Willis: Actor-singer more like just actor

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer

Bruce Willis and The Accelerators 8 p.m. Saturday World Cafe $27.50 general, $22.50 advance 585-2877

Don't call or e-mail me to bitch about it. The actor admits as much at the conclusion of just about every concert he does with The Accelerators, a trio of real musicians who ably back Willis up whenever he feels the need to grace an audience with his vocal and harmonica stylings.

"I know I can't (bleeping) sing," he told a crowd of devotees at a New York club gig in January. At a Boston gig that same month, he confessed, "I know what you're thinking. ... Bruce can't sing, can't dance and some of his movies suck." And in Canada (which has subjected us to the far more punishable musical crimes of Rush, Anne Murray and Gordon Lightfoot), Willis added, "All I can do is memorize lots and lots of words and repeat them back to other actors all day."

Suddenly, his singing — not to mention everything he did in "Hudson Hawk" and "Disney's The Kid" — makes a whole lot more sense.

Willis likely will offer a similar confession near the end of tomorrow evening's Bruce and The Accelerators concert at World Cafe. And, by the way, yeah, I can't help but (bleeping) agree with him.

A couple nights ago, I downloaded a handful of songs from Willis' first (and still only) two albums — 1987's "The Return of Bruno" and 1989's "If It Don't Kill You, It Just Makes You Stronger" — onto my home computer to judge for myself. "Bruno," it turns out, is still available at most record stores. But I wasn't about to shell out any unreimbursable cash for it.

While on the Web, I decided to search for a few other recorded works by actor-singers; you know, to fairly critique beside Willis' efforts. If you know where to look, the usual suspects are all there — Shatner, Wahlberg, Savalas, Love Hewitt, Travolta, "Crockett," even "Tubbs." And honestly, next to this funky bunch, Willis isn't all that bad. At the very least, it sounds as if he's having the "jeez-somebody's-paying-me-mad-cash-for-this?" time of his life running through R&B covers like "Young Blood," "Under the Boardwalk," and "Save The Last Dance For Me."

Still, it wasn't exactly a zen experience listening to the guy pretty much growl through songs for a couple of hours. Which brings me to tomorrow night's concert.

It's a safe bet that most folks already holding tickets to Willis' concert probably aren't heading off to World Cafe to hear his masterful interpretations of Louis Jordan, The Drifters, The Spencer Davis Group and The Beatles — all of whom he typically covers. Most of 'em just want to be near BROOOOCE for a couple of hours. And, really, who can fault them for that?

Until the actor launched a three-week Accelerators tour of Mainland clubs earlier this year in support of his new record label Uptop Entertainment, only lucky audiences at Planet Hollywood openings (few and far between these days) and the occasional Willis film premiere party got to hear the actor wreak his unique brand of vocal havoc on his blues and R&B collection. So I guess we're kind of lucky here.

But why does Willis do it? Sing, that is. Revolution Studios — which is fronting $70 million for his latest and still-unnamed film — declined to allow Willis a chat with us about his music, fearing we might also want to ask him a few innocent questions about the movie he's been filming in our back yard for the past three months.

Well, duh! One might think a guy who makes an estimated $20 million per movie might have had a bit more flexibility in the matter, but we're guessing Willis didn't really want to talk about either the film or his moonlighting as a singer, which he's called "... something I do for fun. "

We won't even begrudge Willis getting his musical ya-yas out while asking fans for $22.50 or $27.50 each to bask in the dubious glory of his presence. He sure doesn't need the money.

But even Shatner charges for freakin' autographs at "Star Trek" conventions.