The first song Kiefer Sutherland fell in love with: “I just love the melody”
There’s more to Kiefer Sutherland than meets the eye. To most people, he is and always will be Jack Bauer, the no-nonsense, torture-loving CTU agent at the heart of 24. However, as the son of legendary actors Donald Sutherland and Shirley Douglas, Kiefer was a movie star from a young age, appearing in such classics as Stand by Me and The Lost Boys. He’s also made his mark on the world of video games, providing vocals and motion capture for the character of Solid Snake in two Metal Gear Solid titles.
Alongside all this, Sutherland is also a musician. In 2016, he released his first album, Down in a Hole, containing eleven original songs all co-written by the star. Two more albums, Reckless & Me and Bloor Street, have since followed and he and his group – creatively titled ‘The Kiefer Sutherland Band’ – regularly play shows across North America and Europe.
Sutherland’s love of music can be traced back to an early age, according to an interview he did with NME in 2021. “I had a brother named Tom. He was seven years older than I was, so I ended up wanting to be him and do everything like him,” he revealed. “I was probably the first kid in second grade that was an Aerosmith fan. But the first song that I really fell in love with? It would have to be Elton John, ‘Your Song’. I just love the melody and I thought he sang it so beautifully.”
‘Your Song’ was named by the actor as “the first song I fell in love with” in a series of questions. Other queries included “the first song I can remember hearing”, which Sutherland named as the novelty record ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree’ by Tony Orlando and Dawn. “It was on the radio a lot,” he said. “My mum hated it. She was very opposed to the Vietnam War and hated the connotations of that song.”
When asked what the first album he bought was, the Canadian named Night Moves, the 1976 album from Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band. “Bob Seger wrote really linear stories,” he said of the soft rock legend. “It wasn’t like a Pink Floyd song, which was loaded with metaphors. He wrote a song called ‘Mainstreet’ and it was about a kid walking down Main Street, passing a pool hall and a strip bar. He wrote these fantastic stories about those teenage years and, like, that first girl, where you took her to the point and made out. I really connected with that.”
Seger’s style of story-focused Americana clearly had an effect on Sutherland’s own music, which is in a very similar realm. So is ‘Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)’ by Jim Croce, which he named as “the first song I learned to play”. Sutherland said, “It was the easiest chord configuration and my voice somehow worked with it. I remember really getting thrilled with knowing a song from beginning to end, including the bridge, and once I realised that was possible, I started to play a lot more.”
The final question NME asked was a very poignant one “the song I want played at my funeral,” and it caught Sutherland off guard. “Oh, I haven’t thought about that!” he exclaimed. “I spend most of my time thinking about the tombstone – I haven’t considered the song. Maybe Bruce Springsteen, ‘Born To Run’, or ‘Racing In The Street’. I think those songs would have encapsulated, on some level, my life.”
