We'll Be Here for the Rest of Our Lives: A Swingin' Show-Biz Saga
by Paul Shaffer, David Ritz
Why You'll Love This
Paul Shaffer spent decades as the coolest guy in the room — and somehow nobody ever asked him to tell his own story until now.
- Great if you want: insider stories from SNL, Letterman, and the Blues Brothers era
- The experience: breezy and anecdote-driven — reads like a long, charming conversation
- The writing: Shaffer's voice is warm and self-deprecating, heavy on name-drops that actually land
- Skip if: you want depth over entertainment — this stays breezy throughout
About This Book
Paul Shaffer has spent decades as one of television's most recognizable faces — the grinning, sunglasses-wearing bandleader beside David Letterman — yet his actual story is far stranger and richer than that familiar image suggests. This memoir traces his journey from a small Canadian city on Lake Superior through the underground music scene in Toronto, the early chaos of Saturday Night Live, the Blues Brothers phenomenon, and nearly thirty years on Late Night. What drives the book isn't name-dropping but something more honest: a genuine, slightly obsessive love of music and performance that kept pulling Shaffer toward the center of American entertainment history.
Written with collaborator David Ritz, the book moves at the loose, digressive pace of a great backstage conversation — anecdotes tumbling into other anecdotes, detours into music history feeling earned rather than indulgent. Shaffer's voice is self-deprecating without being falsely modest, and his insider proximity to figures like Gilda Radner, Martin Short, and John Belushi gives the reminiscences real texture. Readers who love show business history will find a perspective here that's neither the star's memoir nor the observer's — but something rarer, from the guy who was always in the room.