May 6, 2025 • 50 mins
Paul Williams is an Oscar, Grammy, and Golden Globe award-winning composer, songwriter, and musician. He is known for writing and co-writing popular songs such as “Evergreen”, “We’ve Only Just Begun”, and “Rainbow Connection”. Williams wrote the score and lyrics for renowned films such as the 1976 adaptation of “A Star is Born”, “The Muppet Movie”, “The Muppet Christmas Carol”, “Bugsy Malone”, and “The Phantom of the Paradise”. His songs have been recorded by legendary artists such as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and The Carpenters. As an actor, Williams has appeared in numerous high profile films and TV shows such as the 1973 “Battle for the Planet of the Apes”, “Smokey and the Bandit”, “Phantom of the Paradise”, and “Baby Driver”. His illustrious career spans generations and includes titans of both the music industry and Hollywood. Currently, Williams is the president and chairman of the ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Just an old fashioned love song playing on the radio
and wrapped around the music.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
That's my guest today, Paul Williams performing just an old
fashioned love song from his nineteen seventy one album of
the same name.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
You'll swear you've.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Heard it before as it slowly rambles on and on.
No need in bringing him back because they've never rele
egged one.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Just an old.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Fashioned love song.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Williams is an Oscar, Grammy and Golden Globe winning songwriter, musicians, singer,
and actor. He's known for songs like Evergreen, We've Only
Just Begun and Rainbow Connection. He's also written the score
and lyrics for renowned films such as Barbara Streisand's version
of A Star Is Born, Bugsy Malone, The Phantom of
(01:08):
the Paradise, and The Muppet Movie. His work has been
recorded by legendary artists like Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Carpenters,
and Kermit the Frog. Paul Williams is also the current
President and Chairman of the American Songwriting Society ASCAP. With
such an illustrious career that spans generations. I wondered what
(01:31):
brilliant new work Williams has been conjuring up these days.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
The most recent thing is I'm doing Pans Labyrinth for
this stage with Giama del Toro.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Wow and wonderful.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
We've been working on it for years because he goes
aways and does movies and then whatever like that job,
and it's just I'm like, I finally went, you know what,
I fucking surrender. I'm going to take it out of
my bio. I mean, if it happens, it's wonderful. I mean,
we've Gustavo Santo a Lion, I've written the songs, we've got,
if anything, we've overridden them all, and it's like, if
(02:04):
it happens, this is magnificent. If it doesn't happen, then
there's something better. I totally surrender. The next morning, at
eight am in the morning, I got an email from
Geinnimo's partners and that that JJ Abrams was going to
produce and I mean that more that that's good.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Instant Surrender's a good group. You know, you JJ pretty
good to me, you know, but it's you know, and
it's like I'm eighty four, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
You ain't stopping. Oh man, all my friends who are
successful who have rounded that corner at eighty, Laurene Michaels,
this one, that one, all turned eighty this year. Yeah,
they all have the same thing, especially Lauren, I would
imagine because he's so successful. He's at the height of
his success, and it's like these guys are like, I'm
not done. You know, you say when you want to
(02:51):
slow down and stop, it like stop, I don't want
to stop. They go to the twenty years if they could.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
You know, if I was sitting on my porch shilling
and get get off my law, I'd be dead. My
wife puts up with me what she calls it growling,
because I'm like she said, it's like you unconsciously have
to keep There's something about music that keeps going because
in my now, because I can't hear, I don't perform
(03:17):
much anymore because finding the notice is like like Shakespeare
and drug tragedy. But in my head I'm hearing Dada
and it's coming out, so it's like, I mean, it's pathetic.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
But here's what I want to ask you when I
look at you for this show, because I'm I'm obviously
you know who you are. I know your career, I
know you're to Palma movie. I know all that stuff
from when I was younger. And when I look at you,
you seem like the coolest guy in the world. Like
everybody would go with you and go party and they'd
have the greatest time. The music and you're funny and
(03:58):
you know all these Did you feel that way? Did
you have a run where you just had so much fun?
Speaker 5 (04:03):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Well, and the thing is, who is that I wanted
to be with? There was a guy named her Pacheco,
was a buddy who became a road manager. We used
to joke we called him the Bison because he looked
like the Indian and made it with a buffalo, and
he was what happened with the Bison. Her Pacheco, he
played my bodyguarden foundom of the Paradise and he used
to buy, you know, like he was an extra who
did a little bit of stunt work that kind of thing,
(04:25):
you know, and just the coolest guy in the world,
I mean, just amazing. And he knew everybody because he
bought you know, like he you know, when he did
the greatest story ever told in the desert. He was
getting everybody their grass, you know, well not everybody but
the hippists of the hippists, right. And he introduced me
to Bob Mitcham. That's everything I wanted in my life
(04:47):
is that is to have some of the guy that
used to buy, used to sell, you know, get grass
for Bob Mitcham. So I met I met Bob Mitcham
and he was shooting a picture in London. It was
a very Noah kind of a picture.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
We hit it off.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
He called me dough boy, and I was, you know,
I did a lot of blow. I did a lot
of vodka. I can never have been able to smoke
grass because I turn into it like I just you know,
I am curled up behind my shout and not in bed,
but under the bed going because you know, peeking out
the edition blinds, looking at the tree police because they're
coming for me. I mean, I just go right for
(05:24):
that gun. I'm scared exactly that. And the furniture is
talking about me. You know, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
But he was.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
He called me dough boy, you like, and he always
have a joint with him and he goes, do boy,
this is no good, but you're gonna love it. I'm
gonna probaly can't. I don't do I don't you know
even no, no, no, this is no you got it,
you got it. This is so fucking mild here and
you have a.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Hit of it.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
And then he had tossed me the car keys, which
looked like a satellite coming through the air, you know,
and he had say, you know, I'm really fucked up.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
You're gonna have to.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Drive, and I would and then they would just laugh
at me, you know. But that was to me, that
was maybe the peak of my If there was any
time that I felt cool, it was then. The other
times were when I would do almost anything to make
her really love me because she was so cool, and
so I said things. I mean, I said stuff on
(06:19):
the Tonight Show. It was just kind of you know.
I didn't edit myself very much, and I made the
band laugh and I made you know, Johnny laughed, you know,
the atire. I can't remember the name of the producer.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Of the Cordova.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Yeah, yeah, Freddy Kordadeva. I would sit there and go,
why do you have to do it? After sits down
next to me, she says, I just kept go back
from Maine.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
It was my family.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
We did this amazing thing where we clean the entire
house and huge place in all and we did it
in four days. And I said, the family is in amphetamines.
You know, they made a fortunate at it. And Freddy's like,
why do you do that? I don't know, I believe
that out.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
I mean, my wife Caanna reminded me when we first met,
she said, I really loved you based on one thing
you said that I thought was really unusual and interesting.
On the Tonight show, she said, you described yourself as
a combination of Oscar Levan and Donnie Osmond, like trying
(07:19):
to exclude you know, who knows what. But I've been
a construction brat. I went to a new was I
went to ninth schools. By the time I was in
the ninth grade, my dad was going around the builder,
you know, and he drank and he would get me
up in the middle of the night, just saying, you know,
for his buddy like McShane, who hated me. Incidentally, all
(07:41):
he wanted to do was get privately fried, and he
didn't want to hear some gnomes singing Danny Boy. But
my dad would get me up to sing. And people
always said in one of these days, you're going to
kill yourself. You're going to kill these kids because you're
driving like that. He was a big, sweet, sentimental drunk
you dad, My daddy looks your mom. My mom was
was just a sweet and wet hands and an apron mom,
(08:03):
you know.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
And he died you that he.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Drove his car under the abovement of a bridge, went
through the windshield.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Died a week later.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
When I was thirteen, and I was shipped off to
live with an aunt and uncle, who I found out
later he hated her and that they didn't get along.
But she told me, look, if you go back to
live with your mom, your brother's going to starve because
she can't afford both of you. So I want you
to write your mom told it you want to stay here,
which is the last thing I wanted.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
So it's my childhood was rest.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
To confront some tough things at a young age.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Dickensiean, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So you are persuaded that this is the best thing
financially for your mother, so you stay.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
With the California to stay with the ant And the
fact is what part of California Long Beach, down Long Beach,
And you know, I had been I've been one of
those little kids who wanted to sing. I'd stand on
my mom would turn her back on me at a
department store and I'd be telling somebody I can sing,
I can sing, and she'd find me standing on a
counter with a little bunch of money around my feet.
(08:59):
But after my dad, it was gone. Music was gone.
I don't know, I just your heart's on.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
All I knew is that I wanted, you know, A
good therapist has said a couple of them have said,
you wanted to be somebody else, you know. And I
was also really you know when I was This is
a huge, a big part of my story is that
when I was about eight or nine, I was really tiny.
My dad was like, should he be running under coffee
tables at this age, you know? And she said no,
(09:27):
I'm not taking to the doctor. So there was a
country doctor who said I can make this kid grow,
and he gave me a male hormone. Wrong thing to
do because it kind of closes off with the bones.
But it also kicked me into a premature puberty. And
suddenly I have no interest in my toy chest, but
my hand in his chest is suddenly yeah, yeah, you know,
and they spot down there. All I wanted to do
(09:49):
is get let's get asking little girls. Let's get in
the closet and kiss like they do in the movies.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Right.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
The thing is that when they took me off of
the hormones and all, it screwed up my body clock.
So I didn't hit puberty televes like out of high school.
You know, So you stunted your growth physically.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
All I know is that I'm thrilled to be who
I am, and you know it's all been a gift
and it's all worked for me.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
But if what you've done creatively and what you've done
just because there's a there's what I consider the performer's spirit,
no matter how great they are talent wise. Patty Lapone
is great, but she just has this extra block of
some energy, some weird fissionable energy, which you have. You
(10:34):
are a real performer. You can sing, you can act,
you can do anything. When people go back and look
at the songs you want, it's like almost unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Well, I'm a songwriter because of Robert Devall. I believe
it's a really weird story. Well, first of all, you know,
I'm in Long Reach and everything. I graduate, I go
home for a couple of years whatever, and head back
to Hollywood to try to make it. I get cast
in a movie called The Loved One, you know I
did playing in Long Beach.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
They got good reviews from.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
The LA Examiner, you know, said Pauliams has a rare
gift of seeming spontaneous in the theater. I took that line,
memorized it and showed it everybody and got an agent.
So I did The Loved One, and then two years later,
just like that, I got another acting job on a
movie called The Chase. Marlon Browno, Robert Redford, jun fond.
(11:23):
I mean a huge picture. So we're shooting at night.
They've got everybody is older than eighteen, but looks younger.
