May 6, 2025 • 51 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.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
And wrapped around the music. That's my guest today, Paul
Williams performing just an old fashioned love song from his
nineteen seventy one album of the same name. You swear
you've heard it before as it slowly rambles on and on.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
No need in bringing him back because they've never releaged one.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Just an old.
Speaker 5 (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 2 (01:36):
The most recent thing is I'm doing Pans Labyrinth for
this stage with Giama del Toro.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Wow and wonderful.
Speaker 2 (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,
(02:04):
if 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 Getnimo's partners and that the JJ Abrams was going
to produce And I mean that more that that's good.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Instant surrender.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
It's a good group.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
If they could, you know, if I was sitting on
my porch shilling and get get off my lawn, 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,
(03:17):
I don't perform 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 you have a run where you just had so
much fun?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (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 with 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 them, 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
(04:47):
life 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.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
It was a very no Ah kind of a picture.
We hit it off.
Speaker 2 (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 a 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.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
I mean, I just go right.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
For that gun.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
I'm scared exactly that. And the furniture is talking about me.
You know, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
But he was.
Speaker 2 (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
gonna pably, can't. I don't do I don't you know
even no, no, no, this is no you got it,
you got it.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
This is so fucking mild here and you have a
hit of it.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (05:58):
You're gonna have to.
Speaker 2 (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
of the Cordova. 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
(06:41):
kept go back from Maine.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
It was my family.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
We did this amazing thing where we clean the entire
house and a 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?
Speaker 4 (06:56):
I don't know, I believe that out. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I mean, my wife Marianna 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. Is like
(07:19):
trying to exclude you know, who knows what. But I've
been a construction brat. I went to a new I 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 sing, 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. And he died that he drove his car
under the abovement of a bridge, went through the windshield.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Died a week later.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (08:27):
So it's my childhood was rest.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
To confront some tough things at a young age.
Speaker 4 (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 2 (08:38):
With the California, 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 4 (09:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (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 1 (09:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (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 televens like out of high school.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
You know, So you stunted your growth physically.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (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 wrote, it's like almost unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (11:01):
They got good reviews from.
Speaker 2 (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. They didn't really, but in
the meantime, I'm sharing the dressing room with a guy
named Mark Seaton, his dad, with George Setting and the
(11:44):
director a lot of money. Beautiful guitar that he's got
Martin guitar I picked up, he says, don't touch the guitar.
It's Martin, 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.
I painted it like like a stained glass window. And
I'm teaching myself chords. So one night they're shooting of
(12:06):
the scene where the US kids have set fire to
a junkyard that Bubba reeves it was Robert Redford is
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,
(12:29):
we're gone, A calm man and get you. Yes, we're gone,
a com man and get you. And Robert Davall is
walking by, and Robert Davall says, what's that. I said,
it's the guitar.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
I just boughted. He went out the guitar. What were
you singing?
Speaker 2 (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. 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.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Yeah, so I go blab blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (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 5 (13:34):
Yeah, or we'll come in.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, You're gonna come in and get you that again.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (13:58):
Two years later.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
It took me probably two years to start writing songs,
but I somehow that just became my journal.
Speaker 4 (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 2 (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 running 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 4 (14:30):
It is all gonna be a big career. Nothing. I
don't even have a phone.
Speaker 2 (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 them 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 3 (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 Edmine 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 2 (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 2 (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 cherry repeat. 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, it doesn't need a song,
then I know I have a chance to I can.
(19:37):
I can 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 4 (19:44):
Trust it? Another one is going to come.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (19:57):
And it's not choice, it was his idea. It was
his idea.
Speaker 2 (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? Because teen chapel with
him every day, every fucking everything.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
So but Elaine.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (20:36):
She's going on. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (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 2 (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 4 (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 2 (22:19):
We'll give the fact it's about it's got to be
about believable, though, and I approached. I totally approached his star.
As an actor, I wouldn't habit Chuck and I wouldn't
have it Lyle, and they had different different backstories.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
You know.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (23:12):
Me more then.
Speaker 2 (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,
it's 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 4 (23:35):
Oh my god? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (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 2 (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 hang 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 hospoats. 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 4 (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 2 (25:16):
When I met Jim Henson, I went over 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 3 (25:38):
No?
Speaker 2 (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 said, I want you
(26:22):
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, its like he buildst Ive felt better.
It was that kind of a relationship, you know, And
(26:44):
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, you know, Jim,
(27:07):
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 4 (27:12):
Deal, first feature.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (27:22):
No, a bit laid back, so.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
You know, I ask him, you know, the how do
we start this, puppy?
