This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio.
Just an old fashioned love song playing on the radio 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'll swear you've.
Heard it before as it slowly rambles on and on. No need in bringing him back because they've never rele egged one.
Just an old.
Fashioned love song.
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 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 brilliant new work Williams has been conjuring up these days.
The most recent thing is I'm doing Pans Labyrinth for this stage with Giama del Toro.
Wow and wonderful.
We've been working on it for years because he goes aways and does movies and then whatever like that job, and it's just I'm like, I finally went, you know what, I fucking surrender. I'm going to take it out of my bio. I mean, if it happens, it's wonderful. I mean, we've Gustavo Santo a Lion, I've written the songs, we've got, if anything, we've overridden them all, and it's like, if it happens, this is magnificent. If it doesn't happen, then
there's something better. I totally surrender. The next morning, at eight am in the morning, I got an email from Geinnimo's partners and that that JJ Abrams was going to produce and I mean that more that that's good.
Instant Surrender's a good group. You know, you JJ pretty good to me, you know, but it's you know, and it's like I'm eighty four, you know.
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 slow down and stop, it like stop, I don't want to stop. They go to the twenty years if they could.
You know, if I was sitting on my porch shilling and get get off my law, I'd be dead. My wife puts up with me what she calls it growling, because I'm like she said, it's like you unconsciously have to keep There's something about music that keeps going because in my now, because I can't hear, I don't perform 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.
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 you know all these Did you feel that way? Did you have a run where you just had so much fun?
Oh?
Yeah?
Well, and the thing is, who is that I wanted to be with? There was a guy named her Pacheco, was a buddy who became a road manager. We used to joke we called him the Bison because he looked like the Indian and made it with a buffalo, and he was what happened with the Bison. Her Pacheco, he played my bodyguarden foundom of the Paradise and he used to buy, you know, like he was an extra who did a little bit of stunt work that kind of thing, you know, and just the coolest guy in the world,
I mean, just amazing. And he knew everybody because he bought you know, like he you know, when he did the greatest story ever told in the desert. He was getting everybody their grass, you know, well not everybody but the hippists of the hippists, right. And he introduced me to Bob Mitcham. That's everything I wanted in my life is that is to have some of the guy that used to buy, used to sell, you know, get grass for Bob Mitcham. So I met I met Bob Mitcham
and he was shooting a picture in London. It was a very Noah kind of a picture.
We hit it off.
He called me dough boy, and I was, you know, I did a lot of blow. I did a lot of vodka. I can never have been able to smoke grass because I turn into it like I just you know, I am curled up behind my shout and not in bed, but under the bed going because you know, peeking out the edition blinds, looking at the tree police because they're coming for me. I mean, I just go right for that gun. I'm scared exactly that. And the furniture is talking about me. You know, that's absolutely true.
But he was.
He called me dough boy, you like, and he always have a joint with him and he goes, do boy, this is no good, but you're gonna love it. I'm gonna probaly can't. I don't do I don't you know even no, no, no, this is no you got it, you got it. This is so fucking mild here and you have a.
Hit of it.
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.
You're gonna have to.
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 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 kept go back from Maine.
It was my family.
We did this amazing thing where we clean the entire house and huge place in all and we did it in four days. And I said, the family is in amphetamines. You know, they made a fortunate at it. And Freddy's like, why do you do that? I don't know, I believe that out.
Yeah.
I mean, my wife Caanna reminded me when we first met, she said, I really loved you based on one thing you said that I thought was really unusual and interesting. On the Tonight show, she said, you described yourself as a combination of Oscar Levan and Donnie Osmond, like trying to exclude you know, who knows what. But I've been a construction brat. I went to a new was I
went to ninth schools. By the time I was in the ninth grade, my dad was going around the builder, you know, and he drank and he would get me up in the middle of the night, just saying, you know, for his buddy like McShane, who hated me. Incidentally, all 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, you know.
And he died you that he.
Drove his car under the abovement of a bridge, went through the windshield.
Died a week later.
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.
So it's my childhood was rest.
To confront some tough things at a young age.
Dickensiean, you know.
