Friday, November 20, 2009

Who played guitar on BECKER?

It's Friday Question Day on Saturday. Also an excuse to show an episode of BECKER I wrote and directed.

LeeFranke wonders:

"Who is playing guitar between the scenes on TV's Becker?"

I asked the source, Bruce Miller, who composed the theme and did all the music on BECKER (along with FRASIER and a million other shows -- Bruce is the best!)

Ken...........the guitarist is my son Jason Miller. A short backstory is that when I met with Dave Hackel (series creator), well before the pilot shot, we decided on a very raw element to the music to represent the doc -- pretty crusty guy as we know. My example was a guitar hero of many of us, Stevie Ray Vaughn. I played him for Dave and he loved it. Now the question was who to play it for real? Jason did a little demo for me of the actual theme demo I wrote for Dave's approval and was pretty impressive. However, he was a school kid and I always favored employing people who need this for their living, along with the fact that Jason was pretty raw at the time and I didn't even consider him for doing the show with me.

Anyway, after some great guitar solo demos of my regular brilliant studio guys, Dave just couldn't get with the perfection and smoothness of these pros and asked if Jason could do it. I tried him out and he came through beautifully with all the "street rawness" that was required to exemplify the John Becker character. Since this show, I'm proud to say that my son has been carving out an impressive career in his own right, along with sharing composition duties on shows with "pops", as he sarcastically refers to me.

Thanks, Bruce. Here's an episode, complete with main titles. What is your question?





16 comments :

Unknown said...

Some seriously fine playing, kid or not.

Cap'n Bob said...

Good show, and a great job by the cop.

blogward said...

Sorry. It lost me when the girl walked in and everybody laughed at 'Oh my God".

Ref said...

Ke:

The cast of "The Office" consists in large part of many of the show's writers. Is this kind of doubling common? What would the chemistry be like between the writer/actors and those who just get paid to act?

SharoneRosen said...

GREAT GREAT GREAT!
writing, directing & guitar solo

Ref said...

Oops! Should have been "Ken!"

Anonymous said...

Ted Danson's best roll ever. Much better than Cheers!

Jeffrey Leonard said...

Ken: You have such a gift. Too bad the T.V. industry only seems to be using UNfunny scripts these days on most shows. Most of the material is so bad (i.e. "Parks and Recreation"), I get embarrassed for the writer. Who green lights this crap? And why? Isn't there anything better to choose from? It's time for Ken and David to get back on the small screen!

Jen said...

Hi Ken ... you guys had a lot of great guest callers show up on Frasier. Were any of the bits written specifically for an actor you hoped to get, or were all the actors secured after those bits had been written?

Jake said...

An abrasive and very irritating solo. Too frenetic.

Paul. G said...

You are kidding surely ? As someone who's written for tv, i think it captures the essence, as well as having a great strat tone.

FlivverFord said...

Check out BJ Block & Dawn Pembertons "Moving On".
Very similar guitar riffs, to the point where I ended up here wondering if it was actually BJ Block who did the score for Becker.

cuttinthesuga said...

jealous?

Unknown said...

All I can say is, WOW!!

Anonymous said...

Thanx,Jeeves,it was eating at my soul.

Anonymous said...

You might want to mention Gary Solt!