With a Little Help from My Friends

I didn’t grow up in a household where The Beatles played. The first time I heard the song “With a Little Help from My Friends” was when The Wonder Years debuted in 1988, with Joe Cocker’s version of the song as its opening theme music. I didn’t know it was a Beatles song; I didn’t know if it had been written for the show, the way the Cheers theme song had been. I feel sheepish admitting how uncool that is, how naïve and unworldly I was about music. But it’s what happened.

These days, the song’s lyrics have come back to me, and hit with a profundity I never grasped when I was a kid. “What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me? Lend me your ears, then I'll sing you a song. I will try not to sing out of key.”

Today, my album In the Last Hour of Light is out. It was recorded live, including the vocals (“the way The Beatles used to record,” cited the album’s producer Phil Weinrobe), and my biggest fear of making it that way was anticipating the moments when I might sing out of tune. That’s in part because it’s been fifteen years since my last album came out, and these days, if people associate me with music, it’s most likely as someone who interviews musicians about their stories, not someone with their own story, and their own music. And so I thought any flaw in the music, especially in my singing, would be obvious proof that I ought to stay on that side of the divide, and leave the music-making to others. But Phil believed in capturing an unpolished moment, and slowly, over several conversations, talked me into recording that way. So that’s what we did. I can listen to this album and know: this is what happened.

The fact that it happened at all, the fact that this album exists might never mean as much to anyone else as it does to me, but that’s also all right. It’s something I am proud of, and also immensely grateful for. My gratitude is especially focused on the people who helped me turn a long-simmering dream into a reality.

I used to think being a true artist meant doing everything on your own. Operating in a vacuum, ideating and executing from a place of singular vision. But that thinking contributed to the moment many years ago when I lost my way with my own music career. And the way I found my way back to it was by heading in the opposite direction: through collaborating with others, letting the process be a literal and metaphorical conversation, and thrilling in the unique alchemy that came from combining my brain with someone else’s.

It happened at every step along the way: I wrote with other songwriters. I asked Phil to produce the album. I put my music in the hands of other musicians. I challenged myself to be open, and let others challenge me to believe in my own ideas.

There’s another formative moment in my TV history, a story told in an episode of The West Wing, that goes like this:

This guy's walking down a street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep, he can't get out. A doctor passes by, and the guy shouts up, “Hey you, can you help me out?” The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along, and the guy shouts up “Father, I'm down in this hole, can you help me out?” The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. “Hey Joe, it's me, can you help me out?” And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, “Are you stupid? Now we're both down here.” The friend says, “Yeah, but I've been down here before, and I know the way out.”

And look, the friend in the story is named Joe. So let’s remember the next lines I heard for the first time in Joe Cocker’s song:

“I get by with a little help from my friends.”

When I went to record the album, I set out a bunch of instant cameras to document the process from everyone’s perspective, not just my own. I’ve come to cherish the photos that came back.

So, I’m grateful. It feels amazing that I got the chance to make music again. To be engaged in the daunting, fun, terrifying and exhilarating work of trying to excavate some internal part of me, melt it down and hammer it into a shape I can hand to someone else. This album is a collection of stories where I’m trying to reckon with what I’ve lost and what I’m lucky to still have, the miracle of it all, the fleeting nature of it all, and the unvarnished truth of my life: for better of worse, this is what happened.

I’m very grateful to you for going this far with me. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light because of how keenly I feel that time is so scarce. Thank you in advance spending some with me. Thank you for lending me your ears.

You can listen to the album here.

Come say hello and hear the songs and more stories, in person, at any of these shows:

May 14 – Los Angeles, CA at Pacific Electric – with Jason Mantzoukas | tickets
May 16 – San Francisco, CA at Swedish American Hall – with Samin Nosrat | tickets
May 27 – Nashville, TN at Analog at Hutton Hotel – with Allison Russell | tickets
May 30 – Chicago, IL at Lincoln Hall – with Josh Malina & Mary McCormack | tickets
June 7 – Seattle, WA at Triple Door – with Ken Jennings & John Roderick | tickets
June 11 – Cambridge, MA at The Sinclair – with Min Jin Lee | tickets
June 13 – New York, NY at LPR – with Adam Scott | tickets

— Hrishikesh