BlankCo-host of NPR's beloved 'Car Talk' left us laughing By Ann Oldenburg, and Maria Puente, USA TODAY St. Peter must be wondering what's all that racket at the Pearly Gates now that Tom Magliozzi has pulled up in a ramshackle old Chevy, laughing uproariously and shouting, "Don't drive like my brother! The older half of the beloved National Public Radio show Car Talk's "Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers," is gone, meaning no one else is likely to make yakking and yucking it up about cars a laugh-a-minute riot ever again, even to people who couldn't care less about cars. "Click has lost his Clack," tweet-mourned Arnie Siepel of NPR. "Who knew carburetors could be so funny? tweeted David Corn, Washington editor of Mother Jones. So it went all afternoon Monday as the worlds of cars, comics and radio reacted to the passing of Magliozzi, who died of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 77. In a statement announcing his brother's death, brother Ray alluded to a familiar joke about the weekly puzzlers they always featured in the show. "Turns out he wasn't kidding. He really couldn't remember last week's puzzler," Ray said. "We can be happy that he lived the life he wanted to live: goofing off a lot, talking to you guys every week and primarily laughing his ass off. That could be his brother's epitaph: The one thing fans know most defined Tom was his infectious laugh. Tom and Ray made Car Talk a weekly must-hear show, turning advice about car troubles into entertaining radio with their jokes and brotherly bantering, with each other and call-in guests. Many people called as much to talk to them as to find out what was wrong with their cars. The show, one of NPR's most popular, began as a radio show on WBUR in Boston decades ago, back when more people actually fixed their own cars. The brothers took calls, answered questions, offered their brain-teasing math "puzzlers" and generally goofed off. " When we first started doing the show, it was mainly to attract customers to (our) garage," Ray told USA TODAY in an interview in 2008. "We saw that as a vehicle, no pun intended, to get people to know who we were. Tom said they couldn't mention the name of the garage or where it was. "So we came up with the idea of the puzzler, and we told people to send their answers to the garage, at this address, and repeated it several times. Cue the loud laugh. And a booming business: The show went national in 1987, and the brothers ended up with something of a media empire that included books, a syndicated newspaper column, a website and TV stints. Tom was 12 years older than Ray. They grew up in a tough neighborhood of East Cambridge, Mass., in a close-knit Italian family. On the show, they came off as funny, regular-guy mechanics, but both graduated from MIT. In addition to the radio show, the brothers appeared in the 2006 Pixar film, Cars. In 2008, the brothers starred in their own PBS animated series, Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns, playing fictionalized versions of themselves. Tom was the first in his family to attend college. He got a degree in chemical engineering, but he was never that enthralled by work, particularly the 9-to-5 world. "He actually hated working in any world," Ray said in an NPR blog post. "Later on, when we were doing Car Talk, he would come in late and leave early. We used to warn him that if he left work any earlier, he'd pass himself coming in. Tom once described his own attitude to his listeners: "Don't be afraid of work. Make work afraid of you. I did such a fabulous job of making work afraid of me that it has avoided me my whole life so far. Before Car Talk, he "worked" as a Harvard Square bum, a house painter, an inventor and an auto mechanic. Car Talk allowed him to do what he loved most, Ray said: "Making friends, philosophizing, thinking out loud, solving people's problems and laughing his butt off. NPR's Susan Stamberg paid tribute in a blog post, saying, "Funny and smart and big-hearted, Tom was as warm in real life as he was on the radio. Car Talk ran from 1987 to 2012. It remains a top-rated show on NPR stations where it plays in syndication. Tom is survived by his first wife, Julia; second wife, Joanne; his children, Lydia Icke, Alex and Anna Magliozzi; five grandchildren; and his close companion of recent years, Sylvia Soderberg. In a note on the NPR site, Ray asked, "In lieu of flowers or rotten fish, I know my brother would prefer folks made a donation to their favorite public radio station in his memory. Contributing: Gary Levin **** i i Ray and Tom (right) Magliozzi, co-hosts of NPR's Car Talk show, pose for a photo in Cambridge, Mass., in 2008. Tom died Monday of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 77. Charles Krupa/AP hide caption itoggle caption Charles Krupa/AP Ray and Tom (right) Magliozzi, co-hosts of NPR's Car Talk show, pose for a photo in Cambridge, Mass., in 2008. Tom died Monday of complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 77. Charles Krupa/AP When NPR Car Talk hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi opened a do-it-yourself car repair shop in Cambridge, Mass., in the early 1970s, Tom had never had so many laughs. The people who came into the shop were complete "wackos," he told Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 2001. "But man were they fun. And they weren't worried! When the guy jacked up his Lincoln Town Car and drove the floor jack through his oil pan, did he cry? He said, 'Uh oh.' I mean people could take a joke!" Tom died Monday of complications related to Alzheimer's disease. He was 77. Car Talk is known for the car repair advice Tom and his brother, Ray, dispensed, but it's perhaps even more popular for the brothers' comedic banter. In fact, many people tune in who don't even own a car but just love listening to the brothers. The show's executive producer, Doug Berman, says Tom's laugh was incredibly infectious. "It was almost a force, almost separate from him," Berman says. "It was always lurking, trying to come out. And he would see something funny coming a few sentences away, and he would start to laugh while he was talking, and he'd kind of be laughing