(Credits: Far Out / Siebbi)
Whether you know him best as The Dude from The Big Lebowski or for his role in Iron Man, Jeff Bridges has appeared in many popular movies over the years, dating all the way back to the 1970s. The star found success early on, appearing in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show as one of his first film roles, and luckily enough, he earned himself an Oscar nomination for his performance.
Showing real promise from an early age, Bridges went on to star in movies like Bad Company, King Kong, Heaven’s Gate, The Fisher King, The Vanishing, and later in his career, movies like 2010’s True Grit and Hell or High Water. Bridges has amassed seven Oscar nominations throughout his career, winning one for Crazy Heart, proving himself to be one of the greatest stars of his generation.
However, when Bridges isn’t acting, he is likely doing something musical. The actor has always been drawn to the medium, learning piano as a child, and he has even released several albums, including Be Here Soon and Sleeping Tapes. It makes sense that his Oscar win was for Crazy Heart, which saw him play a country musician struggling with alcoholism, with the actor performing his own songs for the soundtrack.
Bridges grew up in the 1960s, a time when music was changing fast. Folk saw a major revival, and rock and roll morphed into psychedelia and hard rock. For Bridges, one band stood out as truly revolutionary: The Beatles. It’s no surprise he was a huge fan of the Fab Four in his teens – most young people at the time were switched on to the mind-bending sounds the Liverpudlian quartet were creating.
When picking out the albums that changed his life for Music Radar, Bridges selected a classic record from The Beatles, his discovery of it proving to be a landmark moment. “When I was a teenager, The Beatles were coming out with new songs all the time. At one point, it was like there was a different song every week. And the B-sides were as cool as the A-sides – it was incredible.”
He continued: “They put out album after album, too, but suddenly the gap between them got longer than usual. We were all expecting something from them, and when they finally put out Sgt. Pepper, it was unlike anything we’d ever heard before – and unlike anything The Beatles had ever done before. A phenomenal record and achievement.”
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, released in 1967, was widely praised by critics, and it remains one of the group’s most popular albums. In fact, many people class it as the greatest album of all time, with songs like ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’, and ‘A Day in the Life’ enduring as some of the band’s best tracks.
It emerged at a time when the music industry was becoming increasingly album-oriented, and it remains one of the first proper concept albums. It encapsulated an exciting time for culture, with the psychedelic sounds that emanated from tracks like ‘Within You Without You’ reflecting the band’s propensity for endless experimentation.
Related Topics
Subscribe To The Far Out Newsletter