Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 7, 1993 TAG: 9305070099
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRAZIER MOORE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
This can come as somewhat of a shock as he coaxes out guitar riffs before each commercial break. Butted up against "SNL's" prankish humor, Smith, undisguised and effusive about it, does more than play guitar. He offers a catalog of raw human emotions. Exquisite pleasure, exquisite pain and everything in between play across his face when he plays.
In short, Smith gets into what he does. And, working his face like chewing gum, he lets you know it. (When you tune him in this week, you'll also find guest host Christina Applegate of "Married . . . With Children" and musical guest Midnight Oil.)
But what else do you know about this iconic presence who never speaks except with his guitar and body language? Who is this man with the generic-sounding name and the retro chop of blond hair flopping in his eyes?
Go ahead. Ask him. Listen to his husky laugh as he imagines himself some legendary, long-ago bluesman reading his own entry in a reference book:
" `Little is known about Mr. Smith,' it starts out. I like that." Then he laughs again and comes clean for history.
George Edward Smith is 41 years old and grew up in Stroudsburg, a town in eastern Pennsylvania.
He has been playing guitar since he was 4 years old. He turned pro when he was 11, playing the Fender Telecaster his mother had given him with bands at nearby Pocono resorts.
As a young adult, he moved to Connecticut and played in bar bands around the New Haven area. He recalls club owners beefing about a new TV show called "Saturday Night Live," which was hurting their business.
When he could, Smith watched it like everyone else.
"Last night," he says in his raspy voice, "I was flipping around the TV and I saw an old clip. John Belushi was doing the Samurai thing with Richard Pryor. And I remembered when I used to watch `Saturday Night Live,' back in '75, '76, before I moved to the city. I used to watch it and go, `Wow! Amazing!' It was magic."
On arriving in Manhattan, Smith hooked up with "SNL's" most magical star. First, he was a band member with Gilda Radner's 1979 Broadway show, "then we got friendly, then we got married."
Then he was on the road, touring with Daryl Hall and John Oates for six years. His marriage eventually ended in divorce.
"But we had a lot of fun, me and Gilda," Smith recalls. "There was no bitterness whatsoever. In fact, we never really did break up. We were both just gone all the time."
When Hall and Oates disbanded in 1985, Smith landed his current gig and hung up a sign on the show's "home base" stage that said, "All Kinds of Music Played Here." You can still see it hanging there.
Smith lives in downtown Manhattan with his wife of two years, playwright Taylor Barton. He produces and plays in a country-rock band called the High Plains Drifters, and hopes to record a second album with the Saturday Night Live Band while the show is on summer hiatus.
"But I'm not very ambitious," he insists. "I've always just let things come to me. I've been very fortunate that good things came."
A certain lack of urgency is understandable. Both as a sideman touring the globe and in his anchoring role at "SNL," he has seen up close the dark side of stardom.
"I've worked with Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, some of the most famous people in the world," Smith says. "These guys can't walk down the street. With Gilda, people would come up and tear at her clothes, tear at her hair. They wanted a piece of her. That's horrible.
"Fame, and clutching after it - that's not what it's about. To be able to do your work, to be given an audience to perform for, that's the thing. For me."
You can see it on his face.
Elsewhere on TV
From the mean streets of Bosnia to the rolling hills of New Mexico, newsman Arthur Kent gets around. Operation Desert Storm's "Scud Stud" is now working on a project for the National Audubon Society that shouldn't put him in harm's way. The one-hour special about environmental activists is being shot in New Mexico. It'll air on cable's TBS in the fall. Kent, who is currently undertaking legal maneuvers against his former employer NBC for his dismissal last year, will narrate and report.
"Saturday Night Live" airs 11:30 p.m. Saturdays on WSLS-Channel 10.
by CNB