POP : Harry Dean Stanton Finds Harmony in Singing, Acting

Reached by phone at 1:30 in the afternoon last Sunday, Harry Dean Stanton sounded as if he were at death’s door. Not bad considering that, called an hour earlier, he’d sounded like that door had been slammed in his face a few times.

He was a tad groggy and hoarse as a result of spending the previous night singing, which he’ll do again Saturday, this time at the Heritage Brewing Co. in Dana Point.

After the first couple of questions, the veteran actor began sounding like his usual self, speaking with the weary intensity he brought to his 1984 breakthrough roles in “Repo Man” and Wim Wender’s “Paris, Texas.”

For the past five years the born-weathered actor has been moonlighting as a singer, performing in a number of engaging musical settings. He made his first forays in a folk-ish context backed by Bob Dylan vet Steven Soles on guitar and Linda Ronstadt cohort Kenny Edwards on bass. Since then he has toured with singer Michael Been and other members of the Call (Stanton met Been when both were in Morocco in the cast of Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ”), as well as with Billy Swan and James Intveld.

Most recently he has performed with the Kingbees (with whom he appears Saturday) and a new band, Cheap Date, in which he shares vocals with the Kingbees’ Jamie James, backed by drummer Slim Jim Phantom, bassist Tony Sales and pedal steel guitarist Jeff (Skunk) Baxter.

Stanton said he sang long before he was an actor, starting in school choirs and barbershop quartets. Later he performed Mexican ballads on his own and at parties. He was encouraged to take his voice public by Ry Cooder when the guitarist/film composer was recording the “Paris, Texas” soundtrack.

“I can’t stress too much how much Ry Cooder was an influence on me,” Stanton said. “Having one of the most respected musicians around like my singing really gave me the confidence to do it.”

He wound up singing a song on the soundtrack and eventually felt tempted to sing in public. “And then I just found myself doing it. People kept asking me, ‘When are you singing again?’ so I kept doing it. It was that simple,” he said.

He realizes it’s not always his singing that draws a crowd.

“People know you as an actor, and labels are so comfortable for people. That syndrome is always hard to get past. People in audiences still go ‘Repo Maaaan!’ Give me a break. I’m singing now. It can be frustrating, but that’s just part of the human conditioning of labels, if you want to get philosophical about it,” he said, foggily.

He thinks he’s finally getting accepted for his voice. “A lot of people now are starting to tell me what a good singer and harmonica player I am and accepting me as a singer. I know there are other actors out there singing who haven’t fared as well as I have, from what I’ve been able to observe.

“I’ve definitely gotten better and more confident. I can understand why it takes some people a long time to really be a singer. You have to find out, ‘Why am I singing? What am I doing this for?’ I do it because I enjoy it, and philosophically, music is a catalyst. It’s a refining agent,” he said.

Stanton agrees that a four-minute song can sometimes convey as much as a two-hour film.

“There’s something very universal and profound about music. I think no matter what language, it transcends all the divisive elements in a society. There’s something magical about it in a way. It’s charming, hypnotic.”

Stanton’s screen work goes back several decades, beginning with the Gregory Peck-produced “Pork Chop Hill” in 1959. Though relegated to supporting roles in everything from the “Combat!” TV series to the first “Alien” film, he usually elevated the proceedings with deeply etched, all-too-human characterizations. He’s not particularly surprised that it took him 25 years to get his shot at larger recognition.

“I’ve instinctively avoided a lot of roles. Plus, I’m not a ‘mainstream’ actor. That’s pretty obvious, I think. I didn’t want to get caught up in that. When ‘Paris, Texas’ and ‘Repo Man’ came up, I had been evolving toward that style of acting, playing myself as much as possible. Those are two of my favorite films,” he said.

He most recently was in an HBO movie, “Hostages,” and will return to the cable network in the John Frankenheimer-directed “The Line of Fire” about the Attica prison riots.

He finds a different satisfaction in singing on stage than he gets in front of the camera, though he says he can’t describe it. He can say what that satisfaction isn’t , though; Stanton isn’t one of those film actors who turn to stage work for the immediacy a live audience brings.

“People always talk about ‘getting back to the boards,’ with a live audience. You’ve got a live audience when you’re acting in front of a camera too, and ultimately a much huger audience. So it’s always immediate to me,” he said.

When he performs he leans toward blues songs, country ballads and Mexican tunes. “It’s all blues in a way. It’s just singing with feeling,” he said. The repertoire also includes songs by Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. Given such writers, Stanton is more than content to be an interpreter.

“I don’t give a damn about writing,” he fumed. “It bugs me when people ask me ‘Do you write?’ They make such a religion out of writing your own songs. I get so pissed off when they go ‘Oh, cover songs.’ So Pavarotti is covering ‘La Traviata,’ or Olivier covering ‘Hamlet’? Give me a break. To me, Chuck Berry and Jimmy Reed songs are classical songs.”

In both of his artistic fields and among his friends, Stanton is comfortable with cohorts several decades his junior. He said, “I’ve always had a conflict about telling my age. I’m 66; it’s not a secret. But people are so into ageism, you know? It’s such a prejudice. Age is not a factor to me. I don’t relate to it. It’s an attitude.

“Chuck Berry, here’s a guy who’s singing his ass off now, and he’s the same age I am if not older,” he said. (Berry is 66 or 61, depending on which of his given birth dates one believes.) “And a lot of people resent it. I’ve seen people in their 20s who are older than me, even some teen-agers. It’s conditioning, I suppose, people succumbing, giving up on life.”

Stanton has seen a lot of change in his life. He was in the Navy during World War II, participating in the battle of Okinawa. All things considered, he says, he preferred the ‘60s.

“I think there was a planetary consciousness revolution in the ‘60s. It was an inexplicable phenomenon. I went through all that. It was a backlash against war, against the whole destructive human impulse. People got sick of it and saw the hypocrisy of religion and war and society. It’s still a huge hypocrisy, preaching loving kindness and goodwill toward men, and then practicing murder. I think Western religion is geared to be fascistic, with that ‘big boss man’ male father image.

“I take kind of a Buddhistic or Taoist approach. I think they have a much more intelligent point of view about the human condition. They believe like the American Indian and the aborigines that a human being is connected literally and scientifically to everything in the cosmos, not just the earth, but everything. You start talking like this and people go, ‘Aw, you know, this guy’s from L.A. and doesn’t know what the ---- he’s talking about.’ And that’s frustrating, because I do know what I’m talking about. This is all reality to me. Everything is connected. That’s one thing about music, it seems to paint a part of the cosmic picture,” he said.