I originally put this piece out in 2011 on the old Kent Patch. It's one of my favorite pieces I have ever written. On a recent review of the current archived version, I noticed it looked in bad shape. It had dead links, missing captions, the photos had been horribly cropped and there were formatting issues throughout. It did not look like what I recently uncovered when it originally posted 7 years ago. Since those days I have moved my blogging over here to this format because the Patch is long gone and on this blog I have a lot more control over my content.
Also since I originally posted this piece, I have come across some additional photos and more information to support this story which I have included as part of this expanded --- maybe -- "remastered" version of this story. I also wanted to post this because I have a book coming out on January 29, 2019 through Kent State University Press and it's called Small Town, Big Music: The Outsized Influence of Kent, Ohio on the History of Rock & Roll. It's really great and Joe Walsh wrote the foreword to it and you can pre-order it from Amazon right here.
This story about George Carlin will not be a part of that book because it's not about a musician or a band but it features some of the same characters who show up in different chapters of my soon-to-be-released book. I felt it should be revived here online as a supplement to my forthcoming book.
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Monday, April 17, 1972 -- George Carlin tours Kent State and headlines in University Auditorium
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| George Carlin (center) with his family and members of Kent State University's All Campus Programming Board at Small Group. (photo by Larry Roberts) |
Carlin gets nickel tour: George Carlin recovered from his illness but prior to Monday night's comedy concert, gets a tour for his family of KSU's campus by members of A.C.P.B.
When I stumbled on this photo I actually had almost missed it. This picture was not on the front page of the Stater nor was it in the issue following George Carlin's performance in the University Auditorium. This image appeared several days later and was buried deep in an issue of the Kent Stater appearing seemingly as an afterthought.
The photo raised so many questions with me. Who is George with? Where on campus is this? What were the circumstances around this "nickel tour"?
When I first acquired this image I started asking around at work (I work in the Kent State University Library) if anyone knew where this was on campus but nobody could figure it out. I then threw it up on our listserv to see if any current faculty or staff members knew where the image was taken. Several minutes after I posted the photo I got a response saying that there was no doubt that George Carlin and company were photographed at the Small Group dormitories. Then about 10 minutes later I received an additional email from someone who had once lived in Small Group and verified that it was in fact Small Group, more specifically Carlin and crew are shown walking through Small Group Plaza Phase 1: Musselman, Stewart and Apple Halls.
So this lead me to some other questions. Why is George Carlin out at Small Group? If I was given the task to take a visiting artist on a tour of Kent's campus, the last place I would ever take them would be to Small Group. While it's not there anymore, it was basically in the Siberia of campus next to the Ice Arena. People who lived there called it Small World because they were so isolated from all the other dorms and the rest of campus. Plus there was nothing exciting or noteworthy about the place. It was simply a functional set of dormitories. Currently most of the buildings that used to comprise the Small Group dormitories have been reduced to a giant practice field as most of these late 60's buildings were demolished in February of 2009. One small cluster of Small Group still exists though not as a dormitory -- it has been re-purposed as part of the Information Services department.
It must be noted that just six weeks after the Kent State performance, George Carlin appeared at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, CA and recorded his most famous album Class Clown for which he is best known for uttering the "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television." The entire album is on YouTube and it's likely Carlin's performance at Kent State closely resembled these recordings. You can listen to that entire recording right here.
Also just two weeks after George came to Kent State he appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on May 2, 1972. The routine he did there must have been identical to some of the material he performed at KSU. At one time that footage streamed on YouTube but it has since been removed. George was however on Carson on February 29, 1972 (6 weeks before he was at Kent State) and that footage currently streams. You can see that right here.
I had the great pleasure recently to talk with a gentleman named Michael Solomon, who was the All Campus Programming Board (ACPB) Concert Committee Chairman from 1972-1974 and was the chief promoter on this comedy concert. He is pictured on the far right (half cut off) of this aforementioned image and he was the first person to clue me in as to what was going on with Carlin on Kent's campus on this day. Michael was only 20 years old and a student at Kent State on April 17, 1972. This is what he told me about having George Carlin in Kent:
Michael Solomon recounts:
"I don't remember how this actually ended up being booked. There was this new comedian George Carlin, he was a really funny guy. This was back when he was doing the 'Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.' That was his routine at that time. As the concert committee chairman my staff and I went to a couple of trade show events and ended up bringing in people we were exposed to there. At one point early in the semester there was a magician who we brought in who was called Mr. Fingers who came from one of those trade shows. We took him all over campus to promote a show he was doing and then brought him over for a party that happened to fall on my birthday.
"So later in the semester we brought in George Carlin to do the University Auditorium, which is up there on front campus. So to build interest in the show I agreed to take a day and take Carlin all over campus like we had done with Mr. Fingers. George was really an interesting character. He was there with his wife and daughter. My girlfriend and I escorted them. We took his wife and daughter over to the skating rink. My girlfriend took care of them in the morning and when we met up later she told me how much George had been hitting on her.
"Anyway ... I am taking Carlin around all these different residence halls. Somebody would go in ahead of us and then announce that George Carlin was going to come and spend 20 minutes there. We'd bring in Carlin and he would just come and talk to people. The thing I remember is some fraternity jock, athlete guy yelling to Carlin 'Hey George, I shaved my head for you today,' with Carlin responding something like 'I really don't care what you look like on the outside, just what's inside your head,' which was just kind of a classic George Carlin thing to say...