So you are persuaded that this is the best thing financially for your mother, so you stay.
With the California to stay with the ant And the fact is what part of California Long Beach, down Long Beach, And you know, I had been I've been one of those little kids who wanted to sing. I'd stand on my mom would turn her back on me at a department store and I'd be telling somebody I can sing, I can sing, and she'd find me standing on a counter with a little bunch of money around my feet. But after my dad, it was gone. Music was gone. I don't know, I just your heart's on.
Yeah.
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, 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 is get let's get asking little girls. Let's get in the closet and kiss like they do in the movies.
Right.
The thing is that when they took me off of the hormones and all, it screwed up my body clock. So I didn't hit puberty televes like out of high school. You know, So you stunted your growth physically.
I don't know. I don't know.
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.
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 are a real performer. You can sing, you can act, you can do anything. When people go back and look at the songs you want, it's like almost unbelievable.
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.
They got good reviews from.
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. 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, seeing the director a lot of money, beautiful guitar that he's got Martin guitar I picked up. He says, don't touch the guitar.
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. Or I painted it like like a stained glass window. And I'm teaching myself chords. So one night they're shooting of the scene where the US kids have set fire to a junkyard.
The 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, we're gone a calm man and get you. Yes, we're gone to come man and get you. And Robert Duvall is walking by, and Robert Duvall says, what's that. I said, it's the guitar.
I just boughted. He went out the guitar. What were you singing?
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 to me, and I said, it's the guitar. I just it's just why it's not the guitar.
So I keep making this staff.
Yeah. So I go blab blah blah blah blah blah.
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.
Yeah, or we'll come in.
Yeah, You're gonna come in and get you that again.
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.
Two years later.
It took me probably two years to start writing songs, but I somehow that just became my journal.
It was my therapy.
Had you written songs before? But eventually you get to a point. Do you play piano horribly?
I mean, I mean when I sit down on my band would actually walk off stage. If I sat at the piano, they go. I started wrinning on guitar, but basically, I mean, I'm just sitting at home. I brought my mother out to take care of her because I thought, you know, I'm gonna know I'm on the chase side.
It is all gonna be a big career. Nothing. I don't even have a phone.
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 by the president, and the guy named Biff Rows plays
a chicken delight. Guy comes in and he gets recruited, and the two of the men we started writing together. We wrote about four songs. He wrote, played me a song. He said, this is funny, and that's not funny, it's pretty. He said, well, write words to it then, so we did. We wrote, we did some acid, we wrote some words whatever, 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 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 recorded years later by David boy Song on Hunky Dory album and it was like, thank you God.
Musician, songwriter and actor Paul Williams. If you enjoy conversations with legendary musicians, check out my interview with Gordon Lightfoot.
One summer I wrote that song Sundowner. I knew that it was going to happen, and it didn't work up to number one. That was our second one. Then it was two albums later that we had the rec of the Edmin Fitzgerald that became a responsibility. It did because only one verse contained any conjecture of any kind of the rest of it was taken from directly from newspaper 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.
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, 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.
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
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 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 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 last a day without you?
Now tell me about that? How did he Lane make come to you? And obviously the big red hot Warren Houser.
Warren had asked me to write a song for Heaving Can Wait, and I, you know, I looked at the picture or whatever. I said, you don't need you don't need a song you got chery rebat. He did that, you know, I said, that's that, you know? So I you know, and I've done that two or three times.
I'm really proud of it because if I look at a picture and I go doesn't need a song, then I know I have a chance to I I can 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?
Trust it? Another one is going to come.
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.
And it's not choice, it was his idea. It was his idea.
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 them every day, every fucking everything.
So but Elaine.
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.
She's going on. I don't know.
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 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. That's exactly what I want.
You know.
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 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.
It was a wonderful job.
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.
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 have it Chuck, and I wouldn't have it Lyle, and they had different different backstories.
You know.
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 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.
Me more then.
I mean, the idea of playing a scene with Bruce, you know, is just God.
You You've done so many TV spots, Your acting career is like an iceberg in most people's minds, and then don't realize you've done countless guest spots and you know, smoking in the band. Was he fun to shoot with?
