# John Tesh: From Entertainment Tonight to Beating Cancer, Faith, Music, and the Purpose That Never Ends

An episode of [Tony Mantor's : Almost Live..... Nashville](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1751194045), 11 Aug 2026, 28 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c41d385f-64b2-4514-9415-b4d50130ce01/60e1a016-b278-426e-b230-b4d501688dc3/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=d1742151-672b-4e4d-997b-b4d50130ce0c

Show Notes John Tesh has lived a life unlike almost anyone else. Millions knew him as the co-host of Entertainment Tonight. Basketball fans know his legendary "Roundball Rock" theme that became synonymous with the NBA. Music lovers have filled concert halls around the world to hear his compositions. But behind the success is an incredible story of resilience. In this heartfelt conversation, John shares how a garage full of cassette tapes launched his music career, the unlikely return of his iconic NBA theme more than 35 years later, and how a devastating cancer diagnosis changed the way he views life, family, faith, and purpose. He also discusses: • The return of "Roundball Rock" • His new cycling remixes and upcoming Christmas album • The story behind Entertainment Tonight • Lessons learned from interviewing some of the world's biggest stars • His battle with terminal prostate cancer • How faith and prayer changed everything • Why purpose is the key to living a meaningful life • Why he has no plans to retire This is an inspiring conversation about perseverance, reinvention, gratitude, and making every day count. Guest: John Tesh Host: Tony Mantor If you enjoyed this episode, please follow Almost Live Nashville, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who needs encouragement today. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Tony Mantour. Thanks for joining us today. Welcome
[0:03] Speaker 1: to Almost Live Nashville, where music, entertainment, and great conversations
[0:08] Speaker 1: come together. If you haven't already, tap follow. This way
[0:11] Speaker 1: you stay up to date, never missing the great conversation
[0:14] Speaker 1: and guests coming your way. Some people build a career,
[0:19] Speaker 1: others build a legacy. Today's guest has done both. John
[0:23] Speaker 1: Tesh welcomed millions into their homes as co-host of Entertainment Tonight.
[0:28] Speaker 1: His music became the soundtrack to some of the biggest
[0:30] Speaker 1: moments in sports history, including the unforgettable round ball rock
[0:35] Speaker 1: theme that has thrilled basketball fans for more than three decades.
[0:39] Speaker 1: His concerts have filled world-famous venues. His nationally syndicated radio
[0:44] Speaker 1: show has informed and inspired audiences across America, and his
[0:48] Speaker 1: passion for music continues to shape generations. But behind the
[0:53] Speaker 1: spotlight is a story that very few people know. a
[0:57] Speaker 1: story of setbacks and reinvention, of faith in the face
[1:00] Speaker 1: of uncertainty, of being told he had only months to
[1:04] Speaker 1: live and refusing to let that diagnosis define the rest
[1:07] Speaker 1: of his life. Instead, he chose purpose over fear, hope
[1:11] Speaker 1: over despair. and continues to inspire millions through his music,
[1:15] Speaker 1: his message, and his unwavering belief that every life has meaning. Today,
[1:20] Speaker 1: we'll talk about the moments that changed everything, from writing
[1:23] Speaker 1: iconic music in a small studio, to the return of
[1:26] Speaker 1: his legendary NBA theme, to his remarkable fight against cancer,
[1:30] Speaker 1: and the lessons he learned about resilience, family, faith, and
[1:34] Speaker 1: living with purpose. This is more than a conversation with
[1:37] Speaker 1: a composer, broadcaster, and entertainer. This is a conversation with
[1:42] Speaker 1: a man whose life reminds us that our greatest work
[1:45] Speaker 1: often begins when we think our story is coming to
[1:48] Speaker 1: an end. It's a great honor to have John Tesh
[1:50] Speaker 1: with us today. Thanks for joining us.
[1:53] Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
[1:54] Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
[1:54] Speaker 2: We'll start off with.
[1:55] Speaker 1: Your current business that you've got going. It's Cycling Remixes.
[1:58] Speaker 1: What made you decide this was the right time to
[2:00] Speaker 1: revisit these pieces in a completely different way?
[2:03] Speaker 2: In October of 2025, NBC made the decision that they
[2:09] Speaker 2: wanted to bring back this old basketball theme that I
[2:11] Speaker 2: had written 35 years ago.
[2:12] Speaker 1: Okay.
[2:13] Speaker 2: And I was actually in a mode where I felt like,
[2:16] Speaker 2: all right, I've done enough music for a while. I
[2:18] Speaker 2: just want to tour. Sure. And so we have a
[2:20] Speaker 2: daily radio show that we do. And so I was
[2:22] Speaker 2: out doing like maybe 18, 20 shows a year, sometimes
[2:26] Speaker 2: big band stuff, sometimes, you know, sports music synced up
[2:29] Speaker 2: to video, things like that. Sure. And it was actually
[2:32] Speaker 2: my son, Gib, who said, he said, I'm grandpa to
[2:35] Speaker 2: his kids. And so he's like, hey, pop up. Why
[2:37] Speaker 2: don't you get back in the studio and do the
[2:38] Speaker 2: stuff that you started with? And that was basically in 19.
[2:41] Speaker 2: I mean, I grew up on Long Island playing music
[2:43] Speaker 2: like everybody else in town. Yeah. And. I ended up
[2:47] Speaker 2: being assigned to the Tour de France bike race when
[2:48] Speaker 2: I was working for CBS Sports as an announcer, not
[2:51] Speaker 2: as a composer, but as an announcer. And David Michaels,
[2:54] Speaker 2: who is the brother of the legendary Al Michaels, the announcer,
[2:57] Speaker 2: was assigned to be the producer of the Tour de
[3:00] Speaker 2: France bike race. Okay. Yeah. His idea was not to
[3:03] Speaker 2: cover it the way they do in Europe, which is live. Right.
