“Oh, oh, no, no!”

To defend the life and works of William Shatner would be to empty the sea with a wooden stool. However, here I find myself having to at least offer a reconcilement of his musical career. William Shatner has been periodically ridiculed and parodied and castigated when he has put his talents to music. Just like Joseph was with his coat.

This is understandable. But let me put it another way. This is baffling.

William Shatner is clearly a musical icon of any era. He is a risk taker and an avant-garde performer with which no one quite rests on a parallel ethereal plane. Some may criticize that he mainly has recorded cover versions – but, fair play, it is not as if he has cowered from some of the biggest tunesmiths in the business: Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Elton John and, more recently, collaborating with Ben Folds.

Tear your insides out

Combining his overwrought with conviction, randomly inflected voice with his overwrought with conviction, randomly inflected physical acting to a tune he has no intention of following and lyrics he has no clue as to the subtle counter-culture meaning of, results in some very potent alchemy going on indeed, my friend.

Watch this:

It's cold as hell

It is fair to say that even at the time in the 1970’s, when 76% of the American public were tripping out their eye sockets on acid, no one had seen what Shatner was laying down.

So, maybe you are thinking, sure, but it is the Star-Trek connection that makes the song listenable, the performance watchable. Why, if Mr. Spock were ever to sing something then there is every chance it would be just as good.



Nope.

Ok, we can continue to debate the merits of William Shatner’s musical ideology until Esperanto becomes the language of the Universe but essentially it comes down to this – look, who would you rather have transferring their shoddy, hammy acting over to a collection of classic song covers: Tom Selleck?

Imagine Tom Selleck attempting Rocket Man re-interpreted as an astral big band, lounge song where he films himself 3 times performing the song – once tentative, once cynical and once… er… tired and emotional to then be run concurrently before setting a course to a building crescendo clashing blunt, literal and surreal analysis, just for a science fiction awards show in 1978? It would be grim. But in the safe, warm, guiding hands of Shatner, it is borderline mind blowing.

Mr Tambourine man!

You just need to listen to anything by John Barrowman, surely the closest comparable contemporary in existence to Shatner, to instantly start praying to William Shatner to descend down amongst us and wreak a furious vengeance upon Barrowman while singing Tambourine Man.

Just picture Shatner phaser-whipping John Barrowman to within an inch of his life, all the while performing this at him in the rain doused alleyway behind the theatre, phaser butt glinting in the light of the churning full moon on the upswing of each syncopated swipe beaten out:



It’s about time your granddaddy showed you how it’s done, boy.

So called cultural commentators talk of the success of The Beatles as partly attributed to being ahead of their time. William Shatner is possibly so ahead of his time we, as a human species, may never in fact catch up.



If William Shatner was to record a version of Cher’s Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves then we may as well all go home. Music would have reached its zenith.