Right now, Jay Leno needs a friend. Well, OK, not a friend as such. What Jay Leno needs is a sycophant with a guitar.
This isn’t usually a problem. Because no matter how many painfully unfunny jokes he tells, or how many soul-crushingly mediocre local newspaper headlines he reads out, Jay Leno knows that his bandleader Kevin Eubanks will get a kick out of them. Because Kevin Eubanks is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most easily amused man on the face of the planet.
But now it’s been reported that Kevin Eubanks has had enough of Jay Leno. Apparently Kevin plans to leave Jay Leno’s new Tonight Show at some point in the near future. We’re not sure why, but he probably wants to move onto a job where he gets to laugh at things that are slightly funnier than Jay Leno. Like, you know, terminal illness or the collected works of Sylvia Plath.
These have been a rough few months for Jay Leno. Where he was once named the man who Americans would most like to invite for dinner, he’s now the man who Americans would most like to run up to in the street and shout “Why? WHY?” at before bursting into tears and collapsing to the floor as he walks away with a weird shrug/smirk combination playing across his face.
Jay Leno’s problems are endless. His prime time show was a failure, he’s being held responsible for Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show departure, his big Oprah Winfrey interview came across as needy and pathetic, and saving both his reputation and the Tonight Show following his various debacles is going to be an uphill – some would say impossible – struggle.
But it’s OK, because at least Jay Leno has Kevin Eubanks. Good old Kevin Eubanks. No matter what trouble Jay Leno finds himself in, Kevin’s always going to be there with an insincere chuckle, a spontaneous guitar riff and – if Jay is really lucky – an awkward ‘you the man’ fingerpoint. It doesn’t matter how bad things get, Jay Leno will always have Kevin Euban…
What? Kevin Eubanks has had enough of Jay Leno too? This is a disaster! People reports:
NBC so far has not officially confirmed the latest shock wave to hit Leno’s show, first reported by L.A. radio K-EARTH 101 and also being reported by the New York Times. Eubanks, a jazz guitarist who joined The Tonight Show in 1992 and became bandleader two years later, simply “wanted a change” and a chance for new opportunities.
It’s hard to work out what new opportunities Kevin Eubanks thinks he’ll find. We’ve seen a copy of his CV, and it’s not very impressive. It’s just an A4 piece of paper with “Skills: laughing at things that aren’t funny, playing up to three descending notes on a guitar at any given time, doing awkward ‘you the man’ fingerpoints (basic training)” written on it in biro. He’s never going to get another job.
The real question, though, is how this will affect Jay Leno. The easy thing for him to do would be to hire another chuckling simpleton as bandleader and let him take over Kevin’s fake-laughing duties. But maybe that’s not what Jay Leno should do. Maybe Jay should find the bandleader that most accurately reflects his current situation. Which sounds easy but, seriously, you try and find a swirling vortex of apathy that can play the guitar. It’s harder than it looks.
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