In the halcyon days of Late Night with Conan O’Brien—before all the Conan-vs.-Leno Tonight Show controversy—I had become a regular guest on the show.
Mine was an unlikely presence, but in some ways I was also a natural fit. Conan and I were two oversized, geeky beanpoles who, somehow, found themselves hosting national television shows.
In those years, I think we were also doing each other a bit of a good turn. Finding guests to fill the hour was no small feat for a show that came on at 12:30 a.m., after the last of the sensible grown-ups had gone to bed. A-list guests were regularly commandeered by Jay Leno and David Letterman for their much bigger shows an hour earlier, and with Conan filming in New York while the center of the entertainment industry was in Los Angeles, the pool of potential guests was already limited by who was in town. That left Conan with people like me and other B- and C-list guests to pull from on a nightly basis. (I won’t name my fellow Bs and Cs. Their publicists and managers may be offended.)
Conan, of course, went on to become hugely popular and soon had full access to all the A+ level guests for his couch. But he stayed loyal to me and the rest of his Bs and Cs, and so anytime I had something to promote, he was right there for me (sometimes it was with him, other times it was with him and his pal, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog). One night, following our interview about the inexplicable success of my first PBS special, Live at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony, Conan was wrapping up when he waited a beat, smiled, and spoke to the camera. At the time, his words felt like they captured the totality of my unlikely life, but now they pretty much sum up everything you’re about to read in this book:
If the guy who used to read the celebrity birthdays on Entertainment Tonight is now playing piano and millions of people are lining up to buy his music, then we all need to get our clarinets out of the attic and start practicing because, seriously folks, anything can happen.1
Conan was right. Anything can happen. For better or for worse. I am living proof. And this book is a testament to that fact. In this book there is a love story that I nearly destroyed, but with persistent pursuit it rose from the ashes and now flourishes in marriage, twenty-eight years later. You’ll hear about a death sentence, handed down to me by high-level physicians and surgeons in Los Angeles. But with a deep faith in scriptural and science-based warfare, here I stand, cured. I’ll tell you about being homeless at twenty years old, living in a North Carolina park, unsure of my future or true purpose, until three years later I was anchoring nightly newscasts at WCBS in New York City. I’ll take you on a journey through my fledgling music career that had me selling fifty cassette tapes per week out of my garage (ten years later my wife and I sold our record company to Polygram for $8 million). You’ll hear the story of how my family and I created a self-syndicated radio show that initially debuted on only six radio stations but twenty years later is heard on more than three hundred stations worldwide.
As I began writing those stories for this book, my publisher, Matt Baugher, offered some encouragement by way of reminder. “When people read a memoir,” he said, “they very often see not only you. They also see a part of themselves in your journey.” It’s so true. It happens to me when I read a memoir, especially, but it also happens when I read any book. When I read fiction, the protagonists are usually wielding swords and they are always the underdogs. When I read books on personal development, I gravitate toward authors who take me inside the lives of artists and performers who have not only persevered but who have developed a unique process for achieving excellence. Leonardo da Vinci, Harry Houdini, Benjamin Franklin, Wolfgang Mozart, Ted Williams, Lin-Manuel Miranda. I read their stories and I think, Can I duplicate their process? What of them can I find within myself?
Those very questions, in fact, have been baked into my approach to life and to work for as long as I can remember. Even before it became a popular life hack, for instance, I was always decoding greatness this way. This desire arose in me because I felt I was not naturally talented and there were no life coaches to tell me otherwise. There was no Tony Robbins. No Tim Ferriss or Oprah. No way to study the masters like we can today on YouTube. Instead, back in the Paleolithic era of the Digital Age (also known as the 1970s and 1980s), I recorded hundreds of other artists’ concerts, motivational speeches, sermons, and radio and television broadcasts off the air on my Walkman and my Betamax video player. I studied these recordings. I learned from them. I emulated the performers. Newscasters. Sports play-by-play announcers. Pianists and composers. Pastors. Coaches and athletes.