I'm playing a sixteen year old, and you know, I
mean the script is they're going to develop your store,
going to develop your story.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
They didn't really, But.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
In the meantime, I'm sharing the dressing room with a
guy named Mark Seaton, his dad with George, seeing the
director a lot of money, beautiful guitar that he's got
Martin guitar I picked up. He says, don't touch the guitar.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
It's Martin.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
I said, I didn't know they had names, you know,
I mean, I didn't know Martin guitar. But I went
on my ball, wanted a little cheap guitar. Or I
painted it like like a stained glass window. And I'm
teaching myself chords. So one night they're shooting of the
scene where the US kids have set fire to a junkyard.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
The Bubba reeves it was Robert Redford is.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Hiding in the in the junkyard, and I've got my
little guitar sitting on the steps of the world's smallest
motor home, a Teardrop motor home, and I'm just making
stuff up, looking for the chord, and I go, bubbah
blah blah blah bah, come out wherever you are. Oh,
we're gone a calm man and get you. Yes, we're
gone to come man and get you. And Robert Duvall
(12:36):
is walking by, and Robert Duvall says, what's that. I said,
it's the guitar.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I just boughted. He went out the guitar. What were
you singing?
Speaker 4 (12:44):
And it's it's Robert Coke and Robert Davalla. I said,
I just made it up and I'm convinced. I'm at
this point, I'm in trouble. Maybe you're not supposed to
be singing on a set. And he said, come with me,
and now I'm now I'm nervous. He walks me over
to the heart of the set where they're shooting, and
Arthur Penny whispered some of him. He said, show him
(13:06):
to me, and I said, it's the guitar. I just
it's just why it's not the guitar.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
So I keep making this staff.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah. So I go blab blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Well I get two like those two lines out and
he says, come over here, stand by the barbed wire,
light them up and lights up all the gas fires
and they shoot it. They shoot me in the back
of the roadster. They he shoots me about four different places,
maybe three places, and singing those two lines, and it's
in the movie.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, or we'll come in.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, You're gonna come in and get you that again.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
You're any human being that is woke as to use
a phrase would have immediately gone, okay, acting isn't working
for me. It's been two years since the last job.
This is I mean it's but I'm sure I had
no idea that it was going to be in the
movie until it came out, and it may have been.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Two years later.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
It took me probably two years to start writing songs,
but I somehow that just became my journal.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
It was my therapy.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Had you written songs before? But eventually you get to
a point. Do you play piano horribly?
Speaker 4 (14:14):
I mean, I mean when I sit down on my
band would actually walk off stage. If I sat at
the piano, they go. I started wrinning on guitar, but basically,
I mean, I'm just sitting at home. I brought my
mother out to take care of her because I thought,
you know, I'm gonna know I'm on the chase side.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
It is all gonna be a big career. Nothing. I
don't even have a phone.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
But I get hired to do as an improvisational actor
on the Mortsaul Show. Mortsol had a local television show
and it was all about the Kennedy assassination. It's all
about the warrant commission. It was all about New Orleans
and all that anyway. So he brought me in and
I played a boy scout, an eagle scout who goes
in to get his Eagle Scout stuff and gets recruited
(14:56):
by the president, and the guy named Biff Rows plays
a chicken delight. Guy comes in and he gets recruited,
and the two of the men we started writing together.
We wrote about four songs. He wrote, played me a song.
He said, this is funny, and that's not funny, it's pretty.
He said, well, write words to it then, so we did.
We wrote, we did some acid, we wrote some words whatever,
(15:17):
and he went to A and M Records and played
him a bunch of songs and they gave him some
an advance publishing deal. And as he's walking out the door,
he says, there's a couple of songs there that I
wrote with another guy. I wrote the words, and he said, well,
give me his number, of all call him. He's never food,
but I'll tell him, so I will go in. The
song was called fill your Heart, and within about a
(15:39):
week after I signed a deal with him, was recorded
on the B side of the Tiny tim album or
Tiny Tipto through the Tulos, which they turned over and
played I mean, I'm like, I love tiny but that's
not what I want to be. I mean, if I'm
but one of the great things that we just cannot
plot our lives. You know, you can't plan it. It was
(16:01):
recorded years later by David boy Song on Hunky Dory
album and it was like, thank you God.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Musician, songwriter and actor Paul Williams. If you enjoy conversations
with legendary musicians, check out my interview with Gordon Lightfoot.
Speaker 6 (16:21):
One summer I wrote that song Sundowner. I knew that
it was going to happen, and it didn't work up
to number one. That was our second one. Then it
was two albums later that we had the rec of
the Edmin Fitzgerald that became a responsibility. It did because
only one verse contained any conjecture of any kind of
the rest of it was taken from directly from newspaper
(16:42):
articles and the aftermath, which only lasted for about three days.
If I had not wrote that song, everybody would have
forgotten about it a week after it happened.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
To hear more of my conversation with Gordon Lightfoot, go
to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Paul
Williams shares how a jingle for a bank commercial turned
into the song We've Only Just Begun I'm Alec Baldwin,
(17:19):
and this is Here's the thing. Paul Williams has written
countless iconic songs like You and Me, against the World,
Rainy Days and Mondays, and one of my personal favorites,
I Won't Last a Day without You. I was curious
about the process behind creating such legendary work and how
Paul Williams got his start as a lyricist.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
The whole point when they signed me at A and
M Records is they were looking for a lyricist for
a guy at six foot four basketball player and scholarship whatever.
Guy that was a piano player named Roger Nichols, Roger Nichols,
and I wrote like he gave me a melody, and
he said, you know, we're looking for a lyricist for Roger.
And he gave me a melody, says take it home
(18:03):
to see what you think of it. At ten o'clock
the next morning, I was there with a lyric for it,
and he said, really, And so I wrote a lyric
called It's hard to say goodbye, to turn away with
no regrets, no regrets for fears, no good byes, to
say love just never seems to work. That it was
Clauding Large. So the same day I had Clauding Lage
(18:24):
and Tiny Tam. What kind of a songwriter am I?
But Roger and I wrote album cuts, B sides, nothing
on it for like maybe three years, and I have
to tell you that one day there's a knock of
the door and it's the head of publishing and he's
got two kids with him. He said, this is Karen
and Richard Carpenter and there are newest artists. So we
(18:46):
started feeding them as songs. The first thing they recorded
was they had a B side, too Close to You.
And then the next thing we wrote a song for
a commercial that we expanded to a full song. I
sang in the commercial commercial for a bank. Richard saw
it said, is there a full song? We've only just begune?
So we've only just begune rainyties and mondays, I won't
(19:08):
last a day without you?
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Now tell me about that? How did he Lane make
come to you? And obviously the big red hot Warren Houser.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
Warren had asked me to write a song for Heaving
Can Wait, and I, you know, I looked at the
picture or whatever. I said, you don't need you don't
need a song you got chery rebat. He did that,
you know, I said, that's that, you know? So I
you know, and I've done that two or three times.
I'm really proud of it because if I look at
a picture and I go doesn't need a song, then
I know I have a chance to I I can
(19:38):
either make some a bunch of money and write a
song it doesn't work, or I can you know, or
I can you know?
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Trust it? Another one is going to come.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
So you know, I said no, and which I think
oppressed him. And when it came up to time for
his star, he thought about me write the songs for
the movie because he thought it was funny.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
And it's not choice, it was his idea. It was
his idea.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
So Warren and I met, and it took forever to
give him to give me the job. It's like, you know,
it's like wark, you know, it's like, can we begin
to talk about actually doing this?
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Because teen chapel.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
With them every day, every fucking everything.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
So but Elaine.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
I met Elaine and I started writing songs and she
Elaine is magnificent and shooting with Warren and Dustin. She
shoots so many takes and never tell them what she wants.
She said, I'll see you. I'll know it when I
see it. What do you want? I'll know what do
you want? I'll know when I hear it. So I'm
writing songs. I'm writing songs.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
She's going on. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
He puts me up at the wall door from there
for weeks writing songs, and you know, And then I
wrote a song called that a lawnmower Can Do All
that I will illustrate Saturday morning. The sound of a
lawnmower touches my soul, touches my soul, brings back the
memory of first summer love of will and me will
end me. That a lawnmower can do all that that
(21:01):
alon More can do, all that that alawn More can do,
all that It's amazing. She leans forward, and then I sing.
I can see her standing in the backyard of my mind.
She cracks her knuckles in this scab Thatt's on her knee,
won't go away. I can see the woman waiting in
her eyes, and I can see the love, but I
can't see the Brooklyn Dodgers in la She went done.
(21:23):
That's exactly what I want.
Speaker 6 (21:25):
You know.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
What she wanted was something that was good that gets
screwed up. Telling the truth can be dangerous business. Honest
and popular don't go hand in hand. If you admit
that you can play the accordion, no one will hire
you in a rock and roll band. Two mismatched songwriters
working together, and I approached it. I mean I think
(21:46):
I wrote thirty five songs for it, and she wanted
to hear the entire song for two lines in the movie.
She wanted to hear Warren and Dustin singing instead of me,
because she's when you singing, it sounds like a song.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
It was a wonderful job.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
But like when you're on The Carson Show in the
makeup from the Planet of the Apes thing, one of
the things I learned about you is that you've got
to be a really talented songwriter to write bad songs,
and you got to be a really talented singer to
sing badly.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
We'll give the fact it's about. It's got to be.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
About believable, though, and I approached I totally approached his star.
As an actor, I wouldn't have it Chuck, and I
wouldn't have it Lyle, and they had different different backstories.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
You know.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
I spent so much time in front of the camera
in the seventies. In the eighties, somebody else was using
my body, so I wasn't working much. But I mean
I did so much live action, bad cartoon acting. And
you know, I just spent two years with Billy Bob
on Goliath, and it's like, I mean, that level, the
(22:57):
level you work at, the level that he works at,
is there's no imitation, there's no acting. It's it's it's
feeling and inhabiting, and it's just there's nothing that excites.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Me more then.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I mean, the idea of playing a scene with Bruce,
you know, is just God.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
You You've done so many TV spots, Your acting career
is like an iceberg in most people's minds, and then
don't realize you've done countless guest spots and you know,
smoking in the band. Was he fun to shoot with?
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Oh my god? Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Well, you know, first of all, it's Pat McCormick, and
I Pat McCormick is one of my best friends, you know.
So I'm visiting Pat and when he was the chief
writer on the monologue writer on The Tonight Show. So
I'd go over and I'd do some game show or something.
I'm with you know, doing Hollywood Squares or something. Then
I'd run over. I mean, I did forty eight Tonight shows.
(23:57):
But I'd also just show over to hang out with Pat.
And I'm standing with Pat off just talking.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
About the extent up comic Pat McCormick, Pat.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Mccormay, Pat Pat McCormick six foot six, played my dad.
