, but also because the experience of sitting alone in the dark.
MR: Do you prefer steam or sauna?
TC: I like a Finnish sauna, so I prefer a woodfired sauna.
It's remarkable how interested you can become in a topic as inherently uninteresting as saunas, but I've read books about them. I'm deeply interested in the cultural parts, but also the physical effects. They really are an integral part of my writing.
The Northern European Nordic sauna is slightly different from the Central and Eastern European sauna in that there's less water. But I do use some water in mine. This is an ongoing debate between my son and me. He thinks it's wrong to throw water on the rocks before you start sweating.
MR: Yeah, it’s the same reason I like to move slow in the humidity. It's nature's way of slowing you down. It’s like you’re cheating.
TC: Well, that’s his view, and he's kind of won me over to that. I like to start around 180°. I like it up to 200° – in that range.
So I take a sauna – 20 minutes, sometimes a little longer. Then I have a chair outside the sauna, and I sit in the backyard and I do emails and calls. That's kind of where it all comes together. Then I get back in the sauna, do another 10-15 minutes, then take an outdoor shower. And then at five o'clock, I have a cup of coffee and I start writing. And that’s my thing.
MR: You traveled a lot when you were a younger reporter. How did you take notes when you were traveling?
TC: I always kept notes, and I do to this day, on what they used to call reporter’s notebooks. I still write at that width because I'm used to it. I would always write in felt tip pen and then over 20 years ago, I was in Asia in one of those motorcycle cabs and I got caught in a rainstorm and it washed away like a week of notes. Ever since then, I write in ballpoint. I have certain shorthand notations that I use. My handwriting is terrible.
MR: Do you have a pen that you use?
TC: No, I like the ones that my wife buys. I have like 10,000 of them.
MR: I like these Uniball Vision pens.
Do you snack when you write?
TC: I don't eat when I write. I want to.
I used to smoke a lot when I wrote. This is so bizarre, but when a kid gets baptized in the Episcopal Church, you get a silver cup with your initials on it. I’m not quite sure why. But I always had it on my desk, and I could fit an entire pack of cigarettes – all 20 cigarettes – into the cup. So that when I smoked Camels, which are short, I didn't have to root around the pack for the cigarettes. I always had a cigarette burning. Always, always, always, always. When I was at the magazine. 100%.
MR: When did you start smoking?
TC: When I was little. I went briefly to a school in Europe in eighth grade and started there. It just wasn't one of those things that was considered outrageous in the world I grew up in. I love nicotine. And I'd love to know the downside of it. There clearly are downsides in using tobacco – it’s a carcinogen. I use a product made by Swedish Match called ZYN. It's a pouch, and I guess you're supposed to be embarrassed about it or something. I'm not embarrassed.
MR: It reminds me of the Mencken line, “Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
TC: That's exactly right. The funny thing is, I'm quite judgmental. I don't drink or smoke weed. I'm like the most sober person you've ever met. I try to restrain myself, but I can be a little judgey about other people. I think the whole country is on drugs, and it really bothers me.
MR: Do you floss?
TC: Every day. I have pretty sketchy hygiene habits. I mean I take a shower every day, but I’m not a hand washer. I kiss my dogs on the mouth. I always go outside to take a leak every time.
MR: Do you pick your nose?
TC: No! I’m not dirty that way. But I do floss every day.
Genghis Freud
MR: What do you think about SSRIs and anti-anxiety medication?
TC: I think they’re terrifying. I could go on for an hour. I have strong feelings about it that I think are evidence-based. I think there are clearly people whose lives have been saved by SSRIs. And I think that's a wonder of modern medicine.
But I also think big picture, if you've seen a massive run up in the prescription of these drugs, at the same time, that you've seen a measurable increase in suicides and in diagnosed depression, you have to ask yourself, by what measure is this working? There are massive downsides to it. If they save your life, you know, most drugs have side effects. But if a drug eliminates your sex drive, for example, which is closely related to, if not precisely the same as your life force, then that's a big cost. That's a really, really high cost. I can only speak for myself, I wouldn't want to live that way. And I mean that.
