Review: William Shatner - Has Been

Shout!, 2005

For Captain Kirk fans still feeling burnt from William Shatner’s painful rendition of the Beatles’ Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, the Star Trek actor’s musical comeback, albeit 35 years late, may be daunting. Shatner doesn’t again endeavour to sing; just as you would imagine however, he instead recites awkward poetry over just as interesting music.

Among the accomplices, Ben Folds, Joe Jackson, Aimee Mann, Henry Rollins, Lemon Jelly, and Braid Paisley join Shatner on Has Been, completing an array of songs all at once comical, poignant, mismatched, and all too humane.

An introspect into Shatner’s off-screen life, this is simply a perfect album; and less the joke you would envisage, Shatner’s latest effort is a more comforting account of contemporary beat poetry, while Ben Folds’ musical intervention and production promises Has Been isn’t just for the Trekkies.

- 5 Stars

(Originally published in the Blue Mountains Gazette Review - June/July 2005)