Kiefer Sutherland reflects on his iconic movies and writing songs that address mistakes -

WHEN Kiefer Sutherland first started playing music live, it gave him a new confidence to open up about his life.

The actor and singer, best known as Jack Bauer in TV drama 24, said the reaction from the audience affected him deeply and encouraged him to speak honestly and to connect.

“Before my first shows I was thinking people would want to kill me,” says Sutherland, 56.

“But people have been so incredibly generous with me and it had a very profound effect on me.

“It really turned me around, because I can be kind of pessimistic and sarcastic and I don’t think I was ready for that kind of human generosity.

“So the shows made me look at humanity differently. And it became really, really important.

Inspired by his first heartbreak

Sutherland begins his UK tour next week after postponing his European tour last year after contracting Covid.

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He says: “I’m thrilled to be coming back to make those shows up. And there are added shows that we’re doing on this tour.

Sutherland is chatting on video call from Savannah, Georgia, where he is filming Clint Eastwood’s upcoming film Juror #2, slated to be the director’s final movie.

He says: “It’s unbelievably hot here. Hot and humid but I’m just finishing filming.”

He adds: “When I started playing live, the music started informing my acting.

“I’m an actor, and have worked professionally for over 30 years and so thought that was going to help me with the musical stage.

“But it’s been the opposite.

“With acting, they are always going to be a character because they’re not my words, and I didn’t write them.

“In my songs I create characters that are closer to me as a person and the exchange between myself and an audience on a music tour has allowed me to feel comfortable.”

Sutherland’s latest album, the country-flavoured Bloor Street, gave him another hit in the UK when it was released last January.

This followed the success of his second album, Reckless & Me, which reached No9 in 2019 and firmly established him as a singer songwriter in his own right.

He says: “I love acting so much and it’s still what I do — I do both things.

“And it’s completely fine if someone likes my work as an actor and that’s all they want.

“That’s completely cool.”

Song Going Down, one of the standouts on Bloor Street, was the first track he wrote for it — and it was inspired by his first heartbreak.

He says: “It was the first gut punch I got from these songs.

“It’s a style of writing where I will try and tell a story that really is very specific. It’s not a metaphor.

“Even with a song like County Jail Gate, that song became my experience of when I went to jail [for drink driving].

“I’ve made some mistakes in life.

“That song started because I was watching a movie and at the opening of the film, a guy was getting out of prison.

“The credit sequence was the prison gate opening — a sound I have heard for real.

“The sound of the County Jail Gate is a sound you’ll never mistake and that became the line of the song.

“Invariably, you’re going to write a lot about the things that were hardest.

‘Stand By Me really got the ball rolling’

“No one was more embarrassed than I was about what I had done and the situation I put myself in.

“Writing about it was helpful because until you can forgive yourself you can’t move forward.

“Writing for me has been very cathartic in that way.”

Bloor Street was the street Sutherland grew up on in Toronto, Canada, where music was an important part of his life.

He says: “Music and girls were very important thing for me back then. My life revolved around that.

“I started the guitar early. And then acting took over my life by the time I was 15.

“I made a small film in Canada called The Bay Boy and I’d done a couple of plays in Toronto and everything started moving forward.

“I got very lucky and I was at the perfect place at the perfect time.

“It was Stand By Me [1986] that really got the ball rolling and the ball picked up a lot of speed with The Lost Boys [1987].

“I had a child on the way so all I cared about was getting the next job, which was Young Guns and then Flatliners, which was a big hit.”

He adds: “You have really no idea which film is going to be successful or which film is going to considered iconic.

“When we were making Lost Boys, we had no idea. We just wanted it to be good enough to get another job. It certainly did that for us.

“But the reference point for me will always be Stand By Me because it was the first film that I did where I was like, ‘Oh, so this is what it’s like at the top’.

“It’s such a beautiful story.

“Each generation has its own version of what the growing up experience is.

“I certainly loved mine and being able to be a part of the one that Stephen King was describing in the book (The Body).

“Making that film was a really special time.

“I was so lucky to work with a director like Rob Reiner, and all of those actors on that film. And the same for TV shows like 24 and Designated Survivor.

“When 24 started, people were coming up to me in the street calling me Jack Bauer.

“I was thrilled that people were enjoying it so much.

“If it meant people were going to call me by a different name, I didn’t mind.”

And it was the storytelling side of country music that made him fall in love with the genre.

“I can listen to a Zeppelin or a David Bowie song and there’s a lot left for interpretation,” he says.

“But when I listen to Johnny Cash singing A Boy Named Sue, there’s no confusing what that’s about.

“It’s a story and has a beginning, middle and an end. That’s what I love about films.

“And that’s what I like about writing songs, so I really leaned into that genre of music.

“I realised I could tell stories and not be restricted to the melodies of American country music, so each album has been a little freer.

‘Songs are all about tempo and feel’

“And like anybody else, I’m learning as I go. I’ve become more comfortable as a singer, which has increased the options that I find for melody.

“So hopefully every album is a progression.”

Playing live, Sutherland has one goal — to make sure the crowd are dancing.

He says: “I want to play a set that would make you move.

“There’s a couple of slower songs in there but pretty much everything else is moving.

“It’s not a rock set but you’re going to dance.

“I want the show to feel like a freight train moving along.

“It’s taken three albums to be able to pick and choose songs from all three records to have a set that’s going to really drive.

“And it’s so much fun to play because it’s really energetic.

“I didn’t pick songs because of their meaning, it’s all about tempo and feel.”

But can he choose between music and acting?

He says: “This is the thing, I love them both so much.

“And they both present very different, and yet somehow connected, challenges.

“They both frustrate me but they also give me the greatest joy and the greatest sense of accomplishment.

“There are other things I can do.

“I cook a meal, I can do a bunch of things, but playing a really good show, there’s a high off that, that’s hard to beat.

“And it’s the same thing with making a film, especially if you’ve got a team that has a lot of expectation, because it makes everything else work.

“If you get that right, you feel pretty good about what you are doing.

“So, I love them both so much.

“And you know, if you do something you love, you won’t work a day in your life.

“So next week, I’m very excited to be playing in the UK again.

“We didn’t get to finish the last tour because of Covid.

“But the shows I had played, I certainly got a reaction that our show had evolved.

“So I was very excited by that.

Kiefer Sutherland reflects on his iconic movies and writing songs that address mistakes

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