It was pleasant to see many contemporary comedians writing nice things about Gallagher’s passing as he had been ridiculed as a hack stand-up for the last 30 years. However there was a time I remembered clearly when he wasn’t the low-brow prop comedian smashing watermelons on stage. Growing up in the Seventies, Gallagher was a regular stand-up doing a few minutes on The Mike Douglas Show or whenever a prime-time variety show had a comic. He even had a couple memorable jokes (paraphrased):
Since the Olympics will be in LA next year, the Soviets are training the athletes for our city’s standard conditions by making them run through a forest fire while breathing through a muffler.
The people of California are like a bowl of granola. Whoever aren’t fruits and nuts are flakes.
I didn’t say they were good jokes. They were timely and considered funny in their day. As for the props, those crept in later and by the mid Eighties came the schtick which lost him the masses and respect. I will readily admit I was probably amused the first couple times but I know before I finished high school, destroying perfectly good food was lame. It made money with a certain population like all those people pissing away money next year to see the unfunny Jeff Dunham.
Gallagher’s career wasn’t all bad. His storming off of Marc Maron’s podcast WTF was the incident I think that re-ignited Marc’s shot at having a third act. I remember hearing all about the incident even though I’ve never bothered to listen to the episode. Having heard it on NPR’s Fresh Air with the overrated Lou Reed’s temper tantrum with, of all hosts, Terri Gross, was enough for me to get the idea how it went down. In return, I followed Maron’s show for a few years.
Farewell Gallagher, thanks for the laugh during my childhood. You sure had a distinctive look and told jokes I repeated at school. Although, your shift to prop comedy wasn’t my cup of tea, you did what thought you had to do to make a living and compared to some other more egregious and unfunny people (Dave Chapelle, Dennis Miller, Fox News and Elon Musk), is forgivable.