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What's happening? Yeah, now we're talking. How the tables have turned. Usually I'd be coming out to see you and your beautiful desk with some nightscape. We thought it was time that a talk show had a nightscape behind it. That was my idea. I invented that in 1948. I saw an old Carson clip. He had like really bad plastic ferns. Yes, yes. Carson was the first Between Two Ferns
He was the guy who invented it. Welcome to Literally with Rob Lowe on the podcast today. Big Red, the king, the reddest, palest, tallest. Okay, I'm going to say it. Quasi most frightening looking man in show business and certainly one of the funniest and one who is etched his way on the Mount Rushmore of late night hosts. He's the longest serving late night host. And like Ty Cobb said, it ain't bragging if you've done it.
We will talk to Conan O'Brien. You're a guy that likes to get out there on your surfboard. Yep. Sort of be one with nature. Totally. And that's where you and I differ. When was the last time you've seen the sun? Well, let's see. I think Gerald Ford was president. I think it was that, I think it was 70, I'm going to say 75 was the last time I actually saw the sun. When he pardoned Nixon, you came out.
Like Patuxy Phil. Yeah, yes, exactly. When I heard about that Gerald Ford had pardoned Nixon, I was so excited because I was, you know, big pro Nixon guy. Yeah, I ran outside in my in my glee and looked up at the sun and said, fiery orb, me must hide. And then I went back inside and it's been since then.
I stick out on the beach because when I wandered the beach and I've told people this before, but I look like Rose Kennedy shortly before she passed away. I'm covered. I'm covered in like I've got a floppy hat. I've got eight kinds of different REI sun shirts. I'm swaddled like and I am the uncoolest looking person you've ever seen. And then I've seen you out there on the water.
a chiseled Adonis soaking up the sun, becoming more powerful every second. It's not fair is what I'm saying and I'm angry. Well, listen, my lovely wife, who was when she first started out one of the great makeup artists in the business until she went on to other things, thinks I get too much sun. And she thinks that I am going to end up like
Tris Speaker's baseball mitt if I'm not careful and would like me to be more like you. But I can't pull it off. What's your regimen? If I were to be more like Conan O'Brien on the beach, what would I have to do? Okay, you'd start by not going to the beach. That'd be the first thing you would do. Yeah, that's the first thing you'd do. I don't belong on a beach, and anyone who sees me on a beach immediately knows I shouldn't be on a beach. But...
I think that if you had any kind of skin issue, you'd have known it by now, you know? Right? Yes. And you don't look like someone who gets too much sun. And we all know celebrities who get too much sun. And you and I... So I'm not there yet. I'm not in the late... Oh, God, no.
No, you're not there at all. Now, we both know the late era Roy Scheider. Yes. Did you ever see any of that action? Yes. I saw Roy Scheider. I used to see him when we were doing our show out in New York. We would go occasionally. I'd make my way out to the Hamptons.
and, you know, to visit somebody. I never had a place out there, but I'd go out there to the Hamptons and I would go to a restaurant. And Roy Scheider was always at any restaurant you went to. I think restaurants paid Roy Scheider to show up and be at their restaurant. And he couldn't have been nicer. He was always like, hey, man, how are you? But yes, you could tell that he had constantly been in the sun. And I think he was one of those guys who
You know, in the 60s, people used to hold up reflectors and hold them up to their faces to bake their faces like a potato. I think he was one of those guys because it looked like he had reentered orbit using his face. I'll do you one better. I saw him with my own eyeballs at the Sunset Marquee pool with one of the mirrors with a hole in it so you could put your noggin through it.
baking his face with Crisco. Oh, God. Oh, God. So your instinct was correct, sir. Can you imagine being Roy Scheider and going to the beach? No. Because his most iconic role is Jaws. And I think he told me that anytime he went to the beach, people would go...
And as if they were the first one to think of it. And he had to sit there and listen to them do that and go, ha ha. Yeah, that's good. That's funny. Yes. While his face cooked the smell of frying Roy Scheider baking the air. That's my favorite movie, incidentally. Jaws. It is perfect. It's one of the few perfect movies.
There's not a false note in it. Although Spielberg always says that he regrets what he did to sharks. And legitimately, like he'll mess up, he'll like tear up because he feels like people unnecessarily hate great white sharks because of that movie. And he's right, by the way. Right. Great white sharks rarely attack. They're great. They're great creatures.
And people now think that they only associate them with that movie. And you know the beach you were just talking about in Carpinteria where you come up and parade like Rose Kennedy has, for the first time ever, a family of great white sharks. Did you know this? No, I didn't know this. Yeah. So they're something with the climate change or the currents, but it started about three years ago.
And there are there's a family of great whites that patrol that beach. They're there all almost all the time. I paddleboarded out with them and it was spectacular to look down and see them. But they were right there, right there. Now, wait a minute. You're telling me that you have no fear when you're around a family of great white sharks and all you have is a paddleboard.
Here's the thing. I will do anything for a camera. Yes. And there was a camera there. Yeah. And my narcissism and my actor's competitiveness flared. Yep. And the next thing, I was out on the board, and there it was. But here's the thing. They're juveniles, so...
That you don't really, they're not really going to come after you. If it was a mama or something, I wouldn't have done it. But here's the thing. Here's the thing that you're not thinking about.