Speaker 6 (27:28):
You know?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Do you start with with Kermit sitting on a log
in the in the in the swamp.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
What's he doing?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
He's playing a banjo and that kind of sets a
certain tone. And I think the instruments like tag pianos
and banjos are great sad song instruments.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
I love the juxtaposition.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So Kenny and I said down to write, say, we
wanted to write something like when you Wish upon a Star,
I mean, when Jimmy Crockett takes always hat in the
window and things about that. It elevates all of us
to another level, and we thought Kremit deserved that.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
We did.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
We wrote ourselves into the worst corner. You got to
think about the opening lines.
Speaker 6 (28:11):
Why are there so many songs about rainbows?
Speaker 4 (28:17):
And what's on the other.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
Side rainbowsis but only illusions.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
And rainbows have nothing to hide. We went out raps.
Speaker 2 (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
(29:44):
song that just pulls at you. Now, when did you
realize you had the aptitude to write these memorable ballads
for these giant divas? Well?
Speaker 2 (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. Stros 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 Barbara. And then I pick up the phone.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
I go, Hi, Barbara, Yeah, of course yeah.
Speaker 2 (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 sing 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're
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 2 (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 2 (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 4 (32:18):
I love Chris, Chris, I love Christmas. 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 2 (32:40):
My very first concert at a club in New York
was at the bitter end and I 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, so many stuggle microphone on his faces said,
what are you feeling? You said, 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.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Day after day I must face all of stranger we're
at don't.
Speaker 6 (34:01):
Below and that Fi roll.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
It's that's the carpenter's performing. Paul Williams. I won't last
a day without You from their nineteen seventy two album
A Song for.
Speaker 5 (34:16):
You when There's No Get It Over, Lad rate Bo,
when My Small the Dream from John True. I can't
say call the madness the world ask to give, but
I won't last day without you.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
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 Carpenter's,
william has been surrounded by legends since the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
I mean I had songs recorded by Ben 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
(35:24):
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 even.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
I met all three of those guys, and I almost
pissed my pants.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
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 Sento lie on myself, the
Phantom of the Paradise, words and music. The big thing
for me was getting as far the Muppets was concerned,
was in Fresh New sobriety.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Nobody's calling me.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
I get sober, and I'm not the hot you know
kid in Timid anymore I've been. You know, you know
you're an alcoholic when you misplaced a decade.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
It's like the eighties around here, somewhere.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
It's around you said line before, and you're the only
person that ever responded you get it. 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. 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
(36:42):
have around my sobriety. 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 along with his story and not bugging it.
(37:03):
And eventually I was at the time I was dating
keenan Wyn's daughter. 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, muse,
whoever you all are up there, We're going to write
(37:26):
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,
the door opens, you see his feet and he walks
by all these little people that seem to get colder
when he walks by.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
Put a boom bum bum bum boom boom boom, but
a boom boom. I get the rhythm of it. You
went a cold wind blows. It chills you, chills you.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
To the boom, to the praze is your heart like
being alone?
Speaker 4 (38:02):
That's what you guys are good. That's not bad.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
It paints you with indifference like a lady paints with rouge.
But the worst of the worst, the most hated, and
Christ is the one that we call Scrooge. Oh there
goes mister b.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
I wrote that much of it without writing it down,
but it was.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
It was what 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
(38:50):
to be a really wonderful experience, 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 (39:04):
And what's interesting to me is that for me, I've
been overwhelmed overwhelmed and maybe joyous way from where 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. You have kids.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
I do have kids, and I was not there for
my kids.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
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 and go flying around
(39:50):
in planes 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, all my
friends when they have kids, that becomes their entire life.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
I said, I escaped that trap.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
I'll show you have it.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Yeah, he said, yeah, you did. My daughter, My amazing daughter.
Sarah is 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,
(40:27):
you were not there. She says, I hear them talking
about the poly Lama, which is 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 them there I alcohol it her
an addict.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
She said, but when we were kids, you weren't there.
But I have to tell you something, Dad.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
When she calls me Pops, she says, Pops, 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 (41:05):
Well, now, obviously you've been involved with ask CAP and
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?
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Now?
Speaker 2 (41:17):
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.