[3:06] Speaker 2: Do it in what he called MTV style. Again, this
[3:09] Speaker 2: is 1982, 1983. Yeah. And so he said, you're a musician,
[3:11] Speaker 2: aren't you? And I said, yeah. He goes, well, why
[3:12] Speaker 2: don't you bring some of your stuff over to Paris?
[3:16] Speaker 2: And I had like, you know, this was, I still
[3:18] Speaker 2: have some of these instruments, a lot of these instruments, actually.
[3:20] Speaker 2: But I had a Prophet 5. I had an Oberheim. Nice.
[3:24] Speaker 2: I had a PPG Wave, if you've ever heard of
[3:26] Speaker 2: that thing.
[3:26] Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[3:28] Speaker 2: Okay. And the key to the whole thing was the emulator, too. Right.
[3:32] Speaker 2: Which has that big, giant floppy disk and you put
[3:35] Speaker 2: it into the drive and it clicks and says, this
[3:37] Speaker 2: will take a while. And then I had a Lindrum, right?
[3:40] Speaker 2: And a Mac SE. Right. And so he would cut
[3:42] Speaker 2: the footage of the day's races. Tour de France is
[3:45] Speaker 2: 24 races with a different finish line every day. Yes.
[3:49] Speaker 2: With one rest day. First of all, I'd never seen
[3:51] Speaker 2: anything like this before. I had only played sports in college,
[3:54] Speaker 2: you know, small sports like soccer and stuff.
[3:56] Speaker 1: Right.
[3:56] Speaker 2: Right. This was like, I couldn't believe it, you know,
[3:58] Speaker 2: what a great opportunity. And so I just started writing music,
[4:01] Speaker 2: you know, with a lot of the 80s sounds for
[4:03] Speaker 2: the picture. Yeah. And I had to write like an
[4:05] Speaker 2: hour and a half of music a week for four weeks.
[4:06] Speaker 2: And so it was a lot of it was sort
[4:08] Speaker 2: of bits and pieces, you know? Yeah. So that stuff,
[4:11] Speaker 2: those themes, I released later on a cassette called music
[4:15] Speaker 2: from a tour de France because we had a lot
[4:17] Speaker 2: of people asking, you know, what was that music? And
[4:18] Speaker 2: I couldn't get a record deal. And so I sold
[4:21] Speaker 2: it out of my garage. Sure. I had a tape duplicator, right?
[4:25] Speaker 2: And I sold tapes out of my garage in bicycling magazines.
[4:28] Speaker 2: And I sold for $ 12. 95 a tape. And I sold
[4:30] Speaker 2: like 8,000 of these things.
[4:30] Speaker 1: Wow.
[4:33] Speaker 2: And that was really the beginning of my music career,
[4:35] Speaker 2: I guess, you know. And so when everything just came
[4:38] Speaker 2: full circle around again, and during that period of time,
[4:40] Speaker 2: I had also written this basketball theme and some other
[4:42] Speaker 2: themes for sports. You know, Gibbs said to me, he said,
[4:45] Speaker 2: why don't you get back in the studio and just
[4:47] Speaker 2: do this? And so I released this sports record. Yeah.
[4:53] Speaker 2: In 2025, which is just basically, it's not easy listening
[4:55] Speaker 2: to music, as my wife would say. Okay. And then
[4:58] Speaker 2: knowing that the Tour de France was coming around, I thought,
[5:00] Speaker 2: you know, why don't we just do different mixes of this?
[5:03] Speaker 2: So I worked with a guy named John Baker and
[5:05] Speaker 2: also Tim Heights, who were both back and forth from
[5:08] Speaker 2: Nashville all the time. and had them extend these three-minute
[5:11] Speaker 2: songs into 12-minute pieces with just downbeats and all kinds
[5:15] Speaker 2: of stuff, samples and all of that. Just knowing that
[5:18] Speaker 2: this audience is familiar with a lot of these themes,
[5:21] Speaker 2: that's why that happened.
[5:22] Speaker 1: Looking back, you've evolved many different times. Which version over
[5:26] Speaker 1: the years surprises you the most?
[5:28] Speaker 2: I think that I have any career at all in music.
[5:31] Speaker 2: Just because I grew up a band geek. I'm 6'6,
[5:35] Speaker 2: now I weigh 230. In junior high, I was this height,
[5:38] Speaker 2: and I weighed 155. So I wanted to play football
[5:42] Speaker 2: in high school because that was the only way to
[5:43] Speaker 2: get girls, and they wouldn't insure me. I wasn't insurable
[5:47] Speaker 2: because I was too light. So I ended up in
[5:49] Speaker 2: the band. So I played baritone horn, trumpet, baritone horn,
[5:53] Speaker 2: and vowel trombone in the marching band on Long Island.
[5:56] Speaker 2: And then also I took lessons, piano lessons, since I
[5:59] Speaker 2: was six years old. My mom was a retired surgical nurse,
[6:02] Speaker 2: and she was just very much into making her kids
[6:04] Speaker 2: study stuff. But both my sisters and I were musicians.
[6:07] Speaker 2: And it was a time, right? I was born in 52.
[6:09] Speaker 2: So it was a time when everybody was in a
[6:11] Speaker 2: garage band. We were in a band called Blood, Sweat &
[6:14] Speaker 2: Tears Cover Band. Billy Joel was in the hassles at
[6:17] Speaker 2: the same time. And so we were a rivalry, although
[6:19] Speaker 2: it wasn't much of a rivalry. If you've ever heard
[6:21] Speaker 2: Billy Joel's band, if he didn't want the gig, we
[6:23] Speaker 2: got it. So we were like, not even Pepsi. We
[6:26] Speaker 2: were like RC Cola. Everybody was playing the same places,
[6:29] Speaker 2: you know, Atlantic Beach Club, Catskills and all of that. Right.
