Todd Forman, who once rocked the stage as the part-time saxophonist for Sublime, has owned his own private practice as a physician since 2005. Photos courtesy of Todd Forman
Editor’s note: The following is the third part in an ongoing series on notable Long Beach residents.
Don’t stereotype Long Beach resident Todd Forman.
Yes, he’s played saxophone with locally-loved and world-famous 90s Long Beach punk/ska band Sublime, whose lyrics often referred to drugs and alcohol. But, despite lyrics that arguably glamorized the lifestyle, Forman’s taken the opposite direction for his line of work.
Forman, whose saxophone playing is heard at the beginning of one of Sublime’s most recognizable tunes, “Date Rape,” among others, is now a physician at his own practice, a career he has had since 2005 and worked toward since his time playing part-time in the band.
Summers in the 1990s—when he was home from Harvard, where he was pre-med—Forman was jumping in a white van with Sublime singer/guitarist Bradley Nowell, bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh to play shows.
“I had my school life and I had my summer life, and they were the exact opposite of each other,” said Forman in an interview with the Long Beach Post at his home in Belmont Shore. “I really looked forward to both of them.”
And Forman spending only summers with Sublime was just fine with the band, too, he recalled. He said he had been playing with them since 1989 and continued until the band’s breakup following Nowell’s death from heroin overdose in 1996.
“I came home from college one summer, and they were recording ’40 Oz. to Freedom’ and they were like, ‘Perfect timing!’ So, I go to this apartment building off Broadway, and it’s literally a back unit that’s been converted into a performance booth and engineering booth,” he said. “They had already laid down all the songs, and then the horns came in. I did about five of the tracks. That’s how I was used to playing with those guys. It was almost like freestyle jazz. That was the great thing about Brad. He was always so free with his music, and so was Bud and Eric. I loved that. I literally could have not played with them for nine months, then come home and play a show. That’s how they were. If you were within their sights, they would be like, ‘Come play, let’s do this,’ but if you’re outside that, then that was that. That’s just how those guys operated.”
He recalled seeing first-hand how Sublime’s fame grew. The band released three studio albums, including their third self-titled album, which was released two months after Nowell’s death and peaked at number 13 on the Billboard 200.
“Sublime played at the Nugget at Long Beach State,” he said. “I remember there being five people in the audience, and then we just kind of exploded. It was interesting to see that. I was used to playing backyard parties, then I came back from college one summer to play with Sublime and the next thing I know they’re playing at Golden Sails with 2,000 kids in the audience screaming their lyrics.”
Since graduating from Harvard, going to medical school at UCLA and getting a masters degree in medical education from USC, Forman has worked in his own private practice in Newport Beach, which he shares with his mother. While he loves working in Newport Beach, 
Forman said he truly loves living in Long Beach, where he grew up.
“When I decided to go into private practice with my mom, who’s also a doctor, we decided to set up shop in Newport Beach,” he said. “We didn’t really plan on moving back to Long Beach; it just kind of happened. This was in 2005 when home prices were really sky high, and we not only found Long Beach more affordable but a great place to live, in general. We decided to live here and see how it goes, then nine years later, we’re still here.”
Despite some notorious Sublime lyrics like, “I smoke two joints in the morning, I smoke two joints at night” and “Was tweakin’ by myself one night, that’s when I wrote this tune,” Forman said as a physician, he’s firmly against drugs.
“I think it’s tough because in punk rock and in music in general there’s so much death due to drug use and overuse,” he said. “Kids have to understand that drugs take people away. Even if they don’t die, they become ghosts. Drugs take them away from their lives. If I could impart anything to anybody wondering what it was with Brad, it’s that he was a genius and was able to hone that genius and hone those skills and beauty as a poet and writer despite drugs, not because of drugs. It definitely wasn’t the drugs that gave him the ability to write, play and sing those songs. Drugs really, on so many levels, took him out of his game completely, and I think if he were around today, he would tell you the same thing.”
