We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives (39 page)

I noticed that, driving to the church in L.A., Belzer seemed to be taking a strangely circuitous route through streets lined with strip clubs.

“Why are we going this way, Richard?” I asked.

“Just take a look at the signs. These are the people who loved Sam best.”

It was then I noticed one tribute after another:

“Totally Nude! Sam, we’ll miss you.”

“Naked from Top to Bottom! R.I.P. Sam Kinison.”

“Stripped from the Hip! Big, Busty and Topless! Sam, you were the best.”

“Split beaver! Shaved! Goodbye, Sam.”

On April 8, 1993, my wife, Cathy, gave birth to our precious daughter, Victoria Lily. The day after the birth I was on the air, accepting Dave’s congratulations and commenting on his remark that “Victoria Lily is a lovely name.”

“Thank you, Dave,” I said. “‘Lily’ was my maternal grandmother’s name, and Victoria …well, she’s a stripper I once dated.”

Naturally I was jesting, but now I wonder whether, even as an infant, Victoria was ingesting her father’s humor just as I ingested my parents’ humor. Some fifteen years later, as a beautiful and bright teenager, Victoria was walking with me on Central Park South, when we happened upon an art gallery that seemed to call us inside. We focused on a small bronze sculpture of an elephant. We noticed that its surface had the texture of a hide.

“It was crafted in Africa,” explained the proprietor. “That coating is taken from the actual mud in which the elephant bathed. The artist used the mud as the final surface treatment.”

“How much is it?” I asked.

“Ten thousand,” was the answer.

I thought about it, but passed.

Once we were back on the street, the lovely Victoria asked, “Why would anyone pay ten thousand dollars for an elephant coated in its own shit?”

My beloved son Will was born January 21, 1999. He is a young chess master as well as a budding musical talent—on trumpet, on the shofar at High Holy Day services, and, along with sister Victoria, on the Rock Band video game. Will is our second exceptional child.

The other day, my children and I were discussing their first words.

“Mine were, ‘I want this,’” said Victoria.

Will looked up from his Game Boy and slyly quipped, “Mine was ‘photosynthesis.’”

One household, three comics, and all under the capable command of the sainted Cathy, who steers the Shaffer ship with frightening efficiency and undying love.

“Family is everything,” I once said to my daughter Victoria.

“Oh, Dad,” she said, “you’re such a bullshitter. You know you’d rather be laughing with Belzer, playing with John Mayer, or staying up late with Marty Short than driving me and Will to school.”

“No, Victoria,” I said, doing my best Tony Soprano imitation, “family is everything.”

Between the birth of Victoria and Will, I got a great gig—musical director of the closing ceremony of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. I look back on the event as a career highlight. The only
problem was that during the opening segment of the evening’s program I was nearly crushed to death. Dig:

It happened when Gloria Estefan, Tito Puente, Sheila E., and I were on a float riding around the inside perimeter of the stadium. Gloria was wailing away, singing out her fabulous “Conga” hit. The crowd was going wild. I was relishing the moment, when suddenly hordes of people broke through the barricades, rushed our float, and tried to climb aboard, tilting the thing precariously to one side. I had no idea what was happening. My mind started racing:
Could it be a gang of red-neck Southerners going after the Jew leading the Latin band?
Whatever it was, I found myself throwing these strangers off the float, using my hands and feet to beat back the invaders. As the float started to tip over, I envisioned the end of my young life. I saw the obit in tomorrow’s
New York Times:
“Mob Kills Gloria Estefan, Tito Puente, Sheila E. and Accompanist.”

Thanks to a gracious God, though, the float stabilized and the eager assailants were beaten back. Turned out they were Olympic athletes who rushed the field too early and, overly excited, decided they needed to join us on the float. By pushing them off I averted the first of several near disasters.

The second involved the architect of rock and roll, Little Richard. One of the great aspects of this event was the free rein given me by the producers. I could book anyone. Richard was high on my list. We decided to prerecord his vocal the Friday afternoon before the ceremony.

“There’s only one thing, Paul,” Richard said. “I need to be out of here by 5 p.m. It’s
Shabbos
, and I’m an Orthodox Jew. Have been for years. After sundown, I do no work.”

As it turned out, the session went long. It took Richard a
while to get into his normal manic mode. When he did find his groove and was ready to prerecord his vocal, it was already 5.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he told me, “but I’m out of here.”

I was prepared. I had looked up the official sunset time in the Atlanta almanac. I brought out the book and pointed to that day’s date. “Sunset will occur at 5:21,” it read.

Richard couldn’t help but smile. “Baby, you’re a better Jew than me.”

In those next twenty-one minutes, we captured a brilliant Little Richard vocal.

The excitement built when the producers said that Stevie Wonder wanted to participate and would soon be calling. A little while later, I was called to the phone. On the other end I heard a voice that resembled a news anchor, in, say, Des Moines, Iowa. The intonation was white as rice. The voice started talking about special lyrics to Stevie’s birthday song written for Martin Luther King.

“Are you representing Stevie Wonder?” I asked the voice.

“Man, I am Stevie Wonder,” said Stevie Wonder.

The next day Stevie showed up with this new set of lyrics. He thought we should do it “We Are the World” style, with the full cast taking turns. I liked the idea.