[6:32] Speaker 2: 25 or 64 had just come out and the first Blood,
[6:35] Speaker 2: Sweat and Tears album with Al Cooper. Yeah. So we
[6:39] Speaker 2: did all that stuff. We would also do, you know,
[6:42] Speaker 2: big band stuff and things like that. So that's what
[6:45] Speaker 2: I always wanted to do with my life. But my
[6:46] Speaker 2: father was a, he was the vice president of Hanes Underwear. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
[6:52] Speaker 2: And so he thought that I would starve to death
[6:55] Speaker 2: if I was a musician.
[6:57] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[6:57] Speaker 2: So he enrolled me at North Carolina State University in
[7:00] Speaker 2: textile chemistry. And I lasted about four and a half semesters.
[7:05] Speaker 2: And then I took a I took a course to
[7:08] Speaker 2: try and raise my GPA, and it was radio and
[7:10] Speaker 2: television 101. And that's really when that part of my
[7:12] Speaker 2: career started. But through it all, I was always in
[7:15] Speaker 2: the practice rooms at NCC and all of that. Yeah. Yeah.
[7:20] Speaker 2: And your chief instrument is piano or guitar or both? Piano. Piano. Yeah, piano. Yeah.
[7:24] Speaker 2: And so when I was in New York working for
[7:27] Speaker 2: sports and also working for CBS News, I studied with
[7:31] Speaker 2: a guy named Harold Danko, who was a jazz teacher.
[7:35] Speaker 2: And he had studied with Chick, apparently, Chick Corea. Right.
[7:40] Speaker 2: And so I learned a little bit. I was mostly
[7:42] Speaker 2: a reader. I grew up, you know, playing whatever, rock, monologues, prelude,
[7:45] Speaker 2: and C-sharp minor. Yeah, me too. Me too. Got halfway
[7:48] Speaker 2: through Rhapsody in Blue. No, I'm not doing this anymore. Yeah. Yeah,
[7:53] Speaker 2: the Rachmaninoff thing is great because you get to beat
[7:56] Speaker 2: on the piano, right?
[7:56] Speaker 1: Right, right.
[7:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So... So yeah, and then when I
[8:01] Speaker 2: got to, you know, here I am in the television
[8:04] Speaker 2: and radio business and I'm writing news themes for people.
[8:07] Speaker 2: And then when I got the job at CBS Sports,
[8:10] Speaker 2: I'm in the truck with everybody, right? And so they're like, hey,
[8:12] Speaker 2: we need some music for this. And so I would
[8:14] Speaker 2: just create music and then give it to them for
[8:16] Speaker 2: free because they weren't going to pay me as a musician.
[8:19] Speaker 2: And then we'd take the BMI royalties and stuff like that.
[8:22] Speaker 2: And so when I got to Entertainment Tonight in 1986,
[8:24] Speaker 2: I'm still not sure why I took the job, but
[8:26] Speaker 2: it really worked out. Yeah, it did. Because 23 million
[8:29] Speaker 2: people a night were seeing that show at the time, right?
[8:31] Speaker 2: In 1986. And I just thought, well, this is the
[8:33] Speaker 2: way to get a record deal. So I sent demos
[8:35] Speaker 2: of all the Tour de France music to everybody, including,
[8:38] Speaker 2: you know, Clive and Quincy. Yeah. All those guys, you know. Yeah.
[8:42] Speaker 2: Donny Einer. And I just got to have all the
[8:45] Speaker 2: turndown letters. And I think, and I don't blame them
[8:47] Speaker 2: for this, I think that they were like, they didn't
[8:49] Speaker 2: want the guy who was reading the celebrity birthdays on
[8:51] Speaker 2: the same label as Billy Joel. Yeah.
[8:53] Speaker 1: You know?
[8:54] Speaker 2: Yeah. So I was watching... pbs one sunday night and
[8:58] Speaker 2: i saw you two under a blood red sky i
[9:00] Speaker 2: saw the moody blues they were both at red rock
[9:03] Speaker 2: wow yeah and then i saw i saw my old
[9:05] Speaker 2: friend he became a friend yanni yes at the acropolis
[9:08] Speaker 2: and i watched these pbs pledge drives and i said
[9:11] Speaker 2: well this is nobody knew who these guys were they
[9:13] Speaker 2: didn't know who the three tenors were why don't i
[9:15] Speaker 2: try and do this right And so I called them
[9:18] Speaker 2: up and told them what my idea was to play
[9:20] Speaker 2: with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. And they said, well, how
[9:22] Speaker 2: much touring are you doing right now? And I said, well, none.
[9:25] Speaker 2: How many records have you sold? I said, I don't know,
[9:29] Speaker 2: 8,000 out of my backyard. And they were like, well,
[9:30] Speaker 2: if you make the special, we'll take a look at it, right?
[9:34] Speaker 2: But we're not going to invest in it. And what
[9:37] Speaker 2: happened was, I mean, it's a long story, but what
[9:39] Speaker 2: happened was four songs in, it started raining heavily. You know,
[9:43] Speaker 2: and the orchestra left, but the audience wouldn't leave because
[9:46] Speaker 2: it was Red Rock because they put on their slickers
[9:48] Speaker 2: and their umbrellas. Right. And they were stomping their feet
[9:50] Speaker 2: because they knew it was at stake for me. We'd
[9:52] Speaker 2: given away 7,000 tickets, but they knew it was a special,
[9:55] Speaker 2: you know, so they stuck it out. Yeah. Finally, the
[9:57] Speaker 2: moon came out, you know, rain stopped. and we, our
[10:01] Speaker 2: great orchestra came back and we finished it. And I
[10:03] Speaker 2: sent a rough mix, rough edit to a woman named
[10:06] Speaker 2: Linda Taggart at Maryland Public Television about three, four weeks later.
