Gary James' Interview With Songwriter
Paul Williams



He's probably one of the most talented, celebrated and successful songwriters of all time. And it's easy to see why. Just some of the songs he wrote or co-wrote include "An Old Fashioned Love Song" and "Family Of Man", recorded by Three Dog Night, "You And Me Against The World", recorded by Helen Reddy, "Evergreen", recorded by Barbra Streisand, "Fill Your Heart", recorded first by Tiny Tim and later David Bowie, and "We've Only Just Begun", "Rainy Days And Mondays" and "I Won't Last A Day Without You", recorded by The Carpenters. And of course, "Rainbow Connection" from The Muppet Movie.

His songs have been recorded by such a diverse group of artists; Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, David Bowie, Tony Bennett, Helen Reddy, The Carpenters, Diana Ross, Luthor Vandross, Willie Nelson, and yes, Kermit The Frog. He's a member of The Songwriters Hall Of Fame, and in April, 2009 was elected President and Chairman of ASCAP (American Society Of Composers, Authors and Publishers). His songs and scores have received six Oscar, nine Grammy, six Golden Globe and two Emmy nominations. He's won an Oscar Award, three Grammy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, an Ivor Novello International Award, and the National Music Publishers President's Award. Nile Rodgers has called him a "Songwriters's Songwriter."

It is a real honor to present an interview with Paul Williams, a man whose songs have brought so much happiness to people all over the world.

Q - Paul, you're the President and Chairman of ASCAP. Now, that seems like a job that would take up a lot of your time. Why would you want that job?

A - (laughs)

Q - Doesn't that job cut into your creativity as a songwriter?

A - Yeah, well it has. First, there were a lot of changes for me. On March 15th, 1990 I woke up. Instead of coming to, I got sober. The career that I thought I had, had basically been gone for a decade. You know you're an alcoholic when you misplace a decade. (laughs) So, that is an example of what that decade was like for me. I did Ishtar, which was the one big thing I did during that decade. It was just a lot of hiding out. I don't know why I crossed the line from use to abuse to addiction, but I did. A lot of it is on the road and writing and recording, hitting the road. I became better at showing off than showing up, I always say. So, I was having a blast. I had a lot of success and slowly but surely the drugs and the alcohol began to kick my ass. I eventually got sober. It's interesting because the first couple of things I noticed is I felt really good about what I'd written. I maybe needed a little break. I didn't know I had the passion for writing. First thing I did when I got sober was The Muppet Christmas Carol. All the songs. All the different kinds of songs. It was the perfect thing for me to be doing 'cause I was writing for Scrooge. This guy had been all screwed up and had a spiritual awakening. So, all the gratitude that Scrooge is going to be singing about, I'm feeling the exact same thing. So, it was a great, great job for me to have. I probably went maybe six or seven years when I really wasn't writing and then I just fell in love with it again. First thing I wrote was with a guy named John Vezner. We wrote a song called "You're Gone", and it was a big hit for Diamond Rio. But to finally get around to your question about ASCAP, you know ASCAP has taken care of me since 1972. My mentor around ASCAP and around a lot of things was Hal David. You know, Bacharach/David. Hal was a sweet man, and he said, "I want you to run for the ASCAP Board." I was like, "I ran for the Board in the '80s and I didn't get elected." He said, "And you shouldn't have, but you're different now. You're sober. You're a different man. Certainly a healthier one and I think you ought to run for the Board." So, in 2001 I ran for the Board and I got elected. I began to see how much amazing work was done at ASCAP to protect songwriters and to make sure we can write a second hit. If I have to go out and collect the money from my songs, all the places it's being played, I can't write a second song. But I could have "We've Only Just Begun" and have time to write "Old Fashioned Love Song" or "Out In The Country". So, ASCAP has been an amazing ally and advocate for me and I wasn't even aware of it. The more I got into it, I was eventually asked to run for President and Chairman. I think what happens is, you get to a certain place where you don't have to work at something as much. You have to be an advocate. You have to know what you're talking about the best I can, and make sure I will walk in on either side of the aisle in Washington, D.C. and stick my hand out and say, "My name is Paul. I'm an American songwriter. Let me tell you what life is like today, trying to make a living." I have to tell you, I think I've made a difference. I know I have to run to keep up with all the other hard-working people at ASCAP. Not only the staff, but the Board Of Directors and all the people you've been writing about.

