FIREZINE #4: Interview with The Greaseman!


*FIREZINE:*	How did DJ Doug Tracht become "The Greaseman" that we've all come to know on the radio?
*GREASEMAN:*	Well when I was growing up I was always a spindly little kid. Being on the air in that studio I could be anything I wanted to be. So I chose to be the exact opposite of what I really was. I hid behind the image of a 55 year old bald-headed, beer-bellied, truck driving, knuckle-bustin', lead-slingin' daddy. In so doing, I found the self-worth on radio that I could never find in life. I was doing The Greaseman thing in 1970 at WENE, but I really came into my own in 1975 when I went to WAPE (Jacksonville, FL) `cause that was when the CB craze boomed, so I took on the persona of a trucker whose only radio experience had been on the CB radio. I lumbered in, snatched the mike out of a trembling program directors hand and began. And that's how I came up with this character, this hideous individual. I did that `75 to `82 in Jacksonville. He sure has changed over the years!
*FIREZINE:*	DC 101 had numerous promotional TV spots run when you first came to Washington featuring you dressed up as your many different personas.
*GREASEMAN:*	When I got to Washington, they figured at the station there that "you're not really using yourself to the maximum capability if you have this hidden image." So there's mixed feelings on it. Some people think that the mystery of no one ever knowing what I look like was part of the fascination of the character. There were never any pictures of me anywhere. And now, I'm like shit in the woods, I'm everywhere!
*FIREZINE:*	Your show harkens back to the golden age of radio where the listener was stimulated with the use of colorful language and sound effects to picture with their mind's eye the scene as it unfolds. You also conjure up this image of a nut on the loose in a tradition of the DJs of the 50's and 60's.
*GREASEMAN:*	That's me. Yeah, I try to paint that picture. "I'm a man on the move"
*FIREZINE:*	Who were some of your comedic influences?
*GREASEMAN:*	I thought The Firesign Theatre bunch were tremendously clever. When those albums came out, I was in college and we all sat there cackling. I like Nick Danger. That bits says with me.. I still use "hot kiss at the end of a wet fist". I interviewed Proctor and Bergman a few years ago, funny guys. Jonathan Winters was great when I was growing up, he was prone to flights of fancy. I've always thought Robert Klein was hilarious.
*FIREZINE:*	Was Lenny Bruce an influence?
*GREASEMAN:*	He was a little before my time, I didn't hear a whole lotta Lenny. I've never been a comedian as one who has to change the world. I'm really basically in there to tell jokes, make everybody laugh and go home. I mean, occasionally thought provoking, but I'm not really there to repair society's injustices or that kind of stuff. I just get in there and have at it. I think about it a lot everyday. I download the E-mail, get ideas from people, talk to some funny friends that I have, exchange the latest jokes we've heard, and then basically it's free form, ad-lib. I don't write anything down. I mean I make notes on jokes I want to tell but I don't actually write out dialogue, scripted bits.
*FIREZINE:*	Often, the set-up is funnier than the punch line.
*GREASEMAN:*	That's what I've always campaigned. I felt that in the heyday of Saturday Night Live, when you watched Samurai Sushi Chef, or whatever the hell John Belushi was doing, and The Coneheads, nobody really gave a shit about the punch line. As a matter of fact, they had no punch line. Those bits sometimes just stopped when they ran out of sight gags and one liners. They just stopped, and it was some of the greatest stuff on TV. Now we've become punch line fixated, when getting there is half the fun.
*FIREZINE:*	When we attended your live broadcast, I was amazed by the way you operated and surprised to see that you took phone calls during the music and commercial breaks and all the while the wheels are turning, forming the show in your head, seeing where it all fits in, and where it can go from there. Then you use the best calls and your responses on a delay, jumping in live to punch it up. Incredible!
*GREASEMAN:*	People seem to be impressed by it. Sometimes I think if you were watching the Wizard of Oz pull these wheels and there was nothing there, you'd be disappointed, but I think when you see the bedlam that's going on behind the scenes, it further adds, I think, to the excitement of the show. Radio's my main thrust, but I've done two NBC movies of the week with Brian Dennehy. In the first one, "Jack Reed : A Search For Justice", my character was "Biker One", that trashed the convenience store, and in the second one, "Jack Reed; Debts and Vengeance", my character's name was "Train", and I'm the prison murderer.
*FIREZINE:*	How did it feel doing other peoples lines?
*GREASEMAN:*	I liked it! You know, my job is tough. I gotta come up with that stuff every day, new and exciting. Somebody else wants to hand me the lines and all I got to do is say `em, "schweet"! I'm not bullheadedly going at acting with dogged determination, but I have studied the craft and my name is still in the hopper and if something comes along that I'm right for, I'd certainly think about doing it.
*FIREZINE:*	Tell me about your new book.
*GREASEMAN:*	Simon & Schuster called me and said they wanted me to write a book. And I thought "What the hell, it probably wouldn't hurt to have my face in every book store in the country", so I said "Sure". So I just jotted down, like The Greaseman Show, in a book called "And They Ask Me Why I Drink". It should be out in October / November. It's stories and bits and views on life. It's wacky, a delightful romp through the mind of a man who needs a checkup from the neck up. It's pool side fun. You'll thumb through that thing and cackle with delighted peals of laughter. The rest of the people around the cabana will wonder "Who's this madman and what's he chuckling at?"
*FIREZINE:*	It's certainly great to hear you back on the air in the mornings once again and enjoying the continued success that you so well deserve. It's been great meeting you and seeing you broadcast live.
*GREASEMAN:*	Thanks and good luck to your magazine. I hope you pull it out! With a dream and a heart you can do anything.