[10:11] Speaker 2: With that rough mix and that rough edit, she played
[10:13] Speaker 2: it at midnight in Maryland and she calls me up.
[10:16] Speaker 2: I put my phone number on there. She calls me
[10:18] Speaker 2: up and she says, you know, this thing, you've got
[10:20] Speaker 2: something here. This thing, it just out pledged to three tenors.
[10:22] Speaker 1: Wow.
[10:23] Speaker 2: She said the most popular segment was when we were
[10:25] Speaker 2: being rained on. So, yeah. So anyway, that was the
[10:29] Speaker 2: biggest surprise. It's a long way of answering your question. No,
[10:32] Speaker 2: that's no problem. Actually, it's a long way to answer
[10:33] Speaker 2: all your questions. But that's really what happened was if
[10:36] Speaker 2: it hadn't been for that. And the only reason we
[10:38] Speaker 2: could afford that was my wife, Connie Selleck, and I,
[10:40] Speaker 2: we took TV money and invested in that. And at
[10:44] Speaker 2: the moment it started raining, we were like, well, that's gone.
[10:46] Speaker 1: That was kind of one of those things that a
[10:48] Speaker 1: failure turned out to be a great thing for you.
[10:51] Speaker 1: What other things have kind of been there where you
[10:54] Speaker 1: look at them? And you realize, oh, this might not
[10:57] Speaker 1: have worked. But then in the end, it worked out OK.
[11:00] Speaker 2: Yeah. I would say that after Red Rocks, Colleen and
[11:03] Speaker 2: I had our daughter, who was eight weeks old at
[11:05] Speaker 2: Red Rocks. And then in order to have PBS play
[11:09] Speaker 2: your special ad nauseum, you have to offer them tickets
[11:11] Speaker 2: to live shows. So I had to announce a 50-city tour.
[11:15] Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
[11:16] Speaker 2: OK. I know, right? Yeah. They give away the tickets
[11:18] Speaker 2: and they gross them up. Right. All that stuff. Oh, yeah.
[11:20] Speaker 2: And so my Italian wife looks at me and she goes, okay, this. Okay, fine.
[11:25] Speaker 2: But when you get back, you're going to have a
[11:26] Speaker 2: one and a half year old. And so what are
[11:29] Speaker 2: we going to do? Right. So I kept touring and
[11:31] Speaker 2: I did two other albums, Avalon and One World, which
[11:33] Speaker 2: are both big PBS specials. Same type of stuff. Right.
[11:37] Speaker 2: It became clear that I was going to have to
[11:38] Speaker 2: spend more time at home. Sure. So I thought I
[11:40] Speaker 2: wanted to go back to like one of the first
[11:41] Speaker 2: things I did, get back into radio. Yeah. My first
[11:44] Speaker 2: radio job was in Raleigh, North Carolina. I was Rick
[11:46] Speaker 2: D's news guy at 20 years old. I looked at
[11:49] Speaker 2: the landscape and I said, what can I do that's
[11:50] Speaker 2: different on the radio? It wasn't going to be, you know,
[11:54] Speaker 2: Fluffy Danny and the Weasel in the morning or Howard Stern,
[11:56] Speaker 2: that thing. It wasn't going to be love songs at night.
[11:58] Speaker 2: I didn't really have DJ chops. And so I thought,
[12:01] Speaker 2: why don't we do something? Because the internet was in
[12:04] Speaker 2: its nascency. People really weren't sure what was real and
[12:07] Speaker 2: what was not. One night we're going to sleep, my
[12:10] Speaker 2: wife and I, and I was going to say bedding
[12:11] Speaker 2: down for the evening. That sounds terrible. And so it
[12:14] Speaker 2: was like pros, but I'm bedding down. I looked at
[12:18] Speaker 2: her side of the bed. Oh, she looked at my
[12:19] Speaker 2: side of the bed and it was all these wires
[12:21] Speaker 2: and stuff. I mean, like everything, you know? Right, right.
[12:24] Speaker 2: She said, well, this is our sleep. She called our
[12:26] Speaker 2: sleep chamber. This is our sleep chamber. What are you
[12:28] Speaker 2: doing with all this crap in here? So I had
[12:29] Speaker 2: to cross complain. So I looked at her side of
[12:31] Speaker 2: the bed and it was all these magazines. Yeah. Oprah magazine,
[12:34] Speaker 2: health magazines, you know, all this stuff with sticky notes,
[12:37] Speaker 2: yellow sticky notes in there. I said, what's this? And
[12:38] Speaker 2: she said, these are all the articles that I want
[12:41] Speaker 2: to get to, but I haven't had time yet.
[12:42] Speaker 1: Sure.
[12:43] Speaker 2: They were all like self-improvement health things. And a veritable
[12:46] Speaker 2: light bulb went off. Right. And I said, why don't
[12:48] Speaker 2: we do a show for this woman where we take,
[12:50] Speaker 2: she was 33 at the time, we take, you know,
[12:53] Speaker 2: 5,000 word pieces, right?
[12:54] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[12:54] Speaker 2: Turn them into like a minute 30 and surround them
[12:56] Speaker 2: with music. We'll call it Intelligence for Your Life. And
[12:58] Speaker 2: so I started calling radio stations like an idiot. So
[13:02] Speaker 2: they got this thing, it's called Intelligence for Your Life.
[13:03] Speaker 2: I was like, is that some sort of a conference? No,
[13:06] Speaker 2: it's a radio show, you know? It was like three
[13:08] Speaker 2: hours on a weekend.
[13:09] Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
[13:10] Speaker 2: And I gave it away for free to like, I
[13:13] Speaker 2: don't know, maybe 30 stations like that. Right. Chugging away,
[13:16] Speaker 2: I'm writing it myself, you know, doing this stuff and
[13:18] Speaker 2: not making any money. And so all of a sudden,
[13:20] Speaker 2: I'm getting calls from radio stations saying, hey, what is this?
