Per this article Gallagher is a tad grumpy these days.
Did you see this?
I don’t know that the full brunt of the “hate speech” type stuff came through, but he definitely came across as a cranky, bitter, curmudgeonly, self-pitying, and far-from-funny (well, that was always true) old jackass. Self-aggrandizing too (note how he takes credit for more or less having invented the mosh pit).
Could be real, could be half-real, half-satire depending on the bits, could be a career move ala Dennis Miller. There’s a ton of money to be made in that shit.
Read the Onion interview. He’d have to be a Hell of a better showman (I mean a good, intelligent showman) than he’s ever shown signs of being to fake the mean-spirited, querolous, minatory tone on display there.
Well, OK, I’ll take the half-satire out of the equation.
A lot of people lost their minds on 9/11 and there’s a lot of people who take advantage of them. I admit it can be hard to tell one from the other, since you don’t get to talk to the latter off camera.
The guy’s obviously not bright enough to understand the concept of Warhol’s fifteen minutes, and so rather than being grateful for having had it, he’s lashing out about its (implicitly unfairly) being taken away from him.
At the height of his success, there was a very different zeitgeist. “Zany” (a word I cringe to utter) was in. I don’t know if it was the lingering influence of Jerry Lewis style clowning, a post-hippie approach of providing “surreal” material that would make stoned people laugh (hint: anything will make stoned people laugh), or what, but this is around the same time when Steve Martin was a comedy superstar for walking around with a fake arrow through his head. If he tried to live off that gag now, he’d starve (so he’s moved on to other ways of annoying me). Gallagher just didn’t get the memo to the effect that if people ever found his shtick funny, they don’t now, and the market won’t pay premium prices for far-below-premium products. So yeah, he’s playing crappy venues, and yeah, he’s bitter about it. Also sounds a bit genuinely unhinged.
Get over it dude. The world’s changed since Mike Douglas and you were of roughly equal fame. For a (very confused) crypto-right-winger, you don’t seem to respect Mr. Market much.
He has had a few things happen over the years that turned him toward bitterness. I heard a radio interview with him, maybe 6 years ago or so, where he was going on about how he was ready to give up the business.
He talked about how he had a falling out with his original manager that resulted in the creation of Carrot Top (manager said anybody with a box of props could be a comedian). He had allowed his younger brother to perform his act in smaller places, as long as it was made clear it wasn’t the original Gallagher. When his brother stopped using clear advertising and started trying to book bigger places, Gallagher had to sue him to get him to stop. Then, some idiot in the audience at one of his shows sued Gallagher because he was hit with something that flew off the stage.
I always liked Gallagher. Saw him live back in the '80s and then again around 2000. He was always one to make his opinions known. If he has gotten as bitter as it sounds, maybe it is time he hung the sledge-o-matic up.
Maybe he’s going for some kind of Andy Kaufman vibe? Something about intentionally making an audience uncomfortable to make a point?
Or not. I dunno. Never was much of a Gallagher fan. Smashing fruit gets old pretty quick.
Considered and rejected above. Kaufman would do bizarre things to change the audience’s frame of reference. Buddy Hackett and Rickles were aggressively hostile but funny in a cruel way. Lenny Bruce was for better or worse truly transgressive in crossing the profanity line with both feet.
If you read the Onion interview – he literally complains about these kids today and their damn baggy pants. Literally. Short of get-off-my-lawn, how non-transgressive a position is that for a 63 year old bitter white guy? Comedy has to go contrary to what you expected in some way, and this is pretty much what we expect from old geezers. Plus, whining (which is what he spends much of that interview doing), bragging about past supposed exploits, and generalized hating on others, are not transgressive – they’re what every washed up bar fly, every racist uncle at the Christmas party, make all of us endure from time to time when trapped in their company. Who the Hell is going to find that cutting-edge or the least bit amusing – let alone pay for it?
Gallagher just made me think of a bizarro world version of Reagan’s old joke about the boy whose parents give him a pile of manure and he gets all excited because he just knows there must be a pony somewhere. Gallagher is the pile of manure that the public got briefly and illogically excited about, but is convinced he was and is a magical pony.
Did he say that he invented it, or is he complaining that he’s the poor schlub who must take responsibility if something happens there? That’s the way I read it.
Best wishes,
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Didn’t he get in trouble back in the 80’s for making some homophobic comments?
In his heyday he had an appearance on Johnny Carson once that was was really over the top rude to Carson where he acted as huckster, and instead of whatever prop he normally used, he said to the audience he was going to “sell them a Carson” and started pulling out various pictures of Carson. Carson took it in stride, but was stunned and visibly offended by the routine.
Here’s a tonight show stand up appearance sans props that’s actually not too bad.
He seems to be a few watermelons short of a wagonful.
Guy was never funny. So he smashed things with a sledge hammer – wow, that’s friggin’ hilarious…!
Never saw it. It was as funny as Letterman dropping stuff of a tower. Big deal.
It was as funny as Letterman because, according to Watermelon Man, Letterman stole the idea from him. STOLE IT! Just like Letterman steals other men’s girlfriends. That Letterman, he can’t be trusted. He’s probably gay.
From his wikipedia page;
In January 2005, The Oregonian’s entertainment section printed a short interview with Gallagher where he gave scathing reviews about many of the top comedic performers in America. He criticized stand-up performers and comedic actors, including David Letterman, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks, and Michael Keaton. Gallagher expressed frustration over Hanks’s and Keaton’s successes, remarking that they were millionaires while he himself was reduced to renting a condominium. While criticizing Jay Leno and Letterman, he expressed surprise that they never invited him to appear in their shows, citing that Johnny Carson never liked him but still booked him.[5]
Gallagher reserved special wrath for Comedy Central’s list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time, where he was listed as #100, just below Janeane Garofalo. Gallagher criticized the list as a whole, stating that when reading it he “was trying to find anyone I ever heard of.”
Bitter much?
You know, I don’t think the bit about other people being millionaires while he is reduced to renting a condo says anything other than that he’s a shit money manager. He had his shot, he had his fame, he did the tours and the shows. If he has nothing to show for it, it is entirely his own damned fault.
Of course it isn’t. It’s the fault of all those Liberals refusing to let him on their shows and stealing his stuff. 
…who stole everything in he ever did from Steve Allen.
I never found Gallagher particularly funny, but he did have a few funny lines:
“If God was a woman, we’d have our dick on our chin.”
Granted it’s hyperbole, but still seems silly to claim you’ve never heard of the people on the list while earlier in the interview he mentioned four of them.
ETA: five actually, Johnny Carson’s on there to.
Seriously. In his heyday he was filling good sized halls, he had to making bank. It would take some work to piss all that cash away.