William Shatner Has Been CD

Prod.By Ben Folds Feat.J.Jack- Son,A.Mann,B.Folds,H.Rollins++

Personnel: William Shatner (vocals); William Shatner; Brad Paisley (vocals, guitar); Ben Folds (vocals, piano, tack piano, electric piano, organ, Wurlitzer organ, keyboards, synthesizer, bass guitar, drums, background vocals); Sebastian Steinberg (vocals, bass instrument, upright bass); Lemon Jelly (various instruments, programming); John Mark Painter (guitar, baritone guitar, trumpet, bass guitar, background vocals); Lindsay Jamieson (drums); Joe Jackson (vocals, piano); Henry Rollins, Aimee Mann (vocals); Jon Auer (guitar, background vocals); Adrian Belew (guitar); Matt Chamberlain (drums, percussion); Louisville Common People's Choir (background vocals).
Audio Mixers: Joe Costa; Ben Folds.
Liner Note Author: Ben Folds.
Photographers: Jeri Heiden; Frally Folds.
Arranger: Ben Folds.
Toward the end of Star Trek's run, William Shatner released The Transformed Man, a collection of spoken word interpretations of popular songs and recitations of poetry pitched halfway between middlebrow art and trippy trendiness. With his overheated, hysteric delivery supported by syrupy strings and studio trickery, Shatner sounded like a psychedelicized Rod McKuen, and The Transformed Man was every bit a period piece as anything McKuen penned during that time -- such as the largely (and justly) forgotten Frank Sinatra concept album A Man Alone. The difference is, where A Man Alone was pompous, pedestrian, and dull, The Transformed Man was pompous, bizarre, and thrilling, a truly strange, compelling miscalculation that was ignored at the time but turned into a cult classic over the years, partially due to Shatner's iconic status as Captain James Tiberius Kirk, but mostly because it was flat-out, fall-down funny. Perhaps it wasn't intended as comedy, but by the time Rhino featured his histrionic versions of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" on their 1988 compilation Golden Throats: The Great Celebrity Sing-Off, there was no doubt that they were now considered comedy records, and soon they were well known -- so well known that fans of those two cuts may not have realized that the rest of The Transformed Man was filled with readings of Shakespeare and obtuse poetry that somehow spoke to existential struggles with identity, winding up as some sort of a concept album. Its status as a cult comedy classic didn't get how weird the whole thing was, but it didn't really matter, since "Lucy in the Sky" and "Tambourine Man" were really funny, whether they were taken in the context of the album or removed from it.
By the late '90s, Shatner's status as a serious actor had long since faded, and he was best known as a caricature of Captain Kirk -- not really for the work he did on Star Trek, but how it was parodied, and the songs from The Transformed Man fed into that image, leading to a lucrative role as a Priceline.com spokesman. In those ads, he revived his musical career, but there was a difference this time around: he was in on the joke. Around the same time, Ben Folds enlisted Shatner for a guest vocal on his 1998 Fear of Pop project, beginning a friendship that later blossomed into a full-fledged collaboration on Has Been, Shatner's long-awaited return to recording. Arriving in the fall of 2004, Has Been was released at the height of a Shatner resurgence that those late-'90s Priceline commercials kick started. He had another round of commercials for the company -- this time also starring his longtime comrade Leonard Nimoy -- and a co-starring role in the prime time series Boston Legal, which was a spin-off of the long-running TV drama The Practice, where he had won an Emmy for his guest spot as a sleazy lawyer. Things were breaking in Shatner's favor because he had embraced the overblown, cheerfully smug caricature, playing his persona instead of playing a character. Because of this, it was reasonable to expect that Has Been would be a cheerfully comic rUncut (p.138) - 3 stars out of 5 - "[I]t is definitely deserving of the cult status that it will inevitably earn."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.110) - 3 stars out of 5 - "[B]ig issues - death, love, a life's work - are chewed over with bittersweet humour and musical sophistication."