How Woody Harrelson inspired The Killers: “We were spiritually fed”
When you think of Woody Harrelson, you’ll probably immediately conjure up an image of either the time when he was a detective in True Detective, when he was the long-haired drunk guy in the Hunger Games movies, or when he wore sunglasses and murdered lots of people in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers.
Well, the last word of that is going to be important as we’ll see, but it would appear that not only is Harrelson an actor of some repute (and there’s no disputing that), but he also has intrinsic links with the music world, and has done so for some time. If there’s such a thing as “professional band’s best friend” then he may well qualify, alongside Matt Smith of House of the Dragon and Dr Who fame, who is besties with a certain Noel Gallagher.
Harrelson is, in fact, something of a musician himself, having formed a band as far back as the early ‘90s when he was regularly appearing in the hit sitcom Cheers, called ‘Manly Moondog and the Three Kool Kats’, touring some smaller venues in the States. Despite seeing music as a possible career, he had to leave it in the background once his TV and film work really began to take off.
That didn’t stop him from getting cosy with other established artists, however, and he’s actually co-written a couple of tracks with the likes of Ziggy Marley and Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish fame. That’s aside from his two worlds crossing over when he gets to sing on movies, such as the 2006 comedy A Prairie Home Companion, which he duetted with John C Reilly on two songs on, and 2009’s Zombieland, for which he contributed a cover of Elvis’s ‘Burning Love’.
Then there’s his friendships with popular artists. For one, there’s Paul Simon who he has performed with on occasion, then there’s a deep friendship with Irish rockers U2, who cast him in the music video for 2015’s Song for Someone and whose guitarist The Edge took part in a jointly hosted radio programme with Harrelson.
Plus there’s his connection with Las Vegas rock-pop outfit The Killers, which goes back quite a few years now and even resulted in Harrelson making it onto one of their records back in 2017. The group’s singer, Brandon Flowers, told the BBC at the time as they prepared to record in the Live Lounge: “He’s our friend… On the record, he actually recites some of Matthew from the King James version of the Bible, and he has it memorised, and he gave us all a little sermon last night. It worked out. We were spiritually fed by Woody Harrelson.”
The song Harrelson appears on is ‘The Calling’ from the Killers album Wonderful Wonderful, which is probably most famous for featuring their global hit ‘The Man’, which was picked out as track of the year by Radio One’s Annie Mac.
At the end of this year, Harrelson will be seen alongside Jamie Lee-Curtis in Ella McCay, a romantic drama from James L. Brooks, and then has several projects coming up, including Now You See Me 3 and Girl from the North Country with Olivia Colman. He’s also teaming up with his True Detective co-star Matthew McConaughey for a new TV series called Brothers for Apple TV+.
