Ben Folds & William Shatner Fall 'In Love'

10/23/1998 8:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(10/23/98, 6 p.m. PDT) - Several interesting collaborations have been announced in the last few months. There's the teaming of R. Kelly & Celine Dion and the Mariah Carey & Whitney Houston duet, but the oddest pairing just may be Ben Folds and actor William Shatner on a track called "In Love." The song is featured on Volume I, the debut by Folds's side-project Fear Of Pop, which is due Nov. 17.

It seems that Folds is a fan of Shatner's Transformed Man album, which featured Capt. Kirk reciting such tunes as Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and the Beatles' "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds." (The 1968 album was reissued a few years back by Varese Vintage. Some of Shatner's work has also turned up on Rhino Records' Golden Throats compilations).

"I've been a fan of that record for years," Folds says of Transformed Man. "He's doing spoken-word versions of pop songs, and I always really like his voice. He has really surprising inflections. So I wrote him a letter telling him how much I loved his stuff, and I think he was pretty surprised that I knew the record, and that some of the songs that were my favorites on that record were some of his favorites, too."

The Fear Of Pop album, which was recorded during the last year, features John Mark Painter from the band Fleming & John and Ben Folds Five producer Caleb Southern.

To read a pre-Shatner Q&A with the Ben Folds Five, click here.