(41:39):
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 to do for.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
The rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
But what it does from me and what every I
wrote a line on the song once it said, every
act of kindness is a little bit of love behind.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
We left behind.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
My favorite line as far as the philosophy is probably
you give a little love and it all comes back
to you. You give a little love, then it all
comes back. In two thousand and one, I was hal
David 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
(42:29):
times and it was not elected. And I mentioned that
to him. And he said, and thank god, because 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
elected to the board in two thousand and one, and eventually,
you know, became Marylynd's vice chair writer share and in
(42:52):
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 (43:03):
That little comedy, little commie.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
I'm 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. As soon as the
polls closed, they would go, I voted, I voted. So
I was raised in this household. What and And one
(43:26):
of the things that happened when when I 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 on almost everything in the world, and yet they
did meaningful work together. I'm talking about like Ted Kennedy
(43:46):
and Orton Hatch, Who did the Americans with Disabilities Act?
Speaker 4 (43:50):
Who did aide suffer kids?
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Cob And because I began to understand a little bit
what was going on in a very changing.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
World to ask app, I got excited.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
About, you know, being a hood ornament, about walking in
the halls and going han Paul Williams and having somebody
like Doug Collins say to me, you know, you're little
venus for smoking the bandit.
Speaker 4 (44:12):
I love that movie.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
What can I do for you any minute? And the
next thing, you know, he and Hawkim 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 (44:30):
Isn't their fair payment for streaming?
Speaker 3 (44:32):
Now?
Speaker 5 (44:32):
Why?
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Well, you know, business is business, you know, and 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.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
God, I gotta take better care of the writers, you know.
I just you know, honey, I think about that, and.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Honey, why can't you sleep I just keep thinking about
the writers.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
Keep thinking about the writers.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
You know, those pesky songwriters or you know, they have kids,
and I suppose they.
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Should be able to feed them.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
I need to help them.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
But the thing is that there is no music business
without a song, right without music and the opportunity to
really work on a daily basis and an amazing staff.
I'm 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
(45:21):
collaborative environment we're living in right now. You know, it's
like very Everson. 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.
Speaker 6 (45:40):
Like I was.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
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 and chasing the words.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
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 2 (46:06):
They did not hover while I was writing. I did
not hover while they were recording. But 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 Albert and Chuck
Kay introducing the two of them to Roger and I.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
Nobody knew who we were.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
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. I'll be in my
office with Roger we're writing, and she'd be over in
(46:47):
the recording. Students they want to hear, and you go
over there and you hear. I mean rainy days on Mondays.
Speaker 4 (46:52):
Let me be the one.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
I want less to deal with it, you know, it's
like and when an angel sings your songs, your life changes.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
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. It's a
Nick Tosh's book about Dean Martin. He wrote that great
biography of Dean Martin called Dino, and he says that
Martin puts a record on the turntable place being Crosby.
(47:20):
They takes it up and he puts one of his
arm and they takes that off and he puts Alvis Presley.
He goes, 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 3 (47:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
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 go, oh my god, there's
Q and that maybe would you see on the service,
but inside there's a partment that's going, I'm like, God,
that's Quincy Jones.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
You know.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
At this point in my life, it's like that whole thing,
you know, that whole thing with Scrooge writing 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 a spiritual awakening while I'm having a spiritual.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Awakening live from the front.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
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 (48:19):
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 you 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 2 (48:35):
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.
Speaker 4 (48:43):
With a Song of My Heart and wound up like
walking into.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
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 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.
Speaker 4 (49:08):
With this one.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
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 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,
(49:32):
you know, in a fashion that is loving, you know,
and to the highest good of all concerned. What you
dwell on you may experience soon in your life or
perhaps later. Phantom of the Paradise open 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
(49:55):
and you go, wow, there's still some wow moments left,
I know, for both of us, and I admire you.
Speaker 4 (50:01):
There's not a word yet for old friends. You just man,
there you go, you got it.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
Thank you, missus than Can My thanks to musicians, songwriter
and actor Paul Williams. I'll leave you with a little
more of the Carpenters performing Paul Williams. 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 6 (50:23):
When there's no getting over that rainbow, when my smalls
the dreams bond con true, I can't say got madness
the world as to kid.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
But I won't last day without you.
Speaker 5 (50:45):
When there's no getting ova that rainbow, when my small
that's the dreams won't come true.
Speaker 6 (50:56):
I can't take on the madness well.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Last a gift, but I won't last day
Speaker 2 (51:07):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
And wrapped around the music. That's my guest today, Paul
Williams performing just an old fashioned love song from his
nineteen seventy one album of the same name. You swear
you've heard it before as it slowly rambles on and on.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
No need in bringing him back because they've never releaged one.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Just an old.
