Name: The Best of Music Legends | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2025-01-27T16:00:12.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Best of Music Legends | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-01-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Best of Music Legends | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-01-27. Transcript available.

The Best of Music Legends | David Letterman

it's nice to see you you know you look great you look terrific you don't you
don't look uh any
different than the last time i saw you you look wonderful when was the last
time i saw you 1991
you look fabulous well-rested happy ready to go yeah yeah what do you look like
everybody always wonders you know what was it like when you did the ed sullivan
show yeah
besides i was in the back somewhere down there yeah uh you know i thought if
you were up to it i
could sort of maybe give you a moment's feeling of how so what exactly i
thought if we could have
the audience when i count to three and all the very high-pitched voices scream
no not yet not yet
but do you think you could do that yeah but you have to help me out dave but
what do i have to
i got a little something here that'll oh it's gonna be good i want you just to
do this because
the last couple of times i saw the show yeah i saw you sort of complaining
about your
hair style i have interesting hair well i got this for you
and so you don't feel alone
so you know i'll just take this back to the room let's go and stand down there
and i'll give him one two three and they're just going to shrink the brains out
are they paying me
enough to do this why why don't we have paul come down too
thank you thank you very much there you go paul now let's pack that camera back
there oh my god
come on dave it's sweeps week
we ain't in that better shape anyway you like paul
you know i was listening to the radio last night and i heard that uh princess diana
yeah has uh
granted and i guess done a television interview with the bbc unbeknownst to
anybody at buckingham
palace do you do you keep in touch with these people are you still friends with
everybody there
um well i see the royal family from time to time when i had certain functions
what kind of relationship
do you have with them is it is it close are you no it's not close i mean they
hardly bring me up
for a cup of sugar and stuff like that but they do call you don't they yeah i i
i mingle with some
of them yeah they're very nice do you ever socialize with them uh-huh how does
that go
well you know what can i say dave two queens together
congratulations on your uh recent wedding last may last may it was a big bash
big deal yeah who was
there oh gosh a lot of my buddies were there uh uh sting was there oh sting oh
jackson brown and uh jd
sather and glenn fry and bruce springsteen was there and billy joel and uh cheryl
crow but was
there any decent music at the reception yes tony bennett tony bennett was oh
man very cool
it's a great thrill to have here and congratulations on everything i brought
you a present a present
yeah what do you got
if i can get it it's not all of our guests are thoughtful enough to bring me a
gift i brought
you a ham oh man this is a beauty
oh this was your band you started the band i wanted to fire uh bono is that
right i did it was funny because
uh you know in dublin 1976 there wasn't a whole lot to do you know sort of join
a band or play football
so we started a band and uh i did try to fire him because in 1976 he wanted to
take a lemon to america
then but as you can see he came back crawling on his hands and knees and here
we are but now seriously
how early into this did you think that he wasn't going to be right for the
group i mean was that true is
that serious it wasn't that kind of thing i think there was there was an
incident in uh in america
where um we had a little bit of a misunderstanding and he threw a drum kit at
me and i sort of felt
at that stage that it was time for him to leave but uh as i said he came
crawling back in his hands
and knees gave me my first he this man gave me my first and only job it turned
out pretty well
didn't don't you forget it pal i won't forget you must know bob dylan i would
guess that you
guys are friends or have certainly met each other i've met bob over the years
from time to time first
time i met him he came to visit me his daughter it turns out was a fan of mine
this is back in the
early 80s he comes over my apartment i was living at the san maritz hotel i had
this great apartment
at san maritz and introduces his daughter to me and she's a fan she's asking me
all these questions and
i'm trying to carry on a meaningful conversation with this you know teenage
girl and in my kitchen
is bob dylan you know and he's leaning against my refrigerator going hey it's
okay you know
it's cool and i thought it was you know he was a good dad he was being a good
dad i thought that was
nice that's a nice thing for both of you to have done and a great thing for the
kid as well uh and
did you was there ever anything you you got from him that you thought well this
is insight this is
this is unusual to our profession i'm gonna hang on to something that he has
told you or said to you
i asked him at one time i met him at a gig believe it or not in milan italy
they have these funny
venues over there they don't have hockey arenas and basketball arenas and madison
square gardens they
have like bicyclone tron like velodrome velodrome yeah velcro things and very
strange gigs and you go
backstage and bob was backstage in milan and i go and he goes hey billy how you
doing
he said what are you doing in milan i said well i'm here to see you man and i
always wanted to
ask him because i'm now building up a large catalog of songs and i start
worrying if i'm
going to forget words and bob's written more words than there are yeah and i
said how do you
but how do you remember all these words oh that's easy just go over in the
dress room and take a look
on the coffee table and this is you sound like bob dylan if he had a cartoon
show
he was in a good mood that night yeah so i look over on the coffee table and
there is
