Forty years after 'Late Night With David Letterman' debuted, paulshaffer reflects on the show's early years, plus his fallout with John Belushi, his rap song with Will Smith, and more
Paul Shaffer Photo: Andrew Toth/FilmMagic Forty years after Late Night With David Letterman began broadcasting from NBC Studio 6A at 30 Rock, the show is rightly hailed as a classic. And taken on their own, Paul Shaffer’s 33 years as Letterman’s musical director and bandleader would make him one of the most iconic men in late-night history. But his legacy runs far beyond that into nearly every crevice of the comedy and music worlds.
In the ’70s. The late, great Howard Johnson, the musician, who we just lost last year, was in the house band at SNL on tuba and bari sax. He had a crazy idea around ’78 about a special about tubas. He was going to sell the NBC network on it: Tuba Special. He had a diagram of how the big band would look — all tubas, all pointing from stage left to the right, except for this certain kind of European tuba that points the opposite way. That was the main thing he had except for the host.
He didn’t get back until the taping had already started. With the band — my brand-new personal quartet — we learn “Let’s Get Physical” and don’t really know what we’re doing. And he really just improvised that whole scene — had never sung it before, never sung it with the band. That was our first show. I said, “My God, you’ve really got to be loose with this show.” That never changed.There was a lot of experimentation. Sometimes it bombed, sometimes successful.
Shortly after I got to New York, an actor I knew from Godspell — Don Scardino, who became a television director — said, “I’ve got a part in this pilot; it’s going to be a Monkees kind of thing for the ’70s where we’re a band and we’ve sold our souls to the devil. Maybe it becomes a real recording act. And I recommended you because I know you’re funny, and maybe they’ll like someone who can really play.” So I audition for Kirshner, got the role, and went to California.
When the Blues Brothers came along, it was natural: “Let Paul do it as Don Kirshner.” It might’ve been Lorne’s idea. It would not have been Belushi’s.He loved it. His show was syndicated; SNL was network. It made him even more famous, I think. We were friends until the very end. I spoke to him when he was dying in the hospital.I think you are feeling the limitation in my acting repertoire, especially at that time. [Laughs.
Al Franken and Tom Davis took the tape and transcribed it and transposed it to medieval times, as if it were a medieval band rehearsing for a performance for the king. But you say the lines of the Troggs tape, and instead of fucking, we make up our own word, flogging. It had gone well in the dress rehearsal, and in between Al Franken said, “It was funny. If you want to throw in a few more of those floggings.” By now, I was loose and threw in a fuck by mistake.
I told my lawyer I pulled out; I had to. He said, “You can’t! First, I just completed the deal, but secondly, this is a big movie. What if I we’re able to work out something like having a co-producer on both of these things, Bob Tischler? Say you stay and work on Gilda, Bob goes to Chicago, then he comes back?” I didn’t know things about scheduling at that time. People do things like that all the time; I didn’t know.
You’ve been impersonated on SNL over the years: Gary Kroeger, Mark McKinney, Chris Kattan. Anyone get you especially right or wrong?
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