http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/65-feb17.htm
Crane: What are you doing with all that money by the way?
Dylan: Oh, buying boots, bananas, fruit, pears.
Crane: Boots, bananas, fruit, pears ...
Dylan: Bought some very fancy ashtrays the other day.
Crane: Did you really? Well, where do you keep all that? I understand
you don't have a place to keep all that ... You travel all the time.
Dylan: I do, yeah.
Crane: What, you strap it all on the motorcycle.
Dylan: No, I don't really ride my motorcycle that much. I have one
though.
Crane: You do.
Dylan: Yeah. I'm thinking of getting a car.
Crane: A car!
Dylan: But I don't know what kind to get.
Crane: Yeah.
Dylan: Yeah, I'm thinking about a Maserati; You ever heard of one of
those?
Crane: Yeah.
Dylan: Well, I never saw one, but I like the name.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/arts/television/15crane.html?_r=3D1&ref=
=3Dobituaries&oref=3Dslogin
July 15, 2008
Les Crane, Talk-Show Host, Dies at 74
By BRUCE WEBER
Les Crane, a provocative talk-show host who was the first to challenge
the primacy of Johnny Carson on late-night television =97 and lose =97
died Sunday in Greenbrae, Calif., north of San Francisco. He was 74
and lived in Belvedere, Calif.
Mr. Crane=92s daughter, Caprice Crane, confirmed his death.
Personable, cocky and well-attuned to the tenor of the times, Mr.
Crane predated Howard Stern as a =93king of all media=94; his multifaceted
career began in radio, moved to television and ended in computer
software, with a stop in between as a Grammy-winning recording artist,
though even he would have shuddered at calling his recording art.
An early, and by later standards, tame incarnation of a shock jock,
Mr. Crane was a radio star in San Francisco in the early 1960s. From a
studio in the hungry i, a nightclub that was a launching pad for
performers like Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand and Lenny
Bruce, he took listeners=92 calls from all over the West Coast, fielding
their questions, sometimes with a celebrity guest, and often
dismissing callers=92 comments on current events and culture with
brusque wit or outright disdain, simply hanging up on some in what was
then a startling breach of accepted etiquette.
His station, KGO, was owned by ABC, and the parent company transferred
Mr. Crane first to the local television affiliate and then to its
flag****p station, WABC in New York. The show, initially with the title
=93Night Line ... With Les Crane=94 and later as =93The Les Crane Show=94
w=
as
first broadcast in September 1963, beginning at 1 a.m. Within two
months it was the object of civil rights picketers protesting the
appearance on the show of Gov. George Wallace of Alabama.
Calling him =93the bad boy of late night television,=94 The New York Times
described Mr. Crane=92s role on the show as =93public relations expert,
complaint-department chief, psychiatrist and tough hero to the
callers.=94
The show was well-received, and Mr. Crane, telegenic, blithely
confrontational and at least partly hip =97 he conducted the first
American television interview with the Rolling Stones, in June 1964 =97
was attractive enough that the following summer the network gave him a
weeklong tryout in the 11:30 p.m. slot with a more conventional talk
show, again called =93The Les Crane Show,=94 which was broadcast in five
big cities. The week featured interviews with Richard Burton, Shelley
Winters, Melvin Belli and Marguerite Frances Claverie, the mother of
Lee Harvey Oswald
=93We=92re sitting here in the studio of a major broadcasting company in
America and we are talking to the mother of a man it is alleged
assassinated our President,=94 he said on the air, adding: =93It=92s
pretty
wonderful, isn=92t it? Pretty exciting.=94
The tryout was successful, but the show was not. On Nov. 9, 1964, Mr.
Crane, just 30 years old, went up against Carson, who had taken over
NBC=92s =93Tonight=94 show from Jack Paar two years earlier. The Crane
show
was canceled just a few months later, in spite of Mr. Crane=92s
interview with Bob Dylan, during which Mr. Crane asked Mr. Dylan, then
23, about the songwriters who influenced him and about the overall
message of his songs. Hank Williams and Cole ****ter were the answers
to the first question. To the second, Mr. Dylan said: =93Eat?=94 Mr. Crane
returned to the show in June but lasted only until November.
Mr. Crane was born on Dec. 3, 1933, but sources about his birthplace
conflict. His name at birth, his daughter said, was Lesley Stein,
adding that she thought he was born in New York. According to an ABC
biography, he was born in Long Beach, N.Y. The Daily News in New York
once re****ted that he was born in the Bronx, and various Web sites say
San Francisco.
Mr. Crane graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans and spent
four years in the United States Air Force as a jet pilot and
helicopter flight instructor; for years afterwards, he wore a bracelet
with his Air Force wings on it, a reminder, he said, =93that whatever
I=92m doing is safer than what I used to do.=94
Mr. Crane married five times. His fourth wife was the actress Tina
Louise whom he met and married while she was at the height of her
popularity as the glamorous ***pot on the 1960s sitcom =93Gilligan=92s
Island.=94 They divorced in 1971 after a five-year marriage. Besides his
daughter, a television writer who lives in Los Angeles, he is survived
by his wife of 20 years, Ginger Crane.
After the demise of his Carson challenge, in 1968 Mr. Crane had
another short-lived talk show, this time on WNEW-TV in New York. He
also worked as an occasional actor on television, appearing on =93The
Virginian,=94 =93Burke=92s Law=94 and =93Love, American Style.=94
In 1980, Mr. Crane went into the burgeoning computer software
business, becoming chairman of the Software Toolworks, whose successes
included =93Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.=94 But of all his endeavors, the
most well-known was one he later wanted to forget.
In 1971, his recording of the inspirational poem =93Desiderata=94 became a
cultish hit and even won a Grammy for best spoken-word recording. A
cross between flower-child na=EFvet=E9 and New Age dreaminess, it hit a
chord at the time, but by 1987, Mr. Crane had changed his tune.
=93I can=92t listen to it now without gagging,=94 he told The Los Angeles
Times.
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