"And then literally like a moment later somebody yells to Carlin 'Do you want some quaaludes?' and Carlin looks over at me and he says 'I've never had quaaludes' and then Carlin looks over at the guy and he says 'sure' and he takes them ON THE SPOT. I don't know what effect they had on him, but you wouldn't have known.
"We did quite a tour of gathering places that day. That's why you see us in front of Small Group in that old Stater image. I just remember that night for his actual show we had a GREAT crowd."
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Mary Mosher, who was a senior in High School at the Kent State University School at the time of this show, had this to say about what she remembered about George Carlin from that day:
Mary Mosher recounts:
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Moulton Hall on Kent State's front campus
in an undated photo. (Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives) |
"In those days the University was using Moulton Hall for storage and we were wondering where they were going to put him, and then we heard that there used to be a ballroom on the first floor and they were just going to put George in that old ballroom. So when we got there, there were all kinds of people standing around the hallway and George Carlin was one of them. It seemed that the University had forgotten to send someone over to Moulton to unlock the doors.
"So somebody finally showed up with the key and when they unlocked this old door everyone walked into the room and the place was just filled with old couches. Like 10 couches stacked on top of each other ... like one regular and one upside down on top of that and another on top of that. So some people rearranged the couches so that we had some place to sit in the middle. I don't remember a thing he said ... it was 40 years ago, but I just remember it was really funny. And the next day I saw him at Perkins Pancake House with his little girl and his wife."
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Very recently an engaging gentleman named Brian Slease told me this colorful story about what he remembered from that day:
Brian Slease recounts:
"There were about a half dozen of us who were part of a three o'clock coffee crowd at the old Perkins Pancake House, and we were a mix of Kent State, Kent Roosevelt and University School people ... though by that time I had already graduated from Roosevelt and had just shown up back in town from a hitchhiking trip I had taken out west. One of my best friends who went to University School, Tim Scott, had sometime earlier gone out to California and stayed with George Carlin out in his West Coast home for a couple of weeks. On that day that George came into town to do a show, we were all sitting in Perkins, drinking coffee, having a grand old time when Tim walks in with George Carlin, and I recognized George right away.
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George Carlin performing in Kent State's University
Auditorium on Monday, April 17, 1972.
(Photo by Larry Roberts)
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"So we're sitting there talking and he said 'I've gotten some of the best vibes ever from all the people I've met in Kent. You folks have the best vibes. I'm gonna be doing a show tonight and I'm just wondering does anyone have anything that can relieve the tension ... if you know what I mean.' and I say 'sure can you wait a minute?' so he said 'yeah.' So I get up from the booth and go into the men's room at Perkins and sit backwards on the toilet and roll a few doobs right there. And just as I am putting everything away and walking out, low and behold three or four Kent cops show up for their afternoon coffee break.
"So I go back to our booth where George is sitting and acting innocently. I say to George, 'here' and I handed them underneath the table and and he goes 'Cool, anything I can do for you?' and I said 'well no, but if anyone here at the table wants my favor they can have it.' And he gave tickets to someone else at our table. I think the show was at the old U Aud (Cartwright Hall), which is up there on that hill. I screwed up by giving away my favor because I could have got tickets or even a backstage pass because I had provided him the uh ... it didn't really matter to me. I was probably just too in awe of the situation in the first place, you know? By this time there were other people crowding around trying to figure out who this guy was. It was weird, quite a surreal experience actually. Kent in those days. It was the late hippie era of Kent."
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It's pretty amazing these anecdotes I have gotten out of George Carlin's appearance here in Kent, especially considering the fact that I didn't know he ever came to town until after I found those images buried deep in those old Kent Staters. I have actually heard even more stories about this day from some other people but was never able to get them committed for publishing.
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Mid 70's photo of University Auditorium
(now Cartwright Hall) where George Carlin
performed on the night of Monday, April 17, 1972.
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I found this great set of color photos on Flickr taken of Kent around the time of George Carlin's appearance on campus. Click here to see a detailed photo from November 1972 with the Perkins Pancake House on the right. Note that Haymaker Parkway has not been carved through yet and this is before East Main Street had been widened. Also click here, here, here and here to see more great photos of downtown Kent in this era.
There was no actual Daily Kent Stater review following George's performance on campus which is odd because they were usually on top of every event in this period -- however -- on my original 2011 posting of this piece someone who was at the actual event commented with this:
"I think George was not over the tension by the time of the show, as he started out choppy compared to the silky smooth delivery many of us knew. With due respect to Michael Solomon, Carlin was hardly a 'new' comedian. I happened into the auditorium with a four-foot-long balloon, rippled and oblong. Our group was pretty early and got center seats in front of the balcony. Everyone was herbed and eventually the balloon was tipped off the balcony where George took notice and ad libbed a couple lines about its phallic shape. A big breakthrough laugh followed and from there on he was in fourth gear."
After the original piece came out George's daughter Kelly Carlin actually commented on the original posting with this:
"I remember going to the spot where the kids were shot on campus, and also going to that ice rink and skating while my parents hung out with some kids and partied.
"It was chilling being only 9 years old and seeing that memorial.
I love the details of your stories. it really brought my dad alive..."
Larry Roberts who took the photos of George Carlin at Kent State later went on to become an accomplished photographer doing major work for both the Toledo Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette among other things. At the time of George Carlin's death in 2008 he published as part of George's obituary 5 archival photographs he took of George from that 1972 night he performed in Kent State's University Auditorium -- you can see those pics right here. They were originally published for the Post-Gazette.
Big thanks to everyone who helped contribute to this story including Michael Solomon, Brian Slease, and Mary Mosher.
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