Top 10 Facts About a Sidekick

Book Review By PETER KEEPNEWS

Early in this disjointed but very entertaining memoir, Paul Shaffer recalls an unusual family vacation. He was “not yet a teenager” at the time (no specific year is mentioned; like many celebrity autobiographies, this one is strong on anecdotes but weak on details), and his parents took him to Las Vegas.

After making references to Proust and Henry James, Shaffer writes: “I cannot compete with the literary masters of yesteryear, nor will I try. I invoke those names, however, only to let you know how I yearn to do justice to what I experienced that night at Juliet Prowse’s by-invitation-only show.”

The story he tells, which also involves Louis Prima, Sarah Vaughan and the thrill of staying up way past his bedtime, captures the glamour of early-1960s Las Vegas with a deft mixture of awe and humor. The picture it paints of his parents, an outwardly conventional middle-class Canadian couple who strove to live their lives “as they imagined Sinatra lived his,” helps explain how a shy piano prodigy from Thunder Bay, Ontario, developed the attributes he would grow up to display so flamboyantly as David Letterman's bandleader and sidekick, especially his ability to celebrate old-school showbiz shtick while simultaneously parodying it. And the bit about “the literary masters of yesteryear” lets us know that Shaffer, while justifiably proud of his achievements as a musician and sometime comedian, understands his limitations as a writer.

More a stream of consciousness than a linear narrative (“Ricky Layne and Velvel bring to mind Andy Kaufman"), “We’ll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives,” written with the help of the first-call celebrity collaborator David Ritz, is not deathless literature, and Shaffer knows it. But it is tremendous fun.

It is also clearly the work of a man who loves to drop names, and who is really good at it. Who knew that Bob Dylan was a fan of Larry (Bud) Melman, the clueless nebbish who was a recurring character on Letterman’s original late-night show? That Jerry Lewis was enamored to the point of obsession with “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”? That Gilda Radner — an old friend of Shaffer’s from their days with the Toronto production of “Godspell” and later a colleague when he played piano and occasionally appeared in sketches on "Saturday Night Live" — had a one-night stand with the hippie-dippie magician Doug Henning? (“He hasn’t called,” he remembers her telling him. “I guess I’m just part of his disappearing act.”)

But 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, who “showed me that life could be lived out in comedy sketches,” and of course Letterman, with whom he has worked since 1982. But he is at his most effusive when writing about the musicians who have inspired him, of whom there are many: not just the legends like James Brown, Ray Charles and Dylan but also non-household names like Mike Smith, the singer and organist for the Dave Clark Five, and Tisziji Muñoz, the avant-garde jazz guitarist who was one of Shaffer’s first employers. I don’t know Muñoz’s music, but Shaffer describes it so vividly, and so affectionately, that I am eager to seek it out.

Diplomatic rather than dishy (“I regret all the tragedy that has surrounded Phil in recent years,” Shaffer delicately writes of an old friend, the record producer and convicted murderer Phil Spector), “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.

Peter Keepnews is a staff editor at The Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/books/review/Keepnews-t.html?ref=books