The first song I remember hearing
The Monotones – ‘The Book Of Love’
“I grew up on 78th Street and Broadway [in New York]… I had a small room at the end of the hall and I had a bed that lifted up and went up against the wall. That’s what they called ‘a shelf’. And I had my vinyl records and a Victrola [record player] – and over the radiator right next to my bed was a grey, long clock radio and out of it came ‘The Book of Love’… It was the late 1950s, maybe early 1960s.”
The first album I bought
Harry Belafonte
“On the cover, he had a belt that was like a circle of brass and the leather went both ways, you know, and then eventually when I got to drama school, all those years later, I found a belt like it and bought it.”
The last concert I saw before I left New York
The Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden in 1972
“I was about to go and see if I could make anything of myself in Hollywood. I was sat in the gods and I remember when Mick Jagger looked up I saw he was looking directly at me. I thought: ‘He can see me.’
“I’ve met him twice since. I have a hard time with musicians. I get tongue-tied. They’re my heroes. I met him on a plane, and then I met him in a restaurant called Matsuhisa, which was the original Nobu. I was, if you can imagine, like one of those inflatable tube men at a gas station that is just dancing all over the place. I pulled the plug, all the air came out of that dancing plastic thing, and I slinked out of the restaurant.”
The artist who makes me cry
Lewis Capaldi
“I really want to meet him… I listen to him on cross-Atlantic flights. I heard that when he has an episode, [Capaldi has Tourette’s Syndrome and occasionally has to stop singing during performances], the audience keeps singing the song so that when he is able to come back, he knows exactly where he is in the song. I think that is… I don’t even know what that is. That is beyond me.”
The song I can’t get out of my head right now
Brandi Carlile – ‘The Story’
“I went backstage and met Brandi one time – and then I got to meet her friend, the majestic queen that is Joni Mitchell, who was in a room next to her. I can’t tell you too much because I tell the story at my book events. You know, it’s a great fear that no one will show up and I’ll be standing there talking to empty seats.”
The music I used to learn my lines for Barry
Born Free soundtrack
“I use music to memorise monologues. I find the emotionality of the monologue in a song and then I play it while I’m learning it and when I’m doing it I hear the music play in my head… This particular piece is so orchestral, so gigantic and fitted the emotion of the monologue that I was doing in Barry.”
The artist I most want to meet
Paul McCartney
“Years ago, I met Paul McCartney on the street in New York and he gave me his phone number and he said, ‘Call me’. And I called him and he never answered the phone. So, if you know anybody who knows him, would you say that I would still love to have a cup of tea with him?”
NME: Have you met any of the other Beatles?
“I met John Lennon. He brought his son Julian to the set of Happy Days. It’s one of the most important pictures I have in my house… I tried to have a conversation with John and he was very shy. It was really hard to pry a sentence out of him until I mentioned the song ‘Mother’, which was a primal scream on his first solo album [1970’s ‘John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band’]. Suddenly he opened like a garden. I think of it as one of the great memories of my life.”
The song I want played at my funeral
Neil Diamond – ‘Holly Holy’
“It just seems to be gigantic. It’s a moment… I just wrote a codicil for my will which is what I want in my casket: I want $20 in my pocket, because you never know if there is a canteen or not in Heaven; I want sneakers because I might have to walk a very long way to get to my cloud; and I want to be buried with my fly fishing rod because I might have enough line to lower it into a river in Idaho. I will sit on a crescent moon and I will fly fish for trout.”
Henry Winkler embarks on his ‘Henry Winkler: The Fonz and Beyond’ UK and Ireland tour from June 12
