HILLBILLY ROCK CREW MOVIE

Sometimes he sings in a kind of parched JJ Cale croak, and sometimes he recites the words like a minister standing over a freshly dug grave. Private Radio, an earthy blend of blues, hillbilly, country and rock, contains a dozen tracks, 10 of which he has either written or co-written. He thinks that he wrote his first song at the age of three, when he used to bang on his Roy Rogers guitar, dance around in a circle and sing 'cat shit on a rat box'.ДЄt last, Thornton has realised a lifelong ambition by releasing an album of his own. Which is almost everybody, as Thornton's musical ambitions have hitherto gone unrecognised, even though he has played in bands since his teens and once put in a stint with Tres Hombres, a crew of ZZ Top impersonators.

HILLBILLY ROCK CREW MOVIE

Thornton's puppyish enthusiasm for pop trivia - it's impossible to stop him digressing about early Beatles singles and the colour of their labels in the US - might surprise people who only think of him as a movie actor, screenwriter and husband to Angelina 'Lara Croft' Jolie. We were just like, 'Wow! Look at those guys!' Then the British invasion happened, and suddenly they changed their name to the Yardleys.' 'There was a band called the Sandpipers, they were our local heroes. Perhaps everybody dresses like this back in Hot Springs, where, in Thornton's youth, a huge percentage of the 9,000-strong population was in bands. In tattered jeans, cowboy boots, tattoos and dangling pendants, he looks as if he has just ridden into town after driving a herd of longhorns across Texas.

Not that he has made any concessions to urban designer-chic.

To sit in an old hand-carved chair with velvet, y'know, I get creeped out.' Thornton is making his musical true confessions in a minimalist air-conditioned room at an agonisingly hip London hotel, because, he claims, 'I have an antique phobia, so I have to only stay at very modern places.

Hillbilly rock crew