Q - Where do you think this talent came from to write all these hit songs you've written? It almost seems like a God-given talent. You can't take college course that teaches you how to write a hit song.

A - No. I think part of it is I always wanted to be an actor. I think part of it is me opening up to whatever emotion I want to work with in there. but here's the other thing that's weird; I hear words and sounds.. Yeah, I hear words in music. Whether I hear words in music myself or write with somebody else, and we're talking writing with everybody from Roger Nichols, who I wrote most of The Carpenters' hits with and "Out In The Country" for Three Dog Night, I've also written a bunch of stuff alone. I've been writing recently with a group called Portugal The Man, and I love those guys. Those guys are fantastic. But I hear words in the emotion of the music. If I'm out by a fountain, I heard like consonants. There was a time when they would have locked you up. But even in the sound of a fountain I hear consonants and vowels. It's weird. And it makes total sense when you think about it. If you let your imagination run, every now and then you can catch a word in there. Obviously I don't sit around listening to my fountain, but it's just an example. I just hear words in the music and they're there. Obviously I work on 'em and pull 'em out of there. I think part of it is being a pushover. Part of it is being emotionally wide-open where I can be very touched by anything in any direction. Music can scare me. Whatever it is I'll probably hear words in the music. I would identify myself first as a lyricist. I'm a better lyricist than I think I am a composer. I'm not a trained musician. I can write something in my head, absolutely done, completely ready to go, great score. So, I've written this song and then I'll go out to my Musical Director, Chris Caswell, who's played piano for me since the '70s, and I'll go to Cas and I'll go, "Cas, there's a chord here and I cannot find it. It's somewhere in there, but, listen to this." He'll reach over to the piano and hit the exact chord. I'll say, "What is it?" And he'll say, "a D (chord). I go, "Wait a minute. What do you mean it's a D?" It didn't sound right. So, I'm not a trained musician in any sense. If I sat down at the piano and played one of my songs, first of all it would probably take me a month to learn how to play it to where you recognize it, and it'll never be good. Just because you can train a horse doesn't mean you can ride it and I cannot ride most horses. I can write the song, but these days I'm happy enough to have other people sing 'em. The big philosophical point for me is if we decide something is a failure, we're probably doing a disservice. If I write something and I love it and nobody responds to it, that doesn't mean it's bad, it means its moment is not right now. Who knows, thirty years later, all of a sudden somebody shows up and for the first time in your life you're holding a Grammy for Album Of The Year. That's just a gift. There's a philosophical lesson in that, my friend.

Q - Talent must run in your family because your brother wrote "Drift Away" for Dobie Gray.

A - Yeah.

Q - Did he write any other songs that I might have heard of?

A - He wrote "When We Make Love" for Alabama. It was a big, big hit. He had several chart records. He had songs recorded by George Jones and so many great, classic Country artists. He made a great living and he died in 2016 from lung cancer. We actually had the same sober birthday, twelve years apart. I got sober March 15th, 1990 and he got sober March 15th, 2002. What's interesting is we were really competitive. We loved each other to pieces, but we were really competitive until we both got sober. Once we both got sober it was like a brotherhood like I never experienced. But yeah, he always made music. He was actually playing in bars in New Mexico when he was like 16. And he wrote what I think is the classic Rock 'n' Roll anthem, "Drift Away".

Q - It was a beautiful song.

A - Yeah.

Q - You and Biff Rose wrote "Fill Your Heart", which Tiny Tim recorded. Did you ever meet Tiny Tim? What did you think of him?