MR: No sex doesn’t make you live longer; it just seems longer.
TC: It’s not even about sex. It's about the desire to procreate, to spread your DNA, to kind of make your mark on the earth. That's your lifeforce. I know that we're so estranged from nature, and we're so anti-fertility that it's somehow shocking to say that – but let me just remind you of the essential biology, which is to reproduce – period.
MR: What do you think about these people who are serial sperm donors, like Genghis Khan, and they have like 400 kids around the world?
TC: I think it's a really natural impulse. The reason so many people in Central Asia are related to Genghis Khan is because he had the ability to do what every man instinctively wants to do, which is impregnate as many women as he can. And of course, the reason we have society, and more broadly, civilization in the first place, is to constrain that impulse, channel it into a useful direction.
MR: [Shows copy of Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents.]
TC: There you go.
MR: Did you ever do psychoanalysis?
TC: I grew up in a world where that was common, and our family was officially against it. So I never did. I think that self-knowledge is really important. I don't mock the idea of knowing yourself. I think it's essential. It's probably the only upside to getting older.
MR: You said you're very guarded about your emotions, and you don't want to let people manipulate your emotions. That you take them seriously.
TC: Well, I try not to take myself seriously. As my father always said growing up, the root of all wisdom is knowing what an asshole you are. And that's really important to recognize how absurd you are. I mean, do you know what you look like naked? Do you know what you look like having sex?
The whole physical body itself is like gross and embarrassing. Precisely to remind us that we’re animals, and we're limited in what we can accomplish. And our aim should be circumscribed by the knowledge of our limitations. Nature teaches you everything. When you ignore it, you wind up destroying yourself and other people.
Blue Blazers and Birkenstocks
MR: Do you have any travel rituals?
TC: I have a million travel rituals.
MR: If you know you are going somewhere tomorrow, how long does it take you to pack?
TC: For decades, I kept a bag packed. I always have a Dopp kit packed. But I don't have a ton of clothes. I'm not a clothes guy. I wear the same clothes.
MR: What do you wear?
TC: I wear Mercer & Sons shirts 365 days a year. I wear them on TV, I wear them fishing, I wear them everywhere. I'm wearing one right now. David Mercer is just a wonderful guy. I've worn their shirts my whole adult life and I really like them.
So I know that I'm going to be wearing a blue shirt and a striped tie and a blue blazer on TV because that's what I wear 100% of the time. In my real life, I wear khakis every single day.
MR: Where do you get your khakis from?
TC: I always got my khakis from a company called J. Press which just makes men's clothes.
I wound up skiing last year and I didn't have ski pants. I love to ski, I hate ski pants – I just wear long johns under khakis, but it was too cold. So, I was at my favorite store in the town that we go to and they had a brand called KÜHL – work pants and they were like 50 bucks. I don't like spending money on clothes. And I loved them. I switched over and I wear them every day of the year. In the wintertime, I wear rubber sandals, and in the summertime, I wear Birkenstocks. And that's it.
I have all kinds of travel rituals. The main one is: get there early. If you can take the stress out of travel, it's totally fun and you can relax. Pulling above the clouds is one of God's gifts, I think.
Bottom line, I've traveled so much for so long, that I no longer care where I am. I just don't care. Not that interested.
MR: But you like being where you are?
TC: We moved full time to the places we had always gone. Very simple houses, very simple life. Like I don't own a car. I ride my bike. Especially as the world gets more complicated and my job gets more complicated, I become more convinced in simplifying. I don't want a billion dollars actually.
The Sharpest Cheddar
MR: How do you eat?
TC: Well, it's a constant struggle because I have terrible eating habits that I'm naturally fat because I like crappy American food. I don't know how you feel about Fig Newtons, but I really am pro-Fig Newton.
MR: I love Oreos.
TC: Oh yeah, all that crap! I'll just eat it if I can. I really try – sometimes successfully, other times not – to keep it within bounds. I really like cheese and fruit and nuts.