Well, there's a lot I'm not thinking about usually. Yeah, there's a lot. I mean, if we just went into, let's do a whole segment called things Rob Lowe isn't thinking about. And there wouldn't be enough time. No, there'd be five years. Yeah. What I'm saying is they're juveniles now. But you know when you watch a great movie like The Godfather 2, they always make sure...
the old Don will make sure that, okay, I can't just kill the father and the mother. I've got to kill the young son too, because he's going to grow up, come back here, pretend he has an olive oil company, but stab me on my porch 40 years from now. And that's exactly what happens. Those juveniles are looking at you now and they're like, we're not going to forget. We're coming back and we're going to get this motherfucker. And it might be 10 years. It might be 20, but they see you
uh, posing in front of them and, and having yourself shot with cameras. And they're like, we will not forget. So they may be juveniles now, but they will settle this score. You know that. Yeah. They'll be like that. He did not pay a scale for being on camera. Those sharks were unpaid. You took advantage of them. And in fact, I saw the video, you attack them at one point.
You start biting their dorsal fins. Their dorsal fins. Do they have a dorsal fin? Yeah. Of course. And what's amazing, you know how when you watch, you look out and you see a fin and you go, oh, it's a shark and it's always a dolphin? Yep. Always. When you see an actual shark fin, it is unmistakable.
Yes. It's like, oh, yeah. They look nothing like what we always think are sharks and their dolphins. In fact, it looks fake. It looks like Jaws. It looks like a fake triangle going across the water. No, it looks like everything you've ever seen in a bad pirate movie. I have a story to tell you, which is about two years ago, I'm in Carpinteria. My wife and I have a small place there on the beach, sort of a clam shack, if you will, and I actually sell clams out the back illegally. Yep. And...
We
I'm friends with the actor Tim Oliphant. Yeah, the best. He's the best. He's the best. He's a wonderful guy, hilarious, very funny. We did the grinder together. Oh, there you go. That's right. That's right. That's right. So you guys have worked together. He's great. He's visiting, and he decides, hey, man, hey, let's go down there and jump in the water. And it was kind of cold. It was a little off-season, but I thought, all right, Tim Oliphant's going to do it. And I had to...
in order to get into the water, I had to take off the nine layers. And then I had to run bare chested down to the ocean with Tim Oliphant, which is not putting me in a good light. Let's just leave it at that. You know, the man's the man's an Adonis. He's an Adonis like you. I've been very careful to avoid Rob Lowe and Tim Oliphant shirtless. I don't want the comparisons out there, but I run out there and I look like, uh, I,
I just got out of an iron lung. And he, of course, looks like he's been chiseled by a great Italian sculptor. We both run down there. We jump in the water. And his handsome head is floating. And my orange pumpkin is floating. And we're both in the water. And then this fin went by.
And he went, hey, man, check out the dolphin. And I'm looking at the fin, and I said, and this is the same Carpentria beach you're talking about, I said, that's not a dolphin. And he went, what is it? And I went, that is a shark.
And he was like, there's no way that's a shark. And he went, oh, no, no, no, no. That's a shark. And it turned out I was right. It was a shark. Whoa. Yeah. And it just went right by us. Now, it was also a juvenile. So I wasn't freaked out. But yes, what happens is dolphins, they're fins.
They arch. They come out and they go back down. And then they come out and they go back down. A shark really looks like someone is pulling a fake fin through the water. It doesn't arch. It doesn't go anywhere. But the shark just wanted to check out Oliphant. It was sexually attracted to him. And it was only my chest that kept it from coming any closer. You were the recipient of one of the great quotes I have ever heard.
about the, about fame. And if anything we do in this business has any staying power or matters,
and what our place in the pecking order is. And that's the great Albert Brooks quote. Conan, you remember this? Yep. He told me, uh, Albert Brooks, and I'll give him a shout out again. People, I often, sometimes I try and think like, who are the absolute funniest people? Like, you know, and, and this is a conversation I have with myself sometimes. And I take it really seriously. And I think, well, Mark's brothers, when they're hitting on all cylinders, WC fields, um,
Albert Brooks, I put way up there as just when Albert Brooks in his albums, in his TV appearances, but in his movies, when he's hitting on all cylinders, I cannot think of anyone who's better. I've always been intimidated by just the idea of meeting him. And then I came out here to LA and I got to meet him.
And immediately I'm fawning and I'm saying,
You know, your work is really important. You make movies. I'm in the disposable pen business. You know, like I make one at night and then it's just dropped in the shredder. And I was starting to go down that line of reasoning and he cut me off and he was like, no, no, no, no, no. None of it matters. Nothing. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. Clark Gable. Clark Gable was the face of
The face of the 20th century. That's what people said. Who the fuck now cares about Clark Gable? And he was just drilling this into me like all of it's forgotten. And then I took that to heart. And then later on, I'm doing an interview. This is many years later. I'm doing an interview with someone at The New York Times.
And they're saying, but if you do such and such, I think it's when I decided to go to half hour. They said, are you worried about what this might mean for your legacy? And I just said, I said, legacy?
And I was, that's when I brought up Albert Brooks and none of it matters. And I said to the guy, look, it was just this image I had in my head. All of our graves, all of our graves go untended. Meaning, you know, yeah, someone's, they're going to put me in the ground somewhere and people are going to come by for a couple of days. And then within days,
Three years, there's weeds growing over that thing. No one gives a shit. So you're just here now. Do it now. And then it's over when it's over. And that that got me this street cred online for a couple of days as Conan is goth. Which is really funny to think of me as Rose Kennedy, meaning by extension, Rose Kennedy is goth. It's the greatest.