Speaker 5 (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 2 (01:36):
The most recent thing is I'm doing Pans Labyrinth for
this stage with Giama del Toro.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Wow and wonderful.
Speaker 2 (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,
(02:04):
if 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 Getnimo's partners and that the JJ Abrams was going
to produce And I mean that more that that's good.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Instant surrender.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
It's a good group.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
If they could, you know, if I was sitting on
my porch shilling and get get off my lawn, 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,
(03:17):
I don't perform 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 you have a run where you just had so
much fun?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (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 with 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 them, 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
(04:47):
life 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.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
It was a very no Ah kind of a picture.
We hit it off.
Speaker 2 (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 a 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.
Speaker 4 (05:22):
I mean, I just go right.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
For that gun.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
I'm scared exactly that. And the furniture is talking about me.
You know, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
But he was.
Speaker 2 (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
gonna pably, can't. I don't do I don't you know
even no, no, no, this is no you got it,
you got it.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
This is so fucking mild here and you have a
hit of it.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (05:58):
You're gonna have to.
Speaker 2 (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
of the Cordova. 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
(06:41):
kept go back from Maine.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
It was my family.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
We did this amazing thing where we clean the entire
house and a 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?
Speaker 4 (06:56):
I don't know, I believe that out. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I mean, my wife Marianna 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. Is like
(07:19):
trying to exclude you know, who knows what. But I've
been a construction brat. I went to a new I 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 sing, 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. And he died that he drove his car
under the abovement of a bridge, went through the windshield.
Speaker 4 (08:09):
Died a week later.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (08:27):
So it's my childhood was rest.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
To confront some tough things at a young age.
Speaker 4 (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 2 (08:38):
With the California, 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 4 (09:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (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 1 (09:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (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 televens like out of high school.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
You know, So you stunted your growth physically.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (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 wrote, it's like almost unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (11:01):
They got good reviews from.
Speaker 2 (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. They didn't really, but in
the meantime, I'm sharing the dressing room with a guy
named Mark Seaton, his dad, with George Setting and the
(11:44):
director a lot of money. Beautiful guitar that he's got
Martin guitar I picked up, he says, don't touch the guitar.
It's Martin, 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.
I painted it like like a stained glass window. And
I'm teaching myself chords. So one night they're shooting of
(12:06):
the scene where the US kids have set fire to
a junkyard that Bubba reeves it was Robert Redford is
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,
(12:29):
we're gone, A calm man and get you. Yes, we're gone,
a com man and get you. And Robert Davall is
walking by, and Robert Davall says, what's that. I said,
it's the guitar.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
I just boughted. He went out the guitar. What were
you singing?
Speaker 2 (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. 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.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Yeah, so I go blab blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (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 5 (13:34):
Yeah, or we'll come in.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, You're gonna come in and get you that again.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (13:58):
Two years later.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
It took me probably two years to start writing songs,
but I somehow that just became my journal.
Speaker 4 (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 2 (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 running 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 4 (14:30):
It is all gonna be a big career. Nothing. I
don't even have a phone.
Speaker 2 (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 them 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 3 (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 Edmine 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 2 (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 2 (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 cherry repeat. 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, it doesn't need a song,
then I know I have a chance to I can.
(19:37):
I can 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 4 (19:44):
Trust it? Another one is going to come.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (19:57):
And it's not choice, it was his idea. It was
his idea.
Speaker 2 (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? Because teen chapel with
him every day, every fucking everything.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
So but Elaine.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (20:36):
She's going on. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (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 2 (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 4 (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 2 (22:19):
We'll give the fact it's about it's got to be
about believable, though, and I approached. I totally approached his star.
As an actor, I wouldn't habit Chuck and I wouldn't
have it Lyle, and they had different different backstories.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
You know.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (23:12):
Me more then.
Speaker 2 (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,
it's 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 4 (23:35):
Oh my god? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (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 2 (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 hang 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 hospoats. 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 4 (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 2 (25:16):
When I met Jim Henson, I went over 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 3 (25:38):
No?
Speaker 2 (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 said, I want you
(26:22):
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, its like he buildst Ive felt better.
It was that kind of a relationship, you know, And
(26:44):
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, you know, Jim,
(27:07):
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 4 (27:12):
Deal, first feature.
Speaker 2 (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 4 (27:22):
No, a bit laid back, so.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
You know, I ask him, you know, the how do
we start this, puppy?
Speaker 6 (27:28):
You know?