As a professional journalist since 1973, I have enjoyed the privilege of interviewing thousands of high achievers: at the Olympic Games, in the recording studio, on Broadway, in the Oval Office, and on movie sets. Along the way I realized how much these humans are just like the rest of us. They have sleepless nights. They war with the same types of insecurities we all face. The difference is, they have learned how to outwork and outlast their competitors. The one common thread in their process is they are relentless.
I was mesmerized, fascinated, and encouraged by men and women at the top of their game. I studied the habitual approaches of Michael Jordan and LeBron James, the rituals of author Stephen King, the video visualizations of Michael Phelps. Their unspoken mantra? “You will not outwork me.” Keyboardist Rick Wakeman from Yes, sportscaster Al Michaels, 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace. Olympic announcer Jim McKay from ABC Sports, singer and songwriter Billy Joel, swimmer Diana Nyad.
There was a time when I thought that I had, indeed, acquired the art of relentless pursuit. I had, if only from a distance, been mentored by those I had scrutinized for so long. I believed the ability to be relentless would be with me forever—that I finally held the treasure map that would lead me to success in perpetuity.
Then on May 23, 2015, the world on which my blessed life was spinning spun off its axis. I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer; my book of life suddenly included a final chapter. Survival required a withering mix of surgeries, chemotherapy, and muscle-wasting treatments that, over three years, reduced me to a puny shell of myself—physically and spiritually. The excruciating pain, nausea, and depression left me with barely enough energy to beg God for help. I felt like I had descended into hell, and I lost my will to continue. The relentlessness of the cancer had surmounted my own.
It was then that my wife, Connie, stepped out of her own life to care for me, full time, and showed another kind of relentlessness I did not even know existed. She studied my disease and treatment options so diligently that surgeons and RNs were certain she was a health-care professional. She became my advocate for each and every treatment. She personified unconditional love wrapped in humility, in empathy. She put flesh on Jesus. And she covered our entire family with a healing scripture that was more powerful than my disease. It was a promise right there in the Bible, and it was one I had missed.
For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, “Be removed and be cast into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them. (Mark 11:23–24)
That verse was life to my flesh.
My wife’s faith and advocacy had brought me back to life and I’m anxious for you to hear more about my Connie—a woman who laid down her life to save her dear mother of ninety years and then used her bold faith and intelligence to stand in the gap for her husband. To save his life. And here I am. Transformed.
I’m grateful you’ve picked up this book. I devour books like this every day. Life stories. Personal journeys. For it’s in the journey, ours and others’, that we are transformed.
As the author of my own story, I’ve tried to write the book that I would want to read. While I describe my childhood and younger days in school, I’ve included them only so that you may gather a deeper understanding of some of my life decisions—decisions that give some context to my journey and reveal a process that is both universal and uniquely my own.
I organized this book in the way I like to read a memoir: by the key moments that have defined me. Because of that, if you don’t feel like joining me in my high school garage band then, by all means, jump to the chapter where I was homeless in a park or the one where I recorded the beginnings of the iconic NBA theme song, “Roundball Rock,” on my answering machine or the chapter where I detail the creative process of composing music for the Tour de France—a process I still use today. It’s all okay by me, because I am not recounting my life as a running diary of catharsis, as a list of examples of bravado, or even as a stroke to my ego. Instead, I am unpacking the pivotal moments in my journey in the hope that I can do for readers what other authors have done for me.
This book is an invitation for you to take a look at my collection of inexplicable successes (and failures) and to find something in my personal road map—as unplanned and haphazardly drawn as it was at times—that can offer you guidance toward the kinds of outcomes I have been fortunate enough to enjoy. Even if the specifics of my life do not resonate at all with the particulars of your hopes and dreams, I still believe there is something in this book for you. I wouldn’t have written it otherwise. As I write this, I could be in the pool with my three grandkids, but I want to share this roller-coaster life of mine with you because, somewhere in these pages, I believe you’ll find a piece of yourself. In fact, I’m sure of it.
Let’s begin.
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