Oh, I think that was the title of the piece I read is all of our graves go untended. Yeah. Something like that, which is, and you know, it's funny people, if you talk that way, people will think that you're being negative and, uh, but it's not, it's actually freeing. It's really freeing and positive. Yeah. It's so freeing and it's so positive to say, because I used to, uh, uh, when I was coming up and in the early days of doing my show, uh,
I used to look at someone like a Johnny Carson or a David Letterman and think, well, they don't have a care in the world because they're just revered. They've accomplished it. So they just must walk through life on a cloud. And of course,
Nothing could be further from the truth. Everybody's dealing... And that's not how they see it, you know? And then you realize that everybody's comparing themselves to the impossible ideal they've created of someone else. So...
There's a whole generation of comedians that thought, well, I'm not Jack Benny. I'll never be Jack Benny. And then I'll never be Steve Martin. Who could ever be better than Steve Martin? And so everybody sort of hates themselves and at the same time thinks that someone else has achieved the ideal. When if you could get into the head of, I know you and I have talked about
You know, like a Cary Grant or someone who everybody thought was the ideal and you got the chance to meet him. And of course, Cary Grant's not thinking that. Cary Grant's thinking about his impoverished childhood and the movie roles that got away. And what's he going to do tomorrow? And he's not sitting around just watching North by Northwest and thinking, I'm Cary Grant.
isn't this amazing he's and if he was you know that would be sad well and yeah so that's the great quote that i i learned early on and sort of recovery and uh we would just never compare your insides to someone else's outsides right and i've i've that's i always remember that but on the other side of it you can't blame us for putting people others on a pedestal because
How does the notion of an insecure Cary Grant work? That's not even a good impression. I don't even want to do that. Yeah, you should do it. He'd be like, if only I knew what kind of product to buy at the market. They want eggs. I don't make eggs. I can't make eggs for her. She's going to think I'm a terrible man. Yeah.
It's also, yeah, it's Cary Grant probably. I don't do a Cary Grant, but it would be Cary Grant. Just I could, I can come up, you know, just Cary Grant being like, why would I go to that party? No one wants to see me. People hate me. They'll think I'm old and that I should have dyed my hair. Sadly, I've let it go gray way before my time.
And I look ridiculous in these glasses. Yeah, exactly. But it's funny. He's, you know, and maybe he wasn't. Maybe he didn't have an insecure bone in his body. But yeah, you're right. He did a lot of acid. That's my favorite Cary Grant thing. You know, he's like one of the earliest, you know, you know. Timothy Leary acolytes. Yeah, yeah. No, he was into it in the mind expanding. He did a lot of acid in the 60s and he was getting into it.
Yeah, he got into it early and was really interested in its potential to expand horizons. It was like in the 50s. It was like before the hippies got a hold of it. Cary Grant, now the hippies have done it. I like the idea of Cary Grant getting into it. He's actually in the lab while they're working on it in 1948. I'd like to try that. Yeah.
He was in way too early. But, you know, yeah, don't compare your insides to someone else's outsides. Yes, that's good. I'm going to try and remember that. I shouldn't compare the inside of my penis to someone else's larger penis. Is that how it goes? That is how it goes. That's the one caveat. That's the asterisk at the quote. Yeah, right. Where it's like, unless it's a penis. Yes, and then there's no way you're not going to compare.
No. Look, men are obsessed with it. Of course, that also has an asterisk. Are we talking flaccid or erect? I always like to throw that asterisk in. A shower or a grower? Exactly. I mean, you know, erect, I'll take on all comers. And that's no pun intended, but flaccid, that's a discussion I don't want to have. Mine actually goes up inside my body. It goes up into the body cavity. Okay.
Like an acorn head. Yeah, and what it does is it nests in there, and it goes into my body cavity, and it nests when it's not in use, and it has a lot of reading material. My penis reads a great deal inside my body cavity. I'm sorry. That was too stupid. But there you go. Hold that thought. We'll be right back.
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You know what else is gone for the fun is the White House press correspondence dinner, which I know you hosted. You hosted twice. Yeah. And right. And it's it's gone because Trump just like was like, I'm not going there. And and so it's kind of over, which is a bummer. It will come back. I mean, it'll it'll it will come back. I think it's this is a temporary. But it is funny. I mean, it's not funny. It's interesting that every president did it.
And they knew that, well, this is just part of being president is you need to go to the White House Correspondents Association dinner and you've got to tell kind of some funny jokes. And everybody did it. And obviously some presidents, I think Reagan was very good at it. Some presidents were very good at it. I mean, Barack Obama was an absolute master at it. Killer. Yeah. And then you would watch...
So everybody just did it. And kind of a fascinating thing about Trump is that he just decided, yeah, I'm not going to do any of these things that people say I have to do. I'm just not doing them. Like, I think there's a chance there won't even be presidential debates. You know, I don't know that he'll debate Joe Biden because, you know, it's a given that you have to debate your rival before the November election. And I I wouldn't put it past him to go like, nah,
Now, like, I don't know. He could say anything. He could sell the White House. He's got this. He's got this ability to just say, you know what? I don't care what other people do. I'm selling the White House. I got I got six hundred thousand dollars for it. I'm selling it to the Marriott chain, you know, and I'll pocket the money. Hey, you can't do that. I just did it. What are you going to do?
It could be the Trump White House. I mean, he could literally brand it. He could brand it and he will. That I actually don't think is that far of a possibility. I have something to propose to you, which is Trump doesn't and the GOP in general, but they don't have a lot of celebrities on their side. They don't have, you know, and they have like a handful of. Why is that? Why is that, though? Historically, why is it like if it's like.
