Fred Norris is Normal

IF YOU LISTEN TO HOWARD STERN, YOU MIGHT THINK THAT Fred Norris, his sound-effects guy, song parodist, and radio-show cowriter, is the most dysfunctional person on his staff. According to Stern, Fred fits the profile of a serial killer, carries a shovel in his car trunk, is so much of a hayseed that he's incapable of opening a checking account by himself, eats by collecting food in a pouch in his mouth, mocks his mother by buying her a Carvel Cookie Puss ice-cream cake for Mother's Day, wears two watches, has two different sets of names, and might just be from Mars. And that's just for starters.

But over lunch at a very nice restaurant located a stone's throw from the K-Rock studios, Fred is successfully rebutting these charges with quiet elegance. Buying his mother the Carvel cake for Mother's Day was merely his idea of a joke. He carries a shovel because he once got caught in a sudden snowstorm and suffered frostbite when he had to abandon his car. The analog watch is for his general time-keeping; the digital watch is for the more precise task of timing commercials. His biological father's name was Nukis; his stepfather's was Norris. He never liked the name Fred, so after discovering that his mother originally wanted to name him Eric but was overruled by his father (because a previous boyfriend of hers had been named Eric), Fred legally changed his first name to Eric-although everyone still calls him Fred.

Fred/Eric cuts another chunk off his steak and puts it in his mouth. His cheek balloons out.

"Maybe I do pouch," he admits, "but at least I'm neat. Howard just lets the food fly all over the place. Let's talk about these meteorite-size pieces of baked potato that I used to find on the front of the board, and the shreds of turkey over by the telephone button."

So given all these rational explanations, why does Fred have this weird rep?

"Oh, I'm so mysterious, I'm so bizarre," Fred mocks. "Yet there are many people, friends of the show, who come up to me and go, 'You know something? They knock you, but you're the most normal human being on that program.' I don't even know what normal is, to be honest. I didn't have the greatest upbringing in the world. I spent a lot of time by myself, which is probably why I lack certain social graces. But that's also probably why I know shitloads of useless pieces of information, which somehow prove to be useful to this program."

Not having the greatest upbringing is a bit of an understatement. Born July 9, 1955, to a pair of full-blooded Latvians, Fred was raised near Manchester, Connecticut, in a rural area famous for its vast tobacco fields. By the time Fred, the second of two sons, was born, his parents' marriage was already on the ropes. His biological father left home when Fred was five, but those first few years were pure hell. "There was always tension and rage," he remembers. "My father had an alcohol problem. When Dad came home, you hid in the closet because there was always something going on you'd rather not be a part of."

Fred spent most of his early childhood alone. When his older brother wasn't using Fred as a human punching bag, the brother wanted nothing to do with him. So Fred would escape by reading books, taking long bicycle rides, or watching lots of afternoon TV reruns (whence came his encyclopedic

Despite the lack of guidance, Fred managed to navigate his adolescence without major incident. When Fred was 13 his mother married his stepdad, Louis Norris, a cabinetmaker, whom Fred credits with finally making his mom happy. Around this time, Fred started playing guitar and began hanging out with a "better class of people." Namely people who could afford instruments-a step up from his neighbors, who, he says, could have stepped right out of Deliverance.

An avid reader, he always got good grades without much effort. Yet when it came to girls, Fred remained a misfit. "I was painfully shy. I still am," he says with a laugh.

Did he have any girlfriends?

"I remember there was a lot of staring," he says. "I was so scared of being rejected that I couldn't even approach them. It was very sad."

After a short stint at Manchester Community College, followed by a few years working in an airplane-parts factory, Fred succumbed to pressure from his parents and enrolled at Western Connecticut State College, where he majored in communications. He figured he'd wind up in radio because "everybody kept telling me that I had a decent voice." While a student, he landed a job working the night shift at WCCC in Hartford, which is where he met the station's new morning man, a tall, lanky Long Islander named Howard Stern.