“Steveland,” I said, using his real name, “there’s a line here that I’m not sure I understand.”

“Which one, Paul?” he wanted to know.

“The one where you wrote, ‘Before Olympiads become an illusion.’ I’m not sure I know what that means.”

“Give me a break, man,” said Steveland, “I just wrote the shit this afternoon.”

Ambiguous lyrics or not, Wonder was a huge success. The concert was tremendous—B.B. King, Richard, Gloria, Sheila,
the Pointer Sisters, and Faith Hill. Faith wanted to do “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

“Great idea,” I said, “but let’s do it with a white gospel group and go for a Jordanaires sound,” referencing the vocalists who often backed Elvis.

“I don’t care if they’re Martians,” said Faith, “as long as they sing their asses off.”

Everyone sang his or her respective ass off.

But how to conclude such an evening of spectacular singing?

Al Green testifying about “Love and Happiness.”

The post-concert was nearly as much fun as the concert itself. Stevie asked me to dinner, where, for our own entertainment, we played what he called the Song Game.

Stevie started a song, and I had to continue with another, thematically linked to the first one. It got tricky, but it also got funky. At one point I picked up a Melodica—a wind instrument that has a keyboard—and accompanied Steveland as he sang Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say.” At the conclusion, every diner in the establishment rose and gave us a thunderous reception.

If I might borrow Sammy Davis’s 1984 description of
Late Night with David Letterman
, the entire Olympics affair was “a gas and a giggle.”

I’ve been given the opportunity to host Letterman a few times when Dave couldn’t make it. The most memorable was the first in 2003. The writers worked overtime to cook up material, and so did I. I put on my pinstriped suit and hit the ground running.

“This is fabulous,” I said. “What were the odds of
me
being available tonight? I usually spend this part of the show staring at Dave’s ass. But this is a new angle. Now I can cut
myself
off. Seriously though, did you see the Academy Awards last night? Joan Rivers showed up in a bulletproof face. Hey, I hear Monica Lewinsky is getting her own reality show. The twist is that every week a guy is voted off
her
. It’s going to be called
Joe Blow
. As you know, I’m Dave’s sidekick or, as some prefer, Dave’s whipping boy. And even though I am a celebrity—whatever the hell that means—and even though I am treated royally, it really doesn’t matter how many people I hire to say that I’m terrific. Tonight I stand alone. Yes, it’s lonely in this spotlight. The pressure’s on and it’s time to dig down deep and ask myself the toughest of questions…”

At this moment, the band broke in with “What Kind of Fool Am I?” and I sang, Sinatra-style, a set of special lyrics:

Another treat that evening was the presence of the great Mike Smith, my substitute on keyboards. He had been lead singer and organist for the Dave Clark Five, the band that rivaled the Beatles during the British Invasion and a group I loved dearly. When they appeared on Sullivan—as they had dozens of times—and I saw Mike standing at the Vox Continental organ, I vowed to never sit again. To this day I play standing proud—all because of Mike Smith. That night Mike did a terrific version of “Because,” a ballad Cathy and I consider
our
song. It was a beautiful experience and may have even gotten Mike to reexamine the possibility of touring the United States. He saw that we, his true fans, had not forgotten him.

Then tragedy struck. Repairing a fence outside his home in Spain, Mike suffered a freak accident: he took a fall and landed on his head. His spinal cord was damaged. Mike was paralyzed from the waist down. He was flown to England and admitted to a hospital specializing in spinal injuries.

I knew I had to do something for Mike because musically Mike had done so much for me. When I learned that the Zombies were touring North America, an idea came to me: Why not a British Invasion tribute to Mike Smith? I booked B.B. King’s club on Forty-second Street and started pursuing other acts. Miraculously, Peter and Gordon, who hadn’t appeared together in thirty-seven years, agreed to perform. So did Denny Laine from the Moody Blues and Billy J. Kramer. Will Lee’s Fab Faux, the most spot-on Beatles band on either side of the Pond, signed on as the opening act. And then we were set.

And then we were sunk. A plane accident at the Toronto airport grounded all flights, including the one for the Zombies. Five hours before the show, they were stuck in Canada with no way out. I was in a panic, and when I mentioned this to Letterman, Dave felt my pain. “Give me a minute,” he said. “I have an idea.” Next thing I knew, Dave had arranged for the group to fly in from a private airport on a private jet. As hard as I tried to pay for it myself, my boss wouldn’t take a dime.

The show was halfway over at B.B. King’s when I was able to tell the audience, “The Zombies have landed! They
will
be here!”

And, boy, were they ever! Rock and roll fanatics are still talking about the evening, especially the grand finale when we did an all-star version of Mike Smith’s great classic “Glad All Over.”

After all this, I wanted to see Mike. I wanted to hand him a copy of the DVD of the concert. I decided to fly over to England and present it to him personally. I did it because I figured that, after putting on that benefit, I’d earned the right to a trip overseas and a visit with my hero.

I landed in London and took the train to the hospital an hour
north of the city. Mike was in good spirits. Miami Steve Van Zandt had given him an electric wheelchair. He had enough motion in his hand to manipulate the controls. His breathing was labored—he was on a ventilator during the evening hours—but he could make himself understood. He greeted me warmly. I said I had come to give him a copy of the DVD.