Barack Obama, and he has a fundraiser. He's got Eddie Vedder and Bruce Springsteen and Beyonce. And then the GOP has got like the Beach Boys. Not even all the Beach Boys. It's like one Beach Boy. There's literally a Beach Boy. Yeah. Beach Boy. They've got Beach Boy, and there's usually some country star. And then there's Jon Voight, I think.
Right. I think John Boyd is in there. So but he's not he's not playing any music. So he's useless. No. But what I'm saying is I think you and I should go hard for Trump. Now, we should just say like Rob Lowe and Conan O'Brien, we we support Trump to the hilt. They would invite us to the White House. We would get invited immediately, you know, and. Oh, yeah. And no. And then completely embrace Trump.
And we would get invited to all kinds of great stuff. And we would get, you know. You know what it'd be really great for? What? Our careers. Well, I mean. Really great. Okay, you're being sarcastic. I think it actually puts us on the tip of everyone's tongue. I think it puts us on the tip of the spear. Yeah, well, listen. As Liz Taylor said, all publicity is good publicity. Liz Taylor also used to stick a fucking onion in her face to cry on screen.
I saw that with my own eyes, by the way. Did you really? Tell me about that. Let's talk about that. And then we'll get back to my idea that we both throw our. I'm very, very into this Trump thing, actually. No, no, no. I know you are. I know you are. But everyone's talking about Trump. No one's talking about you saw Liz Taylor stick an onion in her face so that she could cry. I did. All right. Tell me that.
So, my brother, Chad Lowe, who is a wonderful actor and current television director, was doing a movie called There Must Be a Pony that I believe was written by, hang on, Joan Didion, my favorite author's husband, Gregory Dunn. And it was Robert Wagner.
Robert Wagner, for those of you- RJ. RJ, we call him. RJ. Or number two in Austin Powers world. And so RJ and Liz are playing husband and wife, and Chad Lowe is the young son. And I come to visit on the set, and it's a scene where
RJ comes in and has to tell Liz Taylor that there's been a terrible plane crash and one of her family members is dead. So I'm watching the rehearsal and Liz is like, what if I made a salad? It's in the kitchen. Great. So she's making a salad. But what she's very cagely done is that allows her to have a giant raw onion right in front of herself. Yeah.
And that's genius. RJ comes in and says, this is, I have something terrible to tell you is terrible plane crash. And there've been no survivors. And she literally turns around and she's now put the onion in a, like a, a, a paper towel of some sort. And she puts the paper towel in her face. Like she turns around and it's just waterworks. And I was like, fantastic.
Yeah. I was like, wow. That's great. That's great. Method. Method. That's the way to do it. She's only got two fucking Oscars. The hell does she care? You know what I love is when you said that she used an onion to cry, I was for a minute thinking that she had sliced an onion and had it on a rope and a pulley. And RJ comes in to give her the bad news and you suddenly hear a little squeaky.
of rope going across pulley. And then you see a half an onion come just barely into frame. The towel, the towel, of course, much better, much better. I like your Rube Goldbergian version of like, it's a special effect. You've turned it into a whole special effect. Yeah. Like on the call sheet, it'd be like next day,
rain machines, smoke machines, Liz's onion apparatus. Liz's onion apparatus. And there'd be a guy, a union guy who was an onion wrangler and he would be off camera and you would actually have to say the onion, chew the onion. And then onion just slowly coming into frame just barely. So if you're careful, you can see it.
Yeah, she was. She was amazing. She was just amazing. I mean, that was also, they gifted her with a trailer in purple because she was famous. They had purple eyes and she didn't like the color, so they had to return it. By the way, this is just a TV movie. You know, there was a, I want to say there's like a 10, at least a 10 year period or maybe a 12 year period
Where all anybody in America could think or talk about was Liz Taylor and Richard Burton and the size of her, you know, engagement ring. And they're broke up, but now they're together again. Now they broke up again. Now they're together again. And people forget this. And it goes back to that, uh,
Thing we were talking about earlier, the Albert Brooks is like nothing matters. But there was a 12 year period in American history where all anybody thought about in America was Elizabeth Taylor and what she up to today. That's how huge she was and how much she dominated America.
the national conversation. And then in the photos, what I like looking back at it, they're clearly smashed. Yeah. Also, this is the thing you can see in, you know, it was part of the culture. Like you woke up and you had a drink. And that was the way...
That you lived. And if you were Peter O'Toole or Richard Burton, I mean, it was a English tradition and it also sort of became an American tradition to like. And it became this culture of you're just drinking all the time. Everybody was drinking all the time. And then overnight, I think people realized, wait a minute.
This is a fucking disease. This is not, you know. It's really true. I mean, and it is overnight because I can remember when it was, and in Europe, this sounds cliche to say, and in Europe, they still, but it's true. In Europe, people routinely drink at lunch. Yeah. Like business meetings. Like if you were at a proper business meeting in New York and you had a, I'm going to have a scotch, people would think you have a serious alcohol problem. I've been-
On this one, I've been on vacation. I'll be on vacation, say, and I'm with my wife and we're someplace, you know, we're in Paris, we're in some great place. And I'll notice that I'm very relaxed. We're eating a late lunch. It's like two o'clock in the afternoon. And there've been times where I've thought, I've said like, hey, I'm going to get some white bread.