MR: What kind of cheese do you like?
TC: Ah, well, I grew up with cheese. We're a big cheese family. I love any kind of kind of French soft cheese, like Saint-André, Camembert.
MR: I was just eating La Tur.
TC: Oh, yeah! But day-to-day, I eat a lot of sharp cheddar. I know not everyone loves Cabot dairy. I like Hunter’s Cheddar from Cabot – they make this really intense, makes-your-eyes-water cheddar. It's almost like Stilton or something. It’s a cut-your-face cheddar. I just think it's good for you. I like cheese. I like coffee. I like club soda. I like apples.
MR: What kind of coffee do you drink?
TC: I drink the strongest coffee they make. I drink it black. I have this weird coffeemaker that a buddy of mine gave me a few years ago. It's really a cappuccino maker, but it pushes the steam through the coffee and then it doesn't circulate. And you put it on the stove. I drink three cups of that a day. Each cup is ridiculous.
Coffee, like nicotine, like cheese, is good for you. And I'm sick of pretending otherwise. And I'm disgusted by the fraudulent health authorities who come out with contradictory advice.
MR: Do you exercise?
TC: Not a ton. I mean, I ride my bike. I used to run. I loved running but then I hurt myself.
MR: What kind of bike do you have?
TC: Whatever the one they sold me at the bike store – on the lowest gear.
MR: How do you listen to music?
TC: I use Spotify. I probably shouldn't. I've spent years assembling this collection of music that I really like, and it's not obscure for the most part – some of it's a little obscure – but it's owned by some company that can take it away from me if they don’t like it.
And I feel that way about my pictures and decades of things I've written that reside on the cloud, whatever that is. But it's all at Jeff Bezos’ personal discretion.
The Church of St. John Coltrane
MR: What's your favorite piece you wrote before you were 40?
TC: Magazine pieces were always for me about the experience of reporting them because that was the fun part. You go somewhere interesting, you meet people you hadn't met, you hear things you’ve never heard. It’s hard to separate that from the piece that results, which I can't really assess because I wrote it. One of the most fun pieces I ever wrote ever was a piece about the Liberian Civil War.
MR: I’ve read a bunch of stuff by now. That’s the best.
TC: I’m glad you enjoyed that. That wasn’t me. I was just blessed to be there with all these incredibly interesting people. And I just learned a lot. I really met some amazing people. There was a guy there I think about often called Franzo King. Archbishop Franzo King, who is the head of the Church of St. John Coltrane in San Francisco, which worships the jazz saxophonist John Coltrane as a god and one of his albums, A Love Supreme, as its liturgy. I really got along with this guy, I don't know, because he was from California and had a history with psychedelics. I don’t know, something about it, I just liked the guy. I always meant to go to one of their services.
MR: Did you ever take acid and listen to A Love Supreme?
TC: No, I didn't. And I don’t know if I got that much out of it.
It’s sort of hard to imagine what your views once were. You think you're the same person. But if you'd asked me what I thought about LSD in 1984 and I had written it down, I think I'd be kind of shocked to read it.
MR: Does it bug you about the libertarian crowd – the Randian extolling of skyscrapers?
TC: Yeah. I mean, if you think an office building is beautiful, then we probably don't have a large frame of reference in common. I just I find that so barbaric and disgusting.
MR: Is there an architecture you like?
TC: I love English colonial architecture. I think less appreciated is the British absorption of the cultures they dominated. The British would roll into a place like the Bahamas, for example. And unlike the French, they wouldn't just recreate Mayfair in Freeport. Go to Hanoi. It's just a copy of Paris to the extent you can do that in Hanoi.
MR: And you can get a good baguette there.
TC: Yeah, totally. French schools keep a clock set to Paris time. But the English would go in and say, we're English, we're Anglican, we're subjects of the Queen, and we have a lot to bring you. But we're also noticing the natural landscape. Bahamian architecture, which is English architecture really, is beautiful in that it fits its surroundings. I would say the first rule of architecture is that it takes note of and maximizes the natural environment in which it's set. I mean, duh. Office buildings are exactly the opposite. A Phoenix office building looks identical to an office building in Miami looks identical to a building in Omaha. So my favorite architecture is that architecture which incorporates what's different and essential about the place that it's built.
