SHARING THE INCREDIBLE, STAR-STUDDED ROCK AND ROLL JOURNEY - ARTIST “ABOUT THE BENJAMIN” AND HIS AUDIO BIOPIC “THE BOOK OF BENJAMIN” by Jonathan Widran Looking back on his extraordinary, surreal, and multi-faceted career as one of the rock era’s most prolific and storied – though lesser known than many of his iconic peers, admirers, & musicians, Benjamin Schultz, now rebranding as “Benjamin" (the musician) and "About The Benjamin" (the streaming artist), is a living testament to the unsung heroes of rock and roll. With his career spanning well over half a century, he's been the invisible thread weaving through the tapestry of music history, touching the lives and sounds of legends while remaining largely in the shadows. Now, at 72, he is embarking on his most personal journey yet: "The Book of Benjamin," an audio biopic that serves as both his legacy and a love letter to the eras that shaped him. This project isn't just about his story; it's a bridge connecting the golden age of studio musicianship to a new generation hungry for authenticity as a composer and multi-instrumentalist. “Everyone talks about those 10,000 hours, but it takes a lifetime to become you,” he says. “For me, the arbitrary “Outliers*** ” figure of 10,000 just scratches the surface of becoming a pro. It’s a lifelong education from where you started on your journey to get to where you are in any stage of the game.” Developing a freewheeling rep on par with the legendary session cats and longtime colleagues Steve Lukather, Leland Sklar, Chester Thompson, Gregg Bissonette, and Mike Finnigan, Benjamin has been unstoppable since the moment he jammed with Hendrix at 17, took the stage with B.B. King, who famously handed him "Lucille" and Johnny Winter, grooved shortly after that with Stephen Stills and became joined at the creative hip with Buddy Miles – including serving as producer, composer, and engineer… playing acoustic, electric, lead and rhythm guitar, sitar, piano, organ, keyboards, synth, percussion and bass on the famed rock drummer’s mid-70s opuses More Miles Per Gallon and Bicentennial Gathering of the Tribes and contributing to countless live performances. Before we dive deeper into Benjamin’s crazy-colorful, star-studded history, it’s important to note that he’s finding a revolutionary way to showcase his formidable legacy – and introduce multiple generations to both the expansive array of music and styles that shaped him and which he shaped while amassing those literal and proverbial hours. Creating “THE BOOK OF BENJAMIN,” a work he describes as his “lifetime project,” is about his early brushes with greatness and his prowess that led him to the hallowed halls of studios like Record Plant LA, A&M, Sound City, and Westlake Recording where he became a chameleon of sound. Whether laying down tracks for Buddy Miles, subbing on bass with Stephen Stills, or playing and engineering for a parade of rock royalty, Benjamin was the Swiss Army knife every band who discovered him needed, but few fans knew him by name. He’s now sharing his musical soul with both those who were around in the ‘70s and ‘80s and with the millennials and kids now who seriously need to understand the importance and influence of those eras. To paraphrase a hipster colloquial phrase from the later hip-hop era, the project is All About the Benjamin. “I guess I have wanted to do this for a long time,” says Benjamin. “As for the reason, what comes to mind is the ‘secret is in the sauce’ sort of thing. The reason so many albums sounded so good back in the day and now was because of us studio rats – the Wrecking Crew, the Swampers, Luke, Sklar, Mike Landau, Kenny Aronoff, Dan Huff, Tim Pierce, The Immediate Family, and John Pearse…. THE BOOK OF BENJAMIN offers listeners an opportunity to relive that history in the present day. Why now? The resurgence of classic rock popularity among the youth is so much so that new music makers are whining that they’re being squeezed out by the classic guys. It’s been 56+ years, and this music is still valid and growing. No other genre can claim that.” Tracing Benjamin’s wild, self-made adventure from zero to 10K and beyond opens various possible entry points. Some may start at age three in New York state, where he took to the piano in the house “like a fish to water,” then took a pair of chopsticks, flipped over a metal trashcan cover in his surgeon father’s home office in St. Pete, Florida, and started banging. Playing trumpet at five, any ambitions he had to be a professional jazz cat were discouraged by his parents. They were from the era when heroin was a heavy influence on the genre's practitioners. All they could see was him dying in a NYC alley. It may be hard to