I'm going to get a glass of white wine with lunch, and maybe I'll have two glasses of white wine with lunch because I'm on vacation. And why not? And you do it, and you realize why not, which is you can't. You're not yourself, not only for the rest of the day, but like, no, that just doesn't work. And the idea that people used to say, well, it's 1130 or it's quarter to 12.
we're all going to go to Delmonico's or we're going to go to Ciro's or we're going to go to, you know, um, name, name your, your cliched restaurant with a giant menu from the sixties. And the first thing you do when you sit down before you even ask is they put a double in front of you and you smash it back and you get bombed. And that's what people did famously. You know, it's the madmen culture. It's the, it was just the way I think people thought you were supposed to live. It was, uh,
You know, Dean Martin, I think, faked it for a long time. Dean Martin was not. Is that true? Yeah. Is that true? Because. Well, I think he did for a long time. He faked it. He would he would be on stage and he would have literally grapefruit juice with soda in it or something. And it would, you know, pretending it was.
Because it was so his act that he was always blotto. But of course, you couldn't do what he did and be blotto. And then I think sadly later on, what I've heard is that it became less of an act. Right. That's what I'd always heard. When his son passed away and tragically, I think it morphed from an act to the real thing, which is also W.C. Fields famously never drank. Didn't drink for years and years and years because he was a...
His whole early career was the greatest juggler in the world. He performed for all the crown heads of Europe, and he could do all these amazing things. And he would sometimes in his act, I think it was part of his act to drink, but he didn't. And then, of course, later on, he became, sadly, the real thing. So, you know. What did W.C. Fields, his great quote about why he doesn't drink water? I don't know. I'm sure I've heard it, but I don't. What is it? Because fish fucking it. Ha ha ha ha ha.
No wonder that didn't make it into a movie. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't know. I don't do a WSC fields, but I love, I love that quote. That's a good one. I told my trainer that he taught, he told me to hydrate more. I was like, I'm not doing that. Yeah. Here's the thing. You're like when, when you open the, um, the dictionary or encyclopedia of which no, none exist anymore, as you know, cause everything's online. But if, if you still had one, yep.
And you would see Irish Catholic. There'd be a picture of young Conan O'Brien. Maybe. How did you reconcile the great Irish tradition of just being really loving to drink? Well, I grew up... It's interesting because...
There are two ways if you're part of an immigrant culture, Irish immigrant culture, there were two ways that you could screw up your life, I think. And this is like a very 19th century idea.
But one was to get someone pregnant out of wedlock. And of course, the other was to become an alcoholic. By the way, both the activity of doing such, really fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Fucking problem. But the problem is, so what happened was I grew up in a long line of, it's a completely dry house. Oh, wow. My parents, there was, I've never seen my parents hold a drink.
What? I have not even seen them. I think at my wedding, they held a glass of wine, but they wouldn't sip it. I've never seen my parents sip a drink, and their parents didn't drink, so my grandparents didn't drink, and there wasn't any alcohol in the house. Now, we kept...
My dad, there was a little cabinet in our house that was locked and my dad had the key and there was liquor in there in case people came over in the 60s and 70s and wanted a drink. My dad would go and get this key and open it up and we would see him bring out
some liquor that was for other people, but I'm sure it was terrible liquor in a bottle of wine in a hot closet. I mean, I'm sure people knew when they came to our house to bring their own liquor. So as a result, I did not drink at all
Wow. I never touched alcohol. Wait, so you're in high school. You're fucking going to Harvard. Nothing. They want you to be on the secret societies and shit there. Well, I was on, you know, it's more than that because I was at Harvard. Harvard itself doesn't mean drinking, but I was on the Lampoon and the Lampoon is basically, it's very talented people on the Lampoon and you have to compete to get in and write stuff and draw cartoons and everything. But once you get in,
Everybody drinks constantly. And I was completely, I was surrounded by completely soused
you know, very talented, but drunk people. And I was always had a Coca-Cola in my, in my cup. And I never drank all the way through college. This is, this is fascinating to me because so was the thinking on your part is, because what I'm hearing is it's not like you were scared of something like, Oh, I don't want to be like this person because the only thing you had to model it after were people who were successfully drunk.
not drinking under any circumstances. Right. I didn't know. It didn't come from fear. It didn't come from fear. Well, actually it, it, it does because if you grow up being told, you know, you must never, ever, ever, you know, uh,
go into the dark forest that, uh, yeah, you might not, you might grow up not going into the dark forest. There's two personality types. One would be like, I'm going there right away and I'm going to hang out there all the time. And the other is I will not go there at all. I didn't drink, I didn't touch it. And I think I started to have wine in my twin mid twenties.
but really not at all till later 20s. I mean, I'm not kidding. This is real. But you're an alcoholic now, though. Oh, now? Oh, my God. Oh, well, thank you for finishing the sentence. I do it all now. I do it all. I have a crack pipe under my pillow. I have meth hanging from the ceiling. And it's just black tar heroin. No, you know what's funny? I don't like...
To this day, I just can't stand, I don't like spirits. Like when people have whiskey, and people are all the time saying, oh, Conan, you know what it's like. You go someplace and people say, if they recognize you, this is on the house, but this is aged 50-year-old whiskey in oak barrels.
It's really just incredible. It tastes like gasoline to me. So I have no appreciation for spirits. I can't do spirits. But I learned to like wine. And when you're at, you're a young comedian, you're SNL for fuck's sake. Jesus Christ. We all know what that's like behind the scenes. Well, actually, yeah, but you know, it's interesting. I'm from this different era of, I'm part of this wave of,
that came along. We come after, there's the 60s and 70s. You know, 60s, they're smoking pot. 70s, they're doing cocaine.
