William Shatner

Best known for playing Captain Kirk in Star Trek, William Shatner also built a lesser-known parallel career as a recording artist. The son of a clothing manufacturer from Montreal, Canada (of East European Jewish immigrants), Shatner studied economics before joining the Canadian National Repertory Theatre Company in Ottowa and trained as a classical Shakespearean actor. He got the part of Captain Kirk in 1966 and soon achieved household name status in the role as the television series found international cult success. On the back of this popularity he launched his recording career in 1968 with the spoken word album The Transformed Man, including interpretations of hit songs like Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man and The Beatles' Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, which both received extensive airplay. He later performed a reading of Elton John's Rocket Man at the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards and, during a lull in his acting career in 2004, teamed up with Ben Folds to release his second album Has Been; Folds acted as producer and arranger as well as co-writing most of the songs on the album with Shatner. It included guest appearances by Aimee Mann, Henry Rollins, Adrian Belew, Joe Jackson, Lemon Jelly and Brad Paisley and, while mostly original material, it did feature a celebrated cover of Pulp's Common People. The album was subsequently used as the soundtrack to a show based on Common People performed by Milwaukee Ballet and a film made of the event was released in 2009 under the title William Shatner's Gonzo Ballet. Shatner then released a covers album Seeking Major Tom - including characteristically individual interpretations of David Bowie's Space Oddity, U2's In A Little While, Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and Duran Duran's Planet Earth - with guest appearances by Sheryl Crow, Peter Frampton, Bootsy Collins and Ritchie Blackmore. In 2013 Shatner released his fourth album Ponder The Mystery, with musical support from Billy Sherwood of Circa and members of Yes.