William Shatner has spent six decades surprising people with a microphone, and at 95 he has found a brand new way to do it. Captain Kirk now fronts a heavy metal band, and he has a finished album waiting for release.
It all began with a blunt question. When his record label first pitched the idea, Shatner told Fox News Digital, his reply was, “What the f— is heavy metal?” Months of writing and recording later, plus one very loud night in Chicago, he says he finally knows.
How Did Captain Kirk End Up Fronting A Metal Band?
The pitch came from an old partner. According to Fox News, Cleopatra Records, which has released his music for years, approached Shatner earlier this year about making a metal record. DYR first reported in February that Shatner was planning a metal album with 35 handpicked musicians, and back then he described the genre as “a place where imagination gets loud.”
That guest list kept growing. “All of a sudden, 50, I’m told 50 heavy metal musicians all volunteer to be on this album,” he told Fox News. Shatner wrote six original songs with Robert Sharenow, his longtime collaborator, on what is now their fifth album together. The rest of the record is made up of covers, but do not expect carbon copies, because he says he has “reinterpreted even the cover songs.”
He named the album after that first reaction: What the F Is Heavy Metal. Fox News reports that Queen guitarist Brian May plays a solo on the original track “Rage,” and according to Blabbermouth, the guest roster also includes Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, Rob Halford of Judas Priest and former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo.
Taking it on the road meant he needed a real band, so he formed one and called it The *uckers, another nod to that first reaction. Both Blabbermouth and ABC affiliate WSET list the same lineup, with Marcus Nand on guitar and serving as musical director, Britt Lightning of Vixen as the second guitarist, Phil Soussan on bass, and Fred Aching on drums. Soussan sounded like a fan himself. He said he was “excited to play with one of my childhood heroes.”
The band made its debut on September 19 at the Riot Fest aftershow at Park West in Chicago, and the next evening Shatner took the festival’s Rebel Stage in Douglass Park. Riot Fest said it had landed him after “years of persistent letter writing.” His set mixed the new songs with Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” and in the best tradition of rock star demands, his rider asked for a bowl of sauerkraut.
“We went to Riot Fest … and was a huge success, huge,” Shatner told Fox News. Anyone who remembers his earlier records knows this is hardly his first wild musical turn.
Has Shatner Always Made Unusual Music?
The story goes back to 1968. Shatner, who was born in Montreal on March 22, 1931, made his first album, The Transformed Man, while Star Trek was still on the air, pairing dramatic readings with songs like “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Critics mocked it for years, and its tracks later turned up on Rhino Records’ Golden Throats collections of odd celebrity covers.
Then, in the late 1970s, he performed a spoken version of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” on a televised science fiction awards show, and the clip has been parodied ever since. Shatner never hid from the jokes. He just kept recording.
That stubbornness paid off with his 2004 album Has Been, which changed how people heard him. Ben Folds produced it, and the guests included Aimee Mann, Henry Rollins, and Joe Jackson, who joined him on a cover of Pulp’s “Common People.” Reviewers who expected a gag found a deeply personal record instead.
Metal had actually crept into the mix by 2011, when Cleopatra released Seeking Major Tom, a space-themed covers album with guests like Zakk Wylde of Ozzy Osbourne’s band and Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore. From there he kept hopping genres. In 2018 he made a country album, Why Not Me, with Jeff Cook of Alabama, and that same year brought Shatner Claus, a Christmas record with Iggy Pop and Henry Rollins. In 2020, The Blues reached No. 1 on Billboard’s blues chart.
Fox News counts 11 studio albums in at least five genres, and metal is the newest box on that list. It may also be the hardest on his body.
What Does It Cost Him To Play That Loud?
Shatner has lived with tinnitus for decades, and he told Fox News exactly when it started. He was on the Star Trek set filming an explosion scene with Leonard Nimoy, and because the stage doors were closed, the blast had nowhere to go. “I heard the hiss, but the hiss never went away,” he said.
He estimates he has lost 20 to 30 percent of his hearing, and he has partnered with Audien Hearing, a maker of over-the-counter hearing aids, on a hearing health campaign. With the devices in, he says, the small sounds of home have come back to him: “The dog claws on the floor, the creak of this rocking chair.”
A metal stage is the opposite of a quiet room, and he knows it. “I’m blasting in on my tinnitus,” he admitted. He has made his peace with the trade-off, though. “Either I’m going to perform with the noise or I’m not going to perform,” he said. A month after Riot Fest, he told Fox News, “My tinnitus is just coming back down now.”
So after all that volume, what did he decide the music actually is?
So, What Is Heavy Metal?
For Shatner, the answer turned out to be surprisingly tender. “It is the beat of life,” he told Fox News, adding that the music “enlivens your life” and “makes you pay attention.”
He is especially proud of his take on Metallica’s biggest hit. “It’s a total reinterpretation of the Sandman,” he said. “It is amazing.” The tracks are already recorded, and he plans to listen back in a week or two and fine-tune his vocals before the first single, which is expected this winter. He also told CNN in July that he would play a half-hour set at a desert music festival next spring.
Not bad for a man who started out asking what heavy metal even was. Now, at 95, he sounds as sure of himself as Kirk on the bridge. “This is going to be a major thing in heavy metal,” he said.