I come along in the 80s and I'm part of this group of writers that doesn't do it. Like we're watching our cholesterol. You know, we're like, even then. Yeah, we're in the room with people who went into their offices maybe and closed the door and did coke. But we were completely oblivious to it. And, you know, my writing partner at the time, Greg Daniels, was like, you know,
You can't eat rye bread. It's slightly inflammatory. Greg Daniels, who created The Office and Parks and Recreation with Mike Schur, among others. I cannot picture Greg Daniels taking an aspirin. No, no. Yeah, he wouldn't. He wouldn't. And that was my writing partner. And I'm, I mean, I'm straight as an arrow. He's straight as an arrow. We're the most, it's a ridiculous. Now, this is a true story. I went and had to get a,
It's a couple of years into my late night show. I had to get a physical, an insurance physical, you know, for my late night show that, because, you know, it's required. So I go and I'm getting this physical from a doctor I don't know. The insurance company chose the doctor. And he's talking to me. And then he said, okay, alcohol. And I go like, yeah, I mean, I have some wine, but not, you know, da, da, da. And he said, okay, and what drugs do you do? And I said, I don't do any drugs. And he said, you know,
I'm a doctor. This is confidential and you need to be honest with me. And I said, I don't do drugs. And he said, you don't do cocaine? And I said, no, I don't do cocaine. And he said, I've seen your show. That's true. And he thought that because I was this hyperkinetic,
jumpy guy that I was doing cocaine. And I'm like, I promise you, I had one experience in college where I walked into a room and guys were doing cocaine. And it looked like a scene from less than zero. I mean, very- Oh, I'm familiar. Yeah, yeah. And so I walk in and I'll never forget, it was such a cliched 80s moment
But two of the guys were wearing white tuxedo jackets and they're cutting up. Of course they were. Yeah. And they're doing lines of cocaine. And they they turned to me and they saw me and with maybe not a lot of enthusiasm, but they thought, oh, that guy just walked in and they said, oh, Conan, do you want to do some?
You want some Coke? Do you remember if they called it like a great 80s phrase, like toot? No, I don't remember. I think they just said Coke. I think I wish they had said, you know, something that didn't even wasn't even real. You know, I wish they had said, do you want to ride the Johnny Blow train? But they didn't. Exactly. They just said, hey, hey, do you want some? And I said, no, no, no. My father's a doctor. He he says it.
It interrupts the heart rhythm. Needless to say, no one ever offered me cocaine again. And did you say it like Lorne Michaels? Because that was like Lorne Michaels. Well, I wasn't even intending to do a Lorne Michaels. It was more just of a fussy. But. No, no, Conan, the thing about coke is. You know what you've got to know about coke.
I'm friends with Coke. Coke and I hang out and I'm against it. But you know, the one thing I've learned about, which is, you know, I think it also comes from being like a doctor's son, but I'm always incredibly responsible about, you know, well, I can't take this pill unless a doctor has prescribed it. And I've read the big form that came with it at the pharmacy. So the idea that, uh,
I'm an impossible square. Yeah, I come from a completely different ethos. Like my thing is, if a doctor prescribes me a pill and it's one pill every four hours, two pills has got to be better. Yes, it's got to be. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's honestly what, you know, as a recovering alcoholic addict, that's where I go. You know, I mean, it's like, let's go. Yeah.
Yeah, but it's been how many years for you? That's fantastic. It will be 30 years next month. And it's hard because at 30 years sober, you kind of tend to forget what it was like. And so I always had to be reminded because it was really fun, really fun.
Up until it wasn't fun anymore. Right. And then it was really not fun for a very, very, very, very, very, very, very long time. But there are like, I think of the 80s in New York and white tuxedo jackets. And I'm down to clown, dude. Those were, that was, when white tuxedo jackets were acceptable, that's the era when it was still working for me. Yeah. And the other thing, and here's the other thing. And this is why I'm fascinated with your work.
never getting involved in any of it was that one of the reasons I started doing all that stuff when I did was the models of people I held in esteem
did it right clearly and you know i don't want to necessarily well we can name the names that would that's of the public record you want to be funny belushi did it all those guys they were funny they were edgy they were cool they did it i i would see steve mcqueen at the point doom market just fucked up staggering around stinking with his smelly feet out and i'm like that's steve mcqueen dude he's the biggest movie star in the world
And, and then there was the thing of like, when Coke was good for you and as it is, what successful people did. Right. There was an era that was like, that meant you'd arrived. And like, I'm, you know, a 13 year old, the hell do I know? And that, that sort of those messages got totally baked in for me. It's like, you know, what, what could you aspire to higher than being Jack Nicholson? Right. Right. Right.
I think it's the mistake I think a lot of people made. I think what helped me a lot was that I, obviously, in my formative years, unlike you, I didn't get to see those people. I'm growing up just outside Boston, Massachusetts, about as far from show business you can get. Son of a microbiologist and mother's a lawyer. And show business was about as
I'm growing up in kind of a Victorian household in some ways. Show business was just so far away that I grew up really being about the ideas and the craft sort of thing. And I wasn't around any of the people. So by the time I finally got to meet the people...
I was so set in my ways. Do you know what I mean? I think if I had... And I think one of the... Obviously, you know this, but you think there's a mindset which is, I need this to do the good work. And you realize, well, Belushi and Farley, they did such great work before...
they were overcome by those drugs. In fact, everybody you mentioned was incredibly talented, capable. They were very talented and capable and charismatic people. And if anything, the drug just got in the way. And, uh, you know, um, the Beatles made, uh,
just a massive amount of great music before they ever got involved in anything other than alcohol. And so it's this idea that that's the vehicle to get to this better place, which is just incorrect. It's not true. If you're interested in the work, it's not doing anything for you. It's really true. And we'll be right back after this.
