With an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music and a magnetic ear, Paul Shaffer broke into late-night television with "Saturday Night Live" in the mid-'70s and has been laying down our cultural soundtrack ever since.
David Letterman’s longtime musical director, and author of the new memoir “We’ll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives,” refused comment, for legal reasons, on his boss' current troubles, but he did talk with Eric Estrin about touring topless bars and missile bases, hanging with the Canadian showbiz mafia, and the secret to playing rock ’n roll piano
I graduated from college at the University of Toronto, and I made a deal with my parents that I would take a year to try to get into the music business. They would rather that I had a real profession, but yet, they loved show business just as much as any other Jewish family, and they were secretly thrilled, I think, when I said I was gonna do this for a year. So I spent the year playing around Toronto -- weddings, topless bars ...
I had taken private piano lessons as a kid, which also involved the theory of music, but when I heard rock 'n' roll, it slayed me, and I started immediately trying to figure out things by ear. So while I was taking lessons I was also developing my ear, figuring out all these tunes by the Four Seasons and you know, the Ronettes … everything that I loved on the radio, and I loved it all.
I did a strange tour of Canadian missile bases once in the middle of winter, going up to northern Quebec. It was freezing, you know, and I'm playing these dance-show kind of things. I met a girl on that tour, a dancer who was going to audition for the Toronto company of "Godspell." I went with her to accompany her at the audition.
Stephen Schwartz, who was the composer, heard me play a tune from his show, and he said, "Hey, let me talk to that piano player," and he asked me to play the rest of the audition for him because he liked the way I played. At the end of the day he said, "Could you get a band together and conduct the show?" And I was in show business!
That was certainly my big break, and it absolutely came just because of my piano playing. It's not like I had much style at that time. I had one pair of jeans and I didn't even wash them, I just wore them. It was just the fact that I was a rock piano player, and the music he wrote was rock, so it was a perfect fit.
I hit the keys hard. That's what he liked.
The company up there, the Toronto "Godspell," was quite phenomenal and a marvelous confluence of talent, all of whom are still my close and dear friends. They included Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, Andrea Martin.