A - Oh, I thought he was amazing. He was a sweet, sweet man. He was one of a kind. They broke the mold after Tiny. He was in love with this kind of turn of the century, Tin Pan Alley music, these old songs like "Tip Toe Through The Tulips". He recorded "Fill Your Heart", which Biff and I wrote, on the back (of the record). It was at the beginning of both of our publishing deal at A&M Records and all of a sudden we've got the B side of a number one record in the country. And then of course the biggest surprise in my life, and one of the things I'm most proud of is that "Fill Your Heart" was the first outside song that David Bowie recorded. It's on "Hunky Dory". Again, you never know. You end up getting a song recorded by Tiny Tim. It's unusual and sweet, but it certainly isn't a home run down the middle of the world of Pop music. But then, one of my heroes, David Bowie comes along and records it. You go, "Wow!" It turns out that my not making a living as an actor turned out to be really fortunate and "No" is a gift. If I don't get something that I really want, sometimes I will find that almost inevitably I'll get something better.

Q - When Karen Carpenter sings "Rainy Days And Mondays", and then those lyrics, Hangin' around, nothing to do but frown, rainy days and Mondays always get me down, I believe her. She sounds so sad when she's singing that song. How well did you know Karen Carpenter?

A - Well, Roger Nichols and I were a writing team at A&M Records. Everything we wrote was getting recorded, but nothing was getting played on the radio. We'd have album cuts. We'd have B sides. But the fact is that what we were writing was much more middle of the road. We wrote for about three years where we had a lot of songs recorded that nobody knew, we thought. Then one day we were working in Roger's office at A&M Records and Chuck Kays, who just passed away incidentally, great publisher, COVID took him out, but Chuck came in and said, "I want to introduce you to A&M's newest artists, Karen and Richard Carpenter." They looked at us and said, "Oh my God, we love your 'Peppermint Trolley' record." I never remembered the names of all the groups that were album cuts that we didn't think anybody knew what we were doing. It's like they had studied what we had did. It was amazing. We were knocked out and when they recorded, they really wanted to hear more of our songs. The first thing they recorded was a song called "I Kept On Loving You", and it was an album cut. But again, it got stuck on the back of "Close To You". You get the same pay for the B side as you do the A side for the mechanical sales, not the performer, but it was remarkable to all of a sudden have this spectacular talent, amazing talent, both of them. Richard is arranging and his songwriting... He's a wonderful song writer as well. But to hear that voice was exactly what you describe, to hear layers of melancholy and sheer talent, that was amazing. What a gift!

Q - In a recent interview I did with John Davidson, he said he was in the studio with The Carpenters and they were such perfectionists.

A - Yeah. Beautiful arrangements. She was a good drummer, but once you got her out in front of the drums I don't think she was as comfortable, but God she always sang amazingly. I believe, like you said, everything she sang.

Q - I don't usually ask songwriters what their lyrics mean. But, in "Family Of Man" there's the lyric, Factories built where the rivers ran, time's running out for the family of man. You're talking about manufactures ruining the environment, are you? In the early '70s you didn't hear a lot of songs written with that theme.

A - Yeah. Actually there were two songs I wrote that were both recorded by Three Dog Night that were basically environmental songs. Again, I'm not sure how I began with that. There was that wonderful ad with the Native American with the river that is all polluted. Do you remember that commercial?

Q - Yes. A tear is coming down his eye.

A - Exactly. Who knows. I may have actually been influenced by that. It seemed like my brother and the guy I wrote the song with, Jack Conrad, who was the bass player for me for many years, Jack and my brother were big fishermen. They were real outdoors men. My brother, in addition to being a great songwriter, was a real cowboy. When his songwriting kind of cooled off for awhile, he was a fishing guide. He was a real cowboy. I joke that what color I've got came from the light in my refrigerator. I'm not a great outdoors man, but my brother certainly was. He probably made me aware of we've got to take better care of this planet. At this point I'm a firm believer that we've got to do something about the environment, global warming. I'm probably a bit of an idealist. I'd write a song like that and probably throw my cigarette out the window like an asshole. So I can't pretend to be a warrior for the planet. But "Out In The Country" and "Family Of Man" for Three Dog Night were both songs that brought some attention to this planet and the need to take care of the planet, and I'm proud of that.