MR: You said you are dyslexic, but you read a lot?
TC: I read intensely. I love reading.
I have some kind of thing where I have trouble with spatial relations . . . it’s not that interesting. Most things about ourselves are not that interesting, it turns out. Someone should tell the rest of the country this, by the way.
But anyway, I have immense trouble following instructions physically, including with words. So, if you said, “Take three steps to the left,” that would be hard for me to figure out where the left was.
MR: Is line dancing very difficult for you?
TC: I wouldn’t be able to do something like that.
MR: What about playing music?
TC: Well, I love rhythm.
MR: Are you good at it?
TC: Yeah. I played the drums as a kid, and I loved it. And rhythm comes naturally to me. Not surprisingly, the most primitive of all musical expression rhythm.
I believe it's one of the reasons I was loved the Grateful Dead. They had two drummers.
MR: Were “Drums” and “Space” your favorite part of a Dead show?
TC: I always loved “Drums.” To this day I listen to African drum rhythm on my Spotify.
Every Silver Lining’s Got a Touch of Grey
MR: Do you listen to Gregorian chants ever?
TC: You know I never have. I'm sure they're wonderful. It’s a measure of what a Philistine I am, essentially, that Gregorian chants almost sound too cerebral for me.
MR: If you know what the word “Philistine” means, you’re not one. This is like a quiz PBS had on their website to test whether you live in the bubble. They ask a bunch of questions like “Have you ever walked on a factory floor?” and “Do you know who Jimmie Johnson is?” I thought they should have shortened it to one question, “If you’re taking this test, you’re in the bubble.”
TC: Well, that's the meta position. And you're totally right. If you're downloading a test from the PBS website . . . do you get a tote bag with that?
And also, if you’re thinking about yourself. I do think that one of the great divides in American life that no one ever mentions is the narcissism divide. It’s not just about how much you make or where you were raised – it’s like how much time of the day do you spend thinking about yourself.
But self-knowledge is really important. I kept getting fired or failing in my jobs. And then I would get another job. And then I really had a kind of meltdown – not a personal meltdown, I've always been happily married and pretty happy, actually. But I had a meltdown in the sense that I had no money and had to sell our house. And so that was a moment. The beauty of failure is it forces you to stop doing what you're doing and assess it. The problem with success is it affirms everything you've been doing, even the bad.
So, when that happened, I had to ask myself, “Why am I not succeeding?” I knew I had some talent because I kept getting hired. But then I kept failing.
I had all these complicated explanations in my head for why this would happen, all of which revolved around the behavior of other people. One of the central insights in my life is that it's always your fault.
MR: If everyone else is the problem, you are the problem.
TC: No, you are the problem. Because you're all you can control. I would say, “Well, TV people are terrible, and people who run TV channels are all the same, and they're all liars.” Oh. Okay.
But I was living in that world and I was not succeeding – it forced me to think about what I had done wrong because I had no choice because I had no money. That was such a change period in my life in a great way.
MR: How old were you?
TC: I got fired in 2008 when Obama became president. I was hired by MSNBC in 2004 to be their chief primetime anchor.
MR: Didn’t Michael Savage used to work for MSNBC?
TC: Yeah, like the weekend. And I like Michael a lot. What a nice man he is, and his son is a friend of mine and what a really good guy.
MR: He’s also a hippie. He hung around with Burroughs and Ginsberg.
TC: Oh yeah. He was an epidemiologist at one point. He became a natural foods advocate.
Anyway, I realized what I was like, and that I don’t perform well in certain scenarios.
MR: What were you like?
TC: I just have a lot of problems with authority and being told what to do. I don't react well to it. I become really aggressive, like, very aggressive.
