“Good lyrics are imperative”: Woody Harrelson names his favourite Beatles album
Acting may have been the vocation that launched him to superstardom, but Woody Harrelson has never shied away from admitting that music was his first love.
He started learning the piano when he was a child, and that performative nature eventually gave rise to his Manly Moondog alter ego, the frontman for three-piece act Three Kool Kats. It was a little too left-of-centre for many, though, with the group eventually fading away when Harrelson’s career began to take off.
Not that he’s abandoned those proclivities entirely, with Harrelson regularly finding a way to show off his pipes in a number of movies, ranging from belting out Elvis Presley’s ‘Burning Love’ in Zombieland to contributing several songs to the soundtrack of A Prairie Home Companion. He also provided backing vocals on Hootie & the Blowfish singer Darius Rucker’s solo track ‘Hold On’ and collaborated with Ziggy Marley on the title tune from the reggae star’s fourth album Wild and Free.
Like a hefty percentage of his generation, Harrelson has a very soft spot for The Beatles. Unlike the majority of that percentage, however, he’s in the position to call Paul McCartney a friend, with the two hitting it off long ago. In bad news for Woody, Macca never lost his competitive spirit, once sharing how he usurped his thespian pal when he spied him butchering a classic.
“I seem to remember Woody Harrelson got on the piano, and he starts playing ‘Let It Be’, and I’m thinking, ‘I can do that better,'” he recalled. “So I said, ‘Come on, move over, Woody’. So we’re both playing it. It was really nice.” Possibly devastating for Harrelson’s confidence, but at least McCartney got a kick out of it.
Although it remains unclear whether or not being upstaged by a member of the Fab Four had any bearing on his decision, Let It Be is not Harrelson’s favourite Beatles album. In fact, he didn’t waste any time in offering his candidate for the band’s number one record when asked that very question in an interview with Live Journal.
“The White Album. I do love Abbey Road. I love all things Beatles,” he admitted before launching into some more of his favourite artists and what he likes about them. “I love Spearhead. Michael Franti. The new Tom Petty. Fantastic. Love Tom Petty. I love Peter Gabriel, Alanis Morrissette. Good lyrics are imperative.”
Realistically, that would paint the picture of The Beatles being his all-time favourite band by quite some distance, but it isn’t as cut-and-dry as that. “You know, if I was on a desert island and I had to listen to one band, I never thought I’d say this, but it’s a real toss-up,” Harrelson mused before dropping a bombshell. “Would it be Radiohead, or would it be The Beatles?”
That’s a loaded question that could start a riot, so maybe it’s best that he left it unanswered.
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