WILLIAM SHATNER 

An unlikely music maker’s bold new mission:  to create a sci-fi-concept album

William Shatner’s philosophy toward his life and career has served him well. At the very least, it’s kept things interesting. “I’d suggest that saying yes to opportunity is the way to lead your life, with some discretion,” says Shatner, 80. “So I said yes to an album I called The Transformed Man.” That misunderstood 1968 spoken-word effort, recorded while Shatner was starring as Captain James T. Kirk on the original run of TV’s Star Trek, was for years derided as a catastrophe. But it caught the ear of a young pop musician named Ben Folds, who as a direct result produced a belated follow-up for Shatner, 2004’s Has Been—a critical and commercial hit that paved the way for a late-career diversion into the music world.

His latest adventure was just as unexpected. Cleopatra Records approached Shatner about making an album of science-fiction-themed rock songs. He was skeptical—but became intrigued when he noticed just how many of the tunes revolved around the same character. The doomed astronaut “Major Tom” was introduced by David Bowie in his classic “Space Oddity,” and other composers have continued his lost-in-space tale ever since. “So I thought maybe I could find a dramatic line,” Shatner says. “I chose a number of songs that I thought might give us the story of Major Tom as he slowly dies in space. I put together things that to me are amusing and interesting, fun and entertaining to give us an arc into where he went.”

The ill-fated spaceman’s arc is traced on Seeking Major Tom, an ambitious double album that finds Shatner joined by guests like Sheryl Crow, Warren Haynes, Bootsy Collins and former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde—the latter an indication of the project’s surprising hard-rock bent. “I’m learning and changing so much by doing this record,” Shatner says. “I can’t believe the music I’ve missed. Up until a few months ago I would raise my windows when I heard heavy metal in somebody else’s car nearby.”

The intensity of the music matches Shatner’s trademark impassioned vocal delivery. “I wish I had been able to sing,” he says. “I so admire singers of every ilk, whether it’s country and that nasal twang, or the lyrical voice of a baritone or some guttural guy chewing on a jazz tag. But I also love the spoken word so much. There’s a musicality and a rhythm to words that as an actor I love to grasp.”

–Chris Neal

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