Baba Booey: They Call Me Baba Booey
Tags: book, radio, howard stern, baba booey
Baba Booey. Fa-fa-fooey. Ta-ta-toothy. Ma-ma-monkey. Gary Dell’Abate goes by many names, but his job has been the same for over twenty years: he’s the guy who runs the Howard Stern Show, booking all the guests, running the show’s back office, and when necessary running interference between Howard and upper management. He’s also one of the show’s most recognizable on-air personalities, thanks in no small part to his iconic nickname “Baba Booey,” a moniker which stuck to him like glue after an on-air slip-up in July 1990, in which he repeatedly mispronounced the name of his (professed to be favorite) cartoon character, Quick Draw McGraw sidekick Baba Looey. Since that day, the name has spread like a virus throughout pop culture, popping up as a punchline everywhere from comedy shows like Saturday Night Live and The Late Show with David Letterman to news shows like Larry King Live and Peter Jennings’ ABC newscast, thanks to the efforts of dedicated crank callers. The title of his new memoir, which recounts some of his personal and show-related drama, says it all: They Call Me Baba Booey.
Dell’Abate was there throughout Howard Stern’s signature run at New York’s K-ROCK radio in the late '80s and early '90s, appeared briefly in the autobiographical Private Parts, and continued on long enough to see Stern finally escape his much-hated censors in FCC-controlled radio when he departed for the artistic freedom of Sirius Satellite Radio in 2005. He’s also outlasted many other show notables, including Jackie ‘The Joke Man’ Martling, ’Stuttering’ John Melendez, and blue-collar comic Artie Lange, whose run on the show began to deteriorate in 2008, due in part to the comedian’s admitted struggle with heroin addiction. A vicious on-air spat between Lange and Dell’Abate in 2009 was one of that year’s many uncomfortable Artie moments, before Lange was dismissed in December 2009, and subsequently attempted suicide. As if that weren’t enough drama, the Stern show is now barreling towards what may be its final two months on the air, with both Stern and Sirius bosses playing chicken over the terms of his potential re-signing. Gary Dell’Abate recently called up SuicideGirls to talk about his impressive run on America’s most popular radio show.
Ryan Stewart: I was a little surprised that the A.J. Benza fight story didn’t rate a mention in your book. You got punched in the head!
Gary Dell’Abate: You know, it’s just not that kind of book. The book is more about my personal life, growing up, some of my trials and tribulations and how it sort of led me to the show. And then some funny moments from the show, but it’s not really a show book. So, that’s why stuff like that wouldn’t necessarily end up in there.
RS:
You didn’t feel the need to compile every great ‘Gary moment’ from the show.
GD:
Yeah, I just sort of didn’t go that way. As I was writing the book what came into my head is sort of what got put in there. If you read the whole book, you can see that the show stuff is just sort of dropped in where it’s relevant, because I didn’t want to just crowbar in every single story. The story of how I met Howard is relevant, because that’s how I met Howard, you know? How I got the name Baba Booey is obviously relevant to the book, and I also thought the video tape story was relevant, quite honestly, just because I can’t believe how many people still ask me about that. And also, it’s a story about me, and I tried not to put in stuff just because it was a cool story about Howard.
RS:
Is there a show-only book in your future, you think?
GD:
I’ve had offers to do that for years and years, and for tons and tons of money. It’s something I don’t think Howard would want me to do, and it’s also something that I wouldn’t be comfortable doing. If I did a book with all the stories about what goes on behind the scenes, I think I’d have a difficult time in the future. I know that I wouldn’t hire a guy who wrote a book saying a bunch of mean shit about people, if he was going to then come and work for me.
RS:
One of my favorite books of the last few years was the oral history of Saturday Night Live. I think that would be a great format for your show history as well.
GD:
It would be an amazing format, I think you’re absolutely right. Oral histories are my favorite books. I actually read a similar one about Richard Nixon. I think the reason why those books work is the same reason why The History of Howard Stern shows on Sirius work so great, because you get five different people giving perspectives on the same story. It’s great hearing everybody’s different angles on things. I do think that would be a phenomenal format to do a history of the show, someday.