Don’t Be Evil
MR: But you treat people well. Take our friend Rob. You didn’t know him from Adam. You didn’t have to be nice to him. It’s almost like you’re nicer to the people you don’t have to be nice to.
TC: Of course, of course. If you find yourself pissing down, you're a bad person.
MR: But that's the world we live in.
TC: No! I won't have it. I hate that. If you have a problem at dinner – tip the waiter, yell at the owner. I can’t stand that more than anything.
This is a big issue for us on the show. You can really hurt people with a TV show. And so the question is, and you should ask yourself every day: Am I training my fire downwards?
MR: Don Rickles said he only picks on people who are bigger than him.
TC: That’s exactly right. Our targets are like Jeff Bezos.
Rest and Peace (and Texts)
MR: What’s the first thing you read in the morning?
TC: I hate to admit this – I wish the first thing I read in the morning was like some devotional or whatever. We sleep with our dogs, so there's always a dog and a wife in the picture – that’s really important to me. Right when I wake up, I try to delay turning on my phone which I turn off overnight. But inevitably the first thing I read every morning are texts. I communicate by text as you know. I don’t use email. I get hundreds of texts a day and it's really important to me and I love it. It's my window on the world. But it can be an assault, particularly early on a Monday morning – I'm not an early riser, but for me eight o'clock is pretty early.
MR: What time would you wake up if this was a just world?
TC: I'd wake up at eight – I adapted my life after all this time.
MR: When do you go to bed?
TC: Probably one or two – I try to stay up crazy late. I read in bed at night.
MR: Do you read hard copies?
TC: Yeah.
MR: Do you do marginalia?
TC: It's funny you said that – I used to, and then I inherited my father's library.
My father was a very intense, book-a-day reader his whole life. He’s 80 now. And I got his library last summer shipped to our barn. Thousands and thousands of books, and he had marginalia throughout all of them. And I thought to myself, “Will anyone ever . . . ” I don’t know . . . it was interesting. I thought, “No, I'm not doing that anymore,” because there's something kind of poignant finding a book that my father read in 1965 with notes in the margins. And it makes me feel sad. The past is sad. I didn't realize that until I got older.
I've been a compulsive saver of everything all my life. You know, Dead ticket from 1984. And now I feel like that stuff will be a burden to my kids. And I don't want to save as much of it as I did.
MR: What’s the first media you read in the morning?
TC: I try not to read any media ever if I can. I mean, it's garbage.
MR: So you get your news from texts?
TC: I get all my news from texts, and from a producer we have called Tom Fox who's just a wonderful person. We think in a similar way. He compiles a news outline every morning. I get that at 10:30 every morning and read it. But I don't go to like the New York Times website.
MR: Yeah, if it’s important it will filter to me.
TC: That's how I feel.
Strunk & White (and Orwell)
MR: Your writing reminds me of E.B. White and Jimmy Breslin. Were you influenced by either of them?
TC: Love E.B. White. I love E.B. White. He is one of my favorite writers.
And in fact, I just got a collection of letters that he wrote in the 70s and 80s to another writer in Maine. Someone just gave it to me at dinner the other night. I haven't read it yet.
MR: He’s one of my favorite writers too. You can tell you were influenced by him.
TC: Obviously, George Orwell is my favorite writer and always will be. I love his style as well as his thinking. But Strunk and White really had an effect on me, and I've given it to a dozen reporters who have worked for me.
MR: You learn to write when you’re in high school. I had my English teacher give it to me when I was like 16, and that was it.
TC: I totally agree. Clarity is the goal.
MR: My dad had me read “Politics and the English Language” when I was also like 16.
TC: Really? It's like, probably my favorite essay. That and “How the Poor Die” are probably my two. And “Shooting an Elephant,” “Such, Such Were the Joys.”
MR: I love that. Did you ever read Down and Out in Paris and London? That’s my favorite book that he wrote.
TC: Oh, comeon. It’s an amazing book.
MR: Now that I’m thinking about it, you write like that. The military contractor piece is a lot like that.
