I saw him one day as I was scrolling and thought, “Damn. I’ve got to get Kevin Bacon to Take 5.”<\/p>\n
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Kevin has been omnipresent on screen for more than 40 years. From Footloose to A Few Good Men, JFK to The River Wild, his ability to step into the shoes of just about any character has made him one of the most prolific actors on the planet.<\/p>\n
But it wasn’t his first love. “Before I even knew what acting was, I knew that if I walked into a room of people, I wanted them to look at me. I loved the idea of pop stardom.”<\/p>\n
Watch Take 5 with Zan Rowe<\/a><\/p>\n Across six episodes, icons in music and screen join Double J host Zan Rowe to delve deep into intimate moments in their lives as they share five songs they love.<\/p>\n A musical upbringing<\/p>\n Kevin was drawn to percussion, hitting the drum kit in his childhood Philadelphia basement until, at age 13, he joined a band at the local community centre.<\/p>\n Their name? Footloose.<\/p>\n “It’s pretty weird, right?” the 67-year-old smiles, sitting across from me in a recording studio in New York City. “Strangely prophetic.”<\/p>\n Shortly afterward, his big brother Michael tapped him to play drums in his band. Michael is nine years Kevin’s senior; he’d hand down albums and be out gigging as Kevin was growing up.<\/p>\n “He was the musician in the family. I think my mother felt like, ‘You should do something else. Let Michael do the music.'” Kevin Bacon’s turn as a rebellious dancer in 1984 film Footloose was widely considered his breakout role. (Supplied: Paramount)<\/p>\n But Michael had other ideas. In 1995, the same year Kevin starred in Apollo 13, his big brother asked him to form a new band, The Bacon Brothers, with the two of them both out front.<\/p>\n Kevin had never played guitar, but Michael wasn’t having it.<\/p>\n “To stand up there and take our songs \u2026 and play and sing in front of people, it was a terrifying proposition. The first show that I did, my knees were literally knocking. That’s one of the few times I’ve experienced that.”<\/p>\n They’ve now been playing and releasing records for 30 years.<\/p>\n Around their inception in the mid-90s, some college students in the US came up with a parlour game: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.<\/p>\n He’d worked with so many people; could he be connected to any actor in six steps or less?<\/p>\n Kevin Bacon (centre) with Bill Paxton and Tom Hanks in award-winning 1995 docudrama Apollo 13. (Supplied: Universal Pictures)<\/p>\n “I hated it,” Kevin tells me. “I thought it was a joke at my expense. You know what I mean? Here’s a loser. Here’s a great actor. Can you believe that me, down here, can be connected to this?”<\/p>\n But a decade or so later, he embraced it and \u2014 letting go of some ego \u2014 realised it could be harnessed to do good.<\/p>\n “When I came to New York, and all through my twenties and most of my thirties, I’d say I was really focused on me. That was the driving force \u2026 for me to get a part, for me to make some money, for me to get girls.”<\/p>\n Giving back to others<\/p>\n “After I had children, I started to step outside of myself. And when I started to just step outside of myself a little bit, and read the paper, I would get overwhelmed by whatever it was: the environment or hunger or injustice or animals. Now it’s time for me to give a little bit back to the world.”<\/p>\n Kevin Bacon’s Take 5 songs:Earth, Wind & Fire \u2013 Happy Feeling, 1975Spin Doctors \u2013 Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong, 1991John Prine & Iris DeMent \u2013 In Spite of Ourselves, 1999Frank Ocean \u2013 Thinkin Bout You, 2012Brandi Carlile \u2013 The Joke, 2018<\/p>\n Reclaiming the party game name, he set up SixDegrees.org in 2007, a non-profit organisation that connected community groups to funding and amplified their voices.<\/p>\n They’ve just opened Ruth’s Room, named for his late mother, who committed her life to grassroots charities.<\/p>\n In a juvenile justice centre in Philadelphia, Ruth’s Room is a place where detained kids can learn and make music, be creative and feel safe.<\/p>\n Connection and empathy run deep in the Bacon family.<\/p>\n “If you want to be an actor, it’s about empathising or being compassionate to all forms of human nature,” he says.<\/p>\n “You have to be empathetic and have compassion for the characters that you’re going to play, even when they’ve done terrible things.”<\/p>\n It’s his ability to walk in another’s shoes \u2014 in his professional and philanthropic life \u2014 that reveals itself as he shares his songs of joy.<\/p>\n Music runs deep, too. The family group chat often features a lot of songs being passed around.<\/p>\n He and his wife are parents to actor-daughter Sosie and musician-son Travis. It makes sense.<\/p>\n Kevin Bacon has been making music since he was 12 years old, and curates playlists for the character roles he plays. (Supplied: ABC TV)<\/p>\n The Joke, a soaring hit from US country singer Brandi Carlile, caps off our Take 5.<\/p>\n “Kyra played it for me and said, ‘You got to listen to this.’ And we sat there together, and she was like, ‘Wait for it. Wait for it.’ And it just hit so hard.”<\/p>\n He peers into the distance as Carlile hits the incredible final note. “The way that she sings, it’s like a primal scream. When an artist is showing the fight or energy or hopefulness, it always is a little bit of respite.”<\/p>\n I ask Kevin if joy is an act of rebellion.<\/p>\n “I think that people are cashing in on a lot of despair and feeling overwhelmed. And if you’re able to find some kind of peace and some kind of joy in such a chaotic and sometimes backward-seeming world, country, situation\u2026<\/p>\n “If you can find joy, it is a little bit of an F-U to the despair.”<\/p>\n Stream all episodes of Take 5 with Zan Rowe free on ABC iview<\/a>. Hear extended Take 5 podcast episodes on the ABC listen app<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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