Forman attributes Sublime’s success in part to the band’s roots in the thriving music community in Long Beach.
Growing up in the 1980s, Forman frequented rock venues like Fender’s Ballroom and Bogart’s Nightclub. And, he said, Long Beach at the time had one of the best music education programs around, though he said he doesn’t see that today.
“I think it had—it doesn’t have it anymore but hopefully it will again—one of the best grassroots educational music programs,” he said. “I remember being in third grade, and the local music shop, Whittaker Music, would come in with all these different instruments. I remember seeing the saxophone, and being like ‘That’s what I want to play.’ But I thought it was called a clarinet, so my mom went and rented me a clarinet from Gilmore Music. I told her, ‘That’s not a clarinet,’ and she said, ‘Well, I rented it, so you’re going to play this first and if you do this for a year, then you can start taking saxophone lessons.’ We had the support of the local music shops in elementary school. At Gant, you’d go behind the auditorium and they had huge basses. They had like four of those, a bunch of violins and cellos. Dr. V was in the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, and he was our teacher once a week. I would look up to the junior high school, and there was orchestra, band, jazz band… I thought it was awesome. And then you’d go to Wilson and see the marching band going off with 200 to 300 kids. They had this drum corps that all wore these cool berets and these black uniforms, and they would do this thing called Rock Out with drum beats based on Led Zeppelin tunes, and it was incredible.”
Fast forward to the present, and music programs and extracurriculars are being cut in Long Beach. There are some glimmers of hope, though, he said.
“From what I’ve seen with my kids, the schools have taken out all funding for physical education, choir, a lot of extracurriculars… not all of them, because, starting in third grade, once a week you can start playing violins but there’s this clamor for the violins,” he said. “There aren’t enough. There’s a waiting list to get a violin, and I think that that’s a tragedy. I think any kid who wants to explore the violin should be able to, and I can’t believe with the resources we have in Long Beach that that’s an issue, but it is. At the same rate, it’s dependent on the people, not necessarily on the system. I think people can really change the system. One of the top music programs, probably in middle schools, is at Rogers. That instructor is one of the top instructors. He gets it and he’s great with the kids. He teaches them that there are no limits with how good you can be at that age, and he goes for it. So, there are people who are building it up, but things like drum corps have been put to rest. That’s not at Wilson anymore. That was the biggest and coolest tradition there, and now it’s gone.”
But Forman is doing his part to expose children from Long Beach and beyond to music through a project called Jelly of the Month Club, a kid- and family-friendly band he plays in with other prominent Long Beach musicians, including Sublime’s Gaugh, who also plays in Sublime’s revival group Sublime with Rome.
While on a chance tour with Sublime with Rome in 2010—which Forman said was a rare experience for him because of his career and family—he and Gaugh were watching Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” when the idea was sparked to form a kids’ band.
Since then, Jelly of the Month Club has been playing local shows around Long Beach to expose kids to all genres of music. And, with known members, the band is a favorite among parents, as well as their children, he said.
His skills as a musician have also translated into his career as a doctor, Forman said.
“With a doctorate, you can do a lot of different things,” he said. “I was a professor at USC for five years when I finished residency, and being up in front of a bunch of kids who think you’re cool gives you a lot of power. Being in music is similar to being a professor because you’re trying to be clear. When you’re on point, you know you’re on point and people are actually blown away. When you have that experience in music, you definitely know when you’re on when you’re in front of other people, and that definitely helped when I was teaching medical students. In my private practice, which I’ve been in nine years, as a family physician, what I love about it is you say ‘What’s wrong?’ and being exposed to punk rockers and other forms of art, it opens your mind and senses up in a way where you don’t judge. I’m much more approachable, able to get things out of people, able to describe problems and I love that about family medicine. There are skills I’ve learned as a musician that I’ve applied to being a physician. I can listen to the rhythm of a heartbeat and know when it’s not right. You’re a sum total of your life experiences.”
Previously in this series: No Doubt Guitarist Tom Dumont Living a ‘Simple Kind of Life’ in Long Beach