Soundtrack Of My Life: Henry Winkler

10 May, 2024

Henry Winkler

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.”