Nine days before comedian George Carlin's death, he gave a wide-ranging, two-hour interview to Jay Dixit of Psychology Today. It was originally intended as a 350-word Q&A for the back page of the magazine but today, in the aftermath of Carlin's passing, was published online at much greater length. In the interview, Carlin talks about how he collects and sifts through potential material, the advantages of being an older comedian, how hallucinogenic drugs enhanced his work and life, his extensive use of computers and whether his act is "angry." But most interesting, perhaps, are the parts of the conversation where the rough-and-tumble performer opens up about how his career is tied to his relationship with his Mom, who raised Carlin and his brother alone amid the Great Depression:

I experienced my life in a very happy way, but, what I want to say to you is, I was alone as a child. My father was dead. My mother left him when I was 2 months old and he died when I was 8 years old. He drank too much and he was a bully and she had the courage to take two boys, one of them two months old and one of them 5 years old and to leave him in 1937 and get back into the business world and get a job and raise us through the end of the Depression and through the Second World War. She did a great job, but she was at work until 7 or 7:30 at night many nights.



...I needed to be-not the center of attention-but I needed to be able to attract attention when I wanted it, through my stunts and my fooling around physically with faces or postures or voices I would do. Then it became funny the things I would say, and I became more of a wit than simply a mimic and a clown...



Q: Can you remember the first joke you ever told?
No. But I do remember the first time I ever made my mother laugh. And unfortunately, it's lost on me what it was I said. But I noticed the moment, I knew something had happened, this was when I was very young. My mother laughed fairly frequently. But I knew the difference between her social laugh and her really spontaneous laugh when she was caught off guard-which is the key to laugher, being off guard. And I said something to her, and I saw that in her and it registered with me.

[Psychology Today]

(Getty Images photo taken today at a collection of flowers left in memory of Carlin at the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.)