He played my dad, very funny, one of the funniest
writers in the world and performing and perform and one
of the sweetest human beings in the world. And dangers
to hanging out with because we never slept, you know.
So I'm over there, you know, leaning against the wall
or something with Pat McCormick and Burt Reynolds looks at
(24:26):
the two of us and goes, oh my god, I
got an idea. So that's what he put us together
to begin his little meetings. Dad, I'd like to kick
kids ass just once, just you know, I'm gonna tell
you what now, Your mommy is so ugly. It was just,
you know, And so we did three of them. I mean,
they kept giving us more smoking the band at one,
(24:47):
two and even worse. There was no story it was,
but it was one time I showed up second or
the third one, got off the plane, got in the car,
was driven to the hospitats. We stayed on McCormick standing
outside of his house phone and it goes, this is
the best time I've ever had on a movie.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
I've already been rolled because you have blood on his shirt.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Talk about rainbow connection. I mean, for you, music is music.
It doesn't matter where it lays into the project.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
When I met Jim Henson, I went over and did
the Muppet Show in England, and you know, I was
never a kid that was in a gang that had
a treehouse. When I walked on the set of the
Muppet Show, I was with a gang that had a treehouse.
Who was the most wonderful? I mean there was an energy.
First of all, did you ever work with him? Did
(25:37):
you ever work with the Muppets?
Speaker 6 (25:38):
No?
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Oh, you would have put him be in a perfect
fit because you're just crazy enough. You have an edgy
you know, you'll do anything. But the thing is that
there is a creative freedom. What was unique I think
about about Jim Henson is that he let us breathe.
But anyway, we had a good time on the show,
and he said there's a thing called him an Outter's
(26:00):
jug Band Christmas. We're going to shoot it's it's a
Christmas show, a one hour thing, and I'd like you
to write the songs for it. I wrote the songs
for it. It's actually at this point now I says
stage play as well. But I think it was my
audition for the Muffet movie. So he loved the songs
for the first one. So we we said, I want
(26:22):
you to do the Muppet movie. I said, I want
to bring a guy named Kenny Asheron to write the
songs with me. Kenny and I wrote most of the
songs for A Star is Born with Barbarus Dreisen his
music my words. And I had a great relations for him.
We've been working on an unproduced musical about Dorothy Parker.
We were, you know, it was like he buildst Ive
felt better. It was that kind of a relationship, you know,
(26:44):
And so I brought him in and this is this
is Jim Hansen, Jim Henson is opened my place in
the Hollywood Hills with you know, with Frank Oz and
we're talking about where the songs go. We're kind of
spotting the picture in advance because you have to previews
or the songs if they're performed on screen. And I
walked him to the to the car and I said,
(27:06):
you know, Jim, we're not going to surprise you with this.
I'll show you the songs, you know, as we're working
on them, because this is a big.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Deal, first feature.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
He said, Oh, Paulie, I don't need to hear them.
I'll hear him in the studio. It's not Has that
been your experience in making empower pictures?
Speaker 1 (27:22):
No, a bit laid back, so, you.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Know, I ask him, you know, the how do we
start this, puppy?
Speaker 5 (27:28):
You know?
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Do you start with with Kermit sitting on a log
in the in the in the swamp.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
What's he doing?
Speaker 4 (27:35):
He's playing a banjo and that kind of sets a
certain tone. And I think the instruments like tag pianos
and banjo is a great sad song instruments.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
I love the juxtaposition.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
So Kenny and I said down to write, saying we
wanted to write something like when you wish upon a Star,
I mean, when Jimmy Crookeett takes always hat in the
window and things about that.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
It elevates all of us to.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Another level, and we thought Kremit deserved that we did.
We wrote ourselves into the worst corner. You got to
think about the opening lines.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's
on the other side rainbowsis but only illusions, and rainbows
have nothing to hide.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
We went out raps.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
We just denied all the magic in rainbows. You know,
but look at the gift that we were given if
we go with the next line to it. So we've
been told, and what we do is Kermit steps away
from the podium sits down with the audience and is
a witness to the magic. So we've been told in
some Tuesday believe it. I know the wrong way to
(28:58):
see Someday we'll find it. The rainbow connection, the lovers,
the dreamers and me. The unseen hands on the piano
and the computer keys when I'm writing are many and
always welcome, because the best stuff comes out of my
absolutely unconscious. If I claim it anywhere, I can only
(29:20):
claim it there.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
What is it about you? What do you think it
is about you? I mean I want to go full
blown cliche here and say you drank and drug yourself
to death because of a hypersensitivity you had. It also
helped you write these songs. Where do the songs come from?
You've written some of the most I'm one of these guys.
There's a handful of songs you put on and one
of them is Evergreen. It's just a pretty song that
(29:45):
just pulls at you. Now, when did you realize you
had the aptitude to write these memorable ballads for these
giant divas? Well?
Speaker 4 (29:54):
You know that was her music. She just called you,
she called now. I was being actually fitted for a tuxedo.
A guy is measuring my end scene when my wife
walks in and says it's Barbara Stras wants to talk
to you. And I'm like, you know, oh my god,
And of course you know. I mean, I'm like, oh
my god, it's Barbaras. And then I pick up the phone.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
I go, hi, Barbara, Yeah, of course yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
But she says, you wrote a song called for Helen
Ready called you and Me against the World. There's a
scene at the end of His Stars Worn and I'm
doing his Stars Warn with with with Chris Christofferson. There's
a song at the end of the Chris's character had
written and he's dead and I want to and I'm
lis singing this song and un me against the World
is like I'd love something like that. I said, I'm
(30:38):
I'm here with Kenny Asher, you know, like he's who
I wrote that song with. I go and I meet
with her, and she's wanted me to write one song.
But that's not what I heard. They sent the script
and I wrote down notes wherever he called. I thought
what I heard was, I want you to write the
songs for a stars warn. I mean, I just my
ego here listens sometimes when I don't, you know. And
(30:59):
so I go on and I tell her what the
songs are about, and she and John Peters look at
me like I'm nuts. Would you give us a moment?
And then they brought me back and they said, you know,
that's not what we asked you. We asked you for
one song. But you don't seem to be intimidated. I said,
absolutely not, And of course I'm sure I was.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Where did these songs come from? Where did these lyrics
come from?
Speaker 4 (31:21):
Well, first of all, this script, I mean we're talking about,
you know, the script of the Bible. The two things
that the songs, especially in.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
The story itself, inspired the song.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
Well, the thing is that, first of all, the characters
do and most guys writing songs for most songwriters, pop
songwriters writing for a film or a stage play. When
I have a hit, of course, we all want to
have a hit. But because I come from an acting background,
I want to advance this story and I want to
(31:51):
expose something of the inner life of the character I'm
writing for. So, you know, that was the whole point
with Kerman is that he has a spiritual wife, you know.
So I said down and I write. Everybody is like,
aren't you nervous about writing for Barbara? And I said, yeah,
but I'm also but let's take it up a notch.
(32:12):
I'm writing songs for the guy that putting all my
cleanest dirty shirt Sunday Morning coming down. Me and Bob McGee.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I love Chris Chris, I love christ Oh my god,
didn't you.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I loved him. Yeah, he was such an egoless guy.
I'd run into him from time to time and he
was always such a sweet I mean, there's the guys
who are the biggest guys, the biggest guys, the most talented,
they're so kind. Gradford was so kind to me and
he was too, Chris, very sweet, no ego.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
My very first concert at a club in New York,
was at the Bitter End, and I'd show up there
first night and there's Chris Read in the front. I've
never met him, and I described it as trying to
sing through a guld you know, it's like you know,
and I sang, and one of the songs I sang
was called I Never had It So good. And the
(33:01):
first time we ever really spent a lot of time
together was A Star is Born. And the opening night
of Stars Born, somebody stuggle microphone on his faces said,
what are you feeling? You said that a deep sense
of impending shames.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Musician, songwriter and actor Paul Williams. If you're enjoying this conversation,
tell a friend and be sure to follow. Here's the
Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get
your podcasts. When we come back, Paul Williams takes us
behind the scenes of writing the songs for one of
his favorite projects, A Muppet Christmas Carol. I'm Alec Baldwin
(33:53):
and this is here's the thing, d.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
F today I must feet of strangers were rad you
know I'm not that strong.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
That's Paul Williams performing I Won't last a day without You.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
There's song one I can to do who always cap
You're always there when there's no gardy, no on that range.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
At age eighty four, Paul Williams is showing no signs
of slowing down. It was only when reminiscing about his
storied songwriting career that I was reminded of just how
long Williams has been a force in the songwriting world.
From touring with Olivia Newton John to writing for The Carpenters,
Williams has been surrounded by legends since the very beginning.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
I mean I had songs recorded by Bing Crosby and Elvis.
I mean because it was like the third act of
their career when I'm just getting started. So it's like
when I tell somebody that I songs recorded, a song
recorded by Ben Crosby, it's like, you are old, buddy,
you are old. It's a yeah, I am old. But
(35:12):
when you think about when you started your career and
who was around, I mean, I did something for the
Friars and walking on stage the first time and there's
Greg RePEc and Krook Douglas, you know, you know, I
think Burt Lancaster was was even.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
I met all three of those guys and I almost
pissed my pants.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
But the thing is that I write both ways. I
write words and music, and more and more these days
with Pans Labyrinth. It's Gustavo Sentel on myself, the Phantom
of the Paradise, words and music. The big thing for
me was getting as far as the Muppets was concerned,
was in fresh New sobriety.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Nobody's calling me.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
I get sober, and I'm not the hot you know
kid in Timen anymore I've been. You know, you know
you're an alcoholic when you misplaced a decade.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
And it's like the eighties around here, somewhere, it's.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Around you said one before and you're the only person
that ever responded.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
You get it.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
But at any rate, the phone rings and it was
Brian Hanson, and Brian said, I want you to write
the songs for the Muppet Christmas Curl. Have you ever
seen it? It's one of my favorite things I've ever
done in my life. And it was written with the
exact same emotional commitment that I have around my sobriety.
(36:33):
I literally read the first you know, the Dickens novel.
I read the script, looked where the songs were going
to go left it alone for a while. Let my unconscious.
I'm not procrastinating, I'm percolating. I am leaving my unconscious
alone with this story and not bugging it. And eventually
I was. At the time I was dating Keenan Wynn's daughter,
(36:56):
I was out of her place in Brentwood, and I
go out into the park with a Lawrence Block novel.
I love Lawrence Block's writing, a little tape recorder and
a pencil, and I say, big, amigo.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Muse, whoever you all are.
Speaker 4 (37:12):
Up there, We're gonna write these songs and let me
know when you have an idea. And I pick up
the Lawrence Block novel and I start reading, and about
three pages in I put it down. I thought, okay.
