The Waterboys have joined forces with Fiona Apple, Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle, and other artists to make a concept album about the great actor Dennis Hopper. Life, Death and Dennis Hopper is out April 4, via Sun, and will be led by the single “Hopper’s On Top (Genius)” on Friday (January 10). In the meantime, find the album art and tracklist below.
As the Waterboys’ Mike Scott puts it in press materials, “The arc of his life was the story of our times. He was at the big bang of youth culture in Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean; and the beginnings of Pop Art with the young Andy Warhol. He was part of the counter-culture, hippie, civil rights and psychedelic scenes of the ’60s. In the ’70s and ’80s he went on a wild 10-year rip, almost died, came back, got straight and became a five-movies-a-year character actor without losing the sparkle in his eye or the sense of danger or unpredictability that always gathered around him.” The record, he adds, concerns not only Hopper’s life but also “the whole strange adventure of being a human soul on planet earth.”
Other guests on the follow-up to 2022’s All Souls Hill include Sugarfoot, Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, Kathy Valentine of the Go-Go’s, Patti Palladin, Barny Fletcher, and Anana Kaye.
Read Mark Richardson’s recent Sunday Review of the Waterboys’ 1985 landmark, This Is the Sea.
Life, Death and Dennis Hopper:
01 Kansas [ft. Steve Earle]02 Hollywood ’5503 Live in the Moment, Baby04 Brooke / 1712 North Crescent Heights05 Andy (A Guy Like You)06 The Tourist [ft. Barny Fletcher]07 Freaks on Wheels08 Blues for Terry Southern09 Memories of Monterey10 Riding Down to Mardi Gras11 Hopper’s on Top (Genius)12 Transcendental Peruvian Blues13 Michelle (Always Stay)14 Freakout at the Mud Palace15 Daria16 Ten Years Gone [ft. Bruce Springsteen]17 Letter From an Unknown Girlfriend [ft. Fiona Apple]18 Rock Bottom19 I Don’t Know How I Made It [ft. Taylor Goldsmith]20 Frank (Let’s Fu*k)21 Katherine [ft. Anana Kaye]22 Everybody Loves Dennis Hopper23 Golf, They Say24 Venice, California (Victoria)/The Passing of Hopper25 Aftermath
