by William Shatner

This is a good, maybe even great, album of personal music. Right now, as I listen to it once again, I shake my head in disbelief, because I never expected to actually enjoy listening repeatedly to a rock album that featured the voice of William Shatner, better know as Captain Kirk or T.J. Hooker, but here I am, with a silly grin on my face, repeating the lines inadvertently. Then there's that serious track which is almost too painful to listen to. The fact that this album can achieve both results is testament to just how good this is. I know, I know, you don't believe me, which is why I'm going to have to write more. Even what I say below is likely not going to convince you. You're going to have to hear this one yourself. Just don't pass it by as a gimmick or a novelty. In a world where any Hollywood celebrity can trade on their name to sell tens or hundreds of thousands of albums (Lindsay Lohan, Kevin Bacon, and Kathy Gifford all come to mind), this one is different. This one is, as they say, the real thing.

While this is an album, I hesitate to call some of these tracks "songs." Shatner has instead entered the territory of Laurie Anderson, forgoing singing for what is best termed performance art. Shatner wisely leaves any singing duties to his guest artists, including Joe Jackson, Ben Folds, Aimee Mann and Brad Paisley. But Shatner bests Laurie Anderson at her own game, by underscoring that performance art is best when you are performing. While easily parodied, Shatner's deliberate style of acting is extremely effective. Laurie Anderson's tall tales all seem to be told from that snarky point of view that you assume is her, while Shatner creates several different and unique characters here as well as performing some songs from that persona that we have come to believe is him from his Priceline commercials and live appearances.

The easiest way to divide the album is between the songs written by others and those written by Shatner with his co-writer and producer Ben Folds. Of the former, the album leads off with the catchiest tune, a remake of a British punk hit named "Common People" originally recorded by Pulp. I wasn't familiar with the original, so I can't say how different the cover is, but in this arrangement, with Shatner speaking the verses and Joe Jackson taking over for the chorus, is strong. The first time I heard it, I was amazed at how well Shatner's and Jackson's voices eerily meshed, kind of like that point in Roger Water's song where his wail becomes the plaintive sound of a tenor saxophone. Shatner's character in this song is that of a poor person who is propositioned in a bar by a slumming rich girl who wants to "live like common people," and the way in which his disdain for her touristy ways grows over the length of the song, as if by talking about it, he comes to more of a realization of how angry he is by her, is palpable, made cruel through a combination of his bitterness and the sneering Jackson.

In contrast, the song penned by author Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy) shows that Shatner can equally do the sensitive song. Here he is an absentee father trying to reconnect with a daughter that he left two decades ago. Shatner's verses, like an internal monologue from the man reading the letter he's writing to the daughter, are interspersed with the chorus sung by Folds and Aimee Mann, and in the space of three verses an entire life is revealed: how the father failed and how he still doesn't understand, even though he's trying.

"Real," written by country star Brad Paisley, is an appeal from a celebrity to his fans to understand that he's "just an entertainer," flattered that they think he can save the world, but wanting them to realize that he's real. Again, Shatner takes the verses while Paisley sings the chorus, but what makes this song work for me is how it echoes the Saturday Night Live skit where Shatner exhorted Star Trek fans to "get a life." Here, he's not quite as cruel, although the underlying implication is that these people who would call him instead of, say, NASA, because the world is threatened by an asteroid, are not living in the real world. There's also another theme here, where both Shatner and Paisley are trying to express that they are much more complex than the cardboard portrayals foisted upon people by Entertainment Tonight and People magazine. It's very much a country song, from the instrumental arrangement and Paisley's drawl, but it works like the best country works through making the metaphor live.

The other songs have lyrics written by Shatner, who states in the liner notes that they reflect him, a virtual legacy for his family. It is in these songs that the listener engages in even more speculation, trying to understand the complex puzzle that this "real" artist is putting before us. "Together" is a poem of warming images presented over a repeating and soothing synth track that envelopes the listener as if being rocked in the womb. "What Have You Done" is a monologue--the music is nearly absent--about the speaker (Shatner himself) pulling a drowned woman (wife, daughter?) from under the water. Two tracks have background music that I categorize as "easy listening" or "smooth jazz"--the soft piano and muted drum kit that is played underneath the slower parts of romantic movies. "It Hasn't Happened Yet" overlays this with a multitrack of Shatner (or a character?) pondering the past and coming up short, still lacking peace and serenity. "Familiar Love," complete with Jordannaire background singers, is a different kind of love song. Rather than being, like most rock songs, about seduction and conquest, it instead celebrates the comfort of knowing a lover, and being known by that lover, matched by the rolling, smooth sounds. It's a song that could only be written by someone who has been in a long relationship.

The other side of Shatner's personality is shown in the humorous tracks. In contrast to "Familiar Love," is "Ideal Woman" where Shatner exhorts his lover that he wants her to be her, that he loves her for being her, that he doesn't want her to be something different. He loves her for what she is: the curl of her hair, the way she moves, "the leopard capris...okay, maybe not the capris." It's another song that had to be written by someone with a long term love, who has come to know every foible of his love and come to terms with it--mostly. "I Can't Get Behind That" is a rant--in which rantmaster Henry Rollins joins in--that sounds like what Lewis Black or Bobcat Goldthwaite (in his standup days) would do if they had a great drummer and Adrian Belew backing them. The gospel-laced "You'll Have Time" never fails to crack me up. Shatner assumes the voice and inflection of a TV preacher and testifies to his listeners that he "hate[s] to be the bearer of bad news, but you're gonna die" so you better live life to the fullest. The piece de la resistance in this vein, though, is the title song, where Shatner sounds like Jack Palance (or even Robert de Niro with the opening, "You talkin' to me") over a thrownaway bit of spaghetti western theme by Ennio Morricone. In this song, Shatner speaks directly to those critics, characterized by him as "Never Done Jack," "Don't Know Dick" and "Two Thumbs Don," who claim that he is a has been. After inquiring about their bonifides, he summarizes with the statement that "has been might again," just as he did recently, emerging on TV recently in his Emmy-award winner role on The Practice and Golden Globe for Boston Legal.

Part of the reason I like this album so much--and I should note here that I didn't buy it, and I was surprised that J did--is that several of the songs speak to me in ways that I speak to myself, both in seriousness and in jest. In particular, the mock religous "You'll Have Time" takes my medical troubles from last year and, while not discounting them, puts it into perspective: we're all gonna die, and it doesn't matter when and how if you don't live every day as if you understand that, otherwise you'll just be saying, "was that all there was?" Having been with J for over fifteen years now, and married for nine of those, both "Familiar Love" and "Ideal Woman" ring true to life, reflecting on the comfort and the little annoyances of familiarity with the joy of having found someone whom you're willing and want to know and be known that well. And "Has Been" is a poke in the side to quit moaning about the success of others if one isn't trying to make a success of oneself (i.e., don't be afraid of failure, or of what "they" might say).

Like a great book that enables multiple interpretations depending on how the reader wishes to view things, Shatner's Has Been provides the listener with plenty to think about. As Folds says in the liner notes, this is a brave and daring artistic statement. Who would have thought Shatner had it in him? But then, Has Been might be.

(thanks to my proof-readers and fact checkers Mike S. and J.)