The first song Scrooge, we see a door. Of the
door opens, you see his feet and he walks by
all these little people that seem to get colder when
(37:33):
he walks by. Put a boom bum boom boom boom
boom boom butter boom boom b im.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Get the rhythm of it. You want to cold wind
blows it chills you, chills you to the boom.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Nature. The phrase is your heart like he is a
being alone.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
That's what you guys are good. That's not bad.
Speaker 4 (37:54):
It paints you with indifference like a lady paints with rouge.
But the worst of the worst, the most hated. And
it was because the one that we call screws. Oh,
there goes mister. But I wrote that much of it
without writing it down, but it was. It was what
(38:16):
we were talking about earlier, about the difference between acceptance
and surrender and really really totally letting go of the moment.
I mean, if I'm sitting down with Alec Baldwin to
talk about God knows what we're going to talk about,
I could give gone into it. I could have wrapped
myself around my axle a couple of times thinking about that,
because I would want this to be a really wonderful experience,
(38:39):
and I was excited about it. But I remember the
same club as you, and we let things go and
we trust in the moment and it's exactly what it's
supposed to be, and it's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
And what's interesting to me is that for me, I've
been overwhelmed, overwhelmed in it maybe joyous way from or
I'm at now, which is everything has led me to
where I am right now. Yeah, I don't want to
go back to my old life. No, No, I love
what I'm doing now. I don't want to leave my house. Yeah,
I'm obsessed with my kids and then being around them
and being participatory.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
You have kids, I do have kids, and I was
not there for my kids when I mean, when you
know my son doesn't want to have kids, he said, Dad,
it's like everybody that I know that has kids, they
get total I mean, at this point, I think he'll
change his mind, but he says he was a wonderful actorney.
He said, I also don't want to spend the rest
of my life auditioning. So he went off and like
he became a trainer. He was Kamala Harris's private trainer,
(39:36):
and then didn't go flying around in planes and training
you know, studio heads and stuff like that. Now he's
involved in developing plant based foods and at any rate.
But it's like, you know, Dad, because all my friends,
when they have kids, that becomes their entire life.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
I said, I escaped that trap.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
I'll show you have it.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Yeah, and he said, yeah, you did.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
My daughter, my amazing daughter, Sarah is a therapist. She
works as in the Office of Victims Advocacy from a
major university and and she's she's amazing, two beautiful kids.
And she said, Dad, you were not there. She says,
I hear them talking about the Pauli Lama, which is
(40:18):
my nickname and recovery. So so yeah, she says, you're
the polic She said, I get that. You know, like
you're anywhere anytime that you're going to help another. I'll
call it her an addict, she said, But when we
were kids, you weren't there. But I have to tell
you something to Dad. When she calls me, Pops, she says, Pops,
(40:39):
you finally hid full tilt Papa Bear. And I would
bet that if there's anybody that I can say that to,
you're going to understand what that means. How wonderful, what
that's the best review I ever had in my life.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Now, obviously you've been involved with ASK Captain a member
as a professional songwriter and so forth. But then you
become the president of Asking Why and what's the task
for askcap Now.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Make sure we're a membership organization of We have over
a million members, songwriters, composers, lyricists. They've been putting food
on my table and gas in my car since nineteen
seventy two. When music is performed there is a performing
rights we're royalty there and ASKAVS a pro performing rights organization.
(41:27):
You know, we get to keep the miracle by giving
it away in that other world that we're a part of.
That love and services is an intensely rewarding I mean,
it's absolutely it's a contact because you hear about being
of service being love and service and all, and it
sounds like a really wonderful thing.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
To do for the rest of the world. But what
it does for.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Me and what every I wrote a line in the
song once it's said, every act of kindness is a
little bit of love behind. We left behind. My favorite
line as far as the philosophy is probably you give
a little and it all comes back to you. You
give a little love, then it all comes back. In
two thousand and one, I was I was hal David
(42:10):
was a great friend and Hell said, I want you
to run for the board of AZCAP. And I had
run for the board of ASCAP a couple of times
and was not elected. And I mentioned that to him
and he said, and thank God, because you you know,
because somebody else was using my body. Then he said,
but you're a different man now, and I think you
got to run for ASCAP on the board. I was
(42:33):
elected to the board in two thousand and one, and eventually,
you know, became Maryland's vice chair riders Share, and in
two thousand and nine became president chairman. I was raised
by a hardcore Republican who my dad called my mom
that little communist.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
See that little comedy, a little commie.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
I'm at a little comedy. And they lied at least
every four years. They lied because they'd say, we're going
to cancel each other. It makes no sense. Let's agree
to not vote. So they would agree, they would swear,
you know, they were not going to vote, and as
soon as the polls closed, they would go, I voted,
I voted. So I was raised in this household. What
and And one of the things that happened when I
(43:16):
was very early on, when I did run for the
vard and was elected, before I was president, I got
to know some people that had nothing in common, that
they that disagree to on almost everything in the world,
and yet they did meaningful work together. I'm talking about
like Ted Kennedy and Orton Hatch, who did the Americans
(43:37):
with Disabilities Act?
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Who did age suffer? Kids?
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Collaborate?
Speaker 4 (43:42):
And because I began to understand a little bit what
was going on in a very changing worlded as gap,
I got excited about, you know, being a hood ornament,
about walking in the halls and going on Paul Williams
and having somebody like Doug Collins say to me, you
know your little venus or smoking the Band? I love
that movie. What can I do for you? Any minute?
(44:04):
And the next thing you know, he and Hakim Jefferies
are working on somebody called the Songwriters Equity Act, which
is going to adjust the rules that we operate under
so we can get closer to the fair payment for streaming.
Never made it to the floor, but then we come back.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Isn't their fair payment for streaming?
Speaker 6 (44:20):
Now?
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Why?
Speaker 4 (44:21):
Well, you know, business is business, you know, like writers
are not exactly you know, you know, most heads and studios.
I don't think very luckily wake up in the middle
of the night and go, God, I gotta take better
care of the writers, you know. I just you know, honey,
I think about that, and.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Honey, why can't you sleep? I just keep thinking about
the writers.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
Keep thinking about the writers. You know those pesky songwriters
or you know, they have kids, and I suppose they
should be able to feed them.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
I need to help them.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
But the thing is that there is no music business
without a song. Without music and the opportunity to really
work on a daily basis and an amaze staff I
mean Ascaps one hundred and ten years old, but to
be able to show up. And I have friends on
both sides of the island, and this is not a
(45:09):
collaborative environment we're living in right now.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
You know, it's like Terry Everson.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
You know, it's a cell phone and a foxhold, you know,
I mean ASCAT. We have you know, amazing, amazing writers,
you know, like Beyonce and Paul McCartney and the like.
But we also have a lot of blue collar writers
like I am, like I was. I've had great success,
but I'm a blue collar writer. I write songs. You
got something, you need a song? I love sitting down
(45:36):
and chasing the words.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Now, just to harken back a little bit to you
in the studio with people, I mean, one of the
people who just put a spell on me, like many people,
was Karen Carpenter, And of course I was just sickened
by how she died, And yeah, were you ever in
the studio with her when she was recording?
Speaker 4 (45:54):
They did not hover while I was writing. I did
not hover while they were recording, but I but I
would get a phone call. You know the great thing
about Karen and Richard when we were introduced to them,
they opened up the door, said, this is Karen and Richard.
I think you know it was herb Alpert and Chuck
Kay introducing the two of them to Roger and I.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
Nobody knew who we were.
Speaker 4 (46:12):
And Karen and Richard when we loved your Steve Lawrence
got the Drifter, and we loved rowing pony By, you know,
I mean they knew all these songs we'd written that
nobody knew. I mean it was like never been on
the radio, but they were fans. When the phone would
ring and it would be Karen Love be in my
office with Roger we're writing, and she'd be over in
(46:35):
the recording studiency you want to hear, and you go
over there and you hear. I mean rainy days on Mondays.
Let me be the one. I want less to deal
with it. You know, it's like and when an angel
sings your songs, your life changes.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Oh god, and in that way that you mentioned about Crosby,
when you're writing for Crosby. Whatever, it's been a while,
I think this is still the This is accurate. What's
a Nick Tosh's book about Dean Martin. He wrote that
great biography of Dean Mark Goldino and he says that
Martin puts a record on the turntable by it's bing Crosby.
(47:08):
They takes it off, and he puts one of his
arm and they takes that off and he puts Alvis Presley.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
He goes.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
You see that we're all doing the same thing here, right,
He's doing me, I'm doing this. We're all doing world crooners.
Speaker 5 (47:20):
You know.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
And the fact is that the great thing about what
I think we do is you don't have to give
up your fan cards. So if I'm in a room
in Quincy Walks and I, oh my god, there's Q
and that maybe which you see on the service, but
inside there's apartment that's going, I'm like, God, that's Quincy Jones.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
You know.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
At this point in my life, it's like that whole thing,
you know, that whole thing with Scrooge writing for Scrooge.
One of the great examples of what's turning in my
life is that I'm asked to write songs about somebody
who's having his spiritual awakening while I'm having a spiritual.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Awakening live from the front.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
Absolutely in the fresh in my chest is gratitude, and
I'm writing thing I get up in the morning and
I say, lead me where you need me.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Let me just end by saying, do you have any
idea how talented you are? Did you really own that
in your life? I've just sat there and go, Man,
You've done some amazing things, beautiful things. Do you have
any idea how talented you are? Do you kind of
enjoy that a bit?
Speaker 4 (48:23):
I wish I could introduce you to all of them.
I wish I could introduce you to the kid that
watched a movie about Jane froman called with a Song
of My Heart and wound up like walking into it
my office the first time at ASCAP, and on the
wall next to my thing was the printed sheet music
from with a Song of My Heart. I was the
(48:43):
first thing with music in it that I ever loved.
In that there's some sort of magic going on here.
I haven't quite figured it out yet, but that seems
to be one of the things that I am most
open to is right now, it just come to me
when you need to. With this one. This may be
the last big journey whatever, but I think that it's absolutely,
absolutely magical, and I don't think that we could have
(49:06):
planned any of it. And at the same token, in
early sobriety, I've read the writing of Emmett Fox, and
he talks about what we dwell on, we create, that
thoughts become things. And if you are inspired, you know
in a fashion that is loving, you know, and to
the highest good of all concerned. What you dwell on
(49:26):
you may experience soon in your life or perhaps later.
Phantom of the Paradise opened to nobody in the theater
and they closed the can Film Festival with it this year.
Sometimes a dream doesn't come until you're all about just
ready to walk away from this life and you go, wow,
there's still some wow moments left, I know, for both
(49:47):
of us, and I admire you.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
There's not a word yet for old friends. You just man,
there you go, you got it.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Thank you. My thanks to musicians, songwriter and actor Williams.
