This came out in 2004 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
You’ve heard his unintentionally hilarious psychedelic covers of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and Mr. Tambourine Man. You’ve heard his lounge-lizard act on those TV ads. And you’ve heard … his … grandiosely … halting … delivery … on a million Star Trek reruns.
Now you can hear it all at once. On Has Been — his first album since 1968’s awesomely awful Transformed Man — William Shatner adds another thick slice of cheese to the giant ham sandwich of his career. While piano-pop wiseacre Ben Folds (who recruited Shatner for his 1999 Fear Of Pop album) tickles the ivories, the 73-year-old blathers away as only he can, ruminating on mortality (the gospel-flavoured You’ll Have Time), fear (the lounge-pop of It Hasn’t Happened Yet), fame (the spaghetti Western title cut), love (the Burt Bacharachish Together) and even the 1999 drowning death of his third wife (the sincerly disturbing What Have You Done).
He and Folds don’t do it alone — Joe Jackson helps out on a rocking cover of Pulp’s Common People, Henry Rollins trades quips on the curmudgeonly rant I Can’t Get Behind That, and guitarists like Adrian Belew and The Posies’ Jon Auer help with some of the heavy musical lifting.
Sure, sometimes it’s hard to tell if they’re laughing with Shatner or at him. But if he’s a joke, at least he’s in on it.
