A little help from my friends.
After hurting myself this past summer, I needed surgery to replace my arthritic right hip, a problem subsequently compounded by a broken left femur, leaving me with two bum legs, not one. That was challenge enough without my having to then go through Oxycontin withdrawal – I took Oxy to ameliorate pain, but withdrawal was like getting clean from heroin, only with a doctor’s prescription -- that sent me the hospital ER not once but twice.
The injuries had me mostly confined to a walker; later a cane replaced the walker, until recently when I could walk again under my own power. It has been a not-easy road to recovery, culminating today with my getting on the elliptical trainer lying dormant in my garage. It has taken a too-long six months to begin the process of recovery.
I make it a habit to tune in to YouTube to watch music as I work out. Normally my choice would be Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Grateful Dead, Springsteen and The E Street Band, Laura Nyro, or some other group from my era (music that is, I’m a little sad to say, is mostly populated by dead people). This time, however, I chose something different to watch: a video from the Immediate Family, a group of mostly obscure studio musicians, known only to the celebrated performers with whom they’ve played:
“Danny Kortchmar, Waddy Wachtel, Russ Kunkel, Leland Sklar and Steve Postell probably have more session and live show mileage than just about any other living players today. Each is known for its prodigious ability to be in the right place and at the right time on an endless list of best-selling and hugely influential recordings over the past 50 years.”
If you’d like to get a sense of just how accomplished all of these performers are, watch Cruel Twist. Maybe some of you recognize Waddy Wachtel, who played guitar for Linda Ronstadt, or Leland Sklar, who played base with just about everyone (if you watched Cruel Twist, you might have found yourself mildly amused by Sklar’s ad-libbed sense of timing and wry sense of humor).
Virtually nobody knows the names of these players, but no matter; as much as they play for the small group of fans who recognize their talent, they really are playing for their friends, meaning one another. You get a sense of this if you’ve watched them between takes.
As I turn 75 today I think of the band; of course I’ve devoted most of my career serving clients as well as I possibly could, but if you were to ask me, truthfully, to describe who I worked for all those long days, late nights, and countless weekends, I would tell you it wasn’t for my clients. It wasn’t because of competitors. It wasn’t because of the corner office. It was for my colleagues.
Over the years I showed up largely because I never wanted to let them down; When it got hard to get by, all I needed was a little help from my friends.