I'll leave you with a little more of Paul Williams
performing I won't last a day without you. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Here's the thing that's brought to you by iHeart Radio.
Speaker 5 (50:11):
And there's no getting on that range.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
When my storm lust, the dreams won't go one d bucketing.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Madness, the world lesting you.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
But I want less today without you
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Just an old fashioned love song playing on the radio
and wrapped around the music.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
That's my guest today, Paul Williams performing just an old
fashioned love song from his nineteen seventy one album of
the same name.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
You'll swear you've.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Heard it before as it slowly rambles on and on.
No need in bringing him back because they've never rele
egged one.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Just an old.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Fashioned love song.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Williams is an Oscar, Grammy and Golden Globe winning songwriter, musicians, singer,
and actor. He's known for songs like Evergreen, We've Only
Just Begun and Rainbow Connection. He's also written the score
and lyrics for renowned films such as Barbara Streisand's version
of A Star Is Born, Bugsy Malone, The Phantom of
(01:08):
the Paradise, and The Muppet Movie. His work has been
recorded by legendary artists like Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, The Carpenters,
and Kermit the Frog. Paul Williams is also the current
President and Chairman of the American Songwriting Society ASCAP. With
such an illustrious career that spans generations. I wondered what
(01:31):
brilliant new work Williams has been conjuring up these days.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
The most recent thing is I'm doing Pans Labyrinth for
this stage with Giama del Toro.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Wow and wonderful.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
We've been working on it for years because he goes
aways and does movies and then whatever like that job,
and it's just I'm like, I finally went, you know what,
I fucking surrender. I'm going to take it out of
my bio. I mean, if it happens, it's wonderful. I mean,
we've Gustavo Santo a Lion, I've written the songs, we've got,
if anything, we've overridden them all, and it's like, if
(02:04):
it happens, this is magnificent. If it doesn't happen, then
there's something better. I totally surrender. The next morning, at
eight am in the morning, I got an email from
Geinnimo's partners and that that JJ Abrams was going to
produce and I mean that more that that's good.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Instant Surrender's a good group. You know, you JJ pretty
good to me, you know, but it's you know, and
it's like I'm eighty four, you know.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
You ain't stopping. Oh man, all my friends who are
successful who have rounded that corner at eighty, Laurene Michaels,
this one, that one, all turned eighty this year. Yeah,
they all have the same thing, especially Lauren, I would
imagine because he's so successful. He's at the height of
his success, and it's like these guys are like, I'm
not done. You know, you say when you want to
(02:51):
slow down and stop, it like stop, I don't want
to stop. They go to the twenty years if they could.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
You know, if I was sitting on my porch shilling
and get get off my law, I'd be dead. My
wife puts up with me what she calls it growling,
because I'm like she said, it's like you unconsciously have
to keep There's something about music that keeps going because
in my now, because I can't hear, I don't perform
(03:17):
much anymore because finding the notice is like like Shakespeare
and drug tragedy. But in my head I'm hearing Dada
and it's coming out, so it's like, I mean, it's pathetic.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
But here's what I want to ask you when I
look at you for this show, because I'm I'm obviously
you know who you are. I know your career, I
know you're to Palma movie. I know all that stuff
from when I was younger. And when I look at you,
you seem like the coolest guy in the world. Like
everybody would go with you and go party and they'd
have the greatest time. The music and you're funny and
(03:58):
you know all these Did you feel that way? Did
you have a run where you just had so much fun?
Speaker 5 (04:03):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:04):
Well, and the thing is, who is that I wanted
to be with? There was a guy named her Pacheco,
was a buddy who became a road manager. We used
to joke we called him the Bison because he looked
like the Indian and made it with a buffalo, and
he was what happened with the Bison. Her Pacheco, he
played my bodyguarden foundom of the Paradise and he used
to buy, you know, like he was an extra who
did a little bit of stunt work that kind of thing,
(04:25):
you know, and just the coolest guy in the world,
I mean, just amazing. And he knew everybody because he
bought you know, like he you know, when he did
the greatest story ever told in the desert. He was
getting everybody their grass, you know, well not everybody but
the hippists of the hippists, right. And he introduced me
to Bob Mitcham. That's everything I wanted in my life
(04:47):
is that is to have some of the guy that
used to buy, used to sell, you know, get grass
for Bob Mitcham. So I met I met Bob Mitcham
and he was shooting a picture in London. It was
a very Noah kind of a picture.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
We hit it off.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
He called me dough boy, and I was, you know,
I did a lot of blow. I did a lot
of vodka. I can never have been able to smoke
grass because I turn into it like I just you know,
I am curled up behind my shout and not in bed,
but under the bed going because you know, peeking out
the edition blinds, looking at the tree police because they're
coming for me. I mean, I just go right for
(05:24):
that gun. I'm scared exactly that. And the furniture is
talking about me. You know, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
But he was.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
He called me dough boy, you like, and he always
have a joint with him and he goes, do boy,
this is no good, but you're gonna love it. I'm
gonna probaly can't. I don't do I don't you know
even no, no, no, this is no you got it,
you got it. This is so fucking mild here and
you have a.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Hit of it.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
And then he had tossed me the car keys, which
looked like a satellite coming through the air, you know,
and he had say, you know, I'm really fucked up.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
You're gonna have to.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Drive, and I would and then they would just laugh
at me, you know. But that was to me, that
was maybe the peak of my If there was any
time that I felt cool, it was then. The other
times were when I would do almost anything to make
her really love me because she was so cool, and
so I said things. I mean, I said stuff on
(06:19):
the Tonight Show. It was just kind of you know.
I didn't edit myself very much, and I made the
band laugh and I made you know, Johnny laughed, you know,
the atire. I can't remember the name of the producer.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Of the Cordova.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Yeah, yeah, Freddy Kordadeva. I would sit there and go,
why do you have to do it? After sits down
next to me, she says, I just kept go back
from Maine.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
It was my family.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
We did this amazing thing where we clean the entire
house and huge place in all and we did it
in four days. And I said, the family is in amphetamines.
You know, they made a fortunate at it. And Freddy's like,
why do you do that? I don't know, I believe
that out.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
I mean, my wife Caanna reminded me when we first met,
she said, I really loved you based on one thing
you said that I thought was really unusual and interesting.
On the Tonight show, she said, you described yourself as
a combination of Oscar Levan and Donnie Osmond, like trying
(07:19):
to exclude you know, who knows what. But I've been
a construction brat. I went to a new was I
went to ninth schools. By the time I was in
the ninth grade, my dad was going around the builder,
you know, and he drank and he would get me
up in the middle of the night, just saying, you know,
for his buddy like McShane, who hated me. Incidentally, all
(07:41):
he wanted to do was get privately fried, and he
didn't want to hear some gnomes singing Danny Boy. But
my dad would get me up to sing. And people
always said in one of these days, you're going to
kill yourself. You're going to kill these kids because you're
driving like that. He was a big, sweet, sentimental drunk
you dad, My daddy looks your mom. My mom was
was just a sweet and wet hands and an apron mom,
(08:03):
you know.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
And he died you that he.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Drove his car under the abovement of a bridge, went
through the windshield.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Died a week later.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
When I was thirteen, and I was shipped off to
live with an aunt and uncle, who I found out
later he hated her and that they didn't get along.
But she told me, look, if you go back to
live with your mom, your brother's going to starve because
she can't afford both of you. So I want you
to write your mom told it you want to stay here,
which is the last thing I wanted.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
So it's my childhood was rest.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
To confront some tough things at a young age.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Dickensiean, you know.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So you are persuaded that this is the best thing
financially for your mother, so you stay.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
With the California to stay with the ant And the
fact is what part of California Long Beach, down Long Beach,
And you know, I had been I've been one of
those little kids who wanted to sing. I'd stand on
my mom would turn her back on me at a
department store and I'd be telling somebody I can sing,
I can sing, and she'd find me standing on a
counter with a little bunch of money around my feet.
(08:59):
But after my dad, it was gone. Music was gone.
I don't know, I just your heart's on.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
All I knew is that I wanted, you know, A
good therapist has said a couple of them have said,
you wanted to be somebody else, you know. And I
was also really you know when I was This is
a huge, a big part of my story is that
when I was about eight or nine, I was really tiny.
My dad was like, should he be running under coffee
tables at this age, you know? And she said no,
(09:27):
I'm not taking to the doctor. So there was a
country doctor who said I can make this kid grow,
and he gave me a male hormone. Wrong thing to
do because it kind of closes off with the bones.
But it also kicked me into a premature puberty. And
suddenly I have no interest in my toy chest, but
my hand in his chest is suddenly yeah, yeah, you know,
and they spot down there. All I wanted to do
(09:49):
is get let's get asking little girls. Let's get in
the closet and kiss like they do in the movies.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Right.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
The thing is that when they took me off of
the hormones and all, it screwed up my body clock.
So I didn't hit puberty televes like out of high school.
You know, So you stunted your growth physically.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
All I know is that I'm thrilled to be who
I am, and you know it's all been a gift
and it's all worked for me.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
But if what you've done creatively and what you've done
just because there's a there's what I consider the performer's spirit,
no matter how great they are talent wise. Patty Lapone
is great, but she just has this extra block of
some energy, some weird fissionable energy, which you have. You
(10:34):
are a real performer. You can sing, you can act,
you can do anything. When people go back and look
at the songs you want, it's like almost unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Well, I'm a songwriter because of Robert Devall. I believe
it's a really weird story. Well, first of all, you know,
I'm in Long Reach and everything. I graduate, I go
home for a couple of years whatever, and head back
to Hollywood to try to make it. I get cast
in a movie called The Loved One, you know I
did playing in Long Beach.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
They got good reviews from.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
The LA Examiner, you know, said Pauliams has a rare
gift of seeming spontaneous in the theater. I took that line,
memorized it and showed it everybody and got an agent.
So I did The Loved One, and then two years later,
just like that, I got another acting job on a
movie called The Chase. Marlon Browno, Robert Redford, jun fond.
(11:23):
I mean a huge picture. So we're shooting at night.
They've got everybody is older than eighteen, but looks younger.
I'm playing a sixteen year old, and you know, I
mean the script is they're going to develop your store,
going to develop your story.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
They didn't really, But.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
In the meantime, I'm sharing the dressing room with a
guy named Mark Seaton, his dad with George, seeing the
director a lot of money, beautiful guitar that he's got
Martin guitar I picked up. He says, don't touch the guitar.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
It's Martin.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
I said, I didn't know they had names, you know,
I mean, I didn't know Martin guitar. But I went
on my ball, wanted a little cheap guitar. Or I
painted it like like a stained glass window. And I'm
teaching myself chords. So one night they're shooting of the
scene where the US kids have set fire to a junkyard.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
The Bubba reeves it was Robert Redford is.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Hiding in the in the junkyard, and I've got my
little guitar sitting on the steps of the world's smallest
motor home, a Teardrop motor home, and I'm just making
stuff up, looking for the chord, and I go, bubbah
blah blah blah bah, come out wherever you are. Oh,
we're gone a calm man and get you. Yes, we're
gone to come man and get you. And Robert Duvall
(12:36):
is walking by, and Robert Duvall says, what's that. I said,
it's the guitar.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I just boughted. He went out the guitar. What were
you singing?
