In the spirit of a music profile, I’ll tell you what Amir Ekbatani was wearing during our Zoom interview: 1960s-style Clubmaster eyeglasses and wavy hair shoulder-length hair, a neatly trimmed beard.
And where he was seated: At home, in Montana, flanked by a “wall of synths,” the instruments that make his sound his on the first two singles – really lovely, heartfelt pop songs – of what’s expected to be an 11-track album that he’d categorize as “indie dance.”
Tell you that, over the course of a 70-minute conversation, the 36-year-old was painstakingly authentic about all his answers: “Whatever it is inside of you, that makes your heart feel love and feel on fire, do that.”
And I’ll let you stop me now: This is the sports section. Why am I laying out the ingredients for a profile on an up-and-coming musician? Stay in your lane, Swanson.
Because you remember Nick Ekbatani, the UCLA football player. (He was, for the record, always Amir at home among his Persian family, OK? You just knew of him as Nick.)
On the Bruins’ roster from from 2006-09? The charismatic offensive lineman out of South Torrance High School, who played one season at Los Angeles Harbor College before walking on and earning a scholarship at UCLA, who got good enough to get a tryout with the then-St. Louis Rams?
Who lost part of his leg and very nearly his life in a hellish motorcycle crash with a taxi van on Pacific Coast Highway on July 14, 2012?
You remember now. He was the inspirational figure who, a few months after the crash, tossed his crutches aside at the Rose Bowl and hopped to midfield to participate in the coin toss, the honorary captain before UCLA’s game against Houston.
Who was giving interviews and saying things like: “If I can inspire people to strive for excellence and not make excuses, that would be it. That is the goal.”
Who’ll tell you he was in denial at the time, that days after having part of his left leg amputated, he filled out an unemployment form indicating he’d be out for one month – not imagining then that he’d have to undergo 13 surgeries, or that it would take four years to relearn to walk.
He failed to foresee the heartache and heartbreak ahead, how depression would hit him, he said, like a ton of bricks. Thank goodness for family and friends, whose unfailing support, Ekbatani said, served as a life preserver, for real.
And thank goodness for Swim With Mike.
KEEP SWIMMING
The 43rd Swim with Mike event is happening Saturday, starting at 10 a.m. at USC’s Uytengsu Aquatics Center. It’ll be a community swim-a-thon, an annual celebration of the foundation whose ripple effect has, so far, brought in more than $29 million to furnish scholarships for 295 physically challenged athletes at 152 universities.
“It’s the only scholarship you don’t want to earn,” said Ron Orr, co-founder of Swim With Mike, which began when his teammate and friend, USC All-American swimmer Mike Nyeholt, was paralyzed in a 1981 motorcycle accident.
Teammates organized a fundraiser – “Swim For Mike” – to raise money for a specialized van that Nyeholt needed. Because they raised around $30,000 more than what the vehicle cost, those funds went toward what was to become Swim With Mike.
But what do college scholarships do for students who are experiencing such significant physical challenges, whether because of illness or accident? There has to be other priorities in these young people’s lives.
Exactly.
“What we’ve learned,” Orr said, “is education falls real far down on the list. But what we’ve also found is it’s most healthy for the kids because they can create a new future, something they can do that their parents aren’t doing for them. Design a future.”
But it’s more than that, Nyeholt said. “I don’t want to shy away from the education itself, but in so many cases, it’s just moving forward. These kids’ lives have been absolutely destroyed and this kind of gives them the push. That was the thing for me, reinserting myself into society as a different person … and once you get out there, people don’t look at you differently.”
Ekbatani – the proud UCLA Bruin – used a Swim With Mike scholarship to get up and go get an MBA at USC’s Marshall School of Business.
He thought then that the responsible thing to do would be to make a living as a “corporate finance guy.” But he couldn’t stomach it; it took only about six weeks for him to quit a job with a private equity firm and turn to teaching fitness.
Yes, the one-legged guy with a business degree decided to teach fitness classes. And he was great at it; loved it. Eventually he’d land a gig as one of the featured instructors with the popular Apple Fitness+ platform. You can log on now and work out with him, if you want.
“For a while, I was worried (the MBA) wouldn’t be helpful,” Ekbatani said. “And then the lawsuit happened.”
In 2017, a jury awarded $35 million after his attorneys successfully sued Caltrans, proving a “negligently designed” Redondo Beach intersection was what led to the crash that so severely injured Ekbatani.
“I come from nothing and I was given a large sum of money and, boy, let me tell you, navigating that world was a really, really, really steep learning curve,” Ekbatani said. “I’m grateful that I had some of the fundamentals to actually know what some people were talking about – as well as having the connection to people who know more than I do and I can trust and lean and say, ‘Hey, am I getting screwed?’ Because when that happened, everybody had an investment, new relatives, all kinds of stuff.”
Ekbatani didn’t need to be pressured to give to Swim With Mike. He’s clearly thrilled to have endowed a scholarship – and is moved, he said, to be getting the types of thank-you cards he used to send.
“I don’t know where I’d be without Swim With Mike,” Ekbatani said. “Even without the lawsuit and MBA school, in the darkest time of my life, they gave me something to look forward to.”
ZEST FOR LIFE
People who were around Ekbatani at UCLA remember his zest for life. He was a go-to host for recruits, someone for whom UCLA became a dream school because he dug the intellectual conversations the football players were having on his visit. He’d always liked to sing, he said, but he discovered how much he loved music in his ethnic musicology class with jazz great Gerald Wilson.
And then, soon after he graduated, the crash. So traumatic were his injuries that doctors gave the young man who so loved life a 2% chance of survival.
What’s that do to a person?
“My near-death experience has given me PTSD,” Ekbatani said. “My mind always jumps to, ‘Oh my god, what if I die or what if this person dies?’ I worst-case-scenario just about everything in my life and it can be really exhausting.
“But it can also be really beautiful because I have … just a need for no grudges. Not being a pushover, but just taking a chance at every single friendship and relationship that I possibly can, because life is way too short to play games and give up on people you love and care about.
“And, like, being crazy enough to pursue your dreams.”
Back to the music profile. In 2020, Ekbatani returned to school again, enrolling at Icon Collective, Berklee College of Music and LAAMP (Los Angeles Academy of Artists and Music Production). “I’ve done all the schools,” he said. “So now it’s time to take off the training wheels.”
The results so far: “In My Lane,” and “Tell Me You Love Me,” catchy, retro-feeling tracks that respectively explore going your own way and L.A.’s modern dating scene.
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He sings on them, and he wrote, produced and mixed them – a process that’s taught him to have more grace with himself: “I’m more kind to myself than I’ve ever been,” he said. “One of my biggest downfalls as an athlete, I was motivated by my disdain for my imperfections. Now it’s like, you know, ‘I’m doing OK.’”
Both songs – available on Spotify and Apple Music and other such streaming services – have gained unabashed props from former teammates, people who Ekbatani would’ve guessed might have roasted him for singing so openly about dreams and love. Instead, they’ve become his biggest fans, taking to social media to show their support and sending him congratulatory messages.
All that love has led Ekbatani to a realization, and so he has a message too: “Do it!” he said. “I wish to God I did it when I was younger; I always had music in me, and I just kind of always kept trying to hush it up. If music’s in you, do it … whatever it is inside of you, that makes your heart feel love and feel on fire, do that.”
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