"Howard had so much energy," Fred remembers. "What struck me the most was how hard he worked. Most of the other disc jockeys would come in hung over, put a record on, and try to pick up girls on the request line."

To amuse Howard during commercial breaks, Fred began doing comic impersonations, which Stern insisted he reprise on the air. Comedic talent aside, what most impressed Howard about Fred was his unselfish act of picking up and filing away the albums that Howard had strewn all over the floor during his shift. For that alone, Howard vows that Fred will always have a job with him.

"The one thing that my mother tried to impress on me was to be polite and helpful," Fred says. "I was just being me. If Howard thinks I secretly wanted to get into his pants, he's totally wrong."

After Stern split Hartford for a job in Detroit, he'd call Fred and have him do his Howard Cosell or Muhammad Ali impersonations long-distance. And when Stern relocated to Washington, D.C., in 1981, he called Fred and offered him a job as his producer. It was time for Fred to finally leave his parents' home and venture out into the real world. Only he looked like he let his mother dress him before he left.

Howard describes Fred's sartorial style in those days as "Latvian hillbilly." He wore farmer blue jeans, a drab work shirt, and Kangaroo sneakers straight from the K-Mart bargain bin. To top it all off, a floppy cabdriver's cap would cover his rarely washed hair. Besides looking out of place, he felt it.

"Robin was there already, and when I saw the ease of their interaction, it was like, 'What the fuck am I doing here? I can't compete with this.' I felt like I was playing high-school playground ball and they were in the Olympics," Fred recalls. "I was ready to leave after a week. But Howard said, 'Hang in there. You'll catch up.'"

Howard and his wife, Alison, became Fred's extended family. Alison found Fred an apartment. They fed him. They all hung out on weekends. The only thing they didn't do was to get him laid. He still couldn't score, despite ample opportunities and entreaties from many of his more-than-willing coworkers. So Fred buried himself in work-writing and producing bits, working sound effects into the mix, doing his impressions and song parodies.

It was more of the same when the Stern show moved to New York in 1983, first in the afternoons on WNBC-AM, then back in the mornings at K-Rock. Except now on the weekends, Fred would drive home to Connecticut to spend time with his parents. His lack of interest in things sexual had Howard wondering aloud whether Fred was, well, light in the loafers.

"I was focused on the work, which I probably used to prevent myself from getting involved with a lot of people," Fred says, with the benefit of hindsight and a few years of analysis. "I guess I had, like, a low-grade depression that just kind of sapped me from zipping out into the world. But I've gotten better," he says with a chuckle.

In fact, Fred's metamorphosis has been nothing short of remarkable. It began with a determined effort to change himself, and came to fruition under the tutelage of the first (and only) serious relationship he's ever had-with the winner of an on-air Dial-a-Date. But first, the change. Off with the floppy cabby cap. A distress call to Alison Stern resulted in a visit to a hair salon to get a perm. Then Fred consulted with a saleswoman at K-Rock, who schlepped him down to a cut-rate clothing store and helped him pick out an entire new wardrobe. A human being was slowly emerging. Now it was time to date.

But this is still Fred. No social skills.

So how does he score a date? Easy. He has Howard get him one on the air. For years Howard had been playing his own unique version of Dial-a-Date on the air. He'd bring a lesbian, or a handicapped person, or a fatso into the studio and have them choose their date from three people who called in. The winners would get a free dinner at one of the restaurants that advertised on the show.

"It was one of those mornings when a fat Dial-a-Date didn't show up," Fred recollects. "Maybe because we were making cow jokes all morning. Then Gary goes, 'Hey, how about Fred?' Howard immediately went, 'Nah, he doesn't want to do it.' And I go, 'You know something? I'll do it.' I thought Howard was gonna drop a load right there."

So they got three girls lined up on the phones. The first two were Grade-A sluts who guaranteed Fred sex. The third was a nice Jewish girl, an aspiring actress, coincidentally named Allison, who was temporarily staying with her parents in Long Island. During the contest, her irate father picked up an extension and tried to disconnect the call. Of course, Fred picked bachelorette number three.