Q - You auditioned for The Monkees TV show and you didn't make the cut. Were you ever told why? And are you glad you didn't get the role on The Monkees TV show?

A - (laughs) Yes, I'm glad that the guys that got, got it. They were the best! Davy (Jones) actually recorded one of the songs I wrote with Roger Nichols called "Someday Man". But they already had one short guy (laughs). The fact is that Micky and Davy were friends and Michael Nesmith and I had the same manager for awhile. I think it was perfect they way it was and it was a blessing for me. If I had wound up as a member of The Monkees I wouldn't have had the writing career that I did. For one thing, I would have been signed to Screen Gems. I think the fact that my songwriting career began with Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss at A&M Records, it was the most successful independent publishing company and label I think probably in decades. It was the kind of place where if I wanted to have a drawing of a squirrel on the album cover, Herb Alpert would say, "Sure. Do what you want. I'm not going to put a creative bridle on you." Look at the talent he gave voice to, everybody from Peter Frampton, Joe Cocker, how about the Mad Dogs And Englishmen tour. Did you see that?

Q - I did not.

A - My favorite band because I think they're amazing, my favorite band ever was a band called The Original Delaney And Bonnie And Friends. It was the best band I ever saw on stage. I saw them at The Troubadour in Hollywood in like '68 and I said that's the kind of music I would like to be making. I usually didn't write like that, although as the years went by I found myself writing in different genres from Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas, which is basically Americana, to Phantom Of The Paradise, which is kind of like Hard Rock, almost Glam Rock, before Glam Rock. But it's interesting, my favorite bands and my favorite music is not necessarily what I usually make. I love it when it's right for what I'm writing it for. I get in trouble when I try to label things. But I know I loved Delaney And Bonnie. I loved Joe Cocker's band. Basically they left Delaney and went over to Joe. Then on the other side you've got guys like Leonard Cohan.

Q - Back on June 25^th, 2019 The New York Times reported that your master tapes were destroyed in that 2008 Universal fire. Did you in fact lose your masters?

A - You know what? I'm not sure. I think so. I think we lost a lot of material. I think everybody did. It's almost one of those things I don't even want to consider. But the other thing is, I keep looking forward. I've had the most amazing life. The idea of real classic stuff being gone is just horrifying to think of that, but what can you do? But I've never gone back to do re-mixes on a couple of albums I've produced on my own and some soundtrack albums too. But that's an awful shame. It seems like everybody lost so much.

Q - You were on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson. How'd you find Johnny Carson to be?

A - I did forty-eight Tonight Shows. I joke that I remember six. (laughs) Yeah, it was great. He was the best ever at that. The trick was not to talk to him before. If you're in make-up and then you sit down in front of an audience and a camera, you're acting. You're recreating. If I can go out there and just be myself and he could too, it was always great conversation. You know what I loved about him? He was a great laugher. He wasn't trying to read a question and be judgmental. He was in for the whole deal. One of his major writers was Pat McCormick, who played my daddy in Smokey And The Bandit. We were great friends and we were both crazy. So, when I would show up for the show he would always introduce me, "Paul Williams is a successful songwriter. He wrote blah, blah blah. He's a little strange sometimes, a little crazy." And, I certainly was. But it was great. For a kid from the mid-West going out to Hollywood and all of a sudden having a career where I'm elbow to elbow with just monster stars; I was friends with Robert Mitchum. I joke Bob Mitchum put me in rehab twice (laughs). The fact is the beginning of my career was like the third act of some amazing careers. So, I had a song recorded by Elvis. I had songs recorded by Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and Sinatra 'cause I caught the very end of their careers. So the timing of that was just amazing.

Q - How did drinking help you write songs? Or did it?

