In the rock-meets-cinema hall of fame, nothing rocks harder (or funnier) than track four on the Waterboys’ 2020 album Good Luck, Seeker, “Dennis Hopper.” And now Mike Scott, the group’s leader and sole constant member since its inception 42 years ago, has devoted an entire album to his celluloid hero. Titled Life, Death and Dennis Hopper (Sun), it’ll make fans of the late Easy Rider star and Hollywood bad boy feel like kids on Christmas morning.
“It was a whole lot of fun,” says Scott. “Being directed by the chronology of Hopper’s life relieved me of some responsibility in a very pleasant way. The running order assembled itself because it had to fit the chronology of his story. It’s almost like the limitations are liberating.”
The music certainly feels liberated. There’s finger-popping swing (“Hollywood ’55”). There’s lounge pop (“Andy [A Guy like You]”). There’s born-to-be-wild biker rock (“Live in the Moment, Baby”). There are brightly spotlit cameos (Steve Earle, Fiona Apple, Bruce Springsteen), an unhinged distillation of Hopper’s maniacally depraved star turn in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (“Frank [Let’s Fuck]”), and an Ennio Morricone-worthy dirge (“Venice, California (Victoria) / The Passing of Hopper”). There’s even a reverential paean to the stabilizing pastime that Hopper took up to help him stay off cocaine and booze once he’d gone through rehab (“Golf, They Say”).
So what are Scott’s favorite Hopper performances? Blue Velvet, (naturally) as well as The American Friend, Out of the Blue, and Apocalypse Now. “But,” he says, “I’ve a great fondness for The Glory Stompers. It’s a biker B movie that he made shortly before Easy Rider. He plays a kind of cross between a Hell’s Angel and a juvenile delinquent. I do like that one.”
How’s Scott’s own golf game? “Terrible! If you look at the video for “Golf, They Say,” you never actually see me hit a ball. I look semi-convincing when I’m strutting around, carrying the bag on my back. But, no,” he admits, laughing, “my game is bad.”
