Steve Martin’s Vanderbilt epiphany
Legendary comic Steve Martin, interviewed in a recent issue of Smithsonian Magazine, recounts a major breakthrough in his development as a performer that happened to take place on the Vanderbilt campus:
Because I was generally unknown, I was free to gamble with material, and there were a few evenings when crucial mutations affected my developing act. At Vanderbilt University in Nashville, I played for approximately 100 students in a classroom with a stage at one end. The show went fine. However, when it was over, something odd happened. The audience didn’t leave. The stage had no wings, no place for me to go, but I still had to pack up my props. I indicated that the show had ended, but they just sat there, even after I said flatly, “It’s over.” They thought this was all part of the act, and I couldn’t convince them otherwise. Then I realized there were no exits from the stage and that the only way out was to go through the audience.
So I kept talking. I passed among them, ad-libbing comments along the way. I walked out into the hallway, but they followed me there too. A reluctant pied piper, I went outside onto the campus, and they stayed right behind me. I came across a drained swimming pool. I asked the audience to get into it—”Everybody into the pool!”—and they did. Then I said I was going to swim across the top of them, and the crowd knew exactly what to do: I was passed hand over hand as I did the crawl. That night I went to bed feeling I had entered new comic territory. My show was becoming something else, something free and unpredictable, and the doing of it thrilled me, because each new performance brought my view of comedy into sharper focus.
Martin doesn’t mention the year of this performance, but I’m guessing it must have been the early 70s. I would love to be able to witness what that show must have been like firsthand.
Note to Vanderbilt fans: I really am talking about Steve Martin, not Commodores football coach Bobby Johnson. (Scroll down to the fourth row of photos if you follow that link.)
March 4th, 2008 at 8:53 am
It was the early 70s. I worked at Vandy a few years ago and one of my supervisors often spoke fondly about his early days at Vandy where he witnessed Martin leading students around campus.
March 4th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Thanks, Mike. That is too funny. I would love to have seen Martin wandering around campus in person.
March 7th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Recently, I heard my brother and former wife, who lived here in the early 70s, speaking of going to see him at the ExitIn. People were waiting to get in and the word came that he had not arrived. So while standing in line, they heard someone behind them saying: Does anyone see him? What does he look like? etc. They turned around and it was Steve being one of the in-line folks.
March 14th, 2008 at 11:53 am
There was another ExitIn show (or it could have been the same one I guess) where he had the audience follow him out into the street. They walked up and down the block and then Steve went back into the club for the second show. It was not only really funny but also cleared the house for the second show in record time.
March 28th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
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October 9th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
It was 1973. I was there. I’d be surprised if there were as many as a hundred present. Vanderbilt has a performance space called the Different Drummer underneath the Carmichael Towers where they usually had musical performers, although I once saw an awful mime there, too. The night he’s rtalking about was a fun night, although I had somewhere else to go and didn’t follow in line to the swimming pool. We knew the show was over, but he kept being funny, and the way he responded to us, we assumed this happened to him all the time. I had no idea it was the first time that had happened to him.
He was not as popular then, although I had seen him on the Smothers Brothers years before in odd bits so knew who he was. He came back to Nashville the next year and and was already much more popular. He played the Exit Inn. which was just off campus and held several hundred people. It was a sign of his growing popularity that it was sold out by the time I went over for a ticket, several hours before the show was supposed to start. Apparently he remembered Vanderbilt as a place where the audience followed him around and he encouraged it in that performance, and had this huge crowd following him down Elliston Place. The next time he came to Nashville I had graduated but he played the new Opry House which held thousands. I wanted to drive up to Nashville from Chattanooga but my friends couldn’t get tickets. I think soon after that he stopped stand-up because he wanted to focus on acting.
October 12th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Thanks for sharing these great memories, Don!
February 5th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
I was not only at the Vanderbilt show, but I interviewed him on WRVU, the campus radio station, after the gig. I still have the recording. The fact that his show that night (not the interview) was a turning point in his career creates a great memory for me.
February 7th, 2009 at 10:14 am
That’s really cool, Jeff. It must have been something to see his career take off knowing that you’d spoken to him right before he made the big time.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:03 am
I worked at the Exit/Inn while going to Vanderbilt back then (see above) and remember my introduction to Steve Martin so well. Employees could attend shows for free and a friend was trying to convince me to go in and see one of Steve Martin’s sets. I said no, arguing that comedians are never all-the-way funny, meaning they either miss the mark altogether or are funny so intermittently that it’s more painful than fun. But he promised that this guy was different and we went in. The show was sold out so we stood leaning against the sound booth. Within two minutes I was literally doubled over in that rare and wonderful state of uncontrollable laughter. (Remember Mary Tyler Moore at Chuckles the Clown’s funeral?) His brilliance was glaringly obvious, from his surprising non-sequiturs and offbeat observations to his ridiculous props and the way he moved. All that brainpower and that amazing face combined to create the comedy equivalent of Dolby Surround-Sound. He came at you from all sides and on so many levels that you were powerless to resist him — and that was what made him so incredibly funny, I think. You were laughing at yourself for laughing at him even though he knew you knew he was being ridiculous.
February 16th, 2009 at 6:56 am
Your comment made me giggle, Sue. I’m so glad you took your friend’s advice to go to that show.