[13:24] Speaker 2: Can we have this too? Then we hired like Westwood
[13:27] Speaker 2: One and the whole thing like that and started a
[13:29] Speaker 2: weekend show. And then it became a daily show. And
[13:31] Speaker 2: that was 25 years ago. It still continues to this day.
[13:35] Speaker 2: So that was something where if I hadn't put in
[13:37] Speaker 2: the reps, I would say, it was idiocy. Because if
[13:40] Speaker 2: I had known more about the radio business, I realized
[13:44] Speaker 2: that it wasn't possible to do a self-syndicated show. Yeah.
[13:47] Speaker 1: So now you've interviewed thousands of people. What did those
[13:52] Speaker 1: interviews and the difficult questions that you had to ask
[13:55] Speaker 1: sometimes teach you, not only about humanity, but about yourself?
[13:59] Speaker 2: Yeah. I've never been asked a question like this. It's
[14:01] Speaker 2: such a great leading question for me because I did
[14:04] Speaker 2: some interviews for Entertainment Tonight, right? Mostly they were the
[14:06] Speaker 2: music interviews, you know, everybody from, you know, Clapton. Yeah. Gosh, everybody.
[14:11] Speaker 2: I can't even think of it. You know, it's classical musicians.
[14:13] Speaker 2: I interviewed Sully Rollins on the Brooklyn Bridge, you know,
[14:16] Speaker 2: because that's where he used to practice. Yeah. But I
[14:19] Speaker 2: did a show for a year on NBC called One
[14:20] Speaker 2: on One. Those were like three-hour interviews. We would play
[14:24] Speaker 2: them for like a half hour on NBC daytime. Those
[14:27] Speaker 2: were the ones that had the experience that you just
[14:30] Speaker 2: talked about, where I had a list of questions that
[14:32] Speaker 2: NBC wanted. And I was in a real, I had
[14:34] Speaker 2: been through a divorce. I had just met my wife, Connie,
[14:38] Speaker 2: in 1991. We were dating and she was a famous
[14:42] Speaker 2: actress and the music thing was just really happening and
[14:44] Speaker 2: I wasn't sure what to do with my life. So
[14:46] Speaker 2: I would ask people questions that I wanted answers to
[14:49] Speaker 2: in my own life, just like what you said. Sure. Yeah.
[14:54] Speaker 2: Had amazing answers. He still lives by me right here.
[14:58] Speaker 2: Amazing answers for that. Even people like Telly Savalas. Yeah.
[15:02] Speaker 2: If you have to explain to people, you know, at
[15:03] Speaker 2: a certain age, Telly Savalas was, you know, was Kojak
[15:06] Speaker 2: and Betty Davis, you know, it's just, I mean, on
[15:08] Speaker 2: and on and on. Yeah. You go through all the
[15:10] Speaker 2: stuff that the producer wanted and then it would be like,
[15:12] Speaker 2: I mean, you just ask personal questions about, you know,
[15:14] Speaker 2: how did you know that your husband was the one
[15:16] Speaker 2: or your wife was the one, you know, things like that.
[15:18] Speaker 2: I ended up with a wealth of knowledge.
[15:20] Speaker 1: Right, right.
[15:21] Speaker 2: Experiential knowledge, yeah.
[15:22] Speaker 1: You just mentioned a plethora of people that are just
[15:25] Speaker 1: so well-known. Out of all the people that you've interviewed
[15:28] Speaker 1: and been around, what's that one pinch-me moment that you go, whoa,
[15:33] Speaker 1: I can't believe this?
[15:33] Speaker 2: Yeah, it was Clapton. Okay. It was interviewing Clapton. And
[15:36] Speaker 2: it was an Entertainment Tonight interview, right? Okay. They just
[15:39] Speaker 2: really wanted me to hammer him about losing his son. Right.
[15:44] Speaker 2: You know, it was just so uncomfortable for me. And
[15:47] Speaker 2: the same thing happened with a Tim Allen interview where
[15:49] Speaker 2: they wanted me to interview him about being busted for
[15:52] Speaker 2: cocaine dealing. Right. Right. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. And
[15:56] Speaker 2: so I found a way to come in softly. Right.
[16:01] Speaker 2: And then I asked a bunch of questions that Entertainment
[16:05] Speaker 2: Tonight to this day probably has never aired the answers
[16:07] Speaker 2: to it. Yeah. chord progressions and pentatonic scales you know
[16:13] Speaker 2: it's like talking to the dixie dregs or something you
[16:15] Speaker 2: know it was uh yeah so it was tough because
[16:18] Speaker 2: i loved et and they were so great promoting my
[16:20] Speaker 2: career but no what was it like kissing your co-star
[16:23] Speaker 2: right right that's really what they wanted yeah.
[16:25] Speaker 1: When fans stop you today and talk to you what's
[16:28] Speaker 1: one story that you might hear over and over again
[16:31] Speaker 1: that still just catches you off guard.
[16:33] Speaker 2: Yeah it's changed you know it is uh Nowadays, in 2015,
[16:38] Speaker 2: I was given 18 months to live with a rare
[16:40] Speaker 2: form of prostate cancer.
[16:42] Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember that.
[16:43] Speaker 2: In fact, we just got back from MD Anderson, the
[16:46] Speaker 2: cancer center there, who has been treating me for about
[16:48] Speaker 2: a decade. And the doctor who's known as the Jedi
[16:53] Speaker 2: master for prostate cancer, Dr. Christopher Logathetis, he pulls up
[16:57] Speaker 2: all the scans and everything, just the 100,000 mile checkup.
[17:01] Speaker 2: And he says, well, you're now an extreme outlier. And
[17:04] Speaker 2: I said, well, just give me to that in layman's terms.
