The five songs Ethan Hawke couldn’t live without: “All art aspires to be music”
It might well be that Ethan Hawke flies under the radar a little bit as an actor, because when you look at his body of work and the performances he’s put in, with some top-notch movies like Training Day, Black Phone, Dead Poets Society, Before Sunrise, and more, in multiple genres since the 1980s, they are right up there with anyone’s.
Recently, Hawke has juggled acting with directing; in 2022, he directed a tribute to the great icons of Hollywood titled The Last Movie Stars, and this week comes his documentary tribute to country music star Merle Haggard, titled Highway 99: A Double Album.
In it, Hawke organises the recording of an album of Haggard’s songs reimagined by modern country recording stars, tracking the process and speaking to them in-depth about why they connect so closely to the Californian legend who died back in 2016. Meanwhile, he hits the road in a classic muscle car to retrace Haggard’s life.
Music is evidently a huge influence on Hawke, who has directed music videos, starred in a Taylor Swift video, and also played historic jazz trumpeter Chet Baker in a 2015 drama called Born to be Blue.
It went down well with critics, many of whom praised Hawke’s performance as the West Coast musician who was nicknamed ‘The Prince of Cool’. Baker was a trumpet player and vocalist who had a tumultuous and short life, dying at just 58 back in 1988. A Jazz Hall of Fame inductee, he released several popular albums but struggled with heroin addiction.
And Hawke picks Baker’s ‘Everything Happens to Me’ as one of his songs that he couldn’t live without, telling radio station KCRW about the tune: “I find that all art aspires to be music. I mean, it’s the base. Nothing gives you mood, tone; it’s non-verbal. Music is…the church of my choice. I guess where some people turn to religion, I turn to music.”
Another song on Hawke’s list is also by a famous jazz player, this time saxophonist Branford Marsalis, with ‘Mo’ Better Blues’ from the soundtrack of the same name, of which Hawke said, “One of the things that inspired me was watching Denzel (Washington) in Mo’ Better Blues. It’s just a phenomenal performance, and there’s so many scenes in that movie that are really, really remarkable…”
Elsewhere, Hawke went with Colombian singer-songwriter Marta Gomez and her cover of a Kris Kristofferson song about a terrorist attack claiming an innocent victim, ‘The Circle’, with the actor adding, “I was really taken by this”.
Next up came one of the godfathers of modern country music, Willie Nelson, with ‘Summertime’, and Hawke explaining, “The fact that this guy can reinterpret these old songs and make it relevant for a modern audience. And he makes this ancient song so exciting again”.
And finally, branching out completely, the actor picked Chicago indie band Wilco and their song ‘More Like the Moon’ from their album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2002. It’s a track that means a lot to Hawke, who revealed: “This is a song that got me through my divorce. I moved into a hotel, and it was just one of the worst couple years of my life, and I just played this song over and over again”.
Hawke is about to be seen in The Lowdown opposite Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage, an FX series about a crime-solving bookshop owner who gets beaten up a lot while digging around Oklahoma’s criminal underbelly. And a sequel to his brilliant horror The Black Phone is on the way too, hitting cinemas in October.
Ethan Hawke’s five favourite songs:
- ‘Everything Happens to Me’ – Chet Baker
- ‘Mo Better Blues’ – Branford Marsalis
- ‘The Circle’ – Marta Gomez (cover)
- ‘Summertime’ – Willie Nelson
- ‘More Like the Moon’- Wilco