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Qualifying plan required. Wi-Fi were available on select U.S. airlines. Deposit and Hilton honors membership required for 15% discount terms and conditions apply. I like to sometimes end the show with what I call the lowdown because it's the hackiest phrase ever and it's been used in every stupid article ever written about me and
It offends me. Yeah, but you know what? You know what it is for you? Imagine you're Tom Cruise, and every time you do an interview, they say, his career's on cruise control. And you'd think that he would contact, his publicist would say, you know, that's been used 800,000 times.
But USA Today doesn't care. They're like, he's back. They really don't. Well, they used to, man. Anyway, the lowdown. Let's have the lowdown. So, OK, so Beatles or Rolling Stones? I think I know the answer. Beatles. Beatles. Not even not even close, right? It's not even the same thing. If you know anything about music.
I really admire what the Rolling Stones did, but they're basically working off of rhythm and blues and the Beatles are nine light years ahead of them working off everything and riffing off every musical style. And they're not even in the same solar system. So yes, it's Beatles all the way. Who's the most overrated Beatle? Oh, it's got to be John Lennon.
I just said that because no one ever picks him. Wow. I was going to say, that is a fucking, that is a hot take. Yeah. I was like, you know, what did Lennon ever do? Show me one good Lennon song with the Beatles, you know? Tell me one good. Fucking overrated. Who's the most overrated member of Friends?
Oh, wow. Well, I'm just going to say, because we are friends, it's Lisa Kudrow, because she's my friend. You can get away with saying that. I've experienced her. Yeah, I don't want to offend any of the others. So I can tell you right now, I mean, Lisa Kudrow, she's a friend of mine in real life. And as a real friend, she's overrated, you know, as a friend. So I'm just going after her hardcore. I think that's probably really an interesting concept.
Like, which one of the friends would be the worst friends? That's the show I want to see. Which one of them is the worst friend? Well, you know what? I'm going to have to take it back now because Lisa's a lovely friend and a great person. It was my birthday the other day and I got a lovely bottle of wine from Lisa and Michelle. I didn't get anything from Jennifer Aniston. Nothing. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. If you could see a UFO, a ghost, or Bigfoot, which would you want to see?
And would you tell anyone? Yeah. Asterisk, or have you seen any of those? I haven't seen any of those. Never saw a ghost. You know what? I think ghosts are overrated. A ghost is just someone who used to be alive, who you wouldn't have liked, who's showing up again after they technically should have left the party. So it's like someone coming back to the party because they left their hat. You're turning in to go to bed. The doorbell rings.
You've heard their stories. They weren't that much fun. And they're back to get their hat that they left. So ghosts bore me. Bigfoot, who cares? Bigfoot is probably, if Bigfoot even existed, it's just going to be slightly larger than John Tesh. Yes. And who cares? UFO. I'd like to see a UFO. I'd like to see a real UFO. And yes, I would tell people about it. I would tell people I saw a real UFO. And I would describe it in detail. And I wouldn't care if they thought I was crazy. Yeah.
I'd like to see John Tesh. John Tesh may be, he may have come to earth on a UFO. He is an otherworldly presence. What song lyric have you finally seen printed where you're like, oh, fuck, wait, what? That, like, I played rock band the other day with my boys. Yep. And I didn't realize that in Blondie's Heart of Glass, she's singing Mucho Mistrust. What did you think she was singing?
Once you mistrust. Yep. Okay. I'll tell you mine. Van Morrison in his song Brown Eyed Girl. Yes. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. There's no way there's a lyric in Brown Eyed Girl that we don't know. That's impossible. I'm going to tell you what mine is. All right. There's a part where he says, going down in the old mine with a transistor radio.
Right. He's he's talking about him going down in the old mine with a transistor radio radio. Yeah, sure. I used to hear going down on an old man for a transistor radio. And I was like, what?
You need a transistor radio that badly that you're going to go down on an old man? I swear to God, for years, and I knew it couldn't be right, but to this day, I play guitar. I'll play that song. I'm like, going down on an old man for a transistor radio. It must be a good radio. And no one will be the wiser if you sang that lyric. No, I'm going to sing it. I will perform that song live.
And I will sing Going Down on an Old Man for a transistor radio. See, do you have a list of songs like I do that I think, like as a lawyer would say, stipulated, classic, great, American world classics, don't want to hear it again ever anymore, need to be put away for a while? Because I hate to say it, Brown Eyed Girl might be the first one. You know what? I always think that
And it's so good. It comes on and I start to think, oh my God. And you go like, okay, this again? Really? Again? Again? But then I kind of fall into it. So I don't know. I don't know if there's a song. Do you have a list? I do. I think Ain't Too Proud to Beg needs to go. Uh-huh. Well, a lot of Motown got seriously overplayed.
In the 80s. Seriously overplayed in the 80s. In the movies. Like, I can't think of those songs without thinking of Mary Kay Place shaking a salt shaker as she dances through a kitchen or whatever. I think that music now only signifies montage. Yes. Women who are finally bonding and they're singing into a hairbrush.
But who are we to say, put these songs away? I feel like that is not within my power. I can't say that. Oh, sure it is. All you have to say is, hey, band, don't play this on the break. Just don't play it anymore. We're going to commercial. I don't want to hear it. Yeah. Yeah. Did you ever say to Max Weinberg back in the day, we get it. You're in the E Street band. I did. Okay. I did that every day. That's how I greeted him in the morning. We get it, Max. You know Clarence. You have him on speed dial. We get it.
We get it, man. One of the great, sweet, cool thrills is when I did. And I've been on your show at every iteration. And I always love coming on your show. But in that iteration, I came out and Max played Born to Run. And it made me very happy because I figured it's a very finite amount of people that he unless maybe I don't know. Maybe he played Born to Run for everybody he liked. Maybe I'm not that special. He did play it every night.
