We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives: A Swingin' Showbiz Saga

by Paul Shaffer, David Ritz Narrated by Paul Shaffer

Overview

From Paul Shaffer, lifelong music junkie, hipster, and longtime leader of David Letterman's band, comes a candid, endearing, hilarious, and star-studded memoir of a life in-and love of-show business.How does a kid go from a remote Canadian town at the tip of Lake Superior to the bright lights of Broadway and a gig leading the band on Letterman? This book is Paul Shaffer's answer to that question. From playing seedy strip joints in Toronto, to his first legitimate job out of college-which found him working with future stars (and friends) Gilda Radner, Martin Short, and Eugene Levy-to being first musical director of the nascent Saturday Night Live and helping to form the Blues Brothers, to being onstage every night with Dave and playing with the greatest musicians of our time, Shaffer has lived the ultimate showbiz life. Now, in this hilarious, entertaining, and candid memoir-in which he dishes on everyone from John Belushi and Jerry Lewis to Mel Gibson and Britney Spears-Paul gives us the full behind-the-scenes story of his life, from banging out pop tunes on the piano at the age of twelve to leading the band every night at the Sullivan Theater.

Editorial Reviews

Peter Keepnews

…tremendous fun…mostly We'll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives is about music. Shaffer's love of comedy and comedians shines through in his stories of friends like Martin Short…and of course Letterman, with whom he has worked since 1982…Diplomatic rather than dishy…We'll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives may disappoint readers looking for juicy celebrity gossip. But it will delight those looking for persuasive evidence that making music for a living is every bit as cool as it seems.
—The New York Times

Kirkus Reviews

Late Night with David Letterman veteran recalls his storybook rise from strip-club pianist to musical director of the "World's Most Dangerous Band."Shaffer and co-author Ritz (Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography, 2009, etc.) deliver a passionate, racy account of how the Ontario-born musician's love for raunchy R&B piano set him on a much different path than his well-to-do lawyer father envisioned. Although Shaffer's parents were hip partygoers, they were nevertheless products of the patriarchal Eisenhower Age. After reluctantly studying sociology in college while gigging in local bands, Shaffer came to an agreement with his father: If he wasn't able to make a living from music within a year, then he would attend law school. Armed with a gift for improvisation and a love for cover tunes, Shaffer worked his way through Toronto dive bars and strip clubs and soon landed a gig as keyboardist for the musical Godspell in the early 1970s. His seemingly effortless rise to industry royalty follows a familiar right-place-at-the-right-time narrative. After toiling on a series of minor Broadway projects, Shaffer got a call from an old Toronto buddy, Howard Shore, the musical director for the Saturday Night Live band. Suddenly he became the hit show's keyboardist and a resident at New York's romantically gritty rock-star haunt, the Gramercy Hotel. Though the name-dropping comes thick and fast throughout, to his credit Shaffer never completely settles into the easy rhythms of shallow celebrity-driven anecdote. His reminisces of playing alongside the likes of Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, James Brown and other personal heroes are usually witty and reverent-although the out-of-the-blue chapter on hisfascination with Jerry Lewis's telethons is simply bizarre. As with most celebrity memoirs, the most entertaining bits of the author's personal history are found on the road to success, not at the destination-in fact, his longtime stint at Letterman is barely mentioned. Shaffer's ingratiating hepcat charm saves what could have been just another celebrity's autobiographical ego trip.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171935948
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/06/2009
Edition description:	Unabridged

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