Andrew Dice Clay, the most electrifying and visually stimulating stand-up, is coming to Carnegie Hall’s renowned Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage on Thursday, Feb. 15, for a special one-night performance.
Following the show schedule announcement, I had a chance to speak with the Diceman. He was chatting from his cellphone while in Columbus Circle.
CH: What goes through your mind when you learn that you would play Carnegie Hall?
DICE: I do concerts all year long, but Carnegie Hall is a special gig; it’s an honor to play a theater like that. I have played all of the iconic places in New York, but never Carnegie Hall. I never went to concerts as a kid, but when I was 17, a friend of mine bought two tickets to see Buddy Rich at Carnegie Hall; he was one of my idols. Now, to be going back in there, to actually be on the stage where the greatest of the greats, like Judy Garland and Lenny Bruce, have performed is amazing.
CH: What can you say about your success and to the critics?
DICE: The New York Times used to write about me. It was at a time when no one would even let me be on the same block as Carnegie Hall. I think the headline back then said, “The Demise of Western Civilization” or something like that. Last year was a game-changer for me. Now, everything I’ve been doing, A Star Is Born, working with Scorsese; it is unreal. Now the headlines say I am this great performance artist. When my friend sent me the latest New York Times article I thought it was a joke, some kind of AI thing. So, it is a very exciting time.
CH: What is the secret to staying relevant in the business for more than 45 years?
DICE: Believe in yourself and what you do. Achievement and accomplishment are very possible with hard work. You know, people always say, “You’re really lucky,” and I say yeah, I guess, if you want to call hard work “lucky.” I love comedy now more than I ever did. When I started out, I couldn’t care less about comedy. I cared about an acting career. I would use performing at comedy clubs every night to create my own method of acting, rather than going to acting school once a week. I have strived and bridged a lot of generations to finally have the career that I have always wanted.
CH: Did you believe that you were funny, then?
DICE: I couldn’t care less back then; I did not care about stand-up comedy. I just cared about being a performer. Why go to acting school once a week when I could get up and perform seven nights a week. My comedy chops grew. Now I really love it. I understand it. I have grown with the times. I am not doing the material I did 45 years ago, except the Mother Goose poems, because that’s the signature piece. It’s iconic. It’s memorable and the whole audience still does it with me. Other than that, I do not want to do material from 1980 in 2024. My early success was unheard of. There was no internet. It was unheard of for a comedian to sell out arenas. No comic was a rock star, touring and playing to 100,000 people a week. I am the only comic to ever open for Guns N’ Roses; the minute my name was announced, the audience went ballistic. I opened with “Little Miss Muffet…” and the people went berserk like I had just opened with “Welcome to the Jungle.”
CH: How has your content changed? What can fans expect at the upcoming show?
DICE: I recently got up on stage as a special guest at Madison Square Garden and a friend of mine jokingly said, “It’s nice to see how Dice has mellowed in his golden years,” but I really was just up there doing my thing. I am still edgy, but the material has changed. I am older; I have learned things: I have seen things. My comedy, I’d say, is more self-deprecating now; it’s relatable. I watch clips of a 25-year-old Dice and it was so cartoony and robotic, even the way I talked back then; I never broke character. Don’t get me wrong, it was a lot of fun, but now, I put more of myself into my material.
CH: What does your family say about your career?
DICE: My family knows me; I am very different as a father and a boyfriend. My parents, they’re not here anymore, but they were completely behind what I did from the first night I got up on stage. My parents were completely with me, and they got to see me do so much. They were with me when I did Madison Square Garden. They were with me when I did Nassau Coliseum [Long Island], my first arena.
CH: Why do we collectively need comedy?
DICE: I don’t get into politics, but you see what goes on around the world, everybody fighting everybody. And everybody talking politics. I had a very smart mother. She said three things:
- Never talk politics.
- Never talk religion.
- And never bad-mouth Frank Sinatra.
I did meet Sinatra in Vegas; it was New Year’s Eve and I think we were shooting The Adventures of Ford Fairlane. I could not believe I was meeting Sinatra. He told me what it was like for him to be a grassroots phenomenon. He told me to never back down and keep moving forward. He said no matter what gets in my way, there will always be deterrence, but to do whatever it takes, go around it, go under it, go over it. He told me, “A guy like you is going to survive it.” I could not believe the things he told me. To this day, it is still surreal.
Recently I took my girlfriend to see my friend Bill Burr perform. The minute I walked into his dressing room, he said, “Dice, you’re going to do some time up there tonight, right?” My stomach dropped and initially I said, “No, I didn’t come here tonight to do that.” He said, “You got to do something; you gotta go up.” That lit the switch for me again; it is why I am playing Carnegie Hall next month.
If you call yourself the “Undisputed Heavyweight King of Comedy” when you get on stage, you got to prove it. I’ll never retire; I’ll never be out there playing pickleball.
ABOUT ANDREW DICE CLAY
Andrew Dice Clay is proud to be one of America’s most controversial and outrageous comics. Quite simply, Dice is a comedy legend. When he released his debut album, Dice, the parental advisory label simply read “Warning: This album is offensive.”
Despite media backlash, Dice’s rise to fame was nothing less than meteoric, creating “Dicemania.” He’s sold-out hundreds of arenas all across the country and was the only performer ever “Banned for Life from MTV” (a ban which has since been lifted).
Dice has released numerous gold and platinum-selling albums including the Rick Rubin-produced The Day The Laughter Died (among the five releases Rubin produced for Dice); best-selling DVDs (Dice Rules!); and also starred in several one-hour HBO, pay per view, and Showtime stand-up specials including No Apologies, The Diceman Cometh, and Indestructible.
In recent years, Dice’s career has experienced a resurgence including his recurring role on the final season of Entourage (2011). He starred to great critical acclaim alongside Cate Blanchett and Alec Baldwin in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine (2013); in Martin Scorsese’s Vinyl (2016); in the award-winning, blockbuster hit, A Star Is Born (2018) alongside Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga; and most recently in Hulu’s Pam & Tommy. His other notable TV credits include two seasons (2016-2017) of his Showtime series, called Dice, very loosely based on his own life.
In 2014, Simon & Schuster published Dice’s brutally honest, unapologetic, and uncensored autobiography The Filthy Truth, in which Dice chronicles his remarkable rise, fall, and triumphant return.
Currently, Dice’s “on the street” videos on Instagram and TikTok have resulted in him being hailed as a contemporary cultural phenomenon tackling the modern zeitgeist. He is now in discussions with production companies to take these videos to television.
Upcoming show dates include:
Feb. 15—Carnegie Hall, New York. Fans can get tickets via Carnegie Hall.
Mar. 15—Boch Center, Boston, MA
Mar. 16—Symphony Hall, Springfield, MA
Apr. 5 and 6—Magooby’s Joke House, Timonium, MD
Apr. 27—Parx Casino, Bensalem, PA
May. 18—Celebrity Theatre, Phoenix, AZ
Jun. 1—Andiamo Celebrity Showroom, Warren, MI
Visit www.andrewdiceclay.com and follow @andrewdiceclay on Instagram, @AndrewDiceClayOfficial on Facebook, and on TikTok @andrewdiceclay for more.