It was the night before you. It was Carrot Top. So I hate to break it to you. No, it's not that often you get to talk to somebody who had stories about being in the biggest band in the world. Do you know what I mean? You think about it. There's only been a couple of biggest bands in the world and E Street Band. And you think about, okay, so you were there at every show of the Born in the USA tour, which
which is like the biggest cultural event or one of the biggest of the 80s. And you were there and the shit you must have seen. Do you know what I mean? But of course, if you talk to him, he might say, oh, I remember the Madrid show. I was too close to the ice machine. You know? Like,
Everyone else has this other take, you know? I'm thinking you probably saw this majestic light over Bruce's head at the biggest show you ever did. And they're thinking about the fact that, you know what? The mattresses in Belgium, not great. Too stiff. Yeah, I heard that on that tour that some of the band members would just count the heads to figure out what the gate was going to be. Oh, really? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. I guess it does. I guess it does, you know? For some people...
Show business is just a transaction. For me, it's more about spirituality. I refuse to take any money for what I do. Well, particularly when you realize that no one's going to remember. Exactly. That's right. That's right. So no one you mean to tell me I want to say, hey, fuck you, Albert Brooks. I got one. I got a bone to pick with you, Albert Brooks.
People are going to remember Oxford Blues long after I'm gone. You know, I think he would have a caveat for Oxford Blues. I think that maybe he is wrong. Some things will be remembered. The pyramids have lasted a long time. They're getting a little crumbly. Yep. But I think the pyramids, Taj Mahal, Oxford Blues...
This has been great. I've loved this. This has been lovely. This is really... You know what? I'll say, you and I have encountered each other. Our paths cross. We always... I always really enjoy talking to you. And you have... I envy you. I didn't really start to get a crack at getting to know some famous people until really...
early 90s. And so I missed out on all these legends. And every time I talk to you, I'm goading you to say like, come on, you must have met. And you've met, you've like met Fred Astaire. And you're like, oh yeah, I fought him in a parking lot. You're like, what? You fought Fred Astaire in a parking lot? Yeah, I beat the shit out of him. But you know, he gave as good as he got. He carried a knife in his sock. And I'm like, man, you've got
I envy you that. That's great. You're a great raconteur. You've got great stories. Oh, thank you. Well, listen, I love doing these shows for your company. Are you effectively my boss? I am not. I have no power over you.
I don't know how these podcasts work. I don't know. I don't know either. You're doing it for this company. But, you know, I love the idea that I could say, tell Lowe to shut his trap. You know, tell Lowe he's through if he ever brings that up again. But no, people would just laugh at me.
Stop talking about Bigfoot. No one cares. Yeah. Yeah. Tell him to stop talking about cocks. That's over. See, tell Lo it's over. Nope. I have no power over you. In fact, I think you could get me fired sooner than I could get you fired. Well, that may be. Do you have any, any notes? Anything? What should I be doing better? Worse? Less? What? Like,
You're the only man I trust, Conan. You're an icon in this. Well, that's very nice of you to say. I would say work the core. Never forget the core. Well, you know what Stallone says? No, no. I did hear him say it, but I couldn't understand a word. That's right. He's like Bill Murray's character in Caddy. He said to me...
He said, you know, the only thing people care about is your abs and your forearms. Really? And I was like, your forearms? He goes, yeah, you just roll your shirt up, you show a little bit, and if that looks good, they think everything else looks good too.
Wow. So it's too bad he didn't think of one more area, which is his mouth. A little lip control would have been nice. That's no. See, you're you're a wealth of these things. You've got a you've got a just man. This is fantastic. They're all true. There's no elaboration. Honestly, listen, I'm a firm I'm a firm believer in never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Right. But but.
When I'm telling you about people and encounters, they're absolutely 100% stone the truth. That's great. That's great. Well, I'm going to work on my abs and my forearms right now. Yes, and your tan. Well, that's not happening. It's just not happening. When you come up here again, I know we talk about this every time we see each other, but we must go look for the Great White Sharks. I'll take you out on the stand-up. I'll go out with you, yeah. I'll go out with you if you...
Bring seven men to help me stand up on the paddleboard. I'm going to need seven strong men to get me to stand up on the paddleboard. And a camera to get me out there. And a camera to get you out there. Because you don't exist without a camera. No, and it doesn't matter because at the end of the day, it's all transactional, like Albert Brooks says. No one will ever remember that they suffered through this podcast. This was great. I think you're nuts. Listening to you and I gab, that's a dream for anyone.
Isn't it though? It is. What coronavirus, I say. It just went away for an hour. You're welcome, everybody. You're welcome. Awful attitude. That was good. Oh God. That was fun. Thanks, man. I'll never speak to you again. That's the end. Yeah. That's the end. I'll never talk to you again. Oh my God. That was awesome. I could have talked for another five hours to Conan.
It's funny, it's weird to be in a relationship with somebody that the only time you ever see them, you're separated by a desk and you're on national television. And then you get them doing something intimate like a podcast and you get to see a whole other side of somebody. And it's really great. It reminds me of why I do these shows, actually. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And I'll see you on the next podcast. You have been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe.
produced and engineered by me, Devin Tory Bryant, executive produced by Rob Lowe for Lowe Profile, Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Chris Bannon at Stitcher. The supervising producer is Aaron Blairt, talent producer, Jennifer Sampras. Please rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts, and remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This has been a Team Coco production in association with Stitcher.
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