Paul Shaffer is a fascinating guy. At once both nerdy and cool, he has lived a musician’s dream, playing continually and successfully, backing up everyone who is anyone, and spending what seems like every waking moment immersed in music.
His autobiography, We’ll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives, is a fabulous romp through thirty or more years of his life, from his time as a young man growing up in Thunder Bay, where his lawyer father looked past his obvious talent on the family piano at Bar Mitzvahs and expected him to pursue a career in law, up to his long-time gig as musical director of David Letterman’s show, and beyond.
The audiobook is even better than the book itself, because Paul himself narrates it. His tone of voice carries with it a certain tone of disbelief, as if he can’t actually believe all of this is happening to him.
He describes coming to Toronto for the first time, as a student at U of T, finding work as a piano player for a local strip club, before hooking up with the cast of GodSpell that gave birth to the cast of Saturday Night Live, SCTV, and many other comedy legends.
He is the living embodiment of Samuel Goldwyn’s famous quote, “the harder I work, the luckier I get,” since every job he got seemed to lead to another bigger, better one.
He was the musical director for SNL; he was in Spinal Tap; he was almost an original Blues Brother (Belushi dropped him in a jealous snit for his collaborations with Gilda Radner), he busked with Miles Davis and David Foster in Scrooged, and of course, he penned “It’s Raining Men.”
His biography is a great adventure story in rock music history, a definite good read. Another great Canadian delivering great entertainment.
The Shaffer Move
As a performing musician myself, I always admired the way Paul pulled the Letterman Show band together for nice tight endings. Even though every member of the band was already a hotter-than-hot session player, it’s still a challenge to prepare and play tunes for each individual show. A half day’s rehearsal is not much to go on.
Watching them cruise effortlessly through tunes that could jam on much longer than the commercial breaks allowed, Paul would always pull the band towards a conclusion by raising his arm.
Now I know he is not the only band leader in history to ever do this, in fact I’m sure they all do. But the way he did it, night after night with such cool authority made it easy for me to refer to it as the Shaffer Move, when explaining it to the bands I work with.
Shaffer at Sea
I am always happy and proud to see Paul appearing with other music legends. He’s the go-to guy who never tries to put the spotlight on himself, but puts it on the music instead. Case in point: here’s a great video of a Paul Shaffer Super Jam – a 2019 cruise ship gig called Keep the Blues Alive, featuring Joe Bonamassa, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Samantha Fish, Jimmy Hall, Walter Trout, Anton Fig and many more. It’s a fabulous jam, and Paul pulls it all together.
Another great Canadian music success story. Paul Shaffer, ladies and gentlemen!
Steve Prentice Guitarist 