count Benjamin’s beginning hours- playing trumpet and French horn in his primary and secondary school concert, stage, and marching bands, then studying Music, Literature, and Voice at the University of South Florida – because he got thrown out of those departments for having long hair… everywhere. Yet he’s proud that, with a union card by the age of 13, he started in the local Florida club scene and quickly began learning all he needed to know later to become one of music’s best “utility infielders.” By his mid to late teens, Benjamin’s big-name associations and superstar anecdotes began happening at a dizzying clip. One night in Cleveland, when he was 16, blues legend B.B. King called him up onstage to jam with his band, which included Johnny Winter that particular show, handing over his legendary guitar (and trademark companion) and telling the audience, “I’m gonna hand this young man Lucille and go get a scotch and soda.” Though he was mentored by and learned from many greats he had the honor to play with, he recalls this gem from Mr. King: “If you can say something with one note for 16 bars, you’re onto something.” Buddy Miles telling him, “I don’t want to hear it, I want to feel it,” and Bekka Bramlett’s use of “My daddy used to say....” Benjamin's early years in Tampa were filled with inspiring encounters, including a memorable jam session with Hendrix. At the time, Benjamin was living and working for his best friend, Michael Braun, who was responsible for creating Hendrix's iconic clothing. Interestingly, one of the girls who worked for Braun was dating Hendrix. Benjamin was introduced to Hendrix at a no-tell-motel bar and soon found himself jamming with him at the Men's Garden Club Sunday jam. For Benjamin, those classic one-offs were followed by his first major band affiliation, The Original Wizard, a free-form rock band he formed with singer and bassist Paul Forney and drummer Chris Luhn when all attended the University of South Florida. Wizard became a sensation (1970-71), touring the South and Midwest and then opening for the likes of Iron Butterfly, Chicago, Mountain, Rod Stewart, including Duane Allman and the Allman Brothers. Allman saw the spark and took a liking to Benjamin. One night, he threw him a Coricidin bottle and said, “Try this on for size!” This was a turning point that led him to create a style that Guitar World would describe as “Ben’s slippery style of playing, both with and without the bottle…” The Original Wizard’s biggest gig was performing at the Goose Lake Pop Festival in Ann Arbor, MI, in front of 675,000 people. The band released its only still-selling album. Recently, a sealed original copy of that LP sold for $15,000 in the Netherlands. After taking a brief hiatus to attend Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory, he firmly transplanted himself to Los Angeles, where he launched a key phase of his career as an engineer by helming the major label double album “Spirit of ’76” for Randy California, best known as an original member of Spirit, taking future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Mike Bloomfield’s place in the infamous supergroup KGB and being part of yet another supergroup, “Pipedream”, with his pal bassist Tim Bogert. Perhaps it was the transitory nature of these bands that made him appreciate steady studio work more. And though he toured quite a bit with Buddy Miles after serving as a jack of all instruments on Miles’ aforementioned mid-70s classics, Benjamin realized he was too enamored with “playing the studio” and all the gear to stay away from sessions for too long. Happily and creatively entrenched at “The Famous 3rd Street Record Plant LA”, Benjamin served there as an understudy for many top-name engineers Gary Kellgren, Jack Douglas, Lee Keifer, Lee Decarlo and Michael Braunstein, a versatile gun for hire and became a friend for many artists and bands – including Steve Marriott, Stephen Stills, Bonnie and all The Pointers, Dan “Grizzly Adams” Haggerty, Dave Mason, and even Robert Plant. He credits Record Plant co-founder Gary Kellgren and Sound City’s/Goodnight LA’s Keith Olsen as his greatest mentors behind the console. Back doing sessions with Stephen Stills. “I played bass.” “Stephen wouldn’t let me play guitar”. I was recording in Studio B with Buddy, and Stills was in Studio A. We struck up a decent friendship. When his bass player, Chocolate Perry, wasn’t available, he had me sub for him on recordings and some live gigs. Stephen, Mike Finnegan, and I were on the first-ever digital 32-track recording done in RPLA Studio C.” Benjamin adds, "During my time with Stephen, I got to meet Bonnie Bramlett. Who knew what my association with a 'Bramlett' would