Tommy Chong reflects on pot’s evolution as he turns 80
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Yeah man, Tommy Chong says he always knew he’d live to see the day marijuana legalization would be sweeping America.
He knew when he and partner Cheech Marin pioneered stoner comedy 50 years ago, a time when taunting the establishment with constant reminders that they didn’t just play hippie potheads in the movies — they really were those guys — could have landed them in prison. He even knew in 2003 when Chong was imprisoned for nine months for conspiring to distribute handcrafted artisanal bongs the government declared drug paraphernalia.
“Oh yeah, I saw it coming,” he says of cannabis being legal in some form in about two-thirds of his ad- opted country’s 50 states.
“In fact, I kind of planned the whole thing out,” he jokes. “Well, maybe I was a little premature with that bong thing. But other than that, I was pretty much right on point.”
So much so that when the High Priest of Stoner Comedy turns 80 on Thursday — that’s right, 80 — he expects his Chong’s Choice brand of marijuana, available in legal dispensaries in several states, will be consumed in abundance at the parties his family is planning.
“Tommy likes to say he tests every single batch. Which obviously he does. And he really enjoys it,” his son Paris Chong says with a laugh.
“For this one, make sure that whatever you have to eat around the house is healthy because you’ll find yourself munching away like crazy,” the elder Chong says as he holds up a jar containing a dozen or so choice green buds.
“Oh, and we have chocolates too,” he says, reaching for a package of candies that vaguely resemble Tootsie Rolls.
Not that he was ever a heavy pot user, Chong says, just a consistent connoisseur.
“When I was 17, a jazz musician gave me a Lenny Bruce record and a joint at the same time, and it changed my life,” he recalls. “I quit school I think a week later and went on the road and became a blues musician and eventually a comedian, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
His group Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers was signed to Motown, and Chong co-wrote the band’s only hit, “Does Your Mama Know About Me,” a smooth R&B tune that rose to No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968.
When no other hits followed, Motown dropped the group, and the Canadian-born Chong returned to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he ran a pair of strip clubs with his brother. There he crossed paths with Richard Marin, a Mexican-American art student from Los Angeles eight years his junior, who asked to join the house band. The pair began warming up audiences with stoner jokes, and a comedy team was born.
After some discussion of what to call themselves — Chong says “Richard and Tommy” and “Chong and Marin” were quickly rejected — they settled on Cheech, Marin’s nickname, and Chong. By then, Motown had helped Chong obtain a green card, and the two headed to fame and fortune in Los Angeles.
On a recent early morning, Chong answers the door for a photo shoot at his longtime home in the hills overlooking L.A.’s wealthy Brentwood section, arriving in gray jeans, sandals and a black T-shirt advertising the name of a Colorado cannabis dispensary he recently visited. He offers to change into another shirt for the photos before deciding to stick with the original. “Don’t want to ruin my image,” he concludes with a smile. As a photographer sets up, Chong polishes off a breakfast of oatmeal topped with sliced banana. In recent years, he’s become a vegetarian, although he backslides.
“Especially if you put a plate of dim sum in front of me. Of course, that’s my cultural heritage.”