Oh my god? Yeah.
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. But I'd also just show over to hang out with Pat. And I'm standing with Pat off just talking.
About the extent up comic Pat McCormick, Pat.
Mccormay, Pat Pat McCormick six foot six, played my dad. He played my dad, very funny, one of the funniest writers in the world and performing and perform and one of the sweetest human beings in the world. And dangers to hanging out with because we never slept, you know. So I'm over there, you know, leaning against the wall or something with Pat McCormick and Burt Reynolds looks at 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, two and even worse. There was no story it was, but it was one time I showed up second or the third one, got off the plane, got in the car,
was driven to the hospitats. We stayed on McCormick standing outside of his house phone and it goes, this is the best time I've ever had on a movie.
I've already been rolled because you have blood on his shirt.
Talk about rainbow connection. I mean, for you, music is music. It doesn't matter where it lays into the project.
When I met Jim Henson, I went over and did the Muppet Show in England, and you know, I was never a kid that was in a gang that had a treehouse. When I walked on the set of the Muppet Show, I was with a gang that had a treehouse. Who was the most wonderful? I mean there was an energy. First of all, did you ever work with him? Did you ever work with the Muppets?
No?
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 jug Band Christmas. We're going to shoot it's it's a Christmas show, a one hour thing, and I'd like you to write the songs for it. I wrote the songs
for it. It's actually at this point now I says stage play as well. But I think it was my audition for the Muffet movie. So he loved the songs for the first one. So we we said, I want you to do the Muppet movie. I said, I want to bring a guy named Kenny Asheron to write the songs with me. Kenny and I wrote most of the songs for A Star is Born with Barbarus Dreisen his music my words. And I had a great relations for him. We've been working on an unproduced musical about Dorothy Parker.
We were, you know, it was like he buildst Ive felt better. It was that kind of a relationship, you know, And so I brought him in and this is this is Jim Hansen, Jim Henson is opened my place in the Hollywood Hills with you know, with Frank Oz and we're talking about where the songs go. We're kind of spotting the picture in advance because you have to previews
or the songs if they're performed on screen. And I walked him to the to the car and I said, you know, Jim, we're not going to surprise you with this. I'll show you the songs, you know, as we're working on them, because this is a big.
Deal, first feature.
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?
No, a bit laid back, so, you.
Know, I ask him, you know, the how do we start this, puppy?
You know?
Do you start with with Kermit sitting on a log in the in the in the swamp.
What's he doing?
He's playing a banjo and that kind of sets a certain tone. And I think the instruments like tag pianos and banjo is a great sad song instruments.
I love the juxtaposition.
So Kenny and I said down to write, saying we wanted to write something like when you wish upon a Star, I mean, when Jimmy Crookeett takes always hat in the window and things about that.
It elevates all of us to.
Another level, and we thought Kremit deserved that we did. We wrote ourselves into the worst corner. You got to think about the opening lines.
Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side rainbowsis but only illusions, and rainbows have nothing to hide.
We went out raps.
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 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 claim it there.
What is it about you? What do you think it is about you? I mean I want to go full blown cliche here and say you drank and drug yourself to death because of a hypersensitivity you had. It also helped you write these songs. Where do the songs come from? You've written some of the most I'm one of these guys. There's a handful of songs you put on and one of them is Evergreen. It's just a pretty song that
just pulls at you. Now, when did you realize you had the aptitude to write these memorable ballads for these giant divas? Well?
You know that was her music. She just called you, she called now. I was being actually fitted for a tuxedo. A guy is measuring my end scene when my wife walks in and says it's Barbara Stras wants to talk to you. And I'm like, you know, oh my god, And of course you know. I mean, I'm like, oh my god, it's Barbaras. And then I pick up the phone.
I go, hi, Barbara, Yeah, of course yeah.
But she says, you wrote a song called for Helen Ready called you and Me against the World. There's a scene at the end of His Stars Worn and I'm doing his Stars Warn with with with Chris Christofferson. There's a song at the end of the Chris's character had written and he's dead and I want to and I'm lis singing this song and un me against the World is like I'd love something like that. I said, I'm 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 so I go on and I tell her what the songs are about, and she and John Peters look at me like I'm nuts. Would you give us a moment?
