Billy Connolly's act has come a long way

CAMBRIDGE -- As a comedian, Billy Connolly has influenced generations of comics in the United Kingdom , sold out venues like the Royal Albert Hall and the Sydney Opera House, and even found a way into acting with heavyweights like Dame Judi Dench in "Mrs. Brown." But in 1970, as a musician, Connolly found himself far from his Glaswegian home playing clubs along Route 1 in Norwood and Danvers like the old Harp & Bard.

Sitting in a lounge on the second floor of the Loeb Drama Center, where he will put on eight shows starting Tuesday, Connolly , 64, laughs thinking about those early days. He'd seen the band America on that trip, and he reminisced with them years later at a party in Beverly Hills.

The band asked Connolly if he remembered the comedian that had opened for them. "I said, 'no, maybe vaguely,' " he says. "They said, 'That was Jay Leno.' Never!"

Leno hadn't yet made the leap from the music clubs, and Boston's comedy boom was a decade away, but Connolly was about to take the step that would change his career forever, leaving behind his folk singer persona to become one of the founding fathers of the British alternative comedy scene.

Before Connolly, the British stand-up scene was mostly the domain of cabaret comics in mohair suits doing material about their mothers-in-law and immigrants, not dissimilar to the American scene in the '50s before Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce. Connolly had wanted to be a comedian since he fell into a puddle at school and found he could make the other children laugh. But with no comic model to follow, he drifted through several blue-collar jobs, from ship welder to paratrooper.

Most of Connolly's classmates dreamed of making it out of Glasgow. Connolly had extra incentive. He grew up in a household his mother left early, where he was verbally abused by his aunts and sexually abused by his father. He counts himself fortunate to have found encouragement in his friends' families. "I'd go to their houses, and they were happy houses," he says. "I always knew that everything would be OK if I could just get out of this one. When I became a teenager, be an apprentice, get some money if I worked for wages, and get the [expletive] out of there. There is a world, and it's a good place, because I've seen it."

The folk scene welcomed the hairy banjo player with a penchant for profanity and a thick Glaswegian accent. And though Connolly found some success with Gerry Rafferty (later of Stealer's Wheel) as the Humblebums, he still felt drawn to comedy. "I felt the drive to do it but didn't know how to get what I had onto a stage," he says. "Because what I have is what working guys have. You know? I was just one of those guys they say, 'Oh, he should be on the stage.' And none of them ever do it. Just working-class stuff, being funny and smart arsed."

Those Route 1 gigs would be some of Connolly's last as a musician as he started building his reputation as a comedian with a guitar. Then, in 1975, British talk - show host Michael Parkinson, whose "Parkinson" was the UK's equivalent to "The Tonight Show," booked Connolly after a cab driver gave him a copy of one of his early albums. Connolly became a household name almost overnight after doing some off-color material on the show.

"The BBC immediately said, there's a property here," says Parkinson. "But you can imagine in 1975 the kind of prospect of putting this wild-eyed, banana-shoe-wearing, mad-haired Scotsman on British television, in particular the BBC. They'd no idea how to handle him."

Connolly has a hard time making sense of his own style. In his younger years, he was famous for ripping off three- and four-hour shows, and can still go long on occasion. His stories can ramble -- he has started an anecdote at one show only to finish it several shows later, sometimes in a different venue, by audience request.

He insists that just minutes before he goes onstage, he has no idea what he'll talk about or how he'll pull off a funny show. "It starts a couple of days, usually, before the show," he says. "It's started already with this one. I have no idea. I can't remember what I do for a living. I have to actually go and look at things, maybe get a tape and listen to the last time I performed."

Connolly's freewheeling style contrasted with the more carefully crafted sketch comedy offered by Monty Python, England's other comedic landmark in the '70s. Young comics took notice, among them a teenage Eddie Izzard, who is in the lineup with Connolly for July's Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal.

"I remember when I got into stand-up thinking I'd really like to be able to do that thing that Billy does, which is that sort of endless long chat," Izzard says. "It feels like a chat, as opposed to a tirade or lecture, or some political comics can get into a rant and say, 'this is how you should think.' "

Despite his popularity abroad, Connolly isn't quite as well known in the States. He can sell out stand-up shows in New York and Los Angeles, but he's more closely identified with his stint on the '80s sitcom "Head of the Class" or movies like "Mrs. Brown," "The Last Samurai," or "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" (he also plays a zombie in the film "Fido," to be released this summer). "Most people call me 'that guy,' " he says. " 'Oh, you're that guy.' That's right, that's me, that guy."

Not that he minds. He enjoys his superstardom in the UK, where he counts both royalty and his former welding co-workers as friends, and his lower profile in Los Angeles, where he and his wife, comedian-turned-psychologist Pamela Stephenson, spend most of their time. "I would say to people who want the fame, the weatherman's famous, as well," he says. "Examine your soul and see if that's really what you want."

His influence in the States is more subtle. Local comic Ken Reid first saw Connolly on "Head of the Class" and learned to appreciate him a bit more when he lived in London for a time. "I think if anything I do is specifically influenced by Connolly it would be the sort of attitude of taking comedy out of traditional venues and traditional set up punch-line styles, sort of approaching it more like music," he says.

Connolly, who turns 65 in November, has found peace in his personal life. He's conquered problems with alcohol and come to terms with his childhood abuse. But he hasn't lost the fire onstage. "It doesn't seem to be happening," he says. "I've mellowed when it comes to me, what people think of me. I really couldn't give a [expletive]. You know, after 50, you don't give a diddly."

Don't expect Connolly to give up the stage any time soon. He's long been against retirement, for performers and the working class alike. "I think nobody should retire," he says. "Nobody at all. We're losing all the wise people by making them retire and replacing them with people who don't know what they're doing. And I think it's a good idea to have something to do when you wake up in the morning."