Although he’s known to many simply as the eccentric bespectacled guy who serves as the band leader for the CBS Orchestra on The Late Show with David Letterman, Paul Shaffer’s career has been a wide and varied one, taking him from the position of musical director for the Toronto production of “Godspell” in 1972 all the way to being the musical director and producer for the annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony…and, trust me, you don’t get a gig like that without some serious music street cred. Shaffer has detailed many of his experiences – with the help of David Ritz – in his newly-released autobiography, We’ll Be Here For The Rest Of Our Lives, a light and breezy trip through his life and times in which he chats about Saturday Night Live, This is Spinal Tap, and many, many more topics which would appeal to the average Popdose reader. And what luck: although his press schedule was decidedly rigorous, your pals here at Popdose managed to score ten minutes to chat with Mr. Shaffer about his book and some of the topics contained therein.
It’s great to talk to you, Paul. I’m a big fan.
Hi! Thank you. How are you?
I’m great. I just finished your book yesterday, and it’s fantastic.
Thank you!
Now, how long was the idea of doing an autobiography gestating?
Oh, you know, I’ve wanted to do one for years. Some ten years ago, I got a book deal and tried to do it. I wrote three stories up, and I just never had time to go back to it. So this time, when I was re-introduced to David Ritz, who is the A-list celebrity biographer, just a couple of years ago, he said, “If you ever want to do a book”… I thought, “Well, that’s the way to do it: do it with somebody, and that way, he has the responsibility of turning it in on time.” And we did! But we had fun together, the two of us, and he…besides doing all of the music biographies, like Ray Charles and Smokey Robinson, he also did Don Rickles. So I knew he had me covered. And he was able to get my voice down and, of course, we worked well together as well. It really was co-writing.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecution will prove that Eric Clapton has committed numerous crimes against rock, namely:
• Making music way more derivative than legally permissible for a rock god
• Exploiting fans by releasing milquetoast pap
• Squandering monstrous talent
Clapton is not God, contrary to the Islington graffito proclaiming it during his tenure in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. He is, however, an excellent blues mimic, taking compositions like Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads,” William Bell and Booker T. Jones’ “Born Under a Bad Sign,” and for Mayall, Freddie King’s “Hideaway.” He can derive like few others on earth, in a musical milieu where creatively covering other compositions is the best way to connect with the audience.
Yet great blues musicians contribute at least one or two original compositions–or the definitive interpretation of someone else’s song–to the canon of blues standards. B.B. King has “The Thrill Is Gone” and “Every Day I Have the Blues.” Junior Wells, “Messin’ With the Kid.” John Lee Hooker, “Boogie Chillen’,” “Boom Boom” and “One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer.”
Clapton’s got nothing. “Layla” is known for its innovative coda written by Domino Jim Gordon and a legendary main riff written and co-performed by Duane Allman. “Sunshine of Your Love” was co-written by all three members of Cream. Its undisputedly legendary guitar solo opens not with an original Clapton-improvised phrase, but the melody from “Blue Moon.”
Left to his own devices, Clapton churns out total dreck. There’s a lot to choose from; I’ll keep it brief by offering the “greatest whiffs” from three different decades: (more…)
After the rise of rock and roll, jazz, and jazz guitar especially, has carried a penumbra of snooty affectation. If you take the time to learn how to play over “Giant Steps,” and learn four different voicings for a Bb13(#11) chord, why would you care about the pedantic, pentatonic noodling of Eric Clapton? That’s kid’s stuff. If someone is really into jazz guitar, they don’t like rock and roll.
I’ve always thought that was crap. I love jazz, and rock, and more or less every other genre of music. That jazz is more complex, and requires more of the player than the other, does not invalidate other genres.
Case in point? Mike Stern. Stern is one of the best-known jazz guitarists currently working, but few have taken better advantage of the genre-busting power of the electric guitar. He has played with everyone from Miles Davis and Joe Henderson to Roy Hargrove and the Yellowjackets, but he has never turned his nose up at rock and blues music, and on his latest release, Big Neighborhood, on Heads Up records, his original compositions run the gamut from rock to funk to jazz, and feature a star-studded guest list from Steve Vai to Randy Brecker to Medeski, Martin & Wood. (more…)
You know the joke, “It might look like i’m doing nothing, but at the cellular level I’m really quite busy”? Bruce Hornsby’s post-1990 career is a little like that. As far as a lot of people are concerned, Hornsby may as well have quit making music after his last release with the Range, 1990’s A Night on the Town, but to those who have kept listening, that album only marks the spot where things really started to get interesting. From 1993’s Harbor Lights on, Hornsby has moved steadily away from the tasteful piano pop that made him a star, indulging a wanderlust that has been reflected both off his records (during his stint with the Grateful Dead, for example) and on. Along the way, he’s worked with a long and varied list of virtuosos, including Pat Metheny and Bela Fleck, and cut an eclectic swath with his albums, dabbling in programmed beats (2002’s Big Swing Face), bluegrass (2007’s Ricky Skaggs & Bruce Hornsby), and jazz (Camp Meeting, recorded with Christian McBride and Jack DeJohnette). Even though he’ll forever be popularly identified with “The Way It Is” and “Mandolin Rain,” those songs really only begin to scratch the surface of Bruce Hornsby’s music.