TC: When I was a kid, Hunter Thompson was the model for a lot of young writers. I loved Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold!” But people would ape his style. And I always hated that. Orwell or maybe E.B. White writes, the goal of writing is to get out of the way. And your style will actually suffuse the writing if you let it.
MR: When I was when I was in high school, I went paintballing with my friends. And I was reading a lot of Hunter Thompson at the time, and I wrote an essay about paintballing in the style of Hunter Thompson. And it just was ridiculous. It was a kid wearing his dad’s suit. It just looked ridiculous.
TC: More like wearing someone else's underwear. It's just too intimate. And so I was very influenced by Orwell – not politically, though I have been – but by his thoughts about writing.
I had an editor called Paul Greenberg when I was in a newspaper in Arkansas. He was just a wonderful guy and an amazing writing teacher. I was 23 and he goes, “Read this.” And it just changed my view of it. The point is to create perfect clarity. The prose should be perfectly clear.
Orwell's obsession, and it's become mine after 30 years, was choosing the Saxon word over the Latinate word. Our language is this amalgam of German and Italian. And you should always go with the German.
MR: Churchill was like that too.
No Complaints About Portnoy
MR: What do you think about Dave Portnoy?
TC: The secret to Dave Portnoy is the secret to every person who's been able to live in this environment – and that's bravery. Portnoy's brave. He’s really smart, and he's a good businessman, and he’s funny as hell. There’s a lot about Dave.
MR: What do you think about him running for president?
TC: I don't think he would ever do it, but he'd be a lot better than most. I mean, Portnoy is a practical person. He's a sensible person.
MR: Is he a Deadhead?
TC: No, I can't imagine. I’ve never talked to him about that. I mean, he's a chowdahead, you know? I bet if you asked him, he'd have like a secret weakness for REO Speedwagon.
Dead Right
MR: What do you think about Bob Weir?
TC: I like Bob Weir. I've talked to Bob Weir. I think as a musician I never took him as seriously as he probably deserved. It never occurred to me to get into Bobby and the Midnites or RatDog, whereas I was a huge Jerry band fan.
MR: You turned me on to the Jerry Garcia Band!
TC: Oh, I just love the Jerry band. I never took Weir as seriously. I think he's a remarkable person who joined the band at like 15.
MR: He’s so political. Garcia is this magical person who transcends politics. I think Weir suffuses the band with politics where it’s not necessary.
TC: Lesser talents do that. Politics is an easy out for people who aren't that talented. If you're a genius like Jerry Garcia clearly was – whatever his many flaws – politics is something you may have views about, but it's not the center of who you are.
MR: I think people must be surprised when they find out that you have a favorite Dead recording.
Do you know what your three most listened-to songs on Spotify were last year?
TC: I don't, but I would think that Susan Tedeschi would be on the list. You go through these obsessions or whatever.
MR: What do you think your most played song by her would be?
TC: “Anyhow” or “Keep on Growing.”
MR: “Keep on Growing” was my first guest’s number one as well.
TC: Ah, so good! She's ridiculous. I have a weakness for strong female vocalists. A woman with a good voice is just irreplaceable. I like Jerry's voice.
MR: What’s your favorite Dead years?
TC: I don't have interesting views on that. Probably like everybody else, ‘73 to ’78 – when they got back from Europe until Go to Heaven. I actually smoked the same brand of cigarettes as Jerry did for 20 years. It's a great cigarette, but it does affect your voice.
MR: Did you meet Jerry ever?
TC: I did, as a kid.
MR: What was that like?
TC: I mean, I was thrilled. It's the only picture I have anywhere of me with a famous person, you know . . . because it's Jerry Garcia.
MR: What was he like?
TC: He was kind of out of it. My father was a reporter in San Francisco in the ‘60s and covered the Grateful Dead and knew them. When I was a kid, maybe freshman year of college, I was home in Washington for vacation for Christmas. And my father's like, “Oh, the Grateful Dead are coming to my office. I knew them in the ‘60s in San Francisco.”