RS:
You certainly take a diplomatic line in this book, except for an expected word or two about Don Imus.
GD:
I did sort of settle one score, and I wonder how it’s all going to shake out, because now Howard 100 News is trying to get a hold of this person and speak to them. It’s a woman that I worked with who was a traffic reporter at NBC.
RS:
Roz Frank?
GD:
Yep. I think I gave it to her a little hard. It’s pretty straight-forward, but she may not recognize that that’s the way it went down. And I was joking with somebody and I said, you know, if that would have been five years later I probably wouldn’t even have written it in the book, but that was such an important time for me. I was scratching and clawing my way into the business, and I was taking all this shit, which was very reminiscent of the shit I had taken from my mother.
RS:
Like you said, the origins of Baba Booey is a key story in the book, and all the subsequent goofing it led to. It’s amazing that you ended up hiring Sal Governale, who was a superfan who lived to goof on you. Howard used to let him on the air just to torture you.
GD:
Here’s the deal with that: he did really well in the contest [to win the on-air sidekick spot vacated by Stuttering John in 2004], and he didn’t win, but Howard said “I really like him a lot.” And the funny thing in dealing with him for the contest and all the other stuff is that except when he was busting my balls in those particular instances, he was actually a pretty okay guy. The thing that became funny to everyone involved is that once Sal started working with us we came to realize that all the stuff Sal used to say about me was really about him. He was the one who was a pussy-whipped guy. He was the one in a marriage where his wife was breaking his balls and he couldn’t do anything about it. So, I went from not really being afraid of Sal, but being leery of Sal, to really being more sympathetic to Sal. And my wife didn’t fully understand that at first. I remember we were laying in bed one night and my wife goes “How are you going to have that guy there every day? How are you going to live with that?” and I said to her “I gotta tell you, I can hang out with him, he’s sort of a good guy.” And she goes “That’s impossible.” But I do, I like Sal, I like him a lot. He can be goofy and he can be a nutjob, but he’s also got a really big heart. I’ve gotten along with him wonderfully from the day he started working here.
RS:
The stuff with his wife is radio gold.
GD:
[laughs] It’s not that hard to get it out of him, which is why he’s so great.
RS:
Did allowing people to goof on you in general ever threaten to undermine your authority as the show producer? Do people understand on-air/off-air?
GD:
I think most people have understood that, and most of the people who didn’t…there’ve been times that I had interns who probably thought I was a douche because Howard was treating me like a douche, but they come and go, you know? And there were times that I felt I was being undermined with Stuttering John, but it wasn’t really because of that, because John would be on the back-end of that too. It was more that John sort of knew that Howard loved having him on the air, so he really didn’t have to ever listen to me in the office. He knew that I couldn’t fire him, because he was really good on the air. John was excellent on the air, and really not a great worker in the office. But I felt much more embarrassment from when Howard played the videotape of me [begging an old girlfriend to get back together]. I just felt like a tool, you know? And I felt like everyone in the office was looking at me as such.
RS:
Would you have handed over that tape eventually, just for the show, without the money Howard and others put up?
GD:
No. I am a complete and utter whore, and I am here to say right now that I would never have done that, if not for the money.
RS:
When they played it on the air, it definitely made for a classic show. Another classic would be the 9/11 show, when Howard stayed on the air throughout the chaos. What part did you play in keeping things on track that day, keeping the show on?
GD:
I played a part in the sense that I followed Howard’s lead. I knew that we were staying on the air. I knew we were going to shift gears in the way that we did the show. We were taking a lot of phone calls in the back from people, and I was trying to make sure that the right people and the right information were getting through to Howard as quickly as I could. It was almost like we suddenly went from doing a comedy show to working in a news room. Howard was the anchor and I was the guy in the back trying to feed him the right information.
RS:
Did you have a sense even then that it would be maybe your most important show?
