Cheech & Chong Reunited and Feel So Good

Tony Sauro - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong have transcended time and travail. Without a haze of marijuana smoke.

Peanut butter and jelly's more like it.

"Oh, it seems like we've been off for 30 minutes, not 30 years," said Marin, half of the veteran comedy team. "There's some part of our DNA that's crossed at some points. We share a generational heritage.

"It's a kind of chemistry. It's like peanut butter and jelly. It's like two very separate things, but they go together great."

"You know, we're really just two grumpy old stoners who put our differences aside to do what we do best," said Chong, soberly echoing Marin in a separate phone interview Monday. "We always got along as long as we were creating. It's those off times when we weren't working that were the problem. We're like an old car. If you don't drive us too far, we're fine."

Marin, 62, and Chong, 70, who reunited in September -- 23 years after breaking up acrimoniously in 1985 -- make the trip to Stockton's Bob Hope Theatre on Sunday night as their double-entendre, Light Up America, tour rolls on. Chong's multilingual wife Shelby, 60, opens the show.

The Cheech and Chong story -- two musicians who meet in Vancouver and become the irreverent, hysterically humorous and dazed gurus of Marijuana Nation -- is well-chronicled, in movies, TV shows, records, books, TV commercials, animated voices and stage shows they started piling up in 1972.

Their reunion show reflects that.

"It's kind of the greatest hits," said Marin, having just returned from the duo's 30-day tour of Australia. "They change ... every day as it keeps going along. We're improvisational comedians. We add things and subtract things."

"It's like going to a laugh museum," Chong said. "We get to make stuff up. We don't have to worry about writing a script. We get to be funny, get crazy and have a good time. Hard-core Cheech and Chong-ophiles know everything -- more than we know. We're kind of ageless."

Age has been one of the two grandfathers' post-millennial concessions.

"I'm holding up pretty good," said Chong, who lives in Pacific Palisades. "I'm not used to working this steady. I'm used to being unemployed. In this economy, I'm just happy I have a job. It's all been good. I can't complain."

"We kind of realized the road always takes it out of you, especially at this age," said Marin, who's lived in Malibu for 35 years. "We're doing good. We're having a good time."

That doesn't mean what it implies for Chong, who played the duo's downbeaten stoner during its higher times.

"I had to," said Chong, admitting he's gone bong-less since September. "Or I can't remember all the old stuff. I quit because I wanted to be there for the tour. ... That's gonna be my retirement plan, though: Smoke a lot and get into such a state I don't know where I am. Now, I need to know where I am. I need to make money."

"That's a blessing," said Marin, who's more into transcendental meditation. "It's always good to have memory. It was just part and parcel of the times. It became more his image because of the characters he did."

It also led to a nine-month federal prison term in Taft Correctional Institution in 2003. His Chong Glass/Nice Dreams business, started by his son Paris in 1999, was raided and Chong pled guilty to his company selling drug paraphernalia via the Internet.

A documentary made in 2005 ("a.k.a. Tommy Chong") and released last year implies he was targeted and entrapped.

Chong, like Marin, a strong advocate of de-criminalizing marijuana use, now lets his wife find the humor in it.

"After I got busted, I went out and did a routine," Chong said. "But she sort of inherited that part of my life. It works out pretty well. It's pretty funny. I talk a little bit about my time in jail onstage."

Someone else has taken the cure, too. Belatedly, that is.

"I play Blind Melon Chitlin," Chong said. "He used to be a drunk and couldn't play (his guitar) his whole career. After Cheech left, I sobered him up. He's all clean and sober now. He's 156 years old."

Thomas B. Kin Chong, a native of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, was playing guitar in a soul band and operating a club in Vancouver when he met Richard Anthony Marin, a Watts native who had moved to Canada as part of the anti-Vietman War draft movement. At first, Marin developed his craft as a pottery maker before migrating back to entertainment.

"We kind of understood each other right away and had this mutual frame of reference working there," said Chong, who has written two books about his life and career.

That instant connection evolved into a series of popular albums and movies ("Up in Smoke," which earned $100 million in 1978-79, said it all). In 1985, Chong left because of creative and control issues.

Now, they'll release movies ("Light Up America" and "Two Grumpy Stoners") from this tour and produce some animated versions of their old songs.

Marin, who collects Chicano art, is writing a book of essays on Latino life and culture and a "Steinbeckian" novel ("Angel of Oxnard") he started 24 years ago.

They'll be on tour through June.

"Probably, it's a real windfall for us," Marin said. "It was very sad I couldn't access this asset (during the split from Chong). It's like when you only have half a treasure map. When you put it together, what a really amazing service for our fans, who've been waiting for such a long time. It's something we created that's really special and kind of exists whether we want it to or not. It's like the gene to ride a bicycle. You never have to relearn it."

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