Paul Shaffer has spent pretty much his whole career standing just off to one side of center stage. Everybody knows him from his 26 years as David Letterman's bandleader and sidekick. And chances are you remember him from the early days of Saturday Night Live, where he not only played keyboards in the house band but also did a spot-on Don Kirshner impression, accompanied Bill Murray's talent-challenged lounge singer, and backed up the Blues Brothers. There's that famous Spinal Tap cameo as hapless record rep Artie Fufkin. And you might have seen him leading the legendary jam sessions at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.

Perusing Shaffer's career, you suddenly realize that his sheer sidekickiness — his ability to provide the perfect setting, play the perfect foil, for whoever he accompanies — is the whole magnificent point. Shaffer has gone from being a kid learning how to play keyboards by listening to rock & roll radio way up north in his Ontario hometown of Thunder Bay to somebody who's performed with more famous musicians than anybody ever. If that's what comes with being a second banana, we should all be so lucky.

S&V recently visited with Shaffer at his house in NYC's northern suburbs to talk about his new DVD (see "England Swings") and to check out his 2-channel audio system, which features such high-end gear as EgglestonWorks speakers, a VPI turntable, a Sony SACD player, and Pass Labs monoblock amplifiers. Given that Shaffer's whole shtick springs from his wild energy and wilder outbursts — whether it's tearing off a tasty lick on his Hammond organ or lobbing some hipster non-sequitur into the middle of one of Letterman's ruminations — it's a little surprising to find that he's pretty low-key, even introspective, in day-to-day life.

But that doesn't mean he doesn't keep his famous sense of humor at the ready, even when he's puttering around the house. As he shows us his listening room/practice space, its walls lined with pictures of just some of the hundreds of musicians he's played with, Shaffer lifts the lid of a 3-foot-long antique music box so it can play a tune. Listening to the quiet little melody, the onetime leader of the World's Most Dangerous Band says wryly, "When I get my own show, that will be the theme song."

Tell me about your system.

Several years back, [Beatles and Rolling Stones manager] Allen Klein invited me to a listening party in honor of the fact that he had taken the early Rolling Stones masters and had Bob Ludwig remaster them for SACD. Well, when I heard those records, they sounded incredible. Like the cowbell at the beginning of "Honky Tonk Women" — you've never heard it sound like that before. And I just said, "I want that system." Everybody gave me their card that night — the Sony guy for the SACD player, and the guy from I think Tennessee, where these speakers are made.

EgglestonWorks.

Yeah, Eggleston. I just said, "This is what I want, if it will give me that same sound in my house." And I'm thrilled with this system. These are mastering speakers, I believe — the ones that Bob Ludwig used to master the Stones SACDs. I got a few other SACDs, but none of them sound much different from the originals. So the difference must be in the remastering. That evening, at the listening party — which was attended by my friend Phil Spector as well — they were talking about how they did the remastering. And I'm a very non-technical person, but what I did get from it was that they spent a considerable amount of time doing it, and they did it lovingly. That's a great way to put it.

How did you decide on this room for your system?

We had just built an extra garage, and my wife Cathy said, "You can have the room above it for your office. You can have everything in there the way you want it." I'm not really the type to put in a studio, because I don't really have anything to record. That takes time, and between the daily Letterman show and trying to be a dad, that's all the time I have. I like to come up here on Saturday mornings and turn on Felix Hernandez's all-R&B show, Rhythm Revue, on [WBGO] 88.3. That's why I have that FM tuner. It's from a guy named Mario at a place called Toys from the Attic. I love it that, when I do get the chance to put something on, I know it will sound great.

Have you ever been a vinyl collector?

No. I do have a turntable, though, you notice. At the time I was acquiring this system, a guy gave me a record of a pipe organ, and I got a turntable so I could play it. And when you put that record on, you really do hear what a great transmitter of sound quality a vinyl record is. I can put it on and just fill this room with the sound of a big pipe-organ concert. It's recorded beautifully on vinyl.

The original incarnation of the Late Night World's Most Dangerous Band (from left): Hiram Bullock, Steve Jordan, Paul Shaffer, and Will Lee.

When you were a kid, which did you find yourself gravitating toward: 45s or albums?

Not too many of either, because I was mainly concerned with learning how to play the songs on the piano. Whereas another kid might put on a 45 of the Beach Boys doing "I Get Around," I would just come home after school and sit down at the piano and learn it.

In other words, you'd rather play it than collect it.

Right. So I never collected it. But I did have some records — a couple of Supremes albums I remember. When the recordings were just so good that playing them on the piano wasn't enough to get me off, I really had to buy them. But when I went to college, I left those albums at home. And then I had quite a good collection when I was in college that started to include things like Herbie Hancock; Head Hunters had come out of that time. I started to get interested in jazz.

I didn't know you had a jazz background. I always assumed it was more R&B.

Well, I love R&B. That's really my heart.

Are you a movie person?

Not really.

Do you occasionally watch at home with your wife and kids, just to relax?

Yeah. But I don't go to the movie theater much either. I just got out of the habit. The kids don't really see too many movies. My son watches them on his laptop, actually. That way, he's got privacy, and he can manipulate them however he wants.

