I am sad to hear of David Brenner’s passing.
I had the opportunity to work with David, oh I don’t know three or four times.
One of the first (maybe the first) came fairly early in my tenure at Sirius (pre-merger). It was one of those magical days in the lobby, where cool stars would run into other cool stars. On that particular day the late comedian Robert Schimmel and David met for the first time while waiting to go on other shows…and man they just hit it off.
They hit it off so well that we all decided if they came back the next day and just traded stories on the air. And that’s what we did.
This was long enough ago that our brains weren’t hardwired for social media or video yet , so I don’t have an embed to share with you. But there they were each sitting on a high stool with an old time radio mic in front of them on a tall stand. And David and Robert got up and swapped stories about showbiz for over an hour. What a great use of satellite radio back in the day.
David would come by, oh I dunno every two years or so (he lived in Vegas) and I would always spend time with him in the lobby. He loved to talk about Johnny (you don’t need a last name, do you?) and the Tonight Show. Not in an annoying way, not in a “I used to be…” way but just with reverence and excitement for the power and greatness that show had in another media age. (That’s not a knock on Fallon, it’s a different time, and this was the 1970s when you had 5 channels, and two of them had signed off for the night.) I think I last saw David about a year ago, maybe less, and yep we talked about Tonight.
There was a Carson Project I never quite solved during my time at SiriusXM and I would have asked David, Joan Rivers and Conan to be part of it. Maybe Jeremy Coleman (a fellow dreamer) can throw the power of Howard behind it and solve it, or maybe I can solve it at the next gig. Regardless, it will be sad to do it without David.
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I imagine Howard will give David a good tribute on Monday, and I was happy to hear that my former comrades Ron & Fez went live last night. I was always big on the proper tributes. Nice job fellas.