I was like, “The Grateful Dead are coming to your office!?” He goes, “Well, just Jerry Garcia.” I was like, “No way!”
We took a cab from Georgetown downtown to my dad's office; he was working in a federal agency. And there was Jerry standing there talking about their time in the ‘60s in San Francisco. And it was like – incredible. So my brother and I got our picture with Jerry. I have no pictures in my office. I've met a lot of people, just because that's what I do. But I have no pictures other than that one.
I'll tell you one thing about it that I'll never forget. He was missing the middle finger on his right hand – his brother cut it off with an axe by accident when they were camping on the Russian River. And you could feel it as you shook his hand. You know, his ring finger and index finger kind of collapse together. So you could feel that the hand was not solid. It was interesting.
MR: Is there a concert that you go back to?
TC: No. Of course I've got everything they played in 1977 on my phone. It's such a cliche, but it's true.
MR: 1977 is your favorite year?
TC: I hate to admit that because it's everybody's favorite year, but it was a pretty great year. Honestly, it was a great year. They were still playing Workingman’s Dead tunes, but they were also noodling around with other stuff. They were always moving. I love the Americana stuff. I love the jams and I love the transitions between tunes, but some of the late ‘60’s pure acid stuff . . .
MR: Are you a “Dark Star” guy?
TC: I do like “Dark Star” actually. I really do. And I love instrumentals. My favorite part of Dead shows – and I went to a lot of dead shows – and my favorite part was always the jams. My son turned me on to JRAD. Ah! He’ll do like “Brown-Eyed Women” for like 32 minutes. And I love that.
MR: I have a recording of them playing with John Mayer a couple years ago in Brooklyn. It's pretty good.
TC: Of course it is. I haven’t seen a Dead show since 1990. As an experience, as a concertgoer, the people I went with felt like, “this is getting a little dark.”
MR: But Wake Up to Find Out with Branford Marsalis is my favorite Dead recording and its from 1990. That “Eyes of the World” is what turned me onto the Dead.
TC: Yes! Yes.
MR: Do you like Phish?
TC: Yeah, in fact, I love Phish. I used to go see Phish when they played in a bar in Portland, Maine called the Tree. They would play on their trampolines. This was in the ‘80s. Because I lived in Northern New England, I knew a lot of people who knew them at St. Michaels and UVM. “My roommates dating Trey,” or whatever.
MR: Was this when they were playing chess with their fans?
TC: I never saw that. But they were definitely a fun bar band and they were great. I remember listening to “Fee” when I was in college, I was like, “Wow, this is a cool weird song.” Or “Bouncing Around the Room.”
MR: What’s your favorite Phish song?
TC: I hate to admit it, but a live “Suzy Greenberg” when they go like freaking crazy. That's one of the best tunes ever. Every time we play it in the car when we're on a fishing trip or something I'll put on “Suzy Greenberg” because I love it. My son’s like, “Oh that’s such a cliché.”
MR: Are there Dead lyrics that sit with you? I know “Don't lend your hand to raise no flag/ Atop no ship of fools” inspired one of your books.
TC: I claimed that came from Plato but actually it of course came from Robert Hunter. A guy who works for me called Alex Pfeiffer who's a genius and a Grateful Dead fan came up with the title. So smart. I love Robert Hunter. I was sad when he died.
MR: Me too.
TC: Real name: Robert Burns. He never got the credit he deserved I would say.
MR: Jerry was the best person in that band, and number two was Robert Hunter.
TC: Oh, I completely agree. I had a very long conversation once with Phil Lesh. And what a nice guy and a smart guy.
MR: Do you know where you were when Jerry died?
TC: Yeah, because my wife called me in tears. I was at my desk at the Weekly Standard in Washington. I had just started the week before the magazine had just launched. In fact, I don't even think we put out the first issue. She called me in tears from our house in Georgetown and said that she was going to the mall. My wife is a big Grateful Dead fan. We had gone to a million shows together as kids in high school and college, and she went to the mall for the Jerry remembrance. I'll never forget that.