This is not to suggest that Hornsby’s more recent music is necessarily more difficult than the hits you remember, or even that he’s above copping to commercial pressures once in awhile: his last pop album, 2004’s Halcyon Days, was a piano-dominated affair, featuring plenty of radio-friendly songs and guest appearances from Eric Clapton, Elton John, and Sting. It was a slow pitch down the middle for Columbia — one which the label, predictably, barely managed to turn into a bunt. Now on the Verve Forecast roster — and having tamed his more idiosyncratic impulses, at least for now — Hornsby returns to the pop fold with the 12-track Levitate. (more…)
Casual observers of this series have probably wondered, more than once, why I’m bothering to track those rock-era singles that, like a dolphin rejected from Sea World, couldn’t quite jump through the brass ring. After all, who really cares about chart placements? And isn’t Number Two practically as good as Number One, particularly when everybody’s making so much money? But if there’s one decade that proves why this stuff is vitally important … to somebody, at least … it’s the ’90s.
To put it simply, the Billboard Hot 100 charts of that decade were messed up. (I put it somewhat less than simply in a long-winded column last year.) The pop radio format split in two, resulting in charts that rarely reflected anybody’s actual listening experience. Major labels stopped manufacturing singles for many artists (mostly white ones) in an effort to sell more albums, which resulted in huge radio hits that never qualified for the Hot 100. The advent of precise technology for measuring retail sales and radio airplay resulted in singles topping the charts and staying … and staying … and staying. And as I discussed last week, superstars like Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and Boyz II Men were so desperate to top the charts, and keep up with the competition, that they conspired with their labels to withhold the retail releases of their new singles until the songs peaked at radio, then flooded the marketplace with discounted product to ensure #1 chart debuts.
As a result of these and other, more random developments, the #2 singles of the ’90s were a fascinating bunch. There were huge hits that were simply blocked by huger ones, and great songs that stalled behind ones whose popularity now leaves us scratching our heads. There were oldies that re-emerged after decades, and the two longest-running chart hits of all time (for the moment). So away we go – and, as always, at the end of the column I’ll list some additional singles that were stranded at third base so we can argue which ones most deserved to score.
11. (tie) “Right Here, Right Now,”Jesus Jones; “P.A.S.S.I.O.N.,” Rhythm Syndicate; “Every Heartbeat,” Amy Grant; “It Ain’t Over Til It’s Over,” Lenny Kravitz; and “Fading Like a Flower (Every Time You Leave),”Roxette. What do these wildly disparate singles have in common? They all were blocked from the top spot during the summer of ’91 by the same song, Bryan Adams’ treacly Robin Hood anthem “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You.” (It was the first of three Adams soundtrack singles – all of them god-awful, in my opinion – to top the charts during the ’90s.) Adams spent seven weeks at #1 while holding off five different competitors – the highest number of second-place finishers thwarted by the same single since Percy Faith’s “Theme from A Summer Place” was #1 in 1960. The only one of the five to earn a second week at #2 was – surprise – “P.A.S.S.I.O.N.” In honor of that fact – and because its video is the only one of the five to feature fire (fire! fire!), scantily clad dancers and an atrocious white-boy rap — I’m happy to showcase it here. (more…)
In part two of this flashback edition of Vin Scelsa’s Live at Lunch, singer-songwriter Jules Shear talks about the R&B inspiration for “If She Knew What She Wants,” how he feels about artists licensing their songs for commercials, his romantic relationships with singer-songwriters Pal Shazar and Aimee Mann, and his role in the creation of MTV Unplugged in the late ’80s. In between the bursts of candid conversation, Scelsa spins songs by Cyndi Lauper and Johnny Cash, a foot-stomping cover of Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin’” courtesy of B.B. King and Eric Clapton, and a cut from Shear’s first band, the Funky Kings.
However, the biggest surprise of the entire June 28, 2000, Live at Lunch broadcast is Shear’s speaking voice. Suffice to say it’s not what you’d expect if you’ve ever heard “Steady,” his sole entry on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (though Lauper’s cover of Shear’s “All Through the Night” reached #5 in ‘84). My own personal reaction is best summed up by the following verse from “Stereo,” the opening track on Pavement’s 1997 album Brighten the Corners:
What about the voice of Geddy Lee?
How did it get so high?
I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy.
(I know him, and he does.)
Then you’re my fact-checkin’ cuz.
January 1976, Hollywood, California – The first time I saw Paul Kossoff play was back in 1969. Free were opening for Blind Faith on their first (and only) US tour. They were appearing at the 17,000-seat Inglewood Forum, a huge arena where the Los Angeles Lakers played. This was years before I started writing and I really didn’t know much about guitar players. I didn’t remember too much from the show but I did recall Kossoff having this really aggressive rhythm style and a simple melodic approach to his soloing. You could hear the Clapton connection in his approach.