How about concert DVDs? Do you watch those?

Yeah. I watched, for instance, Eric Clapton's tribute to George Harrison [A Concert for George]. Beautiful — and it's beautiful to be able to hear that on this system. Another classic DVD that I like is the Stones' Rock and Roll Circus. You know, I don't have 5.1 here, but I have it in my apartment in the city.

Did you do that because you were working on the British Invasion DVD at the time, or because you just wanted to have a surround sound setup?

I didn't get it in time to use it in the mixing of the DVD. So I had to rely on the mixing engineer to educate me as to how it's done. And I just went with his concept, which was to not overdo what's coming out of the back speakers at all and have just a hall presence behind you. When I now play the DVD on the system in my apartment, I do like the mix. But I might have put a little more information in the rear, had I done it, and had I had a speaker system to go home and listen to it on. Anyway, I'm not yet happy with my 5.1 system.

. . . and now during his Late Show days.

For any reason you can put your finger on?

Because I've gotten used to hearing these Eggleston speakers.

Are you happy with how the British Invasion DVD turned out?

Yes. Because, as Billy J. Kramer says at the beginning of his set, it reminds him of one of those all-nighters at the Cavern Club. Well, that's exactly what we were going for. It wasn't meant to sound like we were the Eagles with the incredible sound system that they bring, because we were in a club. It's a very live mix. And it is what it is. There was a little bit of post-production, of course, but not much. We're pretty honest. And we didn't have the budget where you could go nuts and end up replacing every instrument, as you hear on so many live concert recordings where things sound perfect.

How did the DVD come about?

My wife asked me to go see Mike Smith with her when he played at B.B. King's club here in New York, and he was just terrific. And then, as you see at the beginning of the DVD, the very next week I got a chance to guest-host the Letterman show. So I said, "I wonder if Mike's still in town? We could have him do the keyboard spot, my spot." And he was, and he did it, and the band played all of his songs. And then he had that horrible accident that paralyzed him. He became a paraplegic. Steven Van Zandt, who is a big fan of his, was also there at B.B. King's that night, and he and I started speaking about doing a benefit. But then Steve, through no fault of his own, just got too busy and had to do his [Sirius] radio show and go on tour. But my wife kept encouraging me: "You should really do something for Mike." And Margo Lewis, who was Mike's agent and who represents a lot of acts from that time, called me and said, "You know, the Zombies have a free date." And then it all fell together.

Did Mike Smith get a chance to see the concert?

I did take the DVD over to England to the hospital that Mike was in, and I sat in his room and played it for him. He analyzed each thing, and he just loved it. At the end of the day, he said, "Can you come back tomorrow? We could watch it again." So I said, "Of course." I ended up going up there all 3 days that I was there, and what an experience that was. It almost doesn't matter if the DVD comes out, because it was made for him and he got to see it. It was very gratifying for him to see all these musicians pay tribute to him. When Mike saw Donald Fagen from Steely Dan get up at the end to play "Glad All Over," he said, "Blimey."

Between your stints on Saturday Night Live, Late Night, and the Late Show, you've performed with an incredible number of famous musicians.

Well, Late Night was hot when it first came on, so a lot of musicians wanted to do it — especially the people who heard their music coming at them. My band was the first rock-style band on a talk show, and we were doing covers of all this music we loved — Stax and Motown, and the Beatles and the Stones.

There's been a CD of the Late Night performances, but there's never been a DVD.

No, there hasn't, but I see a lot of stuff from the old show on YouTube — numbers like "Land of a Thousand Dances" with just Wilson Pickett and the four-piece band. It was terrific. When Late Night first came on, we were catching up on all of the artists who had been making great music before the show started. We had a lot of the greats on. I got to play with everybody that I ever really wanted to play with. I missed people like Elvis and Sinatra, but otherwise I've done pretty well.

Who stands out?

James Brown. I always say him right away. That was an incredibly high musical moment for me. Sly Stone, Carole King. I'll always remember how excited I was about those three. Eric Clapton was one of the first guys to sit in, and then a lot of people started sitting in. Now all the other shows do it as well.

The band seems to be pretty important to Dave.

He's always been very generous with us. He's always interacting with me and the rest of the band. He's heard every note that we've played over all these years, and he continues to be a great supporter. He absolutely will react to what we play, and sometimes talk about it. It's amazing that he's listening so closely.

England Swings The DVD Paul Shaffer and His British Invasion (VDI/Koch) documents a concert Shaffer organized in 2005 as a benefit for Dave Clark Five lead singer/keyboardist Mike Smith, who became paralyzed 2 years earlier after a freak accident. (Smith died this past February, just 11 days before the Dave Clark Five was to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.) The disc features performances from the Zombies, Peter & Gordon (playing together for the first time in almost 40 years), Denny Laine, Billy J. Kramer, and Beatles soundalikes The Fab Faux, with guest appearances by Steely Dan's Donald Fagen and E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg. And at the center of it all, unfazed by the presence of so much British royalty, stands the irrepressible Paul. — M.G.