[17:06] Speaker 2: What does that mean? He says, we can't figure out
[17:08] Speaker 2: why you're still alive. I said, don't ever say that again.
[17:13] Speaker 2: But the point I'm making is that there are two
[17:15] Speaker 2: things are happening. One is that I'll get a lot
[17:18] Speaker 2: of emails from people because I was so honest about it,
[17:21] Speaker 2: my wife and I both, about, you know, this is
[17:23] Speaker 2: what I'm going through. What were the prayers that you
[17:26] Speaker 2: used and what treatments did you use? Should I get radiation? Right.
[17:30] Speaker 2: So I get a lot of that very, very personal
[17:31] Speaker 2: stuff because nowadays, you know, back in the 80s, you
[17:35] Speaker 2: couldn't communicate with people like that.
[17:37] Speaker 1: Right, right.
[17:38] Speaker 2: But now it's great. It's become a bit of a
[17:40] Speaker 2: ministry for me and my wife. The other thing that's
[17:43] Speaker 2: happened is that when I would walk into a, back
[17:46] Speaker 2: in 86 to 96, I would walk into an airport
[17:50] Speaker 2: and somebody would just, they'd be walking by and they'd go,
[17:53] Speaker 2: you know, that kind of thing for the Entertainment Tonight theme.
[17:56] Speaker 2: But it's now, it is the basketball theme. When that
[17:59] Speaker 2: thing came back, and when I wrote that in 1989,
[18:02] Speaker 2: it was just, I had written an NFL theme, I'd
[18:04] Speaker 2: written a golf theme. It was just another theme and
[18:07] Speaker 2: it wouldn't have had any of the effect that it's
[18:09] Speaker 2: had if it wasn't. 35 years hence, right? And during
[18:13] Speaker 2: the whole Michael Jordan thing, you know.
[18:15] Speaker 1: You brought up the prostate cancer. I have to touch
[18:17] Speaker 1: one little thing on this.
[18:18] Speaker 2: Sure.
[18:19] Speaker 1: How does life seem different to you now that you've
[18:23] Speaker 1: lived through this when at the time... they didn't give
[18:27] Speaker 1: you that much time because the older we get, the
[18:30] Speaker 1: more defined we get on our legacy and on our mortality.
[18:34] Speaker 1: How did that affect you during? And then how does
[18:37] Speaker 1: it affect you now that you've actually gotten through all this?
[18:40] Speaker 2: Yeah. I was a bad person when I first got,
[18:43] Speaker 2: became a bad person when I first got diagnosed. I was,
[18:46] Speaker 2: I became a cancer patient. And so it was, the
[18:49] Speaker 2: doctor said, get your affairs in order. So that's what
[18:50] Speaker 2: I did. Yeah. And, you know, we can make sure
[18:52] Speaker 2: the insurance is right or whatever. And it was Connie
[18:55] Speaker 2: really who, Italian girl from the Bronx who sort of
[18:57] Speaker 2: rose up and just said, this is not us. I'm like,
[18:59] Speaker 2: what are you talking about? She just said, we're going
[19:02] Speaker 2: to find, we were both reading books about prostate cancer
[19:05] Speaker 2: and about latest treatments. We were, you know, I was,
[19:09] Speaker 2: you know, there were people who knew who I was.
[19:11] Speaker 2: And so I was able to actually call up hospitals
[19:13] Speaker 2: and find doctors and interview them. None of it was
[19:15] Speaker 2: any good news. So when I started taking treatment and
[19:19] Speaker 2: chemo and something called androgen deprivation therapy, they give you
[19:22] Speaker 2: shots in your stomach, which basically suck all of the
[19:27] Speaker 2: testosterone out of your body because prostate cancer loves testosterone,
[19:31] Speaker 2: feeds on that. And prostate cancer also loves to go
[19:33] Speaker 2: to your bones. So that's why you want to get
[19:36] Speaker 2: on it right away. This was a rare form of
[19:39] Speaker 2: that cancer. It didn't make any PSA, which is the
[19:42] Speaker 2: marker for prostate cancer. Right. My GP found it with
[19:45] Speaker 2: a manual exam. He just found there's something wrong. with it.
[19:48] Speaker 2: You know, I feel some lumps or something. Right. And
[19:50] Speaker 2: I feel some lumps ended up being, you know, these
[19:52] Speaker 2: giant tumors that had took my kidney and one of
[19:54] Speaker 2: them and it spread across my body. What happened with
[19:56] Speaker 2: me is I was in a lot of pain. When
[19:57] Speaker 2: you're a quote unquote terminal patient, you can get anything
[19:59] Speaker 2: you want, you know. So I was taking oxys and
[20:02] Speaker 2: then at night I was chasing him with whiskey. Wow.
[20:05] Speaker 2: I know. And which, which. And when I tell that
[20:07] Speaker 2: story on stage, I'm like, I don't recommend that. And
[20:09] Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, yes, I do. No, I don't.
[20:11] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[20:12] Speaker 2: I just became a horrible husband. And in this studio,
[20:14] Speaker 2: I remember my wife, we were toe-to-toe arguing about something.
[20:18] Speaker 2: And she just said, if you're not going to fight,
[20:19] Speaker 2: then I'm not. You're done.
[20:20] Speaker 1: Right.
[20:21] Speaker 2: And she was serious. Yeah. And so I sobered up
[20:25] Speaker 2: and we kept fighting. Yeah. And then when I found
[20:29] Speaker 2: out how many people were praying for me.
[20:31] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[20:32] Speaker 2: And I would get these Facebook posts. Right. And all
[20:35] Speaker 2: the rest of that stuff. And that's the thing about,
[20:37] Speaker 2: you know, that's actually a, you know, a challenge when
[20:40] Speaker 2: you're first diagnosed is have a lot of friends, you know,
[20:42] Speaker 2: in this situation where they don't want it to be public. Yeah.