Speaker 4 (12:44):
And it's it's Robert Coke and Robert Davalla. I said,
I just made it up and I'm convinced. I'm at
this point, I'm in trouble. Maybe you're not supposed to
be singing on a set. And he said, come with me,
and now I'm now I'm nervous. He walks me over
to the heart of the set where they're shooting, and
Arthur Penny whispered some of him. He said, show him
(13:06):
to me, and I said, it's the guitar. I just
it's just why it's not the guitar.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
So I keep making this staff.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah. So I go blab blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Well I get two like those two lines out and
he says, come over here, stand by the barbed wire,
light them up and lights up all the gas fires
and they shoot it. They shoot me in the back
of the roadster. They he shoots me about four different places,
maybe three places, and singing those two lines, and it's
in the movie.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah, or we'll come in.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, You're gonna come in and get you that again.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
You're any human being that is woke as to use
a phrase would have immediately gone, okay, acting isn't working
for me. It's been two years since the last job.
This is I mean it's but I'm sure I had
no idea that it was going to be in the
movie until it came out, and it may have been.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Two years later.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
It took me probably two years to start writing songs,
but I somehow that just became my journal.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
It was my therapy.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Had you written songs before? But eventually you get to
a point. Do you play piano horribly?
Speaker 4 (14:14):
I mean, I mean when I sit down on my
band would actually walk off stage. If I sat at
the piano, they go. I started wrinning on guitar, but basically,
I mean, I'm just sitting at home. I brought my
mother out to take care of her because I thought,
you know, I'm gonna know I'm on the chase side.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
It is all gonna be a big career. Nothing. I
don't even have a phone.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
But I get hired to do as an improvisational actor
on the Mortsaul Show. Mortsol had a local television show
and it was all about the Kennedy assassination. It's all
about the warrant commission. It was all about New Orleans
and all that anyway. So he brought me in and
I played a boy scout, an eagle scout who goes
in to get his Eagle Scout stuff and gets recruited
(14:56):
by the president, and the guy named Biff Rows plays
a chicken delight. Guy comes in and he gets recruited,
and the two of the men we started writing together.
We wrote about four songs. He wrote, played me a song.
He said, this is funny, and that's not funny, it's pretty.
He said, well, write words to it then, so we did.
We wrote, we did some acid, we wrote some words whatever,
(15:17):
and he went to A and M Records and played
him a bunch of songs and they gave him some
an advance publishing deal. And as he's walking out the door,
he says, there's a couple of songs there that I
wrote with another guy. I wrote the words, and he said, well,
give me his number, of all call him. He's never food,
but I'll tell him, so I will go in. The
song was called fill your Heart, and within about a
(15:39):
week after I signed a deal with him, was recorded
on the B side of the Tiny tim album or
Tiny Tipto through the Tulos, which they turned over and
played I mean, I'm like, I love tiny but that's
not what I want to be. I mean, if I'm
but one of the great things that we just cannot
plot our lives. You know, you can't plan it. It was
(16:01):
recorded years later by David boy Song on Hunky Dory
album and it was like, thank you God.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Musician, songwriter and actor Paul Williams. If you enjoy conversations
with legendary musicians, check out my interview with Gordon Lightfoot.
Speaker 6 (16:21):
One summer I wrote that song Sundowner. I knew that
it was going to happen, and it didn't work up
to number one. That was our second one. Then it
was two albums later that we had the rec of
the Edmin Fitzgerald that became a responsibility. It did because
only one verse contained any conjecture of any kind of
the rest of it was taken from directly from newspaper
(16:42):
articles and the aftermath, which only lasted for about three days.
If I had not wrote that song, everybody would have
forgotten about it a week after it happened.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
To hear more of my conversation with Gordon Lightfoot, go
to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Paul
Williams shares how a jingle for a bank commercial turned
into the song We've Only Just Begun I'm Alec Baldwin,
(17:19):
and this is Here's the thing. Paul Williams has written
countless iconic songs like You and Me, against the World,
Rainy Days and Mondays, and one of my personal favorites,
I Won't Last a Day without You. I was curious
about the process behind creating such legendary work and how
Paul Williams got his start as a lyricist.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
The whole point when they signed me at A and
M Records is they were looking for a lyricist for
a guy at six foot four basketball player and scholarship whatever.
Guy that was a piano player named Roger Nichols, Roger Nichols,
and I wrote like he gave me a melody, and
he said, you know, we're looking for a lyricist for Roger.
And he gave me a melody, says take it home
(18:03):
to see what you think of it. At ten o'clock
the next morning, I was there with a lyric for it,
and he said, really, And so I wrote a lyric
called It's hard to say goodbye, to turn away with
no regrets, no regrets for fears, no good byes, to
say love just never seems to work. That it was
Clauding Large. So the same day I had Clauding Lage
(18:24):
and Tiny Tam. What kind of a songwriter am I?
But Roger and I wrote album cuts, B sides, nothing
on it for like maybe three years, and I have
to tell you that one day there's a knock of
the door and it's the head of publishing and he's
got two kids with him. He said, this is Karen
and Richard Carpenter and there are newest artists. So we
(18:46):
started feeding them as songs. The first thing they recorded
was they had a B side, too Close to You.
And then the next thing we wrote a song for
a commercial that we expanded to a full song. I
sang in the commercial commercial for a bank. Richard saw
it said, is there a full song? We've only just begune?
So we've only just begune rainyties and mondays, I won't
(19:08):
last a day without you?
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Now tell me about that? How did he Lane make
come to you? And obviously the big red hot Warren Houser.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
Warren had asked me to write a song for Heaving
Can Wait, and I, you know, I looked at the
picture or whatever. I said, you don't need you don't
need a song you got chery rebat. He did that,
you know, I said, that's that, you know? So I
you know, and I've done that two or three times.
I'm really proud of it because if I look at
a picture and I go doesn't need a song, then
I know I have a chance to I I can
(19:38):
either make some a bunch of money and write a
song it doesn't work, or I can you know, or
I can you know?
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Trust it? Another one is going to come.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
So you know, I said no, and which I think
oppressed him. And when it came up to time for
his star, he thought about me write the songs for
the movie because he thought it was funny.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
And it's not choice, it was his idea. It was
his idea.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
So Warren and I met, and it took forever to
give him to give me the job. It's like, you know,
it's like wark, you know, it's like, can we begin
to talk about actually doing this?
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Because teen chapel.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
With them every day, every fucking everything.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
So but Elaine.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
I met Elaine and I started writing songs and she
Elaine is magnificent and shooting with Warren and Dustin. She
shoots so many takes and never tell them what she wants.
She said, I'll see you. I'll know it when I
see it. What do you want? I'll know what do
you want? I'll know when I hear it. So I'm
writing songs. I'm writing songs.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
She's going on. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
He puts me up at the wall door from there
for weeks writing songs, and you know, And then I
wrote a song called that a lawnmower Can Do All
that I will illustrate Saturday morning. The sound of a
lawnmower touches my soul, touches my soul, brings back the
memory of first summer love of will and me will
end me. That a lawnmower can do all that that
(21:01):
alon More can do, all that that alawn More can do,
all that It's amazing. She leans forward, and then I sing.
I can see her standing in the backyard of my mind.
She cracks her knuckles in this scab Thatt's on her knee,
won't go away. I can see the woman waiting in
her eyes, and I can see the love, but I
can't see the Brooklyn Dodgers in la She went done.
(21:23):
That's exactly what I want.
Speaker 6 (21:25):
You know.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
What she wanted was something that was good that gets
screwed up. Telling the truth can be dangerous business. Honest
and popular don't go hand in hand. If you admit
that you can play the accordion, no one will hire
you in a rock and roll band. Two mismatched songwriters
working together, and I approached it. I mean I think
(21:46):
I wrote thirty five songs for it, and she wanted
to hear the entire song for two lines in the movie.
She wanted to hear Warren and Dustin singing instead of me,
because she's when you singing, it sounds like a song.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
It was a wonderful job.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
But like when you're on The Carson Show in the
makeup from the Planet of the Apes thing, one of
the things I learned about you is that you've got
to be a really talented songwriter to write bad songs,
and you got to be a really talented singer to
sing badly.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
We'll give the fact it's about. It's got to be.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
About believable, though, and I approached I totally approached his star.
As an actor, I wouldn't have it Chuck, and I
wouldn't have it Lyle, and they had different different backstories.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
You know.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
I spent so much time in front of the camera
in the seventies. In the eighties, somebody else was using
my body, so I wasn't working much. But I mean
I did so much live action, bad cartoon acting. And
you know, I just spent two years with Billy Bob
on Goliath, and it's like, I mean, that level, the
(22:57):
level you work at, the level that he works at,
is there's no imitation, there's no acting. It's it's it's
feeling and inhabiting, and it's just there's nothing that excites.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Me more then.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
I mean, the idea of playing a scene with Bruce,
you know, is just God.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
You You've done so many TV spots, Your acting career
is like an iceberg in most people's minds, and then
don't realize you've done countless guest spots and you know,
smoking in the band. Was he fun to shoot with?
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Oh my god? Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Well, you know, first of all, it's Pat McCormick, and
I Pat McCormick is one of my best friends, you know.
So I'm visiting Pat and when he was the chief
writer on the monologue writer on The Tonight Show. So
I'd go over and I'd do some game show or something.
I'm with you know, doing Hollywood Squares or something. Then
I'd run over. I mean, I did forty eight Tonight shows.
(23:57):
But I'd also just show over to hang out with Pat.
And I'm standing with Pat off just talking.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
About the extent up comic Pat McCormick, Pat.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Mccormay, Pat Pat McCormick six foot six, played my dad.
He played my dad, very funny, one of the funniest
writers in the world and performing and perform and one
of the sweetest human beings in the world. And dangers
to hanging out with because we never slept, you know.
So I'm over there, you know, leaning against the wall
or something with Pat McCormick and Burt Reynolds looks at
(24:26):
the two of us and goes, oh my god, I
got an idea. So that's what he put us together
to begin his little meetings. Dad, I'd like to kick
kids ass just once, just you know, I'm gonna tell
you what now, Your mommy is so ugly. It was just,
you know, And so we did three of them. I mean,
they kept giving us more smoking the band at one,
(24:47):
two and even worse. There was no story it was,
but it was one time I showed up second or
the third one, got off the plane, got in the car,
was driven to the hospitats. We stayed on McCormick standing
outside of his house phone and it goes, this is
the best time I've ever had on a movie.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
I've already been rolled because you have blood on his shirt.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Talk about rainbow connection. I mean, for you, music is music.
