If I leave here tomorrow, will you still remember me?
There are a lot of things I should be writing about here. The new Spoon album, the new Hawksley Workman album and the upcoming New Pornographers album, for example. And I will (I promise, Pat!) but my life (such as it is) was taken over during the last two weeks by a pop culture phenomenon. When you get sucked in by a wave, sometimes you just have to let it wash over you. Become one with it. Embrace it. Let it pummel you.
And I feel like I’ve been worked over good by Conan O’Brien.
Long story short (and if you don’t know this, you should be ashamed) NBC promised Conan the Tonight Show five years ago, figuring (wrongly, it turns out) that when 2009 rolled around, Jay Leno would be ready to retire.
Despite the fact that he agreed to step down and hand the show over to Conan, Leno’s ratings were still good and NBC started to have second thoughts about letting him leave for another network where he’d almost certainly steal viewers from Conan (because people are idiots and have no taste and just like the blandest shit in the world. See also: The continued existence and enduring popularity of Nickelback), so they gave Leno a show at 10 p.m.
But his 11:35 audience didn’t follow him there. The show flopped. Why? Uh, because Jay Leno is an unfunny jag. Network affiliates were pissed because Leno was killing their nightly news broadcast, which meant even fewer viewers for Conan at 11:35. Everybody’s ratings dropped and NBC cancelled Leno’s show. But he still had a contract and still wanted to work and NBC wanted to keep him happy. So they said they’d move him BACK to 11:35 and Conan could decide if he wanted to host the Tonight Show at 12:05. Astute readers will note that this would have meant the Tonight Show would be on tomorrow.
Otherwise, that sounds awesome, right? Everybody’s happy, right? Well not the guy getting it at both ends.
Conan released a statement saying he would not be a party to the destruction of the institution that is The Tonight Show. He refused to move the show to 12:05, which he noted would bump The Late Show With Jimmy Fallon to 1:05 a.m. Basically, his statement boiled down to this: If NBC wants Leno on at 11:35, they’re going to have to fire me.
So that’s what they did.
Never ones to go with an innovative option, the short-sighted idiots at NBC put their money on the slightly lame, aging horse with a dedicated following of sleepy Grandmas and Grandpas. Leno would host a show at 11:35. Fallon would stay on at 12:35. There’s the door, Conan. Don’t let it hit your freckled, Irish ass on the way out!
In the last two weeks, Conan’s barely constrained anger at those who were doing him dirty translated into comedic gold. He openly badmouthed the network, ran up huge musical clearance fees for songs performed on the show, encouraged his guests to speak freely about the situation and just generally did whatever the hell he wanted. It was the most creative I’ve seen him since the writer’s strike. And his ratings started to climb. The highly desirable demographic of 18-49-year-old viewers that make up Conan’s audience voiced their displeasure with the situation on the Internets. But NBC executives don’t understand the Internet. It’s just a fad. Like skateboards. And soda-pop. And baby boomers are gonna live forever! Yeah!
Morons.
I’ve been watching Conan since he started. I remember his very first show, actually. Teenage me developed a raging crush on the tall, awkward, twitchy guy who didn’t know what to do with his hands and seemed like he was seconds away from throwing up. But he got better. And how.
Conan developed his style and refined his timing and became one of the best celebrity interviewers in the game. All the while still retaining his goofy sense of humour with really quirky, absurd bits that made excellent use of his talented writing staff. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is, without a doubt, one of the best late night bits of all time. And to this day, I have not laughed as hard as I did when Conan’s guest Norm Macdonald told Courtney Thorne-Smith that she should call her new movie with Carrot Top “box office poison.” Later, when she told Conan the movie was called “Chairman of the Board,” Conan invited Norm to “do something with that, you big freak.” Without missing a beat, Norm replied “I bet board is spelled B-O-R-E-D.” I have no doubt it will go down in history as one of the funniest unscripted talk show moments of all time.
I give Conan a lot of credit for changing his game up occasionally. He was constantly developing new bits and never leaned on any one schtick too often. He was the polar opposite of Leno, who clung to terrible, unfunny segments like Jay Walking and Headlines, punctuated every lame monologue joke with a rimshot of awful from his sycophantic bandleader Kevin Eubanks and just generally rested on laurels that were already pretty tired of supporting that much chin.