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Do you start with with Kermit sitting on a log
in the in the in the swamp.
Speaker 4 (27:35):
What's he doing?
Speaker 2 (27:35):
He's playing a banjo and that kind of sets a
certain tone. And I think the instruments like tag pianos
and banjos are great sad song instruments.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
I love the juxtaposition.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So Kenny and I said down to write, say, we
wanted to write something like when you Wish upon a Star,
I mean, when Jimmy Crockett takes always hat in the
window and things about that. It elevates all of us
to another level, and we thought Kremit deserved that.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
We did.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
We wrote ourselves into the worst corner. You got to
think about the opening lines.
Speaker 6 (28:11):
Why are there so many songs about rainbows?
Speaker 4 (28:17):
And what's on the other.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
Side rainbowsis but only illusions.
Speaker 4 (28:29):
And rainbows have nothing to hide. We went out raps.
Speaker 2 (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
(29:44):
song that just pulls at you. Now, when did you
realize you had the aptitude to write these memorable ballads
for these giant divas? Well?
Speaker 2 (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. Stros 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 Barbara. And then I pick up the phone.
Speaker 4 (30:13):
I go, Hi, Barbara, Yeah, of course yeah.
Speaker 2 (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 sing 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're
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 2 (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 2 (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 4 (32:18):
I love Chris, Chris, I love Christmas. 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 2 (32:40):
My very first concert at a club in New York
was at the bitter end and I 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, so many stuggle microphone on his faces said,
what are you feeling? You said, 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.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Day after day I must face all of stranger we're
at don't.
Speaker 6 (34:01):
Below and that Fi roll.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
It's that's the carpenter's performing. Paul Williams. I won't last
a day without You from their nineteen seventy two album
A Song for.
Speaker 5 (34:16):
You when There's No Get It Over, Lad rate Bo,
when My Small the Dream from John True. I can't
say call the madness the world ask to give, but
I won't last day without you.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
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 Carpenter's,
william has been surrounded by legends since the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
I mean I had songs recorded by Ben 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
(35:24):
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 even.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
I met all three of those guys, and I almost
pissed my pants.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
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 Sento lie on myself, the
Phantom of the Paradise, words and music. The big thing
for me was getting as far the Muppets was concerned,
was in Fresh New sobriety.
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Nobody's calling me.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
I get sober, and I'm not the hot you know
kid in Timid anymore I've been. You know, you know
you're an alcoholic when you misplaced a decade.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
It's like the eighties around here, somewhere.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
It's around you said line before, and you're the only
person that ever responded you get it. 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. 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
(36:42):
have around my sobriety. 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 along with his story and not bugging it.
(37:03):
And eventually I was at the time I was dating
keenan Wyn's daughter. 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, muse,
whoever you all are up there, We're going to write
(37:26):
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,
the door opens, you see his feet and he walks
by all these little people that seem to get colder
when he walks by.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
Put a boom bum bum bum boom boom boom, but
a boom boom. I get the rhythm of it. You
went a cold wind blows. It chills you, chills you.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
To the boom, to the praze is your heart like
being alone?
Speaker 4 (38:02):
That's what you guys are good. That's not bad.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
It paints you with indifference like a lady paints with rouge.
But the worst of the worst, the most hated, and
Christ is the one that we call Scrooge. Oh there
goes mister b.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
I wrote that much of it without writing it down,
but it was.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
It was what 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
(38:50):
to be a really wonderful experience, 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 (39:04):
And what's interesting to me is that for me, I've
been overwhelmed overwhelmed and maybe joyous way from where 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. You have kids.
Speaker 4 (39:25):
I do have kids, and I was not there for
my kids.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
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 and go flying around
(39:50):
in planes 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, all my
friends when they have kids, that becomes their entire life.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
I said, I escaped that trap.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
I'll show you have it.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Yeah, he said, yeah, you did. My daughter, My amazing daughter.
Sarah is 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,
(40:27):
you were not there. She says, I hear them talking
about the poly Lama, which is 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 them there I alcohol it her
an addict.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
She said, but when we were kids, you weren't there.
But I have to tell you something, Dad.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
When she calls me Pops, she says, Pops, 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 (41:05):
Well, now, obviously you've been involved with ask CAP and
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?
Speaker 3 (41:16):
Now?
Speaker 2 (41:17):
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.
(41:39):
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 to do for.
