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Apr 04, 2025 Web Exclusive By Arden Green

Rock and roll experimentalist operation The Waterboys—brainchild of Scottish multi-instrumentalist and sole consistent member Mike Scott—have outdone themselves with the beautifully bizarre Life, Death and Dennis Hopper, a sprawling ’60s fantasia celebrating the life and work of the oft-misunderstood countercultural icon and infamous movieland madman. The album, a fragmentary psycho-pop opera, is abuzz with tongue-in-cheek pseudo-beatnik babble and infectious hooks, Scott paying devoted homage to Hopper and his legendarily iconoclastic artistic spirit. For fans of the notorious Easy Rider and Last Movie director, whose dramatic decade-by-decade rebirths coincided with each major era of modern Hollywood, from its late Golden Age of the ’50s to the countercultural explosion in the ’60s, the New Hollywood movement of the ’70s, and the Reagan Revolution of the ’80s. Ultimately an aging American cinephile’s dream, Life, Death and Dennis Hopper arrives seemingly from left field in 2025, and is perhaps exactly what we’ve needed in an era whose manic artistic spirit could afford liberation from the dulling forces of mass production and aesthetic conformity. Hopper, love or hate him, was a renegade artist whose sought consistently to challenge and invigorate the moviegoing public, and The Waterboys—this time around including the likes of Steve Earle, Bruce Springsteen, Fiona Apple, Taylor Goldsmith, and Barny Fletcher—stunningly portray his brilliant albeit controversial career across the album’s 25 electric tracks.

Opening track “Kansas” finds outlaw country’s ageless radical Steve Earle bidding farewell to Hopper’s hometown of Dodge City in the late star’s voice. “Will I remember you, Kansas?,” sings Earle. “Hell, I don’t even know.” As with anything on which Earle is featured, “Kansas,” despite its brevity, carries itself with a rustic determination, a dust-blown relic from an era of modern outlaws and enchanted wanderers, much like Hopper himself. The track serves as an ideal introduction, as the aspiring actor departs the bleak Plains for the promise of stardom in Hollywood. This segues into the jazzy bop “Hollywood ’55,” which, through a vulgar anecdote concerning disillusionment, details young, clean-cut Hopper’s acquaintances with director Nicolas Ray, in whose influential film Rebel Without a Cause Hopper would play a small role as a high school hoodlum, and actress Natalie Wood.

The rollicking “Live in the Moment, Baby” concerns Hopper’s continued ascent as a young star, taking its title from advice shared with Hopper by his Rebel and Giant co-star James Dean. Other major figures of the era’s popular culture appear throughout this “who’s who” of 20th century American art culture, including Andy Warhol and Terry Southern, whose respective tracks, “Andy (A Guy Like You)” and “Blues for Terry Southern,” work well as enjoyable standalone cuts amidst a thematic barrage of delirious interludes and brief sonic collages, such as the Herb Alpert-esque daydream “Brooke/1712 North Crescent Heights” and the psychotic cinematic mashup “Freaks on Wheels.”

As Hopper evolves from Hollywood teen idol to harbinger of late-’60s hippie madness, so too does the artistic and social landscape evolve around him. Hopper—now bearded, beaded, shaggy-headed, and drug-addled—travels the American landscape with his Nikon camera around his neck, documenting a culture in rapid flux (“The Tourist”), attends the now-mythical Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 (“Memories of Monterey”), conceives of his landmark directorial debut Easy Rider (“Riding Down to Mardi Gras” and “Hopper’s on Top (Genius)”), and spirals out of control while undertaking Easy Rider’s notorious, albeit misunderstood follow-up The Last Movie (“Transcendental Peruvian Blues,” “Michelle,” and “Freakout at the Mud Palace”). These tracks run the gamut of genres, blending jazz, freak folk, psychedelia, glam rock, orchestral pop, and stream-of-consciousness spoken word ramblings to reflect this tumultuous period in Hopper’s life, as his star swiftly falls from grace and he retreats into a decade of artistic and professional exile.

After years of failed romances, murky depression, debilitating addiction, and social alienation—as depicted on “Ten Years Gone,” “Letter from an Unknown Girlfriend,” on which a commanding Fiona Apple shines brightly, and “Rock Bottom”—a downtrodden Hopper accomplishes the seemingly impossible: he kicks his old habits, leans into his negative reputation as an unpredictable eccentric, and rises from the ashes to enjoy an enviable second act as an esteemed character actor, most notably as Frank Booth in the late David Lynch’s 1986-released masterpiece Blue Velvet, as depicted on the punky “Frank (Let’s Fuck).” The album’s most notable celebration of Hopper’s showbiz resurrection, as well as finest overall cut, is its otherworldly victory lap “I Don’t Know How I Made It,” on which Dawes frontman Taylor Goldsmith lends Scott and company his ethereal falsetto. This triumphant statement of perseverance boasts remarkable craftsmanship on part of Scott and pays worthy tribute to the seemingly unstoppable artistic force that was Dennis Hopper, that high-art provocateur masquerading first as the hippie generation’s highway-bound doomsayer, than as the ostracized maniac cowboy dreamer, and, finally, as a reformed Hollywood elder statesmen.

Nearly 15 years following Hopper’s death, such a freakishly delightful tribute to the contentious artist’s career feels long overdue. Needless to say, Life, Death and Dennis Hopper is by no means a record for everyone, and is likely to appeal in its entirety to a smallish swath of experimental music fanatics, ’60s and ’70s counterculture enthusiasts, and those who prefer their art to be raw, radical, and packing just the right amount of irony. Perhaps the album’s release will inspire listeners not only to revisit Rebel Without a Cause and Easy Rider, but also give 1971’s The Last Movie and the following year’s captivatingly obscene gonzo documentary The American Dreamer a watch. Whatever mainstream accessibility Rebel and Easy Rider may have possessed, these latter two works eschew in their entirety, making for equally fascinating and perplexing viewing experiences.

Kudos to Mike Scott and The Waterboys for undertaking such a thematically esoteric project, which is certain to reward its most invested listeners. Dennis Hopper’s illustrious five-decade career successfully showcased the visions of the 20th century’s prophets of aesthetic apocalypticism and scattered fringe dreamers, whose senses of artistic purity rivalled their tendencies toward chaos and degeneration. Experience Life, Death and Dennis Hopper and step into the bloody boots of a lesser-recognized American legend—and who better to guide you than The Waterboys, whose tendency toward eccentricity, excess, and defiant experimentalism render them luminescent mutant offspring of their subject? (www.mikescottwaterboys.com)

Author rating: 7.5/10