‘The Richard Harris Love Album’: The actor’s forgotten career as a crooner
From Ringo Starr’s almost impressively wooden performances on the silver screen to Corey Feldman’s bizarre switch from The Goonies to whatever you can call his current music career, music and film have always had a degree of crossover, with actors wishing they were rock stars and vice versa. Beloved veteran actor Richard Harris, however, is something of a special case.
A name like Richard Harris should demand no introduction, having boasted a career spanning four decades on stage and screen and amassing a reputation among Ireland’s all-time greatest actors. For the uninitiated few, though, Harris first emerged during the 1960s as one of the brightest acting sparks of the British New Wave, with his first starring role coming in 1963’s This Sporting Life, ushering in a revolutionary new age for film and theatre and earning Harris an Oscar nomination to boot.
Those early triumphs set the stage for one of the most lauded and legendary acting careers of his generation, with Harris amassing an impressively wide range of roles, stretching from Albus Dumbledore to Oliver Cromwell.
Throughout it all, though, the actor became almost as notable for his extracurricular activities as for his on-screen appearances. Namely, there are countless tales of Harris’ many drunken exploits alongside the likes of Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton. Between them, they had perfected a lifestyle of sex and drugs, all that was left was rock and roll.
Then, during the late 1960s, at the arguable peak of Harris’ hellraising years, the actor seemingly sought to make his mark on the music industry. Presumably, the motivation behind that choice largely revolved around the phrase “How hard can it be?”. Harris had already dominated theatre stages, film sets, and barstools for years by the time he unveiled his 1968 debut, A Tramp Shining, and he took to the recording industry with equal enthusiasm.
To the amazement of most listeners, though, that album is not without its merits. In fact, the single ‘MacArthur Park’ from that record managed to reach number four in the UK singles chart, and it went even higher in the US, peaking at number two. Although by his own admission, Harris was never a trained vocalist, audiences certainly connected with his performance style and the rich emotion that he managed to pack into those recordings, likely owing to his acting abilities.
More albums followed, and 1972’s The Richard Harris Love Album was a definite highlight within the actor’s relatively short-lived recording career. In addition to having an undeniably great title which demands a double-take when flicking through a box of LPs, the album compiles some of Harris’ greatest musical efforts, revolving around various crooning, orchestral, and Bacharach-esque love songs delivered in his typically romantic fashion.
It isn’t a groundbreaking record by any means, and it is easy to see why Harris’ recording career soon trailed off in favour of his thespian work. After all, those jazz-adjacent Music for Pleasure style romance albums were ten-a-penny back in the early 1970s, whereas Harris’ unparalleled acting abilities always set him apart from the rest.
His final LP came in 1974, in the form of the largely spoken word album I, In The Membership Of My Days, which sees Harris perform alongside his sons and was perhaps best suited as a Christmas present for his relatives than a fully-fledged, internationally-distributed album.
A core part of Richard Harris’ appeal is the multi-faceted nature of his career, and his fleeting music career forms one of the most interesting aspects of the actor. Yet, it is an avenue which is certainly worth revisiting, particularly in the case of The Richard Harris Love Album. Dig behind the novelty value, and you’ll find some truly beautiful love songs imbued with the kind of emotion that only Harris could administer.