Speaker 4 (41:57):
The rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
But what it does from me and what every I
wrote a line on the song once it said, every
act of kindness is a little bit of love behind.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
We left behind.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
My favorite line as far as the philosophy is probably
you give a little love and it all comes back
to you. You give a little love, then it all
comes back. In two thousand and one, I was hal
David 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
(42:29):
times and it was not elected. And I mentioned that
to him. And he said, and thank god, because 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
elected to the board in two thousand and one, and eventually,
you know, became Marylynd's vice chair writer share and in
(42:52):
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 (43:03):
That little comedy, little commie.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
I'm 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. As soon as the
polls closed, they would go, I voted, I voted. So
I was raised in this household. What and And one
(43:26):
of the things that happened when when I 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 on almost everything in the world, and yet they
did meaningful work together. I'm talking about like Ted Kennedy
(43:46):
and Orton Hatch, Who did the Americans with Disabilities Act?
Speaker 4 (43:50):
Who did aide suffer kids?
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Cob And because I began to understand a little bit
what was going on in a very changing.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
World to ask app, I got excited.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
About, you know, being a hood ornament, about walking in
the halls and going han Paul Williams and having somebody
like Doug Collins say to me, you know, you're little
venus for smoking the bandit.
Speaker 4 (44:12):
I love that movie.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
What can I do for you any minute? And the
next thing, you know, he and Hawkim 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 (44:30):
Isn't their fair payment for streaming?
Speaker 3 (44:32):
Now?
Speaker 5 (44:32):
Why?
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Well, you know, business is business, you know, and 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.
Speaker 4 (44:41):
God, I gotta take better care of the writers, you know.
I just you know, honey, I think about that, and.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Honey, why can't you sleep I just keep thinking about
the writers.
Speaker 4 (44:51):
Keep thinking about the writers.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
You know, those pesky songwriters or you know, they have kids,
and I suppose they.
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Should be able to feed them.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
I need to help them.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
But the thing is that there is no music business
without a song, right without music and the opportunity to
really work on a daily basis and an amazing staff.
I'm 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
(45:21):
collaborative environment we're living in right now. You know, it's
like very Everson. 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.
Speaker 6 (45:40):
Like I was.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
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 and chasing the words.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
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 2 (46:06):
They did not hover while I was writing. I did
not hover while they were recording. But 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 Albert and Chuck
Kay introducing the two of them to Roger and I.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
Nobody knew who we were.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
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. I'll be in my
office with Roger we're writing, and she'd be over in
(46:47):
the recording. Students they want to hear, and you go
over there and you hear. I mean rainy days on Mondays.
Speaker 4 (46:52):
Let me be the one.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
I want less to deal with it, you know, it's
like and when an angel sings your songs, your life changes.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
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. It's a
Nick Tosh's book about Dean Martin. He wrote that great
biography of Dean Martin called Dino, and he says that
Martin puts a record on the turntable place being Crosby.
(47:20):
They takes it up and he puts one of his
arm and they takes that off and he puts Alvis Presley.
He goes, 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 3 (47:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
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 go, oh my god, there's
Q and that maybe would you see on the service,
but inside there's a partment that's going, I'm like, God,
that's Quincy Jones.
Speaker 3 (47:49):
You know.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
At this point in my life, it's like that whole thing,
you know, that whole thing with Scrooge writing 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 a spiritual awakening while I'm having a spiritual.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
Awakening live from the front.
Speaker 4 (48:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
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 (48:19):
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 you 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 2 (48:35):
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.
Speaker 4 (48:43):
With a Song of My Heart and wound up like
walking into.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
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 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.
Speaker 4 (49:08):
With this one.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
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 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,
(49:32):
you know, in a fashion that is loving, you know,
and to the highest good of all concerned. What you
dwell on you may experience soon in your life or
perhaps later. Phantom of the Paradise open 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
(49:55):
and you go, wow, there's still some wow moments left,
I know, for both of us, and I admire you.
Speaker 4 (50:01):
There's not a word yet for old friends. You just man,
there you go, you got it.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
Thank you, missus than Can My thanks to musicians, songwriter
and actor Paul Williams. I'll leave you with a little
more of the Carpenters performing Paul Williams. 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 6 (50:23):
When there's no getting over that rainbow, when my smalls
the dreams bond con true, I can't say got madness
the world as to kid.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
But I won't last day without you.
Speaker 5 (50:45):
When there's no getting ova that rainbow, when my small
that's the dreams won't come true.
Speaker 6 (50:56):
I can't take on the madness well.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Last a gift, but I won't last day
Speaker 2 (51:07):
Without you,
Host
Alec Baldwin
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