Benjamin
Charles Maydon
Review
Artist:
William Shatner
Title:
Has Been
Label:
Shout! Records
[From Platform (Nottingham Trent University
newspaper), Sessions section,
Volume 1
Issue 3, October 18 2004]
Bill
Shatner will always be remembered, for better or worse, for being in Star Trek. In fact, his first album – The Transformed Man from the ’70s – had
the tag-line “Star Trek’s Captain
Kirk” on the cover. However, said album gave him another reputation – one for
not being able, under any circumstances, to sing. Despite containing the worst
ever cover of the Beatles’ Lucy in the
Sky with Diamonds, it sold pots and pots. The appeal of his new album, Has Been, therefore, is not that it
contains new songs, gospel choirs, capable musicians, or even the fact that it
has been produced by indie legend Ben Folds; everyone wants to know if Shatner
has taken any singing lessons yet.
Fortunately,
he hasn’t, and this album is basically spoken theatrically by Shatner, while
Folds and company sing tunefully in the background. It makes for a very good
combination – the same words being spoken (or even sung!) by someone with a
different voice would just not have the same gravitas; Shatner’s
album is about Shatner.
Although
Has Been contains many wonderful,
original songs including the tongue-in-cheek death-focused ballad You’ll Have Time (“Live life like you’re
going to die, because you are... / By the time you hear this, I may well be
dead!”), the best Shatner composition on the album, the genuinely heartfelt Real, about the struggles of being
recognised as an actor, and Together,
which has some excellent percussion work and a racing beat, the absolute forte
of this album is the opening track, the famed cover of Pulp’s Common People. Folds, Joe Jackson and a
choir of well over a hundred sing in rich chorus in the background as Shatner
merely speaks the lyrics like a bored actor trying not to pass an audition.
Sublime.
Text & Site © Benjamin Charles Maydon
2011