William Shatner "Live"

Title:	William Shatner "Live"
Creator:
Date(s):	1977
Medium:	audio, vinyl record (LP)
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Language:	English
External Links:	William Shatner "Live" at Wikipedia
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William Shatner "Live" is a 1 hour 20 minute 2-LP set containing live recordings from several of William Shatner's appearances at college campuses.

the cover of the LP

an ad in the sixth Space-Con program book

It was heavily promoted in fan newsletters.

The Liner Notes by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath

It is the first time the man has come out, alone to confront his legend.

And the legend has come out to confront him.

The audience, six years old and yet unborn when the ENTERPRISE flew—the rerun generation.

They came, college students—and college professors. Pre-schoolers—and Ph.D’s. Doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers. Truck drivers, dockworkers, drill sergeants. Both sexes. All ages. Every shade of difference, every degree of diversity. Feeling no generation gap at all.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that the legendary Kirk is finding a place in the history of heroes which is unique, one-of-a-kind, unprecedented.

And the rerun generation is growing up never having known a world in which there was not at least one example of a hero who was profoundly open, willing to be real to himself and others.

On stage now the man who broke that trail a decade ago has gone on, WHERE-NO-MAN… The dramatic performance speaks of the flying, and is the flying. Shakespeare, Cyrano de Bergerac, Galileo on the need for the freedom of man’s mind. Some of the rerun generation may not understand the words fully. It doesn’t matter. Their eyes never leave his face.

He shifts from the dramatic performance. He loves to let the audience reach out to him with questions, with a love which would register on the Richter scale. Now he is fast, funny, light, loving, with anecdotes from the STAR TREK years and now.

Shatner has said, “They’re not the screamers. They’re the people who say ‘thank you.’ They remember something I did many years ago. I’ve grown from a boy to a man on television in front of everybody. And now here they are, turning out in torrential rains to say ‘thank you.’ And I am—moved to tears, many times.”

The response was so tremendous that there will be other tours, other albums. The man will go out to greet the legend again—and undoubtedly astonish it yet again.

Fan Comments

1977

We've always heard that Bill Shatner was a practical joker, and a general court clown on the Star Trek sets — we've seen him in the blooper reels and read about him in "The World of Star Trek" — but none of that ever seemed quite real... until now!

The record album, WILLIAM SHATNER LIVE is Bill all over. He laughs, makes jokes, tells funny stories, portrays various characters — real and imaginary — and even gets serious and reads some great historical science fiction. In short, this album lets you meet Bill face-to-face.

If you like Captain Kirk and Bill Shatner, you'll LOVE this album — possibly the best Star Trek related album to come out.

The double album contains color photos of Bill, a large autographed poster, and of course, two records. The album is recorded portions of one of Bill's campus-tour talks given at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. Included on the two disks is: "Earthbound" a poem about science fiction fans, "Go With Me/High Flight/The Flight of Man/Galileo" a conglomeration of historical science fiction literature dramatised beautifully by Shatner, "Ways to the Moon" examples of early man's fantasies about the moon, "War of the Worlds", a beautiful reading from H.G. Well's classic, "The Movie" where Bill talks about the ST movie, going in great depth into the personal characters of Gene Roddenberry, Leonard Nimoy, Jerry Isenberg and others, and a whole section called "Short Takes" from audience question and answer sessions, including the old stand-by: "How cum there weren't any bathrooms on the Enterprise?". The album contains a letter from Bill, and an introduction by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath.

Rating: "8 out of 10."

This double album is a ’must’ for all Shatner fans. It is an easy mixture of space fact and fiction; drama and comedy, formality and informality, and the mood of the whole is enhanced by excellent direction - as for example the very subtle touch of the barely audible background music that accompanies several of the items.

Side 1 - Earthbound. The album begins with a very effective SF quotation of that title. Mr. Shatner goes on to chat to the audience - he has a gift for making people laugh; then goes on to a piece designed to get the audience into the 'space' mood, from which he slides easily into another quote, Greek astronomical knowledge, and on into Shakespeare.

Side 2 - Six Days to the Moon. Mr. Shatner begins by speaking of early SF stories going on to quote from Cyrano de Bergerac, a piece obviously picked for its humour.

This very entertaining item is followed by Mr. Shatner pointing out how many of Cyrano’s imaginary details are now accepted scientific or technological fact. From this he continues with a fictional history of flight and astronomy, going on to quote from ’The War of the Worlds’.

Side 3 - The Movie. Although this of course is now out of date, it’s interesting to hear how things were when the movie was still being considered. Mr. Shatner speaks of Leonard Nimoy’s disagreement with Paramount, giving a hilarious description of the Heiniken poster. He then goes on to speak of visiting the old STAR TREK offices while filming Barbary Coast, and finding Gene Roddenberry sitting in one of the offices typing... and talks about Gene’s rejected script.

Side 4 Questions. Mr. Shatner invited questions from the audience, and has a fairly lengthy exchange with a boy called Peter, seven years old, who wanted to know how the transporter worked - and ended up accepting the true answer, which he already knew, trick photography! Mr. Shatner admits that he does not understand the STAR TREK mystique, but points out that no-one knows what makes a hit show.

The album, entertaining from the start, becomes even more so with re-hearing; there is so much in it, you can’t grasp it all the first time... or even the second.

2016

I was in a record store the other day when I noticed an LP I’d never seen before—a sealed copy of a 1977 album called William Shatner Live with a $25 asking price. We’ve all heard about Shatner’s sublime 1967 album The Transformed Man, of course, but this record was another animal altogether. For one thing, it’s “a talking album only,” to quote the disclaimer on Elvis Presley’s 1974 album Having Fun with Elvis on Stage.

One of the hilarious things about William Shatner Live is the back cover, which has some of the most over-the-top liner notes I’ve ever seen. Here it is:

[liner notes quoted]

Recorded at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, William Shatner Live recalls a time when Shatner’s status as a universally beloved icon of movies and TV was considerably more in doubt than it is today. The original Star Trek series had been cancelled eight years earlier, in 1969, and the 1970s were proving to be a bit rocky for Shatner. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was still two years off, and T.J. Hooker was fully five years into the future. The Priceline ads were two decades away.

Three years earlier, Shatner had appeared in Roger Corman’s Big Bad Mama, and while we’d all think it cool to have a Corman movie on our résumés, appearing in one is probably not a sign that one’s career is heading in the right direction unless it’s your film debut. In 1976 Mark Goodman wanted Shatner to host Family Feud—true story—and Shatner’s most notable acting credit of 1977, the same year William Shatner Live was released, was the tarantula horror movie Kingdom of the Spiders.

Given these facts, William Shatner Live comes to seem like nothing so much as an extended audition reel to send to Hollywood casting agents, as the former and future Captain James T. Kirk shows off his acting skills, reading monologues by the likes of H.G. Wells and Edmond de Rostand, as well as a less expected author: noted Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht.

To hear Shatner essay the lofty and bracing registers of Brecht’s Life of Galileo is to ponder whether his signature declamatory style is a self-fashioned Verfremdungseffekt, or what we would call an alienation effect.

While the 17th-century scientist Galileo seems an odd choice for the originator of the space-traveling Kirk role, it makes a bit more sense when you realize that Galileo, as the astronomer par excellence, has reason to discuss the celestial bodies of outer space and the possibilities of the human mind. Indeed, it’s probably the most Roddenberry-ish thing Brecht ever wrote.