"Howard was totally against it," Fred says, smiling. "He's like, 'Go with the girl who'll blow you! What the fuck's the matter with you?'"

Fred and Allison met at a restaurant and had dinner with the winners of the one-legged Dial-a-Date, the one-eyed Dial-a-Date, the spotted-zebra-face Dial-a-Date, and, not surprisingly, they only had eyes for each other. One thing led to another, and, later that night, Fred broke his long drought.

But he couldn't tell anyone! He'd promised that to Allison. "Howard tried to worm it out of me, and if there was anyone I wanted to tell, it was Howard," Fred laughs. "'Now, Howard, you've been thinking I'm a queer. And I went on Dial-a-Date and I got fuckin' laid. Not once, but twice.' It was painful that I couldn't tell him."

Allison introduced Fred to a whole new world of choices. Thai food instead of cheeseburgers. Sapporo instead of Budweiser. Armani instead of Oshkosh. Then one night Fred arrived at a K-Rock party wearing fine Italian loafers without socks and offering his opinion that you hadn't seen Lost in Yonkers on Broadway unless you'd seen it starring Mercedes Ruehl. This from a guy who hadn't known how to hail a cab a few months earlier. The transformation was complete; the rube had turned into a sophisticate.

Still, Fred wasn't sophisticated enough to realize that when it was time to get married the least he could do was inform, if not invite, his radio family. In July 1994, after eight years of living together, Fred and Allison took the plunge during one of the Stern-show vacations. They had a lovely wedding on the beach in Amagansett, Long Island. After the ceremony, Fred called Howard and left a message on his machine: "Howard, this is Fred Norris. [Twenty years of working together and he still identifies himself as 'Fred Norris'!] I just wanted to let you know that Allison and I got married." Fred neglected to make the same call to Robin and, deeply hurt, she stopped talking to him. Until he almost killed himself at his bachelor party at Scores, New York's premier strip club.

When the radio show convened after Fred's marriage, Howard decided to throw a bachelor party for the newlywed, the theory being that any occasion is an excuse for a party at Scores. Fred vowed not to drink that day, until a celebrant insisted they toast with some tequila shots. One shot led to the next, and before you could say "country bumpkin" Fred had thrown up all over Howard's lap, nuzzled with Gay Rich, a Stern-show intern, and, on trying to exit the V.I.P. room, missed about four steps and flew headfirst into the floor, rendering himself unconscious and the carpet a deep-crimson hue.

"When I woke up, I saw curtains and other people and I go, 'Oh, Scores has a room in the back where people go and lie down when they drink too much. How cool,'" Fred says with a chuckle. "Then I realize this isn't Scores, it's a fucking hospital. 'Oh, my God, what did I do?' Then I saw my mortified wife."

Despite its rocky start, Fred's marriage has endured. Indeed, married life has enabled him to explore creative outlets outside the Stern show. When his father-in-law died unexpectedly of a heart attack at 59, Fred, realizing that life is way too short, decided to seriously pursue his first love, music. He formed the King Norris band, and released a CD that showcases his guitar virtuosity and songwriting skills. Appearing regularly on the club circuit in the Northeast, King Norris now attracts not only Stern-show devotees but an ever-increasing number of loyal fans.

Following his wife's lead (and without the knowledge of his Stern-show colleagues), Fred also began taking acting lessons. Since then, he's appeared in a number of independent films, and received critical kudos for his performance in Private Parts, the screen adaptation of Howard's best-selling autobiography. Maybe Howard is right after all: Fred is like a chameleon, taking on the attributes of whoever he's with at the time.