[20:46] Speaker 2: Don't even want any other friends to know.
[20:48] Speaker 1: Right, right.
[20:48] Speaker 2: But if you've got friends who are going to pray
[20:50] Speaker 2: for you, and that's really what was happening. And so
[20:53] Speaker 2: to answer your question, my daughter's pregnant, so she calls
[20:57] Speaker 2: me every 15 minutes. No problem. She's okay. That's good. Yeah,
[21:02] Speaker 2: that's good. To answer your question, once I got past
[21:05] Speaker 2: the pity party, which is what my wife called it,
[21:08] Speaker 2: then I did think legacy. The legacy that I thought
[21:13] Speaker 2: of was more music, you know? Yeah. Just more music.
[21:16] Speaker 2: Because you know as a musician that you'll release a
[21:19] Speaker 2: song and you have no idea what's going to happen
[21:21] Speaker 2: with it. Yeah, yeah. And then all of a sudden
[21:23] Speaker 2: you get a message for somebody. I have a song
[21:25] Speaker 2: called Bastille Day. Very simple song. It's just an A
[21:27] Speaker 2: minor and C minor. I almost didn't put it on
[21:29] Speaker 2: a record.
[21:30] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[21:30] Speaker 2: I get this stuff. I still get it today where
[21:32] Speaker 2: it's like, oh, I got married to the song. Someone
[21:34] Speaker 2: said I buried a friend to the song. And I've
[21:37] Speaker 2: got a couple of people say that I vacuumed to
[21:39] Speaker 2: the song, you know, so. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So it
[21:41] Speaker 2: is one of those things where it's just, I feel
[21:43] Speaker 2: like producing more music and doing that can add to
[21:47] Speaker 2: a legacy. Yeah.
[21:48] Speaker 1: Now, out of all the times you've been interviewed, what's
[21:51] Speaker 1: one question you always hoped that someone would ask you,
[21:54] Speaker 1: but they never did?
[21:56] Speaker 2: Why don't you retire? Nobody asks me that question. Although... Although,
[22:01] Speaker 2: whenever you go to the hospital for a checkup, whenever
[22:03] Speaker 2: they go, are you still working? They ask you two questions.
[22:07] Speaker 2: Are you still working? And when was the last time
[22:11] Speaker 2: you had a fall? That's what they start. Why are
[22:14] Speaker 2: you asking me this? I'm 74 years old.
[22:16] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[22:17] Speaker 2: Yeah. Actually, I think the question is, when are you
[22:21] Speaker 2: going to quit? Yeah. You know, it's, which is the
[22:23] Speaker 2: same question. And I don't know, I think maybe it's
[22:25] Speaker 2: the baby boomer thing. Yeah. I just don't, I just,
[22:28] Speaker 2: I feel like if I didn't have a purpose, I
[22:30] Speaker 2: would probably shrink, you know, shrink and die. Yeah. Do
[22:33] Speaker 2: you feel the same way?
[22:34] Speaker 1: I do.
[22:35] Speaker 2: I do.
[22:35] Speaker 1: You know, people constantly ask me, so when are you
[22:37] Speaker 1: going to retire?
[22:38] Speaker 2: It's like, never. Yeah.
[22:40] Speaker 1: You know, why retire when doing things that you enjoy?
[22:43] Speaker 2: Yeah. And when you look at somebody like, like Tony Bennett,
[22:46] Speaker 2: for example, right?
[22:47] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
[22:48] Speaker 2: But his career was just re-energized, you know, by his son. Right.
[22:52] Speaker 2: I'm still waiting for that moment for me. But it's, yeah,
[22:56] Speaker 2: I really, I just, I think purpose is a big deal.
[22:59] Speaker 1: It is.
[22:59] Speaker 2: You know, my friend Rick Warren wrote Purpose Driven Life,
[23:02] Speaker 2: and that's a great book. It's just about you were
[23:05] Speaker 2: born with a purpose. God birthed you with a purpose,
[23:09] Speaker 2: and you got to figure out what that is and
[23:10] Speaker 2: just live it. Exactly. My thing is, I really want
[23:13] Speaker 2: to encourage people to find the mission, the purpose that
[23:17] Speaker 2: they were made for and then live that out.
[23:19] Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like you've done well that way. And
[23:22] Speaker 1: I'm just glad that things are still progressing and going
[23:24] Speaker 1: good for you.
[23:25] Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, not every organ works the way it's
[23:28] Speaker 2: supposed to, but I just mean my kidney. I don't
[23:32] Speaker 2: mean the private parts. Right, right.
[23:35] Speaker 1: But I mean, it's like you're still sitting here. We're
[23:37] Speaker 1: having this conversation about your life, about your future projects,
[23:42] Speaker 1: about what you want to do. That's a good thing.
[23:44] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I think that, I mean,
[23:47] Speaker 2: I'm talking to a musician here. I think that you
[23:51] Speaker 2: lose track of time when you're working on music. You do.
[23:53] Speaker 2: You just do. Whether it's whether you're practicing or whatever.
[23:55] Speaker 2: And now, you know, my wife and I are very
[23:57] Speaker 2: involved in helping to put music programs into schools and
[24:00] Speaker 2: certainly our grandkids' schools. I have all three of my
[24:03] Speaker 2: grandkids are great pianists. Nice. I did not teach them.
[24:05] Speaker 2: Music in the house is just a huge thing. You know,
[24:08] Speaker 2: I love it. And I love watching like an eight-year-old
[24:11] Speaker 2: learn a piano piece and not be worried about what
[24:13] Speaker 2: we think about.
[24:14] Speaker 1: It, you know?
[24:15] Speaker 2: Right.