I did learn that Paul was absolutely enamored with Eric’s playing. When I finally met Koss about seven years later, he couldn’t stop his gushing.
“The first real inspiration I had to get into it was seeing Eric Clapton with John Mayall at a small club. I didn’t know who he was or what had gone down, but here’s all these people yelling, ‘God, God!’ He really caught my attention and then I wanted to play.”
Paul finally met his hero on that Blind Faith tour. During our interview in 1976, he also told me of that momentous meeting.
“Clapton came up to me and asked ‘How the hell do you do that?’ talking about my vibrato. “And I said, ‘You must be joking!’” (more…)
There is really no rhyme or reason for the way these things go, but lately I’ve noticed a very definite increase in the amount of people who are discovering, or rediscovering, Traffic. Maybe it’s the dearth of great music, maybe it’s just their time, but in the last few months I’ve had a number of people tell me how great Traffic was, as if it were a revelation.
First of all, when you think back on it, nearly everything that Steve Winwood has been involved in for the last 40 plus years has had something to recommend it. Whether it was his start as a 15 year-old in the Spencer Davis Group, his playing on the classic Jimi Hendrix album Electric Ladyland, his brief stint in Blind Faith, his solo career, or right up to his recent tour with Eric Clapton, the guy has been, and is, a paragon of musical virtue. But throughout all the years, it was with Traffic that he had his finest moments. I would make the argument that Traffic’s music stands up better today than that of nearly any other band of the era.
By 1973, Traffic was a very different band than the one that had gotten together in 1967. Gone for the third time was founding member Dave Mason, and original drummer Jim Capaldi had begun a solo career, though he plays percussion on Shoot Out. Gone too were Jim Gordon and Ric Grech who had joined the band in 1971. They were replaced by Roger Hawkins and David Hood of the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio house band. Together with sax/flute player Chris Wood, and percussionist Rebop, the reconfigured band set about to record their sixth studio album in Jamaica. It was the followup to 1971’s Top Ten U.S. hit The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys. A short time later, after releasing one last album, Traffic was gone for good. (more…)
There was a time — maybe 25 years ago — when mentioning Phil Collins in the pantheon of frickin’ awesome drummers was greeted with thoughtful nods. Nowadays? Not so much. The reaction you’ll probably get from folks who don’t know how good Phil is behind the kit would run the gamut from a snicker to a sneer. In a way, I don’t blame them. After all, if you look at Phil’s creative output since the mid-’90s, it’s a story of an aging rocker whose slide into adult contemporary sludge is a bit tragic. Tragic because the ballad-heavy output of hits Phil produced eclipses the complexity of his earlier work that demonstrates what a talented guy he was on the drums. Phil’s been around long enough to know that what makes for a great drummer is not flash, but knowing when to add that bit of spice to a song that will really make it shine.
My good friend Scott Malchus and I are both drummers. Because we both spend (and spent) hours in the woodshed and basement behind the traps working on our chops, it doesn’t take huge leaps of logic to know that when listening to music, our ears are finely tuned to what the drummer is doing.
Scott suggested we do a mix that highlights Phil Collins’ work as a session drummer, and I have to say that after re-listening to these songs, there are some mighty fine drum moments in this mix.
Ted: By the early 80s, some hard rock icons like Robert Plant revamped their musical styles for more radio-friendly songs. If there’s a good one word description of Phil work on “Pledge Pin” it would be “sly.” On the surface you do hear the major accent of the snare on the 2 and the 4, but crank the song up and you’ll be treated to a lot of subtle and complex minor accents and quirky fills that never detract from the groove. This is by far one of my favorite non-Genesis tracks where Phil shows he can kick some serious ass behind the kit. (more…)
![MikeStern_photo1[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/MikeStern_photo11-682x1024.jpg "MikeStern_photo1[1]")
After the rise of rock and roll, jazz, and jazz guitar especially, has carried a penumbra of snooty affectation. If you take the time to learn how to play over “Giant Steps,” and learn four different voicings for a Bb13(#11) chord, why would you care about the pedantic, pentatonic noodling of Eric Clapton? That’s kid’s stuff. If someone is really into jazz guitar, they don’t like rock and roll.
Casual observers of 
(1988)
(1995)
(1989)
(1993)
(1994)
(1994)
(1988)
(1987)
(1991)
(1989)
(1995)
In 
January 1976, Hollywood, California – The first time I saw Paul Kossoff play was back in 1969. Free were opening for Blind Faith on their first (and only) US tour. They were appearing at the 17,000-seat Inglewood Forum, a huge arena where the Los Angeles Lakers played. This was years before I started writing and I really didn’t know much about guitar players. I didn’t remember too much from the show but I did recall Kossoff having this really aggressive rhythm style and a simple melodic approach to his soloing. You could hear the Clapton connection in his approach.
There is really no rhyme or reason for the way these things go, but lately I’ve noticed a very definite increase in the amount of people who are discovering, or rediscovering, Traffic. Maybe it’s the dearth of great music, maybe it’s just their time, but in the last few months I’ve had a number of people tell me how great Traffic was, as if it were a revelation.
