John Tesh

speaker

268 appearances 2 recordings 2 series first heard Feb 2025 last heard 14 Oct

John Tesh’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Oct 2025 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Athletic NBA Daily · Wolves handle Thunder | Roundball Rock with John Tesh · 14 Feb 2025 podcast

Well, the first thing to know is that I had grown up as a musician on Long Island. And then I was playing music, recording music in the 1980s while I was still working on news and things like that. And I got a job at CBS Sports doing sporting events that nobody else wanted to do. You know, ski flying and Mr. Universe. And I mean, figure skating was fantastic.

And I landed on the Tour de France with a guy named David Michaels, Al Michaels' brother, who's this tremendous producer. And I'd never met him before. He goes, hey, John, I know you're a musician and a writer. Let's do this MTV style. Let's do the Tour de France. And we'll use music and stuff. I said, well, I've got some... I've got a bar and I've got a piano. I've got some synthesizers.

I'm geeking out. That was me all day doing that stuff, right? And then since I'm in the sports world, knowing producers and stuff like that, I heard through the sports grapevine that... that NBC had gotten the coverage, right? And this is 1989, 1990, and that they were looking for a theme. And this story is online, you know, in a bunch of different places.

And so I was just in the middle of the night in Magève, France, still covering the Tour de France. I'm thinking, what would it sound like? What would a sports team sound like? First of all, I'm up against everybody, John Williams and Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, all those guys.

But what Eversol wanted to do and Terry O'Neill is they just wanted to put it out to people and say, hey, we'll consider anything. And so I got this theme idea in the middle of night, two o'clock in the morning, and I called my answering machine, which was in New York at the time, and I left a message for myself at 2 a.m.

And when I tell this story on stage, people are like, you know, I tell a story about how I call my answering machine and left a message for myself. And they all laugh because they've all done that. They've all said, I'm going to pick up a quart of milk and all the rest of that stuff. And so I still have... This is actually the answering... I have the answering machine. You have it?

And here's the answering machine message. I have the answering machine message because I carry it around with me and I play it on stage. So I played this...

like you know years ago on a pbs special this is the original answering machine message that i left when i was in majeur france and i called uh i called my answering machine in new york and you can see how close it is to what ended up being the michael jordan theme yeah this is a message for me about the nba theme here's an idea it goes like this

Yeah, so it was... And then, you know, just sitting at the piano, you know, it was basically just... I just took the answering machine and just went, you know... And then just, you know, it's the second section, which is...

But but having watched sports and then been in it and been in the control room and Brent Musburger was there and all the rest of those guys, you know, understanding that the theme can be two parts. Right. Right. Like two fanfares. But then there has to be a place for Marv to talk over. And this was a lot of this was something it was like an inside thing.

So so I wrote this section, which was basically, you know. So there's not much melody. It's just like, you know, brought to you by, you know, like that kind of thing.

Yes, yes, yes. And then there was, you know, at the end, there had to be something that built up at the end. And that was basically, you know, the whole orchestra playing like, you know,

This is awesome. Right? It's like an epic. Those parts, I knew that from working in sports that it had to have all those parts. But to be honest, I had no idea that it would even work, that they'd pick it. And when they did pick the theme and it played for 10, 11 years or something like that, it was just another theme, right?

And this really didn't become, I don't think it really became popular until it was off the air for a while. I don't even know how that happened.

I mean, nostalgia, right? It goes away, like the NBA. And also, again, Michael Jordan disappeared as well, right? The NBA left NBC and went into this next era, and they changed music. They didn't have Michael Jordan. I think that the two coincide maybe a little bit more than a lot of people realize. But for me, every time I hear that song, that's who I'm thinking about. Yeah.

The funniest thing about that is I'm in Los Angeles, right? I have a lot of friends because I grew up there and worked there. A lot of friends in New York. And one Saturday night, it was, I guess it was about 8 o'clock, 8.30 Pacific time. And my phone is blowing up. I'm getting texts that are just very confusing. Things like, are you okay with this? Do you see what's happening here?

Oh my gosh, these guys, I hate these guys for what they're doing to you right now. I'm thinking, what in the world is that? And it was like, okay, watch Saturday Night Live. So I sit there with my wife and we watch the thing. And I watched Jason Sudeikis and Vince Vaughn and Robinson, all these guys.

And at the end of it, I go, I turn to my wife and go, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. And the funny thing about it is that they studied the Avalon show that I did for PBS where we played the theme. And Sudeikis, I'm going to show you this. I made this for you guys. Sudeikis dressed and talked and hairstyle exactly like me. So that's Sudeikis on the left.

And that's me on the right. And so, I mean, they did some work on there, even down to the goofy tie. This is 1994. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I know.

Showing 221–240 of 268 · page 12 of 14