Lee Sklar put the bass into Phil Collins’s poignant song Another Day In Paradise – and thousands of others too. But he’s always remained under the radar.
Not that you’d forget him if you saw him performing today, with his iconic silver beard going down almost to his belly – he started growing it when he left high school in 1965.
The ultimate “musician’s musician,” the Hollywood session man has been recording since the Seventies without making a name for himself to the record buying public. But inside the circle of musicians, especially those who record in Los Angeles, he is revered as a steady hand, tastefully laying down the foundations of a tune for whoever hires him.
Not that a steady hand is how most musicians dream of being remembered, but with more than 2,000 albums to his credit (and still counting) that’s a lot of reverence.
When I say he’s a steady hand, that’s not to discount his very recognisable style, which first came to attention on James Taylor’s signature song You’ve Got A Friend and Jackson Browne’s songs Doctor My Eyes.
He also laid down the melodic grooves on Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman, Sara Smile by Hall & Oates, and Diana Ross’s Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To) and played on several of Phil Collins’s solo albums. He also played on It’s Raining Men by The Weather Girls.
Born in 1940, Leland Sklar moved from Wisconsin to Southern California when he was very young and started playing piano at age four, inspired by the playing and glamour of Liberace on TV.
On music teacher’s advice, he switched instruments when he found his high school music class filled with pianists but no string bass players, and took up double bass in the orchestra. He never looked back.
A chance meeting led to a handful of gigs accompanying James Taylor and when his album Sweet Baby James became a hit, Sklar became a regular in Taylor’s band and his career began to take off.
Over the years he has played with Toto, The Doors and Carole King, and on country tunes by the legendary Willie Nelson, Linda Rnstadt, Reba McEntire, Lyle Lovett and George Strait, on TV shows such as Hill Street Blues, and feature films including Forrest Gump, Ghost, and My Best Friend’s Wedding.
Trivia: Sklar was one half of the string bass section in his university orchestra; the other was Daryl Dragon, later to play keyboards in The Beach Boys and find fame with his wife Toni as one half of The Captain & Tennille.