and it would almost overtake him like a wave." “I am proud to say that after 23 or [24] years on the radio we have learned absolutely nothing. It's absolutely the truth. People say, 'Tell us about radio!' We have no idea. We sit in front of the microphones and we know nothing about radio. Nothing! - Tom Magliozzi, co-host of Car Talk Two years ago, the brothers stopped taping new episodes of Car Talk because of Tom's Alzheimer's. "He felt that he just wasn't what he used to be," Berman says. "And he had such an incredible mind that it was really difficult for him." Both Tom and Ray graduated from MIT, Tom with a degree in chemical engineering. He went on to work in the marketing department of a corporation, speculating about future trends. Then, after narrowly escaping a crash with a tractor-trailer, Tom abandoned the corporate life and started collecting unemployment insurance. Ray, 12 years Tom's junior, told Gross in 2001 that his mother urged him to try to rescue Tom from his layabout life. So Ray, who had been teaching middle school in Vermont, returned to Boston, and Tom came up with the idea of starting a garage. Car Talk is still broadcast in an archival version. Fresh Air listens back to Tom's and Ray's 2001 interview with Gross. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interview Highlights On their DIY repair shop in Cambridge Tom: You couldn't make any money at it. It was a great concept and we have never had as many laughs as we had the year that we opened that garage. Ray: No, we had a rollicking good time. ... Belly laughs, because we attracted every kind of inept weirdo that the city of Cambridge and the surrounding towns had to offer. Tom: There was no shortage. Ray: There was no shortage and I was amazed to find out how many wackos inhabited our fair city, and those who came in who thought they knew what they were doing and didn't really expect us to do the work for them for $2.50 an hour, or whatever we were charging them. We soon realized we were doing all the work for everybody, running around like nuts. ... It was pretty much a bust. ... What really drove us out of business was the fact that in 1973, fixing one's own car was within the grasp of the average person. But as emission controls came into being and cars got more complicated, it soon disappeared — that ability soon disappeared — and we found the business diminished considerably. People in Cambridge who had had the time because they were unemployed bums, like my brother, to work on their own cars went out and got jobs and bought newer cars. ... Tom: But it's interesting how much fun the bums could be. I mean, these were complete wackos, weirdos, as my brother said, he's absolutely right, but man were they fun. ... I mean people could take a joke! People weren't as uptight as they are now. It was only a car. ... What was really sort of spiritual about it was that nobody ever got hurt. I mean, in all the years that we did that, [with] complete rank amateurs using very dangerous equipment ... Ray: We didn't know any better either! You wanna use the torch, yeah? Go ahead! We'll be standing on the other side of the brick wall. Tom: Here, wear this football helmet. Call us if anything happens — we're going out for coffee! On their first radio appearances as part of a WBUR car mechanics panel in 1977: Tom: We didn't know that it was a real radio station. It's part of Boston University and, at the time, the studios, I mean, you'd think it was like 1920. Ray: The equipment resembled the tin cans and the string. Tom: You'd expect [Italian inventor Guglielmo] Marconi to walk by any minute. And so, our assumption was, you know, first of all, who is listening to this station? And we thought it was a station that only broadcast on like wires within the school, within BU. Ray: We thought it had, you know, 50-watt capacity and then we found out it had 50,000 watts. Tom: Well, when they turned on the microphones, the lights dimmed. So yeah, I think we were pretty relaxed. On how much Car Talk changed over the years Ray: It sounded surprisingly like the new shows do. Tom: It did? Ray: I mean, we tended to, if we got someone on the line who we thought was interesting, we tended to talk to that person for whatever a period of time we thought was appropriate, sometimes 25 minutes. And our producer Doug Berman [who joined the show when it went national in 1987] would never allow that. Now he's giving us the cut sign and waving his hands and jumping up and down if we go more than five or six minutes — he gets nervous. But other than that, I would say the show is pretty much the same. Tom: Really? Ray: Which begs the question, why do we need Berman? ... Tom: I've been asking that question since Day 1. On learning how to do radio and constantly laughing on the air Tom: No one ever told us anything. Until maybe a week ago, we would walk into the studio and say, "Are we on?" I mean, we had absolutely no information. We knew the room we would go to, we knew where to sit and that was it. Ray: The only reason we knew that is there was a show on the hour before us called Shop Talk, which was two or three guys talking about stereo equipment and recording and the like. And we would watch them through the glass and we would see how far away from the microphone they sat. And we noticed they wore headphones and we noticed they pressed the lighted buttons on the phone to talk to callers, and so we patterned ourselves after what they did. Tom: I am proud to say that after 23 or [24] years on the radio we have learned absolutely nothing. It's absolutely the truth. People say, "Tell us about radio!" We have no idea. We sit in front of the microphones and we know nothing about radio. Nothing! Ray: We've never made an attempt to learn anything, either. And we do laugh a lot, too much sometimes, and I'm sure people complain. And there are many people who can't stand us. Tom: My wife is one of them! Ray: Well, that goes without saying. Which wife? Tom: All of them FreshAir has an interview with them from a dozen years ago, but I couldn't get it to play in IE yet. I think I got it downloaded with Firefox though. http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/