When David Sanborn died, the reaction in the media reflected his impact on music, comedy, and the eclectic nature of his presence among the famous and inside baseball of the 60’s explosion, the melting pot of R&B, jazz, and pop. His deep intelligence and arch sense of humor gave him entry at the highest levels of the art, punctuated by his ability to crystallize those moments when his peers called on him to weigh in. Though we saw little of each other over the years, the conversation always seemed to pick up seamlessly in mid-sentence.
I met Dave at a recording session for the short film I directed with Proctor and Bergman of the Firesign Theatre. Producer John Simon pulled together a pick up group of Woodstock-based musicians from Van Morrison’s band and others, but Sanborn was the icing on the cake for me. As I told him on a break, Dave was the creator of what I felt was the perfect solo, the title track of Paul Butterfield’s In My Own Dream, and Dave made clear his delight at working on a Firesign project.
This was 1973, and in the wake of my mother’s death in August I was living in her house in Woodstock. Flash forward to the fall of 1980 and I was living in a small room at the Band’s Shangri-La studio in Malibu. learning the tools of the trade at the engineering aspect of the recording process. The producer running Shangri-La was a reigning expert on tube microphones and compressors that dominated the production of the business at the time. I was in the throes of the end of my first marriage, rejected and lost in the transition from producer to assistant engineer. I was holiday house sitting the rental house of a band recording at the studio when Dave walked in unexpectedly.
Things got stranger in short order. Back after the holiday at the studio, I was watching Monday Night football when Howard Cosell broke in with the news of John Lennon’s murder. I waited until dawn and then walked across Pacific Coast Highway and down to Broad Beach. and down to Dave’s new rental. When he woke up, he invited me to move in and we set up shop. It was there that I was served divorce papers by a process server who somehow tracked me down. Dave was moving toward cleaning up from the usual tools of the lifestyle, and eventually moved back to New York and AA, which he stayed with for the rest of his life. I would see him from time to time; we once left the Letterman Christmas party to watch the late great Sam Kinison at Carolines’ comedy club until our sides hurt.
My friend Dave Sanborn lost his fight with cancer this past Saturday. My wife came in from errands and I could tell something was very wrong. She turned off the Trump trial coverage and told me. It was not a surprise, as he had cancelled a series of gigs via Facebook a few days before. We had last seen him in California at a gig at the Oakland Yoshi’s. He seemed fragile as his wife helped him to his chair on stage, but as long as I knew him he seemed fragile but purposeful. The music was direct and unmistakeable; his stories about how he got to this moment wry and wise with a window into his essence. When we visited between sets, he suddenly reached out and took my hand, something I often avoided at the reminder of his frailty. This time he was saying goodbye while he could. At this time in our lives we are more and more of these moments, but I’m grateful for having the luck of his friendship.
As We Speak