It doesn't matter where it lays into the project.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
When I met Jim Henson, I went over and did
the Muppet Show in England, and you know, I was
never a kid that was in a gang that had
a treehouse. When I walked on the set of the
Muppet Show, I was with a gang that had a treehouse.
Who was the most wonderful? I mean there was an energy.
First of all, did you ever work with him? Did
(25:37):
you ever work with the Muppets?
Speaker 6 (25:38):
No?
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Oh, you would have put him be in a perfect
fit because you're just crazy enough. You have an edgy
you know, you'll do anything. But the thing is that
there is a creative freedom. What was unique I think
about about Jim Henson is that he let us breathe.
But anyway, we had a good time on the show,
and he said there's a thing called him an Outter's
(26:00):
jug Band Christmas. We're going to shoot it's it's a
Christmas show, a one hour thing, and I'd like you
to write the songs for it. I wrote the songs
for it. It's actually at this point now I says
stage play as well. But I think it was my
audition for the Muffet movie. So he loved the songs
for the first one. So we we said, I want
(26:22):
you to do the Muppet movie. I said, I want
to bring a guy named Kenny Asheron to write the
songs with me. Kenny and I wrote most of the
songs for A Star is Born with Barbarus Dreisen his
music my words. And I had a great relations for him.
We've been working on an unproduced musical about Dorothy Parker.
We were, you know, it was like he buildst Ive
felt better. It was that kind of a relationship, you know,
(26:44):
And so I brought him in and this is this
is Jim Hansen, Jim Henson is opened my place in
the Hollywood Hills with you know, with Frank Oz and
we're talking about where the songs go. We're kind of
spotting the picture in advance because you have to previews
or the songs if they're performed on screen. And I
walked him to the to the car and I said,
(27:06):
you know, Jim, we're not going to surprise you with this.
I'll show you the songs, you know, as we're working
on them, because this is a big.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Deal, first feature.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
He said, Oh, Paulie, I don't need to hear them.
I'll hear him in the studio. It's not Has that
been your experience in making empower pictures?
Speaker 1 (27:22):
No, a bit laid back, so, you.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Know, I ask him, you know, the how do we
start this, puppy?
Speaker 5 (27:28):
You know?
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Do you start with with Kermit sitting on a log
in the in the in the swamp.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
What's he doing?
Speaker 4 (27:35):
He's playing a banjo and that kind of sets a
certain tone. And I think the instruments like tag pianos
and banjo is a great sad song instruments.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
I love the juxtaposition.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
So Kenny and I said down to write, saying we
wanted to write something like when you wish upon a Star,
I mean, when Jimmy Crookeett takes always hat in the
window and things about that.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
It elevates all of us to.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Another level, and we thought Kremit deserved that we did.
We wrote ourselves into the worst corner. You got to
think about the opening lines.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's
on the other side rainbowsis but only illusions, and rainbows
have nothing to hide.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
We went out raps.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
We just denied all the magic in rainbows. You know,
but look at the gift that we were given if
we go with the next line to it. So we've
been told, and what we do is Kermit steps away
from the podium sits down with the audience and is
a witness to the magic. So we've been told in
some Tuesday believe it. I know the wrong way to
(28:58):
see Someday we'll find it. The rainbow connection, the lovers,
the dreamers and me. The unseen hands on the piano
and the computer keys when I'm writing are many and
always welcome, because the best stuff comes out of my
absolutely unconscious. If I claim it anywhere, I can only
(29:20):
claim it there.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
What is it about you? What do you think it
is about you? I mean I want to go full
blown cliche here and say you drank and drug yourself
to death because of a hypersensitivity you had. It also
helped you write these songs. Where do the songs come from?
You've written some of the most I'm one of these guys.
There's a handful of songs you put on and one
of them is Evergreen. It's just a pretty song that
(29:45):
just pulls at you. Now, when did you realize you
had the aptitude to write these memorable ballads for these
giant divas? Well?
Speaker 4 (29:54):
You know that was her music. She just called you,
she called now. I was being actually fitted for a tuxedo.
A guy is measuring my end scene when my wife
walks in and says it's Barbara Stras wants to talk
to you. And I'm like, you know, oh my god,
And of course you know. I mean, I'm like, oh
my god, it's Barbaras. And then I pick up the phone.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
I go, hi, Barbara, Yeah, of course yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
But she says, you wrote a song called for Helen
Ready called you and Me against the World. There's a
scene at the end of His Stars Worn and I'm
doing his Stars Warn with with with Chris Christofferson. There's
a song at the end of the Chris's character had
written and he's dead and I want to and I'm
lis singing this song and un me against the World
is like I'd love something like that. I said, I'm
(30:38):
I'm here with Kenny Asher, you know, like he's who
I wrote that song with. I go and I meet
with her, and she's wanted me to write one song.
But that's not what I heard. They sent the script
and I wrote down notes wherever he called. I thought
what I heard was, I want you to write the
songs for a stars warn. I mean, I just my
ego here listens sometimes when I don't, you know. And
(30:59):
so I go on and I tell her what the
songs are about, and she and John Peters look at
me like I'm nuts. Would you give us a moment?
And then they brought me back and they said, you know,
that's not what we asked you. We asked you for
one song. But you don't seem to be intimidated. I said,
absolutely not, And of course I'm sure I was.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Where did these songs come from? Where did these lyrics
come from?
Speaker 4 (31:21):
Well, first of all, this script, I mean we're talking about,
you know, the script of the Bible. The two things
that the songs, especially in.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
The story itself, inspired the song.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
Well, the thing is that, first of all, the characters
do and most guys writing songs for most songwriters, pop
songwriters writing for a film or a stage play. When
I have a hit, of course, we all want to
have a hit. But because I come from an acting background,
I want to advance this story and I want to
(31:51):
expose something of the inner life of the character I'm
writing for. So, you know, that was the whole point
with Kerman is that he has a spiritual wife, you know.
So I said down and I write. Everybody is like,
aren't you nervous about writing for Barbara? And I said, yeah,
but I'm also but let's take it up a notch.
(32:12):
I'm writing songs for the guy that putting all my
cleanest dirty shirt Sunday Morning coming down. Me and Bob McGee.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I love Chris Chris, I love christ Oh my god,
didn't you.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I loved him. Yeah, he was such an egoless guy.
I'd run into him from time to time and he
was always such a sweet I mean, there's the guys
who are the biggest guys, the biggest guys, the most talented,
they're so kind. Gradford was so kind to me and
he was too, Chris, very sweet, no ego.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
My very first concert at a club in New York,
was at the Bitter End, and I'd show up there
first night and there's Chris Read in the front. I've
never met him, and I described it as trying to
sing through a guld you know, it's like you know,
and I sang, and one of the songs I sang
was called I Never had It So good. And the
(33:01):
first time we ever really spent a lot of time
together was A Star is Born. And the opening night
of Stars Born, somebody stuggle microphone on his faces said,
what are you feeling? You said that a deep sense
of impending shames.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Musician, songwriter and actor Paul Williams. If you're enjoying this conversation,
tell a friend and be sure to follow. Here's the
Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get
your podcasts. When we come back, Paul Williams takes us
behind the scenes of writing the songs for one of
his favorite projects, A Muppet Christmas Carol. I'm Alec Baldwin
(33:53):
and this is here's the thing, d.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
F today I must feet of strangers were rad you
know I'm not that strong.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
That's Paul Williams performing I Won't last a day without You.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
There's song one I can to do who always cap
You're always there when there's no gardy, no on that range.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
At age eighty four, Paul Williams is showing no signs
of slowing down. It was only when reminiscing about his
storied songwriting career that I was reminded of just how
long Williams has been a force in the songwriting world.
From touring with Olivia Newton John to writing for The Carpenters,
Williams has been surrounded by legends since the very beginning.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
I mean I had songs recorded by Bing Crosby and Elvis.
I mean because it was like the third act of
their career when I'm just getting started. So it's like
when I tell somebody that I songs recorded, a song
recorded by Ben Crosby, it's like, you are old, buddy,
you are old. It's a yeah, I am old. But
(35:12):
when you think about when you started your career and
who was around, I mean, I did something for the
Friars and walking on stage the first time and there's
Greg RePEc and Krook Douglas, you know, you know, I
think Burt Lancaster was was even.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
I met all three of those guys and I almost
pissed my pants.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
But the thing is that I write both ways. I
write words and music, and more and more these days
with Pans Labyrinth. It's Gustavo Sentel on myself, the Phantom
of the Paradise, words and music. The big thing for
me was getting as far as the Muppets was concerned,
was in fresh New sobriety.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Nobody's calling me.
Speaker 4 (35:55):
I get sober, and I'm not the hot you know
kid in Timen anymore I've been. You know, you know
you're an alcoholic when you misplaced a decade.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
And it's like the eighties around here, somewhere, it's.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Around you said one before and you're the only person
that ever responded.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
You get it.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
But at any rate, the phone rings and it was
Brian Hanson, and Brian said, I want you to write
the songs for the Muppet Christmas Curl. Have you ever
seen it? It's one of my favorite things I've ever
done in my life. And it was written with the
exact same emotional commitment that I have around my sobriety.
(36:33):
I literally read the first you know, the Dickens novel.
I read the script, looked where the songs were going
to go left it alone for a while. Let my unconscious.
I'm not procrastinating, I'm percolating. I am leaving my unconscious
alone with this story and not bugging it. And eventually
I was. At the time I was dating Keenan Wynn's daughter,
(36:56):
I was out of her place in Brentwood, and I
go out into the park with a Lawrence Block novel.
I love Lawrence Block's writing, a little tape recorder and
a pencil, and I say, big, amigo.
Speaker 3 (37:09):
Muse, whoever you all are.
Speaker 4 (37:12):
Up there, We're gonna write these songs and let me
know when you have an idea. And I pick up
the Lawrence Block novel and I start reading, and about
three pages in I put it down. I thought, okay.
The first song Scrooge, we see a door. Of the
door opens, you see his feet and he walks by
all these little people that seem to get colder when
(37:33):
he walks by. Put a boom bum boom boom boom
boom boom butter boom boom b im.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Get the rhythm of it. You want to cold wind
blows it chills you, chills you to the boom.
Speaker 4 (37:45):
Nature. The phrase is your heart like he is a
being alone.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
That's what you guys are good. That's not bad.
Speaker 4 (37:54):
It paints you with indifference like a lady paints with rouge.