But I don’t want to focus on Leno. He sucks.
Conan is where it’s at. And beyond the laffs and the sketches and the celebrities, I think one of the biggest accomplishments of his hosting career was his obvious love and support of independent music.
He started hosting indie bands before hosting indie bands was cool. He took a chance on musicians with small fan bases and big ambition and stood alone among the late night hosts as the one you could actually believe listened to the music his guests played.
Seriously. Leno seems like your typical classic rock guy, stagnant and irrelevant. Letterman had a few quirky favourites, but was never down with what the kids were listening to. Kimmel is better, but still has the taint of frat-boy humour associated with The Man Show. And Colbert and Stewart only occasionally roll out the welcome wagon for bands. Fallon is taking what Conan started on Late Night and running with it.
When it came to music, Conan reigned supreme. When he moved from Late Night to the Tonight Show, he brought his musical sensibilities with him. He sat down with Slash, welcomed Roseanne Cash and Neko Case and recently hosted another Sound Salvation Army favourite, Spoon. Over the years, he also developed a close relationship with The White Stripes. They were guests many times and in 2003, played an entire week of shows for him. On his final episode of Late Night, they performed his favourite song, “We’re Going to Be Friends.” And he appeared in their perspective-warping video for “The Denial Twist” directed by Michael Gondry.
Before Jimmy Fallon scored The Roots, Conan also had the best house band, with Springsteen’s drummer Max Weinberg leading the way. Having Weinberg around was great because sometimes, you want The Boss to play your show at Christmas and it’s a little easier to score that get when your bandleader has his home number.
Maybe Conan has such affinity for his musical guests because he’s a musician himself. He plays guitar and sings with a far better voice than he’d ever admit and (this is maybe one of my favourite things about him) he’s a huge, nerdy fan of The Music Man. As a writer for The Simpsons, he penned the episode Marge Vs. The Monorail, a sendup of the musical. When The Music Man was revived on Broadway, producers approached Conan to play Harold Hill for a limited run, but he had to turn them down because he couldn’t fit it into his schedule. Later, he managed to profess that love when he performed a musical number based on “Ya Got Trouble” at the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards.
In retrospect, this little ditty is pretty prophetic:
And it remains one of my favourite song-and-dance numbers by a host with limited musical ability.
Last Friday was Conan’s final night hosting The Tonight Show. He said that when all these troubles started, the first person to call him up and offer his support was, weirdly, Neil Young. Young was Conan’s last musical guest. I thought he’d maybe play “This Note’s For You” or “Rockin’ In the Free World,” but he went with “Long May You Run” instead. And when he finished, when Conan walked out to shake his hand, Young said “I just want to thank you for everything you’ve done for independent music.” I’m not a huge Young fan, but that was pretty frickin’ awesome because it’s pretty frickin’ true.
Also on his last show, Conan took a minute to dispel the rumour that he was forbidden from saying certain things about NBC. It wasn’t true, he insisted. On this night, he could say whatever he wanted. And what he wanted to say was a sincere and gracious thank you to NBC for 20 mostly good years. That was far nicer than what they deserved, but absolutely typical behaviour from Conan, who cemented his reputation as the classiest of class acts.
His voice was husky and he strained to stay composed as he said he and his crew would remember the outpouring of creativity and support from fans until the day he died. He cautioned young viewers against cynicism and revealed his own personal credo: if you work hard and are kind, amazing things will happen.
It’s far too late for the likes of me to be saved from the clutches of cynicism, but it was absolutely inspiring to hear a man who has been so thoroughly screwed by his bosses profess and demonstrate his belief in kindness in an industry that values the exact opposite.
With that, Conan loosened the noose of his necktie, strapped on an axe and joined Will Ferrell and friends for a rousing, cowbell-laden rendition of “Free Bird.” Normally, I’d say “Balls, that song is so wanky and annoying and long.” But you know what? In this case, it’s less about the music and more about the sentiment behind the song. It’s about getting out of a shitty relationship with no future so you can go be awesome on some other network. Zing! So if anybody deserves to wail along to nine plus minutes of cock rock, it’s Conan.
Rock on, Coco.
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download The White Stripes - We're Going To Be Friends: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Leno 10 o’clock was an hour, not half an hour.
You are correct, sir.
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