GD:
I don’t know that I knew it that day, but I knew it not long after. As the show went on, the mood went from ‘Wow, a plane crashed into the World Trade Center, that’s crazy,’ to something else. I think the defining moment of the day was when I was sitting on the couch [in the studio] and Howard was sitting at his console and suddenly the second plane hit the second tower. You know, I’ve heard it said that when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald that was one of the first times that news stations had ever done an instant replay. They just reran the tape and people watching were thoroughly confused – they thought multiple people were getting shot. And I remember looking at that second tower going down and not being entirely sure that it really was the second tower, and that I wasn’t watching some sort of weird replay. And then we recognized it, and Howard looked over at me and said “We’re under attack.” That’s when it hit me. I was like, oh my God, we, this country, are under attack. Only then was it really driven home to me what was happening.
RS:
Have you ever thought of putting out a sort of box set of the definitive shows?
GD:
Well, I don’t think we’d ever commercially release it, but what we do have is History of Howard, and people can listen to that. And we’re actually making our way up to the 9/11 years now. I get a copy of that stuff on DVD and I put them in a drawer, and I feel like one day when my kids are older and I’m gone I can have handed those over and it’ll be like ‘This is who your father was.’
RS:
And what about the Channel 9 shows? You guys have been trying to buy those back forever.
GD:
You know, I’ve never really been in the loop on what that’s about, but it appears that it’s never going to be resolved, from what I can tell. I mean, if it hasn’t been resolved by now then who knows if it ever will be. And I almost wonder how those shows would hold up, although I suspect they would hold up pretty well. But you have to put those shows in perspective – they’re twenty year old shows. They would probably seem tame in comparison to some of the stuff that’s on TV now, but for what we were doing at the time, they were completely radical and innovative.
RS:
Is there anything about your off-air conversations with Howard that people might find interesting or surprising?
GD:
It’s funny, I was just talking to someone else about this earlier, but Howard and I communicate in a very odd way. There’s never been a time when he’s sat down with me and said to me “Hey, I think you’re a great producer.” I mean, he’ll say stuff like “You did a great job” and stuff like that, but we’ve never sat down and had, like, a heart-to-heart talk where he’s said “I think you’re a great producer” and then I said “I think you’re a great boss.” But through the way we speak about each other in interviews and on the air and through emails, we know it. I don’t need him to say that. I know how he feels about me. But we certainly don’t have these crazy heart-to-heart conversations off the air.
RS:
People always ask if Howard is the real guy on the air, or if that’s an act. Do you think of yourself as having a radio persona?
GD:
Well, I developed a radio persona in the sense that….I don’t think I act any differently on the air than I otherwise would, but because I am on the air I get to say shit that I wouldn’t get to say if I was a CPA. If someone comes on and I say “God, that chick is ugly, I would never have sex with her,” well, if you said that at a party you probably wouldn’t be invited back to any more parties, but it’s perfectly acceptable to say it on the air, you know? I’m not saying stuff on the radio to try and be outrageous, I just get to say things that I usually wouldn’t get to say.
RS:
There was a recent on-air bit where you played an IQ game and you ended up mispronouncing the word machine as ‘mac-hine.’ When you’re doing something like that, are you thinking to yourself: if I don’t screw this up, then where’s the bit?
GD:
No, no, I really didn’t know that I was walking into that one, it just sort of happened. I mean, look, I did the IQ test. And I was just talking to another person on our staff about doing one and he doesn’t want to do it. He said “It’s a losing proposition!” and I said, “Listen, brother, nobody could take that test who had more to lose than me. I’m the producer of the show. If my IQ test comes in low, I’ll never live it down. I’ll never be respected again.” So, I do think I’m a willing participant in the fun. The IQ test was proof of that.
RS:
I was going to ask why your Afghanistan USO trip didn’t make the book, but it occurred to me that you made that trip with Artie, and maybe you’re laying off the Artie stories for now.
