Cheech & Chong

During the height of their popularity in the 1970s, Cheech & Chong served as the primary public face of the perspectives and habits tied to the hidden drug subculture. In a manner recalling W.C. Fields, who rose to prominence by centering his routines on alcohol, the pair Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong surfaced through swirling marijuana smoke, at once celebrating and satirizing the stoner audience that formed their most devoted following; though dismissed by reviewers and ignored by wider society, their position as counterculture icons stayed unchallenged, and their routines came to define the times for both aging hippies and dazed-and-confused teens.

The partnership began forming in the late 1960s after Chong, who had entered the entertainment world as a guitarist in a rock band, founded City Works, an improvisational ensemble that later added Richard "Cheech" Marin. Once City Works disbanded, Cheech & Chong carried on as a duo and developed a musical comedy format. Audiences soon responded more strongly to their spaced-out pothead dialogues than to the songs, so the pair rarely strayed from that established identity; across successive albums and movies they stayed fixed in the role of blissed-out stoners whose humor remained anchored in the sluggish mindset of habitual users.

Cheech & Chong issued their self-titled debut LP in 1971, containing studio sketches such as "Waiting for Dave," a looping bit indebted to Bob & Ray, "Cruisin' with Pedro," which centered on drug-deal anxiety, and "Trippin' in Court." The release proved a major hit, and its 1972 successor Big Bambu, issued inside an oversized rolling paper, climbed to the number two position on the Billboard charts. Los Cochinos, released the next year and winner of a Grammy, matched that chart placement while featuring the novelty single "Basketball Jones."

Following 1974's Wedding Album, which contained the hit "Earache My Eye," and 1976's Sleeping Beauty, Cheech & Chong had cultivated a sufficient cult audience to transition into motion pictures. Their first feature, 1978's Up in Smoke, set the pattern for later entries by quickly setting aside plot to emphasize surreal digressions and extended rambling exchanges between the lead characters. Apart from 1980's Let's Make a New Dope Deal, the duo devoted the ensuing years entirely to film work, producing a rapid succession of comedies that included 1980's Cheech & Chong's Next Movie, 1981's Nice Dreams, and 1983's Still Smokin.

As the freewheeling spirit of the 1970s yielded to the "just say no" ethos of the Reagan years, Cheech & Chong encountered diminishing interest in their signature style; after 1984's The Corsican Brothers their screen career concluded, and in 1985 they returned to the studio for the final album Get Out of My Room. Following the split, both appeared in low-budget films for the rest of the decade; by 1993 Marin had even released the children's record My Name Is Cheech, the School Bus Driver.

While Chong largely faded from view, Marin experienced renewed visibility in the mid-1990s through roles in Robert Rodriguez's Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn; a key supporting turn in Ron Shelton's Tin Cup led to a co-starring part opposite Don Johnson in the CBS series Nash Bridges. In 1997 Chong appeared as a guest on that program, marking the duo's first joint public appearance in some time.