If this news broke a couple weeks earlier, we could easily have mistaken it for an April Fool’s prank: TV icon William Shatner will cover Pink Floyd on an upcoming album.
“Searching for Major Tom” will contain 19 cover songs all with a space theme. The Floyd song will be “Learning to Fly” from the band’s 1987 album “A Momentary Lapse of Reason.” The track features Edgar Froese from Tangerine Dream on keyboards and guitar.
While Shatner’s first album (1968’s “The Transformed Man”) is of … er … questionable quality, but at least one, 2004’s “Has Been,” is, with rarely an exception, top-notch — due, in part, to collaborator Ben Folds, in our humble opinion.
“Searching for Major Tom” will also include covers by Deep Purple, Thomas Dolby, U2, Queen, David Bowie, Duran Duran and others.
Shatner announced the album in February, but only just recently announced details.
Mr. Shatner is one the extremely few people of Hollywood that I would enjoy sitting down with and chewing the fat, as it were.