Howard Stern doesn’t often talk about Artie Lange, but in a new interview, he says he’s “sad” about his former “Howard Stern Show” sidekick.
“I choose my words about Artie carefully, because I love him,” Stern, 65, told the New York Times Magazine.
Lange, 51, who lives in Hoboken and grew up in Union, has long struggled with drug addiction, moving in and out of hospitals and rehab programs. He’s currently serving four years of probation after pleading guilty to heroin possession in 2018 following a State Police arrest in 2017.
The comedian was jailed for almost two weeks after he was found to have violated his probation for the second time in less than two months, testing positive for cocaine at a court appearance in December and again in January. He’s now in a drug court rehab program.
“What’s happening with Artie makes me very sad," Stern told the magazine. “We’ve lost touch, and that’s my doing. I got my fingers crossed for the guy. And it wasn’t a clean break. It was many years of wanting Artie to get help.”
Lange, who joined the “The Howard Stern Show” in 2001, was asked to take a break from the show in 2009, in the wake of a drug binge. Not long afterward, Lange was hospitalized following a suicide attempt in which he drank bleach and plunged a kitchen knife into his stomach several times. His mother found him passed out in his Hoboken home. It was Lange’s second suicide attempt after another following a 1995 bender.
Ultimately, the show and Stern cut ties with Lange, who has talked about Stern’s efforts to help him.
“I know that a lot of fans want me to talk about Artie and feel it’s a cop-out for me not to," Stern continued. “I’ll take that. I don’t want to do anything that would rock his boat. I get sad talking about Artie. He was a tremendous contributor. But we had to move on.”
Lange, who has also been hospitalized for complications of diabetes, had to undergo nasal surgery because his septum has been demolished from years of snorting cocaine and heroin.
“I really have to stop myself from listening to the bad voice," Lange told NJ Advance Media in 2018. "It takes willpower.”
Lange said his time with Howard Stern defines his career since it was the time in which he gained many longtime fans.
“The relationship radio fans have with people on the radio, especially in the morning, is so different from any other fan in any other medium,” he told NJ Advance Media. “You go to work with them ... Howard wanted to make a guy in traffic in Missouri going to his sh** job happy. That’s all he wanted to do.”
“I had crazy loser stories for being a crazy loser for a long time,” Lange said. “They looked at me as someone who was one of them and got lucky,” he says of “Stern” fans.
Lange went on to say Stern once offered an explanation for why listeners liked him. “'It’s ‘cause you’re genuine,'" he says Stern told him. "'You wouldn’t know how to be phony. You’d be bad at it.’”
The Jersey comedian appeared alongside Pete Holmes in the third season of the HBO series “Crashing” before the show was canceled in March. He had been a recurring character Judd Apatow-produced series since it premiered in 2017. An episode in the second season was dedicated to Lange’s experiences with addiction.
In April, Lange’s Twitter account posted a clip of him that seemed to show him working a garbage truck route.
“You’re going to keep this quiet, right, I’m sure,” Lange said to the person taking the video as he hopped back on the side of the truck and rode away down the street.
“Absolutely,” the person said. “No one will ever know.”
“I love you!” Lange said, flashing a peace sign. “Take care.”
Have a tip? Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
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