Up Till Now: The Autobiography

events of my life into a few songs, focusing on those things I wanted my loved ones to understand. I managed to get it down to only about one hundred different songs. Then Ben and I went to work rewriting and editing them.
    I flew to Nashville to record the album. Ben had bought the studio in which Elvis Presley had recorded some of his music and we were going to work there. As I was getting on the plane I saw my name on the cover of one of the tabloids and picked it up. And then I hid it until all the passengers were seated so no one would see me reading it. It is sort of embarrassing. The story quoted an actress who was complaining about working with “that has-been.” Has-been? What? I’d always resented that phrase. It’s an oxymoron. How can you be a has-been unless you’ve been something? Big deal, you’re not that now. The fact is you’re not what you were a split second ago. People are constantly changing. I never understood why it is considered a derogatory term to have been something. Is it better to never be than to be and eventually become a has-been? The only people who stay the same are minuscule talents who earn their livings writing about other people who are busy living real lives, people who think “has-been” is an insult.
    I got it! That’s the title! Has Been . We were searching for a title and there it was, right in front of me, on the front page of a tabloid. I loved it, it was turning a phrase in upon itself. It was the last thing anybody could have expected, which is why it was my first choice.
    Ben recruited great musicians for the album; Joe Jackson, the British group Lemon Jelly, punk star Henry Rollins, Aimee Mann, and country icon Brad Paisley. Novelist Nick Hornby wrote a song for us. We worked every day and night for two weeks and eventually put down—that’s music industry insider talk—eleven cuts, the story of my life from It Hasn’t Happened Yet to Has Been.
    Has Been received wonderful reviews. Absolutely wonderful. Modesty, and my editor’s instructions, prohibit me from including the top fifty or sixty. So please Google Has Been, read them for yourself. Then order it—and I’ll just bet you can figure out where you can find it!
    After the album was released Ben and I did a live show in Los Angeles. I had to relearn the songs and then, in front of several thousand people, for fifteen minutes I was a rock ‘n’ roll star. Without the tattoos, of course. At the end of the concert all the lights in the hall were turned off. And then the band started playing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” When the song started I raised my arm high into the air—and stuck out my middle finger. Just that one finger. The spotlight caught it and remained focused on it. And I kept it there as I sang “Lucy in the Sky” exactly as I’d done it decades earlier on The Transformed Man . That young audience, Ben’s audience, got it immediately. They started screaming—and laughing. I performed the song almost exactly as I had done it so many years earlier. This time though, instead of being mocked, we got a long, long standing ovation. The audience stood cheering for a half hour. Literally, a half hour. We would have done an encore, but we had nothing else to play. They got it. Maybe it took thirty-five years, but they got it.
    A few nights later Ben, Joe Jackson, and I appeared on the Tonight Show and did a song from the album titled Common People. Again we got an enormous response. I was flying! I was pumped! When I got in my car to drive home I turned the radio to a local music station. Suddenly I heard the male host say to his female co-host, “We’ve got William Shatner’s new record here.” They’re going to play my record on the radio! This was thrilling; within hours I’d sung on the Tonight Show and I was about to hear my record being played on the radio for the very first time!
    “Yeah,” the female host responded. “What an asshole.”
    “You’re right,” the male host said. “He really is an asshole.”
    Here’s what I did not think: I’ve got the title for my next album. Instead I got my cell phone and called them. “This is William Shatner,” I said. “And I am not an asshole!” Then we started arguing about whether or not I was an asshole. Finally I asked them, “Listen, would an asshole call a radio station to complain that he is not an asshole?” I stumped them with that one.
    We spoke for about five minutes and then hung up. The female