Izhar Ashdot receives ACUM lifetime award, still putting in the work at 64

Izhar Ashdot runs the “risk” of never growing old.

At the age of 64 the veteran singer, guitarist, songwriter, and producer is about to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from ACUM, a nonprofit that oversees the copyrights of authors, composers, and music publishers in this country.

He joins the lofty company of singer and composer Rami Kleinstein, singer-songwriter Astar Shamir, and music producer Louis Lahav, who will be honored on July 9 at Cinema City in Glilot.

Four and half decades after he returned to these having spent a good chunk of his formative teenage years in Greece and the Netherlands – where his father served as a Foreign Ministry emissary – Ashdot is still doing the business, churning out the licks and riffs with undimmed earnestness and unrelenting joie de vivre. 

On the verge of senior citizen status, the rocker seems to have plenty left in the tank to offer the world. I wondered what the award means to him. I jokingly asked if he was at all perturbed by the summation – dare one say finality? – element inferred by official recognition of everything he has done in the music business to date. Ashdot wasn’t taking the bait.

“Getting a lifetime achievement award is an opportunity to look back,” he parries. It is not just a matter of basking in past glories and high points either. For Ashdot it is about reflecting, building up a good head of steam, and moving right along. 

“More than anything, that fires me up for the future,” he notes. Clearly we can expect plenty more whence Ashdot’s hefty oeuvre thus far hails. Getting an institutional pat on the back must be gratifying and, indeed, it is as good a time as any to cast an eye, and ear, back on a musical career that began with co-founding seminal rock-pop group T-Slam back in 1980.

Origins of Ashdot's musical roots

In fact, Ashdot’s active musical consciousness began to take root and evolve several years earlier. He had a head start on his Israeli contemporaries in the then-current rock and pop stakes. Back in the 1970s Israel was, in pure Western terms, something of a cultural backwater. New records took months to make their way over to stores here from the States and UK and, in pre-global village times, information channels were few and far between.

“In the 1970s Israel was pretty isolated in that sense. There was no Internet,” he observes. “The only way to keep up with new developments in music was through the odd radio program, and sporadic newspaper articles and possibly, a video clip on TV. Other than that there was nothing.”

Word of mouth was the de rigueur in-house way of disseminating the latest and greatest on the international music scene. 

“We’d inform each other. You know, one of our friends may have had a brother who was sent a record from abroad, and that sort of thing.”

Over in Western Europe Ashdot had no such problems at an age when pop and rock dynamics tend to grab you hard, give your adolescent passage of life new meaning, and help you find like-minded folk. 

“When I lived with my family in Europe, from the age of 15, when a record came out I’d just go along to the store and buy it. And then the group would come over to give concerts. People would talk about music and there were music trade newspapers. I grew up on [British publications] the NME [New Musical Express] and Melody Maker. They were my bible.”

The youngster had plenty to offer his peers when he returned to these shores in 1977 to do his army service. He talked to, and played with, as many musicians as possible, and did his best to spread the word. 

“I felt like a sort of oleh hadash [new immigrant],” he laughs. “I had this feeling of Zionism in the sense of coming here to bring the message of rock and roll to Israel.” 

He landed the ideal IDF slot to do that. 

“I served at Army Radio, together with [iconic rock and pop radio journalist] Yoav Kutner, even though he’s a few years older than me. We were good pals. We wanted to preach the word of rock and roll.”

Kutner has been doing just that, superbly well on all sorts of fronts, for close to half a century, while Ashdot just keeps on rolling out the sounds and vibes that continue to appeal to the masses, and touch the heart. He got himself a good taste of success with T-Slam, which he cofounded with vocalist-percussionist Danny Bassan and keyboardist Yair Nitzani. The group’s first release Radio Hazak (Loud Radio) put Ashdot and Co. well and truly on the Israeli pop-rock map, and there were two more records before the group disbanded after only three years. There have been a number of reunions since then. 

All the members went their own way, developing solo careers, while Ashdot also became very busy as an arranger and producer, helping to craft albums for the likes of Ofra Haza, Corinne Allal, and alternative rock outfit Monika Sex. The latter has performed with Ashdot on the ongoing Fellow Travellers tour of the country, in which Ashdot collaborates with some of the country’s rock A-listers, including Beri Sacharoff, Dana Berger, Monika Sex guitarist Peter Roth, and the T-Slam gang.

 Allal, Rona Kenan, and stellar keyboardist-vocalist Rami Kleinstein are also on the tour roster with gigs coming up at Zappa Herzliya (August 1), Grey Modiin (August 11), and Zappa Amphi Shuni on September 1. Ashdot has played and/or recorded with all the Fellow Travellers collaborators, and the new eponymous live album is due for release on July 10. 

The 64-year-old isn’t showing signs of slowing down anytime soon. Ashdot feels he has a long way to go and plenty of things to keep him out of mischief. He says he keeps his ears and mind primed and ready for action. 

“First of all, I am curious which means that I search. I have a habit, over the course of many years, of looking for new things and listening to new things.” He gets some help with that from someone of the right generation, close to home. “I have a 25-year-old son. He provides me with a lot of information about the new stuff. I am curious and I listen. I don’t really know how it all melds into my work. That’s a mystery.”

Now at his “grand old age,” he says he sometimes hears echoes of the pretty distant past, which gradually insinuate themselves on his creative process. 

“You know, you can hear something at the age of 20 and then, suddenly, when you are 50 it comes out in your music.” 

He proffers the collateral for the theory. “I have a song called “Bemerchak Negia Mikan” (Within Touching Distance) [from the 2005 album of the same name] and, while I was working on it, I suddenly realized I was feeding off music by [1970s American rock group] The Eagles. I didn’t even like them when I was 17,” he chuckles. “Then suddenly, 30 years on, I get into it. You can never tell.”

Maybe not, but the Israeli pop and rock scene is all the richer for Ashdot’s sterling contribution over the past four-plus decades. The Lifetime Achievement Award is a deserved kudo.