This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Given this crazy election year, you might think Jay Leno wishes he still had a nightly show to make jokes about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
But you'd be wrong.
"No, I don't really miss it — only because it's such a negative thing," said the former "Tonight Show" host in a phone interview with The Tribune. "One side hates the other side. Each side thinks the other side is idiots and nobody respects anybody's opinions. In that sense, I don't really miss it. I'm glad I'm kind of sitting this one out.
"Everybody feels depressed and they just want this election to be over."
Including Leno, who will perform at the new Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City on Friday, three days after the nation elects a new president.
"Yeah, I think people will be ready to laugh," he said.
During his long tenure as host of "The Tonight Show," Leno told jokes about half a dozen presidential elections — from Bill Clinton v. George H.W. Bush through Barack Obama v. John McCain. And he enjoyed it.
"It was great fun when I did it," Leno said. "I was lucky. I came up in the era when Clinton was horny and Bush was dumb and it was a little easier. Now, it's so nasty.
"No one could ever figure out my politics when I was doing the show because we tried to go kind of right down the center."
Leno returned to "Tonight" as Jimmy Fallon's guest on Oct. 31, and his approach was the same one he took from 1992-2014.
"I did a Hillary [Clinton] joke, and I did a Trump joke," he said. "We went back and forth. And the audience liked it because they were just hearing jokes. The joke comes first."
He compared being a comic to being a lawyer. A lawyer's job "is not to go for guilt or innocence, it's to defend your client."
"If you're a comic, you're out there to get laughs. If you're influencing public opinion after you get the laugh, I guess that's OK. But to try to influence public opinion before you get the laugh, that kind of defeats the whole purpose of being a comedian, to me."
He's left late-night TV behind, but Leno is hardly retired. In addition to performing standup comedy across the country, he's the star of "Jay Leno's Garage," which returns with new episodes Wednesday at 8 p.m. on CNBC. First up — Vice President Joe Biden and his 1967 Corvette, and an appearance by former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"When you leave 'The Tonight Show,' people always say, 'Are you going to do another talk show?' Well, no," Leno said. "You can't really do what you just did because then you didn't really go anywhere. And if you try to repeat what you did before, well, it's going to cost twice as much with half as big a staff. So you choose to do something totally different."
(He learned that lesson with his ill-fated 2009-10 prime-time show, between stints as the host of "Tonight.")
Leno has been doing a version of "Garage" online for more than a decade; in 2015, it debuted as a regular CNBC series (and won an Emmy as best short-format nonfiction program).
He is clearly having a great time making the show, and it's very entertaining — even for viewers who aren't big car buffs.
"I started doing 'Jay Leno's Garage' just for car guys. And it grew to be the third-biggest automotive website on YouTube," he said. "So then we got an offer saying, 'Hey, would you want to do it for a network? Make it a little less technical, a little more show-bizzy?' So that's kind of what we do. Yeah, it's great fun."
It's a show about cars, but Leno tells jokes along the way. His primary goal remains getting people to laugh.
"You know, I was a standup comedian long before I got 'The Tonight Show,' " Leno said. "And while I was doing 'The Tonight Show,' I was on the road at least two, three days a week. So it's fun to go back to being a comedian again. The part-time job was always the TV thing."
Ticket-buyers can expect to see the same guy they watched in TV for decades, with some new jokes.
"When you talk to new comedians, they always say, 'It took me 5 minutes, but I got 'em.' Or 'It took me 20 minutes, but I got 'em.' Or 'I never got 'em,' " Leno said. "When you're famous, you've got 'em from the get-go, and your trick is not to lose them."
Twitter: @ScottDPierce —
Jay Leno in concert
When • Friday, Nov. 11, 8 p.m.
Where • Eccles Theater, 131 S. Main St., Salt Lake City
Tickets • $30-$125, available at artsaltlake.org, at the box office or by calling 801-355-ARTS (2787)
Note • Recommended for ages 8 and up. No babes in arms.