How Lukas Nelson Inspired Bradley Cooper’s ‘A Star is Born’ Character and Soundtrack

When Bradley Cooper caught Lukas Nelson and his band Promise of the Real backing Neil Young at the Desert Trip festival in Indio, California in October 2016, he started visualizing the main character of his 2018 A Star is Born remake. Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Roger Waters, and more were part of the festival lineup that year, but it was Nelson who left Cooper transficxed and embodied his A Star is Born character Jackson Maine.

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Both longtime fans of Young, Cooper later approached Nelson, Willie Nelson‘s son, about collaborating on a new A Star Is Born. “Bradley is a huge Neil Young fan so that immediately endeared him to me,” said Nelson in a 2019 interview. “He asked me to come over to his house, and he played me a clip of some stuff that he sang, and I thought, ‘This is doable because he already knows what sounds right.’”

‘A Star’ Reborn

Eventually, Nelson ended up writing eight songs with Cooper and Lady Gaga for the film, a remake of the William A. Wellman-directed 1937 A Star Is Born, starring Janet Gaynor and Frederic March, the first color film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. A Star Is Born was later adapted into a musical starring Judy Garland and James Mason in 1954 and again in film with Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand in 1976 nearly 40 years before Cooper’s iteration.

“I [sat] with him for hours singing and writing songs,” said Nelson. “If I was away, I would send him songs and he would send me clips of him singing and it just got better and better.”

Nelson added, “It was a matter of us working together, creating the character and the guitar sound with him and the guitar parts he wanted me to play on songs, things like that, and then, it was a full collaborative effort.”

Jackson Maine

Both were already writing, and Nelson hadn’t even seen a script but was familiar with the storyline and wrote based on his own experiences. “Since Jackson Maine is a character that is sort of based on me and other influences,” said Nelson, “I just wrote a bunch of songs that are based upon my own life.”

To make his character Maine believable, Cooper also had to become a proficient guitarist, though it’s Nelson’s playing heard throughout the film. “I worked with him [Nelson] and another guitarist for about a year,” said Cooper, who also spent some time with Pearl Jam‘s Eddie Vedder and Jack White to round out his character.

For the film, Cooper and Gaga also performed in front of live festival audiences, including a spot during Willie Nelson’s set at Stagecoach and again at Glastonbury in 2017. “[Lukas Nelson’s] father was kind enough to let us come on his set,” said Cooper. “It was nuts, man. As a kid, you always dream of being a rock star, so, to pretend to be was pretty cool.”

For the film, Nelson co-wrote eight tracks on the soundtrack, including “Black Eyes” and “Too Far Gone” with Cooper, and “Alibi” with Lady Gaga and Cooper. Gaga and Nelson also co-wrote “Look What I Found,” “Is That Alright?” “Music to My Eyes” “The Cure,” and “I Don’t Know What Love Is.”

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“We hit it off,” said Nelson of Gaga, who plays Ally, Maine’s bandmate and love interest in the film. “We had this musical telepathy and we wrote well together. We ended up sort of being musical producers and directors of the music in the film.”

Nelson even appears in the film as a musician in Jackson Maine’s band. “I was just on-stage with my band, wearing what I would usually wear,” said Nelson of his on-screen appearance, “and when we’re performing there are nearly always cameras around, so it just felt like a natural progression.”

Photo: Kevin Winter/WireImage