A - I'd stay up all night, loaded, and write all this stuff that I thought was brilliant, that made no sense at all. I'd get a little sleep, get up and write what became the song. My dad was an alcoholic. Both my brothers were alcoholics. All three of us got sober. All three of us had to. It was the best thing that ever happened to any of us. The fact is that in the '60s and '70s it seemed like everybody was getting high. And eventually they grew up. I did. I became addicted and the best thing that ever happened to me, it may have been that I became an alcoholic because it gave me a way to not only reach out and have a community save my life, the recovering community, but also that I'm able to pass that on, on a daily basis. For thirty-one years I've realized my responsibility is that we get to keep the miracle by giving it away. Anybody in your audience that is having trouble with drugs or alcohol, there is a solution. Run to that organization that's in front of the phone book. I don't mention them by name because that's one of our traditions. But that anonymous organization saved my life and it'll save yours if you need it.

Q - Frank Sinatra and Elvis recorded your songs. Did you meet them?

A - Yeah. I met Elvis backstage. I was opening for Liza Minelli. Elvis came back after the show to say hi to Liza. We're standing in the hall and she's changing her clothes. I said, "Elvis, I reapply appreciate you singing my song." He said, "What song was that? I don't keep track of those things." "It's called 'Where Do I Go From Here'." He said, "Oh, yeah. What album was that on?" I said, "I don't know." I don't keep track of things like that." And he laughed. Red (West, one of Elvis' bodyguards) was there, who I incidentally became friends with on a move called Wild, Wild West Re-visited. I played the villain in that and Red was on the shoot. Red said, "You know what? Elvis loved that, that you just fed it right back to him. 'I don't keep track of things like that'." He said he laughed his ass off. He loved when people would do that to him. Usually they were so nervous or respectful.

Q - How about Sinatra?

A - "Marvelous Mr. Paulie." He called me "Marvelous Mr. Paulie." He recorded two or three songs. I think only one of 'em was released, which was a song called "Dream Away", which was one of his favorite songs. When my mother was dying I wanted her to hear that song. The album had been cut, but hadn't been released yet. So, I called Frank's office and a guy called Sarge Weiss, who worked for him, I spoke to him. I said, "Frank recorded a song, 'Dream Away' and I haven't heard it yet, but I'm told it's on the album. My mother is dying and I want to play it for her. She's a huge fan of Sinatra's and having her little boy have a song recorded by Frank Sinatra is a big deal." He said, "Hold on a second," and he put Frank on the phone and Frank said, "Mr. Paulie, what can I do for you?" I told him and he said, "Hang on," and he gave the phone back to Sarge and said, "Take care of this." He was really sweet about it. The next thing I know, I've got an acetate of that cut on the album. I took it into my mother's room. She was dying at home in my older brother's home. I played "Dream Away" and she looked at me and said in a very weak voice, "Now your a songwriter."

Q - Did you ever meet Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin?

A - None of the three. I just basically missed that. I'm in The Doors movie as an actor, but I never met Jim Morrison, sorry to say, nor Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix, if you go to Electric Ladyland Studios in New York there's a stall and if you shut the door there's a plaque inside the stall that says, "Paul Williams Slept Here." (laughs) We were recording Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty for Ishtar. We were mixing their songs for Ishtar. It was like long, long, tedious work. I went into the bathroom and fell asleep. So, there's a plaque in there. (laughs)

Q - If you hadn't won any Academy Awards or Grammys, would it have bothered you? What does an award really mean? You got to do with your life what you wanted to do and that's more than most people can say.

A - If I ever complain about anything in my life that's related to an award, yeah or nay, I hope somebody slaps me because I am so blessed to be, at my age, to be as active as I am, to be as healthy as I am. I jog 2.7 miles every morning. I work out three times a week with a trainer. I haven't had a drink in thirty-one years. I don't drink anymore. When I quit drinking I weighted 187 (pounds). I weigh 130 now. Lazarus and me have a lot in common because I feel I was raised from the dead to have the life have today. The best thing I can do is (a) be grateful, and (b) if there's somebody I can help, let me know because I get more out of it than I give. It's one of those things that is key to staying sober, as being in love, and service. All for love and service your fellow man and hang on for the ride.

Official Website: www.PaulWilliamsOfficial.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.



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