George Carlin's 1972 Nickel Tour of Kent State

• Monday, April 17, 1972, George Carlin touring and more before headlining in the University Auditorium (now Cartwright Hall)

So some time recently I came across this very mysterious, candid, paparazzi style image coming from an old Daily Kent Stater showing legendary comedian George Carlin with his wife and daughter (along with a few Kent State students) walking somewhere on the campus of . The caption in the image reads:

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.

This was another image where I was just stunned when I saw it, and I have to admit I almost missed it. This picture was not on the front page of the Stater nor was it in the issue following his April 17, 1972 performance in the University Auditorium (now Cartwright Hall). This image appeared several days after the initial review for the show and was buried deep in an issue of the Kent Stater appearing as only an afterthought among some other banal stories. The photo raised so many questions with me. Who is he with? Where on campus is this? What were the circumstances around this nickel tour of campus?

When I first acquired this image I started asking around at work 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 anyone knew where the image was taken and I immediately got a response saying that there was no doubt that George Carlin and company are shown here 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 on earth 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 comprised the Small Group dormitories have been reduced to a giant practice field that has been ongoing in development as most of these late 60's buildings were demolished in February of 2009.

It must be noted that just 15 days after George Carlin was photographed at Kent State, he performed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Check out the clip here. Note that he looks exactly like the photos you see from Kent State and it's likely his routine was quite similar. It also 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 in five parts and it's likely Carlin's performance at Kent State closely resembled these recordings. Listen here (though be warned it's pretty raunchy and certainly not safe for work): Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5. Of note is that Part 5 contains the "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" routine.

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:

"Lots of stories from that day. Carlin, who was staying at the Holiday Inn on 43 and I-76, spent a lot of time in the middle of the night walking in the woods listening to the dead, or so he told me...

"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. We 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 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. And he 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 we had a GREAT crowd."

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:

"My friend Cheryl and I heard George Carlin was coming for this lecture series as part of the 1972 Creative Arts Festival and we were at the time both attending High School at what was then the Kent State University School (now the Michael Schwartz Center). In those days, if you wanted to leave school for the day all you had to do was just sign out. But most people didn't even bother doing that, we just left the property and we spent all day at both The Hub (In April of 1972 The Hub was in Oscar Ritchie Hall) and at Perkins Pancake House (currently the site of the FedEx Kinkos next to Chipotle). We knew about Carlin performing that night in the University Auditorium but we had heard he was doing a free show that afternoon in Moulton Hall, which is the building on front campus that is closest to the street (directly across from the Taco Bell/Long John Silvers).

"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."

Very recently an engaging gentleman named Brian Slease told me this colorful story about what he remembered from that day:

"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, and 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.

"We were all just sitting there in a booth next to where the outside part of that kitchen was, the prep area. George and Tim walk in and come right up to our booth and George introduces himself to me and I say 'oh, it's nice to meet you Mr. Carlin' and he says 'No, my name is George,' and I say 'ok George.' So he sits down across from me and my buddies in the booth and we're sitting there talking about anything and everything. He was interested in what had happened here with May 4. This was the Spring of 1972 and it was just before the second anniversary of the shootings where it was commemorated by putting up 200 tombstones in the front of the campus that year. Anyway ... he talked about the different things he was noticing in Kent, all the head shops and what not. He said 'I've never in my entire life been to a small town like this where I've seen so many head shops.' Cucumber Castle was right across the street at that time and then right down the street was a record store that was another head shop you know? We talked about Vietnam, the seven words you can't say on television, all those things were just so George, you know? So he was very cool about the whole thing and he didn't have any bodyguards or anything like that. The only person who came in with him was my buddy Tim. 

"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."

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. I did however find one additional reference to George's all-day visit to campus here.

A couple of other notes: 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 these links to see dramatic downtown photos in this period showing the gorgeous and majestic Kent Block that would burn down in August of 1972: March 1972 photo and another photo from that same month and year. This one is from February of 1972 and shows the traffic clogged up downtown due to a train. Again, it's impossible not to mention the appearance of that incredible Kent Block. Here is one final photo to take note of and it shows downtown in December of 1972 in the aftermath of that fire. Sigh, what a blow to the cityscape of downtown.

Images for this story are courtesy of The Daily Kent Stater and the Department of Special Collections and Archives, Kent State University Libraries.

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