come to mean." Benjamin knew where the getting was good. He continued being an essential studio cat throughout the 80s. He lucked out working steadily for future Songwriter Hall of Famer and non-stop hitmaker Rick Nowels, contributing to projects (engineering the demos/being half the band) for everyone from Ric Ocasek and The Graces to Belinda Carlisle (where he is on 2 tracks with Sir George Harrison) At that point, he ultimately had the creative itch to leave the studio fold and create his own thing. Going solo and forming The Ben Schultz Band in 1992, he soon attracted the attention of Epic Records, who ultimately signed Benjamin. Teaming up with his new friends and collaborators, Ray Brinker, Jon Butcher, and Leland Sklar, collectively known as Barefoot Servants, recorded a bestselling self-titled album in 1994. Scoring a Top 5 single, “Box of Miracles,” and doing a 69-city in 90 days US tour, “We Had Magic!” The Barefoot Four regrouped in 2005 for the sequel album Barefoot Servants 2, but the reunion was short. But the life of a former studio cat isn't all platinum records and backstage passes. Considering that Benjamin has lived in Nashville for over 12 years, the best, simplest, least tragic-painful way to describe what happened in his life in the 2000s is simply to say, “It’s like a bad country song." Just when you think you’ve got it mastered, and you’re feeling gratitude over those hours in the studio, touring experience, and the countless creative masters you’ve gotten to work with, the crap hits the fan –the downslide into financial hardship, then illness intrudes to impart lessons the other experiences could not. Perhaps envisioning it would become part of a book someday, Benjamin has written a powerful and cathartic essay about his fall from health and financial grace. First, many of his investments were tied up in “significant family funds” – an unscrupulous nephew-in-law got into the family money when “my aunt went senile” and then tied him up for years amidst protracted lawsuits. At the same time, his property in Los Angeles was a victim of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis…then dealing with the ongoing volatility of his now-passed wife, a longtime alcoholic…and finally with a diagnosis of Stage 4 Non-Hodgkins lymphoma. That came with a prognosis of 3 years to live. … he says, “I lost everything. I was homeless and alone, and I didn’t even have my own guitar. Yes, it was definitely like a bad country song," Benjamin arrived in Nashville on Valentine's Day, 2012, with only a suitcase and the clothes on his back. Bouncing around, he ultimately crashed at a Kung Fu studio helping out to raise wolves on a large property while doing odd cash jobs. “My beliefs are very spiritual,” he says. “I take comfort in the knowledge that this experience is a necessary part of my life's journey. I faced the situation head-on and dealt with it." Benjamin's cancer, now long in remission, he got busy and was creating “THE BOOK OF BENJAMIN.” I began recording The Rain Song in 2017 from absolute scratch. There were no sessions with others. No click track...I built it from the ground up, one guitar at a time. I then had the drums added by friends in LA; “I put the bass on and approached Bekka Bramlett to sing.” It was now late 2018. “I was already working on so many other other songs...writing, arranging, and finally recording them.” “Things were good.” Then, just as he was on a creative roll, Benjamin’s “Bad Country Song” re-entered the Hot 100 playlist – a new set of challenges. He was forced into an unexpected hiatus by Crohn’s disease and Covid. It took his doctors many years to finally diagnose him. Benjamin was now down to 114 lbs. and nearly died...again. While millions of gigging musicians suffered setbacks due to the original pandemic shutdown, he was recuperating from life-saving surgery and got a reprieve from worrying about finishing the project in the timely manner he had planned. He’s now clear of the "3 C's" - Cancer, Chron's, & Covid. The creative thoughts are backflowing non-stop. He keeps adding to those 10,000 hours. Spent from 2021 through all of 2024 getting the sound he wanted. “Yes, that’s a luxury,’” he says, “but I’ve never had the opportunity before.“ As "The Book of Benjamin” has taken shape, it stands as a testament to perseverance, to the enduring power of music, and to the notion that it's never too late to tell your story. For Benjamin, the 10,000 hours were just the beginning. Now, it's time for the world to listen. **** ***by Malcolm Gladwell 2008 ****Instrumental singles and an album have been released as of Jan 2024. It’s doing well on its own, with nearly 800k streams as of this writing