Willis Earl Beal opens up about trashing the set on new movie ‘Memphis’

Singer also reveals details about new EP and third album

Singer-songwriter Willis Earl Beal has revealed he almost got booted off the set of a new film he stars in.

Beal, who has completed scoring and filming on the movie Memphis – a fictional tale about a musician who is plundered into creative and emotional disintegration – claims he trashed the set in anger after drinking excessively.

Director Tim Sutton explained to Rolling Stone: “There’s a point in the film where he had to go further and further into the dark, and I wanted him to go to Beale Street [in Memphis] and cause havoc. Willis didn’t want to do it. He spent a lot of time in his life doing shit like that, he didn’t want to regress like that. The day was horrible, we were having a horrible time, Willis was drunk out of his mind.”

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Beal continued: “I went off, I disappeared, and then I showed up to the house totally smashed and ready to go to Beale Street. And they said ‘Well, we’re not going down there’ and I just flipped. I just started trashing the place and in that moment, I knew, right before I trashed the place, I said ‘film this, this is me imploding’. I knew that I was quitting at that moment, I knew that it was over, and everyone was going to spread my name and say, ‘He was impossible to work with,’ and my career was over.”

The pair managed to patch things up and the movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival over the weekend. Earl Beal also revealed details of a new EP and confirmed he is working on a third album. He added: “I sing in a lower tone [on the EP]. There’s a little bit of Leon Redbone in there, all I can tell you is all of the music is tinted gold. I’ve got all of the material written and finished for my third record, if they don’t fire me. We’ve got seven out of ten songs fired. If they don’t fire me.”

Beal released his last album – ‘Nobody Knows’ – in September 2013.

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