Howard Stern’s embarked on quite an interview bender lately while promoting his new book, Howard Stern Comes Again. In the process, he’s unveiled his favorite interview subject and revealed the one person who he did apologize to for being absolutely “brutal” to them on his show. Yet as it turns out, there’s another subject with whom Stern very much wanted to make amends, but he decided to reach out too late. That person was Robin Williams, who committed suicide in 2014 at the age of 63.
Stern (along with a pair of kittens) covers the June issue of Rolling Stone while speaking with Andy Greene and addresses how he felt the urge to contact Williams. “I had this idea that I gotta call [Robin Williams] and apologize,” the radio host admitted. “I started to put it in process and see if he would take my call, but he killed himself. I get chills when I tell you.” Why did he see the need to apologize? Well, this involved a very 1990s-style Stern interview, which got ugly because the shock jock wanted to one-up an idol:
“I was a baby. I want every listener. I want everyone focused on me. You’re not going to be funnier than me. You’re not going to come into my studio and steal the moment from me. This is who I was. Rather than say to Robin Williams, ‘My God, you’re here,’ and celebrate an amazing talent and the beauty of that guy’s career, he walks in and I start in, ‘Hey, you’re f*cking your nanny.’ Bam, sledgehammer. Sock him right in the f*cking head. A**hole. Me, not him. And my audience is cheering me on because who does that? There’s a lunatic loose from the mental asylum.”
Stern was apparently brought to tears while further discussing how he wished that he’d have conducted that interview differently. Perhaps he’d have even unearthed some revelations from WIlliams rather than setting the tone for an adversarial discussion. Ultimately, Stern expresses how much “goddamn pleasure” he felt while watching Williams’ projects in his lonely younger years. And he still considers Williams one of the inspirations for why he moved into the radio business: “I wanted to bring people pleasure.”
The interview is a wide-ranging one and full of gems. You can read the full piece at Rolling Stone and check out the cover below.
(Via Rolling Stone)
