Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Judd Apatow rocks out in Garry Shandling tribute on night one of ‘The Hanukkah Sessions’

The director did a solid job covering Blood, Sweat and Tears as part of Dave Grohl’s holiday series

Hey now! Happy Hanukkah! For the first night of the holiday, Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin’s Hanukkah Sessions welcomed director Judd Apatow onto the stage to show off his vocal talents on Blood, Sweat & Tears’ “Spinning Wheel.”

Why “Spinning Wheel” and not, say, “I Have a Little Dreidel?” Apatow said up top that he chose the song because of sidekick Hank Kingsley’s memorable rendition on The Larry Sanders Show. 

“This is a tribute to Garry and to Hank,” Apatow said, referencing his friend and the star and co-creator of The Larry Sanders Show, the late Garry Shandling. He did not pay lip service to the actor who played Hank Kingsley, Jeffrey Tambor, who has been accused of sexual misconduct (Tambor denies the allegations).

Accompanied by Grohl on drums and Kurstin on keys, Apatow even cut a rug during an instrumental break. Mercifully, it was better than Kingsley’s rendition. But I’ll let you compare them for yourself.

Kurstin and Grohl’s sessions, now in their second year, are set to drop a performance a night, with guest talent from Jews like Beck, Pink and Jack Black.

Spinning wheels are great and all, but they’re no substitute for Hank Kingsley’s rotating restaurant, a space I hope to see Apatow enter in the new year.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.