But the worst of the worst, the most hated. And
it was because the one that we call screws. Oh,
there goes mister. But I wrote that much of it
without writing it down, but it was. It was what
(38:16):
we were talking about earlier, about the difference between acceptance
and surrender and really really totally letting go of the moment.
I mean, if I'm sitting down with Alec Baldwin to
talk about God knows what we're going to talk about,
I could give gone into it. I could have wrapped
myself around my axle a couple of times thinking about that,
because I would want this to be a really wonderful experience,
(38:39):
and I was excited about it. But I remember the
same club as you, and we let things go and
we trust in the moment and it's exactly what it's
supposed to be, and it's wonderful.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
And what's interesting to me is that for me, I've
been overwhelmed, overwhelmed in it maybe joyous way from or
I'm at now, which is everything has led me to
where I am right now. Yeah, I don't want to
go back to my old life. No, No, I love
what I'm doing now. I don't want to leave my house. Yeah,
I'm obsessed with my kids and then being around them
and being participatory.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
You have kids, I do have kids, and I was
not there for my kids when I mean, when you
know my son doesn't want to have kids, he said, Dad,
it's like everybody that I know that has kids, they
get total I mean, at this point, I think he'll
change his mind, but he says he was a wonderful actorney.
He said, I also don't want to spend the rest
of my life auditioning. So he went off and like
he became a trainer. He was Kamala Harris's private trainer,
(39:36):
and then didn't go flying around in planes and training
you know, studio heads and stuff like that. Now he's
involved in developing plant based foods and at any rate.
But it's like, you know, Dad, because all my friends,
when they have kids, that becomes their entire life.
Speaker 3 (39:51):
I said, I escaped that trap.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
I'll show you have it.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
Yeah, and he said, yeah, you did.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
My daughter, my amazing daughter, Sarah is a therapist. She
works as in the Office of Victims Advocacy from a
major university and and she's she's amazing, two beautiful kids.
And she said, Dad, you were not there. She says,
I hear them talking about the Pauli Lama, which is
(40:18):
my nickname and recovery. So so yeah, she says, you're
the polic She said, I get that. You know, like
you're anywhere anytime that you're going to help another. I'll
call it her an addict, she said, But when we
were kids, you weren't there. But I have to tell
you something to Dad. When she calls me, Pops, she says, Pops,
(40:39):
you finally hid full tilt Papa Bear. And I would
bet that if there's anybody that I can say that to,
you're going to understand what that means. How wonderful, what
that's the best review I ever had in my life.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Now, obviously you've been involved with ASK Captain a member
as a professional songwriter and so forth. But then you
become the president of Asking Why and what's the task
for askcap Now.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Make sure we're a membership organization of We have over
a million members, songwriters, composers, lyricists. They've been putting food
on my table and gas in my car since nineteen
seventy two. When music is performed there is a performing
rights we're royalty there and ASKAVS a pro performing rights organization.
(41:27):
You know, we get to keep the miracle by giving
it away in that other world that we're a part of.
That love and services is an intensely rewarding I mean,
it's absolutely it's a contact because you hear about being
of service being love and service and all, and it
sounds like a really wonderful thing.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
To do for the rest of the world. But what
it does for.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Me and what every I wrote a line in the
song once it's said, every act of kindness is a
little bit of love behind. We left behind. My favorite
line as far as the philosophy is probably you give
a little and it all comes back to you. You
give a little love, then it all comes back. In
two thousand and one, I was I was hal David
(42:10):
was a great friend and Hell said, I want you
to run for the board of AZCAP. And I had
run for the board of ASCAP a couple of times
and was not elected. And I mentioned that to him
and he said, and thank God, because you you know,
because somebody else was using my body. Then he said,
but you're a different man now, and I think you
got to run for ASCAP on the board. I was
(42:33):
elected to the board in two thousand and one, and eventually,
you know, became Maryland's vice chair riders Share, and in
two thousand and nine became president chairman. I was raised
by a hardcore Republican who my dad called my mom
that little communist.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
See that little comedy, a little commie.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
I'm at a little comedy. And they lied at least
every four years. They lied because they'd say, we're going
to cancel each other. It makes no sense. Let's agree
to not vote. So they would agree, they would swear,
you know, they were not going to vote, and as
soon as the polls closed, they would go, I voted,
I voted. So I was raised in this household. What
and And one of the things that happened when I
(43:16):
was very early on, when I did run for the
vard and was elected, before I was president, I got
to know some people that had nothing in common, that
they that disagree to on almost everything in the world,
and yet they did meaningful work together. I'm talking about
like Ted Kennedy and Orton Hatch, who did the Americans
(43:37):
with Disabilities Act?
Speaker 3 (43:38):
Who did age suffer? Kids?
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Collaborate?
Speaker 4 (43:42):
And because I began to understand a little bit what
was going on in a very changing worlded as gap,
I got excited about, you know, being a hood ornament,
about walking in the halls and going on Paul Williams
and having somebody like Doug Collins say to me, you
know your little venus or smoking the Band? I love
that movie. What can I do for you? Any minute?
(44:04):
And the next thing you know, he and Hakim Jefferies
are working on somebody called the Songwriters Equity Act, which
is going to adjust the rules that we operate under
so we can get closer to the fair payment for streaming.
Never made it to the floor, but then we come back.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Isn't their fair payment for streaming?
Speaker 6 (44:20):
Now?
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Why?
Speaker 4 (44:21):
Well, you know, business is business, you know, like writers
are not exactly you know, you know, most heads and studios.
I don't think very luckily wake up in the middle
of the night and go, God, I gotta take better
care of the writers, you know. I just you know, honey,
I think about that, and.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Honey, why can't you sleep? I just keep thinking about
the writers.
Speaker 4 (44:39):
Keep thinking about the writers. You know those pesky songwriters
or you know, they have kids, and I suppose they
should be able to feed them.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
I need to help them.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
But the thing is that there is no music business
without a song. Without music and the opportunity to really
work on a daily basis and an amaze staff I
mean Ascaps one hundred and ten years old, but to
be able to show up. And I have friends on
both sides of the island, and this is not a
(45:09):
collaborative environment we're living in right now.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
You know, it's like Terry Everson.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
You know, it's a cell phone and a foxhold, you know,
I mean ASCAT. We have you know, amazing, amazing writers,
you know, like Beyonce and Paul McCartney and the like.
But we also have a lot of blue collar writers
like I am, like I was. I've had great success,
but I'm a blue collar writer. I write songs. You
got something, you need a song? I love sitting down
(45:36):
and chasing the words.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Now, just to harken back a little bit to you
in the studio with people, I mean, one of the
people who just put a spell on me, like many people,
was Karen Carpenter, And of course I was just sickened
by how she died, And yeah, were you ever in
the studio with her when she was recording?
Speaker 4 (45:54):
They did not hover while I was writing. I did
not hover while they were recording, but I but I
would get a phone call. You know the great thing
about Karen and Richard when we were introduced to them,
they opened up the door, said, this is Karen and Richard.
I think you know it was herb Alpert and Chuck
Kay introducing the two of them to Roger and I.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
Nobody knew who we were.
Speaker 4 (46:12):
And Karen and Richard when we loved your Steve Lawrence
got the Drifter, and we loved rowing pony By, you know,
I mean they knew all these songs we'd written that
nobody knew. I mean it was like never been on
the radio, but they were fans. When the phone would
ring and it would be Karen Love be in my
office with Roger we're writing, and she'd be over in
(46:35):
the recording studiency you want to hear, and you go
over there and you hear. I mean rainy days on Mondays.
Let me be the one. I want less to deal
with it. You know, it's like and when an angel
sings your songs, your life changes.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Oh god, and in that way that you mentioned about Crosby,
when you're writing for Crosby. Whatever, it's been a while,
I think this is still the This is accurate. What's
a Nick Tosh's book about Dean Martin. He wrote that
great biography of Dean Mark Goldino and he says that
Martin puts a record on the turntable by it's bing Crosby.
(47:08):
They takes it off, and he puts one of his
arm and they takes that off and he puts Alvis Presley.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
He goes.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
You see that we're all doing the same thing here, right,
He's doing me, I'm doing this. We're all doing world crooners.
Speaker 5 (47:20):
You know.
Speaker 4 (47:21):
And the fact is that the great thing about what
I think we do is you don't have to give
up your fan cards. So if I'm in a room
in Quincy Walks and I, oh my god, there's Q
and that maybe which you see on the service, but
inside there's apartment that's going, I'm like, God, that's Quincy Jones.
Speaker 5 (47:37):
You know.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
At this point in my life, it's like that whole thing,
you know, that whole thing with Scrooge writing for Scrooge.
One of the great examples of what's turning in my
life is that I'm asked to write songs about somebody
who's having his spiritual awakening while I'm having a spiritual.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Awakening live from the front.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
Absolutely in the fresh in my chest is gratitude, and
I'm writing thing I get up in the morning and
I say, lead me where you need me.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Let me just end by saying, do you have any
idea how talented you are? Did you really own that
in your life? I've just sat there and go, Man,
You've done some amazing things, beautiful things. Do you have
any idea how talented you are? Do you kind of
enjoy that a bit?
Speaker 4 (48:23):
I wish I could introduce you to all of them.
I wish I could introduce you to the kid that
watched a movie about Jane froman called with a Song
of My Heart and wound up like walking into it
my office the first time at ASCAP, and on the
wall next to my thing was the printed sheet music
from with a Song of My Heart. I was the
(48:43):
first thing with music in it that I ever loved.
In that there's some sort of magic going on here.
I haven't quite figured it out yet, but that seems
to be one of the things that I am most
open to is right now, it just come to me
when you need to. With this one. This may be
the last big journey whatever, but I think that it's absolutely,
absolutely magical, and I don't think that we could have
(49:06):
planned any of it. And at the same token, in
early sobriety, I've read the writing of Emmett Fox, and
he talks about what we dwell on, we create, that
thoughts become things. And if you are inspired, you know
in a fashion that is loving, you know, and to
the highest good of all concerned. What you dwell on
(49:26):
you may experience soon in your life or perhaps later.
Phantom of the Paradise opened to nobody in the theater
and they closed the can Film Festival with it this year.
Sometimes a dream doesn't come until you're all about just
ready to walk away from this life and you go, wow,
there's still some wow moments left, I know, for both
(49:47):
of us, and I admire you.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
There's not a word yet for old friends. You just man,
there you go, you got it.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Thank you. My thanks to musicians, songwriter and actor Williams.
I'll leave you with a little more of Paul Williams
performing I won't last a day without you. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Here's the thing that's brought to you by iHeart Radio.
Speaker 5 (50:11):
And there's no getting on that range.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
When my storm lust, the dreams won't go one d bucketing.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
Madness, the world lesting you.
Speaker 2 (50:31):
But I want less today without you
Host
Alec Baldwin
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