like a store-bought book bob dylan's the songs of bob dylan he's got them all
right there he's got
this big book on the coffee table and i said well okay but how do you read the
lyrics on stage he goes
well i really can't read them i just feel good knowing they're there how's it
going good look pretty
good some are doing all right for you yeah it's been good now when you're out
uh by the way you know i
came very close to being in the e street band that was when we were thinking of
uh letting go of
clarence i believe saxophone was your that's it exactly that's it exactly uh
but when you're when
you're out you know uh driving around and stuff you drive around like other
folks i guess do you
do you ever find yourself uh like singing your own songs you get something on
the radio and you're
singing along with your own stuff in the car i mean are you doing comedy bits
when you're driving
in from connecticut
i mean that would that would seem to be a natural thing to do you're driving in
is it funny is it
not funny you think so no i don't do that but uh all right how do you decide
okay i'm going to
put together a collection of music that will go to a disc or an album is that
an official do you
have like an official beginning or is it just a gradual casual accumulation of
material uh sometimes
is luck you know you write a bunch of songs that go together we made this
record in about seven and a
half weeks that was really fast but i've spent a year or two waiting for the
right collection of
songs and uh that's not any fun and how many it's not it's not fun you say no
you're sitting around
first of all i like to play you know and uh i mean that's really one of the
things i enjoy doing the
most so you're sitting around waiting the trick with the new song is to have
the new song you got to
have a new idea sometimes you don't have them so you're sitting around waiting
waiting waiting
you want to go out and play but you don't have new material and uh it just you
know time marches
on i mean i don't have any guys writing stuff for me i don't know i don't know
if it i don't know if
it works like that on it on this show you look great well thank you i'm all
patriotic yeah it's like
you're an evil knievel's will well i didn't think of it i do sort of look like
evil knievel yeah what
have you been doing what's new with you oh i've just been working on this album
and doing a lot of
wonderful stuff watching you on television with that baby i know you're tired
of hearing it by now but
congratulations thank you very much he's a beautiful baby yeah he turned out
pretty cute
pretty pleased he did it and i just wanted to let you know if you need a wet
nurse you call me
whoa for the baby for the baby no seriously well you and i are the same age and
i've you know i've
always i've never had any children either and i always wanted to and uh you
know because i always
kind of wanted to experience that whole breastfeeding thing well if you had a
grand piano wouldn't you
want to play it of course the big story is uh coming out of the kentucky derby
that the winning
horse the 50 to one shot giacomo is actually named for your son was named after
my my my youngest child
how does that happen i'm a very good friend of jerry moss who owns the the
horse and jerry moss was the
head of the record company for the last 30 years right and so he phoned us up
and said would you mind if
i call my new horse jack and we said no problem i didn't think he would win the
kentucky dollar
well nobody did 50 50 to one for god luckily trudy bedheim 500 bucks so is that
right she made a lot of money
that's amazing because uh just kind of trying to do the quick math in my head
here if you bet that
horse a 50 to one shot 500 that's a billion dollars
that's a billion dollars congratulations thank you i'm retiring yeah you don't
need to go on the road
ever again i don't you're one of the people obviously that we've tried to get
on the program
as a guest about every week maybe every other day we would call and find out
can he be on the show and
can he be on the show and after the first 15 years we started to get our
feelings hurt
uh and now it's been close to 25 30 years and i just i just need to know going
forward
any any problems that we don't know about i don't like the show
okay we'll make a note of that we'll put that in your file when we were 22 i i
thought we were like
older than i feel now i mean we because you know we were smoking peter stuyveson
cigarettes and we
thought we were like really grown up um we were only 22 so but um i had to
stand somewhere here and there
was a curtain and um the audience was out there and we were kind of very new to
america loving it but
a little bit scared and i had to do yesterday my song on my own and i'd never
done this i'd always
had the band with me but suddenly they said you're doing yesterday so okay so i'm
standing there
come on get it together it's okay and the floor manager the guy on the curtain
came up to me said you're
nervous i said no he said you should be the 73 million people watching wow
well sadly you won't have that problem tonight
take me through uh your name the origin of the name and where it started and to
what it is today
well my mother named me sean because when i was born to her it was her right
sean s h-a-u-n s-e-a-n s-h-a-w-n oh sure i would get the wrong one well sean
that's a nice name yeah yeah
and then then what happened yeah um people start calling me it
i see right
same thing happened with me but i was dave
the name david david david david david david david david david david david david
yeah i not not just
dave it's well actually it's dave z
if you want to if you want to know something
honest to god i thought you had stopped smoking well where did you get that
idea i thought you would
stop because i remember 10 years ago you were on the show and you'd had a
little health deal and
the doctor said well uh it's the probably the cigarettes and you said yeah but
can i keep smoking
and he said yes no i i had a test once and and this is not what the doctor said
after he looked at
my lungs and looked at my heart yeah he didn't say this but this is what i
heard keep smoking
that's what i heard that's what you heard yeah now is it and we're