The Stern show remains Fred's bread and butter. There, his mastery of sound effects continually expands the show's aural palette. (Fred has been fascinated by the use of sound ever since he took a tour of the NBC radio network soundstage as a little kid from rural Connecticut.) Back in the early days in D.C. and at NBC, Fred and Howard created most of the sound effects live, whapping drum kits and cymbals. But over the years Fred has accumulated a library of prerecorded sound clips with which he unerringly punctuates the proceedings. On any given day a listener is likely to hear 0. J. Simpson's observations on a gruesome murder ("It happens"), the tarantella when producer Gary Dell'Abate enters the studio, and corny circus music when Howard plugs Jackie The Joke Man's T-shirts, mugs, comedy cassettes, and CDs ("because he reminds me of this carnival barker hawking his wares"). And when Robin gets on her high horse and delivers one of her impassioned opinions, Fred gently deflates her with schmaltzy soap opera-ish theme music.

Perhaps his darkest (and most hilarious) sound bite features Jackie cackling at the most horrific news stories imaginable. "I will never forget the first time I did that," Fred smiles. "There was this story about a child who someone wrapped in Saran Wrap and left in the middle of the desert because they thought he was possessed by demons. At that point you go, 'I could either scream or make a joke out of it.' Then I realized, 'Who's the ultimate joker? He's sitting right across from me.' Jackie will laugh at things, and I'll have no idea why. So I played him laughing."

Jackie's reaction?

"Shock. It was as if I had killed the baby in front of him. He was mortified because he didn't want anybody to think it was actually him laughing. He was gesturing to me to quit it, and the more he did that, the more I played him laughing."

In fact, Fred is reputed to possess the most vicious sense of humor on the show. Stuttering John will sometimes blanch at the sheer savagery of the questions Fred writes. When Fred dons his Nazi uniform and plays Kurt Waldheim, Jr., hosting the game show "Guess Who's the Jew," he's so convincing that he gets fan mail from Aryan Nation members.

"The show probably gets too meanspirited sometimes," Fred admits as he polishes off his steak. "But that's what makes it as exciting as it is. We're willing to go that extra mile. People don't realize how much it's like emotional S&M on the air sometimes. People call me vicious? I'm just trying to be helpful. The 'Fred, the Man from Mars' label? That's that dick Jackie. He's just a curmudgeonly old troll. Howard once asked where Burt Reynolds's dinner theater is, so I said, 'Jupiter, Florida.' And since Jackie never reads a book or picks up a magazine, or knows anything that happened in the twentieth century, he has contempt for anybody that has any knowledge, information, or perhaps a coherent thought in his head that doesn't pertain to 'Why did the drunk take a duck into a bar and fuck him in the ass with a bottle of Chivas? So Jackie says, 'And you're from Mars.' That's where that started-basically a bad joke that Jackie found funny and laughed at a lot, so everyone else thought it was funny, and now people look for my antennae."

Fred's been working himself up during this monologue, and I can't tell how much of this is shtick-little Freddie Nukis inhabiting a character-and how much is Eric Fred Norris really getting pissed. But since he does carry that shovel in his car trunk, I ain't risking it to find out. I remember what Jackie told me about Fred: "Nobody works harder than Fred. He's the soldier who would take a bullet for you. He's the guy who will write 20 pages to my one page. He's the guy with the broom that has to clean up. But all the time, Howard breaks his balls about doing nothing, and it upsets him. And there's nothing funnier than that, because no body works harder than Fred. Someone said they had good news for Howard, and I wrote, 'What? Fred's gonna quit?' So Howard says it, and Fred immediately wrote me a note that said, 'I was here before you, fat boy.'"

Jackie still doesn't know if Fred was kidding. And neither do I.

"But you're really so normal. I don't see how anybody can believe any of that weird shit about you," I lie.

Fred nods. He seems calmer now.

"It's funny, when people on the outside meet me and they have these perceptions from the crazy shit that goes on on the air, they'll go, 'My God, you're really a nice person. Why do they say these things about you?' And I go, 'They have a show to do.' What the fuck do I know? I show up, they abuse me for a few hours. That's my life."

Fred shrugs and picks up his plastic shopping bag. It's time to go home. Of course, no one on the show has ever been privileged to see Fred's home. But home he goes. To practice guitar? Run some lines for an audition? Put some freshly butchered human remains in the freezer? Contact his superiors back on his home planet?

Your guess is as good as anyone's.

Updated: 2-August-1999

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