The Big Lebowski actor Jeff Bridges revealed his musical talents when he portrayed a faded country musician in Crazy Heart (2009), which earned him an Oscar. By that time, he had been making his own music for decades. In the 1970s and 80s, he recorded songs with his childhood buddies in the West Los Angeles neighborhood where he grew up, but those tracks sat on a decaying cassette tape for 50 years until he showed them to an old friend and musical collaborator in 2020. The recently unearthed album is called Slow Magic, 1977-1978.
“This company, Light in the Attic, specializes in archival music. And this certainly qualifies, being 50 years old. … It rekindled all these old relationships … guys that I hadn't seen in a long time. And it was fun to catch up with those guys and get the music out,” says Bridges, now age 75.
He recalls that during his grammar school days, each Wednesday night, he joined a jam session where people were encouraged to sing and “play instruments they didn't know how to play.” He describes that it was a “time of innocence” and “nothing was sacred.”
“I personally had some ideas about making albums … but I also was making movies. I would write during the movies. Sometimes I would get mad at myself because I'd be in my hotel, studying my lines for the next day. And I would have this song idea, and I would start playing the song. And then I would get mad at myself, ‘Jeff, you've got to get back on your studying.’ … But later, I learned that when I start to shake up my creativity, it comes out in all different ways — drawing, painting, ceramics, music, acting. They're all connected somehow with me.”
Bridges’ father, brother, and sister were all actors too. “My dad, he was so gung-ho about all his kids going into acting, and I resisted it a bit. Who wants to do what their parents want him to do, right? So I thought, I want to do this music. And he said, ‘Jeff, you're going to be asked to do all of those things you're interested in as an actor.’ … It proved true … Crazy Heart … and [The Fabulous] Baker Boys. … So I've gotten to explore my music, but it has taken the back seat to the acting.”
He adds, “I thank God that I still have this desire to do the muic, that the music pushes itself through me.”
In 2020, Bridges was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, underwent chemo, then got COVID. He nearly died, and at the time, re-recorded the song “Slow Magic.”
Being sick taught him that each moment was a gift, he recalls. “I learned it in a strong way. But prior to that … the very thing that you're afraid of, if you get into it, that can be where the treasure in life lies.”