William Shatner and his metal band made their live debut over the weekend in Chicago. They played on the main stage at Riot Fest on the Sunday, but the night before they treated fans to an intimate warm-up gig at Park West in town.
Shatner’s group, named, the, ahem, *uckers, are made up of guitarists Marcus Nand and Britt Lightning, Phil Soussan on bass and drummer Fred Achin. At the Park West gig they played some well-known covers: Enter Sandman, Ace Of Spades and Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train alongside some original tunes that may or may not end up on the forthcoming album What The F Is Heavy Metal?
As you can see from above, Shatner’s diction is the same as it was on his records going back to The Transformed Man album in 1968. But he moves with admirable agility for a 95-year-old man. That he’s performing live at all is pretty astonishing.
Prior to the shows over the weekend, the actor put out a social media post, saying: “I have explored space. I have explored time. Now… I explore distortion.”
In an interview with the Moynihan Report podcast earlier this month, Shatner admitted that he didn’t have much knowledge of heavy metal but had written an “impassioned” response song to Guns N’ Roses’ Patience: "I'm tired of old age. I'm tired of losing hair. I'm tired of not eating. I'm tired of catching a cold. I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired!'"
There’s no news yet regarding a release date for the Shatner metal album. But we do know that this isn't the end of his live career.
He and the *uckers have been booked to play Coachella next year. Shatner unwittingly leaked the news in an interview with CNN last month when he said he was going to play “the one in the desert” next year, which his daughter Melanie Shatner Gretsch later confirmed was indeed Coachella.