GD:
No, it’s funny that you say that because I was thinking about that as well the other day. The writer and I sat down and went through it and it just didn’t fit into that part of the book, but I’m actually keeping a list for a paperback slash second book if anybody is interested. And I think just having some distance…I mean, you can go on my website and see where I have a story written up. It just didn’t end up in the book. And I think I’ve been pretty brutally honest about what happened with Artie while we were over there, and everybody else. So, it is there if anybody wants to see it.
RS:
Was 2009 a tough year in general on the show? I remember that incredibly personal fight between you and Artie, which was really a no holds barred situation.
GD:
I don’t know if 2009 was a tough year, but I wasn’t really hurt by the accusations that Artie was making so much as I was hurt by the fact that he knew he was purposefully saying something that he knew would hurt me. It was like Artie knew what my Achilles heel was and he just went for it. That was more difficult for me than the stuff he was actually saying. I was afraid of [not performing well at USO stand-up] before we went there, but by the time we got back I knew that I had done a decent job. Not a great job, but I knew I had done a decent job. And I knew that Artie was just going there because he knew that it would upset me.
RS:
Joking that he was glad Dave Attell had less time on stage so you could perform, and so on.
GD:
Yeah, and listen, Artie could have brought along another comedian who was more talented than me. The other guys who were on the bill were incredibly talented, but what I found out there was that it’s not all about the shows. I wouldn’t say the shows were a minor part of it, but they were really just one element of what it’s about, the reason that you go over there. The bigger reason is the eight or twelve hours a day that you spend walking around, talking to people, hanging around with them, that’s the real gift that’s being given, not only to the people there, but to us as well. When you hang out with those people you find that they’re just grateful that somebody is coming to visit.
RS:
Speaking of comedy, are you still out hunting for new talent these days? Lots of people who’ve gotten a break on the show are doing very well.
GD:
You know, I used to go to the comedy clubs once in a while, but I was never really on the ground looking for talent. Once in a while somebody would say “You’ve got to come and see this comedian” but it wasn’t the main way that we got guests. Even though in the past we have broken some new talent like Sam Kinison and people like that, it’s not really the format of our show. And the great thing is that you really don’t have to go out anymore. I don’t have to go to comedy clubs, I’ve got people saying “Here’s seven links to my client on Youtube,” you know? That’s the way that you see them. And people might say that it’s not the same thing as being in the club, but you can get a pretty good feel for somebody off of that. I find myself watching a lot of DVDs at home and watching a lot of Youtube videos and listening to a lot of CDs in my car and also listening to stuff on my iPod that people have sent me.
RS:
Artie recently did some stand-up at a club, I read. He seems to be getting back in the swing of things. If he decides to tell his story on another show is that okay with you?
GD:
I think I’d be a little bummed out. I mean, listen, I think telling it to us would certainly be the most interesting way to tell it. We are the other pieces of that puzzle. Artie could tell us what was going on and we could tell him what we were thinking and what we believed at that time. So, I do think it would make for the most interesting interview.
RS:
But Howard is resisting it.
GD:
I don’t know that Howard is resisting. I just don’t know that everybody is ready to pull it together.
RS:
If the Howard Stern Show is done in eight weeks, do you feel like you guys have done what you set out to do in radio?
GD:
God, yes. Howard was in the history books even before he went to satellite radio. And I think that going to satellite radio just cemented that forever. When we showed up to Sirius Satellite Radio they had four hundred thousand subscribers. Now, with the company merged, they have twenty million subscribers. It’s a very viable format that was not very viable before Howard Stern got there. If Howard had gone to XM instead of Sirius, Sirius would have probably just gone out of business. I mean, just the fact that Howard went to the company with the lesser amount of subscribers and managed to actually overtake the other company? Holy shit. In the last twenty-five years of radio, who has had a bigger impact than Howard Stern? I’ve been glad to be a part of that. And I’d love to go on. I want to keep going.
They Call Me Baba Booey is available in bookstores November 2nd..
They Call Me Baba Booey is available in bookstores November 2nd..
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