[24:15] Speaker 1: And just their innocence and how they approach it. Yeah.
[24:19] Speaker 2: You know, there's a book called, we've quoted it on
[24:22] Speaker 2: our radio show before. It's called The Rule of 10
[24:24] Speaker 2: Years Old. Yeah. I can't remember who wrote it, but
[24:26] Speaker 2: it's basically a book that informs you on how to
[24:29] Speaker 2: find your purpose if you're lost. Right. And it is
[24:32] Speaker 2: look back at your life when you were 10 years old. Yeah.
[24:35] Speaker 2: What were you doing then when you were on your stingray,
[24:39] Speaker 2: green stingray bike with the playing cards attached to the
[24:42] Speaker 2: spokes and you had your eyes closed with your hands
[24:44] Speaker 2: off the handlebar? What was that person doing to make
[24:48] Speaker 2: him come alive? And if you look at my life, parents,
[24:50] Speaker 2: you know, my father was a World War II veteran.
[24:53] Speaker 2: They just sort of stuffed me in the basement, you know,
[24:56] Speaker 2: and they would out and go out and party and stuff.
[24:58] Speaker 2: And I had in the basement, I had actually, you know,
[25:00] Speaker 2: Lin-Manuel's life is a lot like this too, latchkey life.
[25:02] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[25:03] Speaker 2: Where there was a reel-to-reel tape recorder that my dad had. Yeah.
[25:06] Speaker 2: It was actually a wire recorder, if you've ever even
[25:08] Speaker 2: heard of that.
[25:08] Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[25:10] Speaker 2: And, you know, a microphone and an amplifier, an upright piano. Yeah.
[25:15] Speaker 2: And I was just creating really bad stuff, you know.
[25:19] Speaker 2: But look at that. And I also, I bought one
[25:21] Speaker 2: of these from Heathkit. Do you remember Heathkit? I remember them. Yeah.
[25:25] Speaker 2: Not many people remember that. So it's basically a kit, right,
[25:28] Speaker 2: for people who don't know. Right. And you send away,
[25:30] Speaker 2: and then you can build your own radio station. Yes.
[25:33] Speaker 2: Or whatever it is, whatever you want. Right. So I
[25:35] Speaker 2: built a radio station, and I was broadcasting into my parents'
[25:39] Speaker 2: car in the driveway, right? Yes. So if you look
[25:43] Speaker 2: at that, that's pretty much what I was going to
[25:44] Speaker 2: be doing, I guess.
[25:45] Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's been good. So what would you like
[25:47] Speaker 1: to leave people with, just to let them know what's
[25:51] Speaker 1: on the horizon here that they can look forward to
[25:53] Speaker 1: from John Tesh?
[25:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm actually just about finished with a
[25:59] Speaker 2: Christmas record. And I've done several of them, but I've
[26:02] Speaker 2: never done one like this. This is as if Round
[26:05] Speaker 2: Ball Rock became eight Christmas songs. And the only title
[26:10] Speaker 2: that would work on this is Epic Christmas. Okay. And
[26:13] Speaker 2: what I did was I started out sketching out tunes.
[26:19] Speaker 2: I had my friend Tim Hines do the MIDI stuff
[26:22] Speaker 2: for the MIDI arrangements for it. Right. And then... charted
[26:25] Speaker 2: it out, took it into a studio with all live musicians. Yeah.
[26:28] Speaker 2: We had, I laid down my piano part in the studio.
[26:33] Speaker 2: And then we had Tim Landers on bass guitar, who's
[26:36] Speaker 2: been my music director forever. Yeah. Ray Brinker. on drums,
[26:39] Speaker 2: who's now out with Herb Alberts. Andrew Sinnewick, who plays
[26:43] Speaker 2: on all the big movies here on guitar. And then
[26:46] Speaker 2: Jim Cook, who's as good a B3 organist as you'll
[26:49] Speaker 2: ever find. And then Tony Guerrero, who's a great flugelhorn
[26:52] Speaker 2: player and arranger. He did all the orchestra stuff. So
[26:55] Speaker 2: it's basically 80s synthy stuff, right? Right. With a live
[26:59] Speaker 2: band with strings and brass. Nice. And it's powerful. Nice.
[27:03] Speaker 2: It's for unwrapping presence at a high speed. Okay. All right.
[27:07] Speaker 2: That's good.
[27:08] Speaker 1: Well, this has been great. I really appreciate you taking
[27:10] Speaker 1: the time to join us today.
[27:12] Speaker 2: It's been good therapy for me. I appreciate it. Are
[27:15] Speaker 2: you in Nashville now?
[27:15] Speaker 1: I am. I am.
[27:16] Speaker 2: Oh, that's great. That's great. You know, I used to
[27:19] Speaker 2: work at Channel 4 there. Did you know that? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
[27:23] Speaker 2: I was on the air with a guy named Dan Miller.
[27:26] Speaker 1: I remember Dan.
[27:26] Speaker 2: Pat Sajak was the weather guy. I learned how to
[27:28] Speaker 2: be a journalist in Nashville. That was a really, really
[27:32] Speaker 2: strong station. Well, this has been a real honor to
[27:34] Speaker 2: talk to you. Well, it's been great. Thank you.
[27:36] Speaker 1: It's been my pleasure. Thanks again. A sincere thank you
[27:40] Speaker 1: to our guests for sharing their journey with us today.
[27:42] Speaker 1: And thanks for spending part of your day with us.
[27:45] Speaker 1: We hope today's conversation gave you something to take with you.
[27:49] Speaker 1: If you haven't already, remember... tap follow so you never
[27:53] Speaker 1: miss the great conversations and guests still ahead you can
[27:57] Speaker 1: always reach us at media at plateau music.com thanks for
[28:01] Speaker 1: being part of what we're building here on almost live
[28:04] Speaker 1: nashville we'll see you next time

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