Film / News
Stand By Me, Lost Boys and 24 star comes to Bristol
“I hear about an actor wanting to do music and my eyes roll back too,” Kiefer Sutherland told People magazine last year. Naturally, he was promoting his debut album. At the Bristol Bierkeller on June 20, he plays the first of five UK shows to promote it.
It’s a long and not always noble tradition: people who can act a bit imagining that they can become successful musicians too. Some have made a big success of it. Jared Leto’s 30 Seconds to Mars are a bona fide platinum selling rock act, Steve Martin won a Grammy for his bluegrass album, Juliette Lewis rocks out in an agreeably punky style, Jack Black enjoys living out his rock star fantasies with Tenacious D, and even Johnny Depp has enjoyed a minor hit with his celeb mates Alice Cooper and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry in the Hollywood Vampires. Then there are the mediocre ones. Does the world really need Russell Crowe’s 30 Odd Foot of Grunts or remember Bruce Willis’s The Return of Bruno? Scarlett Johansson’s Tom Waits covers album Anywhere I Lay My Head received positive reviews, but nobody bought it. Joining her in the packed ‘Don’t Give Up the Day Job’ department are Keanu Reeves’ Dogstar. And this is by no means an exhaustive list
Enter Sutherland, whose career was kick-started by his performance as John ‘Ace’ Merill in Rob Reiner’s great adaptation of Stephen King’s coming-of-age yarn Stand by Me. He then become something of a teen idol in the late 1980s with the likes of The Lost Boys and Young Guns. In the new millennium, he won a whole new audience, as well as a trophy cabinet full of awards, for racing around all over the shop as counter-terrorist agent Jack Bauer in the long-running Fox TV series, 24.
is needed now More than ever
And now he’s a country singer. Is he any cop? Well, Sutherland released Down in a Hole, his debut album with musical partner Jude Cole, to mostly respectful reviews last year. “The album has an unexpected, unvarnished authenticity that is pleasant, if sometimes familiar,” reckoned the Washington Post. “The fierce Down in a Hole brings to mind Tom Waits’ similarly titled Way Down in the Hole, though Sutherland’s voice lacks Waits’ distinctiveness. Gonna Die evokes late-period Johnny Cash, but Sutherland is no Johnny Cash. Still, who is?”
If you fancy taking a punt, advance tickets for the Bierkeller show are available from Bristol Ticket Shop, price £27.50
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