And then they brought me back and they said, you know, that's not what we asked you. We asked you for one song. But you don't seem to be intimidated. I said, absolutely not, And of course I'm sure I was.
Where did these songs come from? Where did these lyrics come from?
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.
The story itself, inspired the song.
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 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. I'm writing songs for the guy that putting all my cleanest dirty shirt Sunday Morning coming down. Me and Bob McGee.
I love Chris Chris, I love christ Oh my god, didn't you.
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.
My very first concert at a club in New York, was at the Bitter End, and I'd show up there first night and there's Chris Read in the front. I've never met him, and I described it as trying to sing through a guld you know, it's like you know, and I sang, and one of the songs I sang was called I Never had It So good. And the first time we ever really spent a lot of time together was A Star is Born. And the opening night of Stars Born, somebody stuggle microphone on his faces said,
what are you feeling? You said that a deep sense of impending shames.
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 and this is here's the thing, d.
F today I must feet of strangers were rad you know I'm not that strong.
That's Paul Williams performing I Won't last a day without You.
There's song one I can to do who always cap You're always there when there's no gardy, no on that range.
At age eighty four, Paul Williams is showing no signs of slowing down. It was only when reminiscing about his storied songwriting career that I was reminded of just how long Williams has been a force in the songwriting world. From touring with Olivia Newton John to writing for The Carpenters, Williams has been surrounded by legends since the very beginning.
I mean I had songs recorded by Bing Crosby and Elvis. I mean because it was like the third act of their career when I'm just getting started. So it's like when I tell somebody that I songs recorded, a song recorded by Ben Crosby, it's like, you are old, buddy,
you are old. It's a yeah, I am old. But when you think about when you started your career and who was around, I mean, I did something for the Friars and walking on stage the first time and there's Greg RePEc and Krook Douglas, you know, you know, I think Burt Lancaster was was even.
I met all three of those guys and I almost pissed my pants.
Oh my god.
But the thing is that I write both ways. I write words and music, and more and more these days with Pans Labyrinth. It's Gustavo Sentel on myself, the Phantom of the Paradise, words and music. The big thing for me was getting as far as the Muppets was concerned, was in fresh New sobriety.
Nobody's calling me.
I get sober, and I'm not the hot you know kid in Timen anymore I've been. You know, you know you're an alcoholic when you misplaced a decade.
And it's like the eighties around here, somewhere, it's.
Around you said one 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. Have you ever seen it? It's one of my favorite things I've ever done in my life. And it was written with the exact same emotional commitment that I have around my sobriety. I literally read the first you know, the Dickens novel. I read the script, looked where the songs were going to go left it alone for a while. Let my unconscious.
I'm not procrastinating, I'm percolating. I am leaving my unconscious alone with this story and not bugging it. And eventually I was. At the time I was dating Keenan Wynn's daughter, 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 gonna write these songs and let me know when you have an idea. And I pick up the Lawrence Block novel and I start reading, and about three pages in I put it down. I thought, okay. The first song Scrooge, we see a door. Of the door opens, you see his feet and he walks by all these little people that seem to get colder when he walks by. Put a boom bum boom boom boom boom boom butter boom boom b im.
Get the rhythm of it. You want to cold wind blows it chills you, chills you to the boom.
Nature. The phrase is your heart like he is a being alone.
That's what you guys are good. That's not bad.
It paints you with indifference like a lady paints with rouge. But the worst of the worst, the most hated. And it was because the one that we call screws. Oh, there goes mister. But I wrote that much of it without writing it down, but it was. It was what we were talking about earlier, about the difference between acceptance and surrender and really really totally letting go of the moment. I mean, if I'm sitting down with Alec Baldwin to talk about God knows what we're going to talk about,
I could give gone into it. I could have wrapped myself around my axle a couple of times thinking about that, because I would want this to be a really wonderful experience, 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.
And what's interesting to me is that for me, I've been overwhelmed, overwhelmed in it maybe joyous way from or I'm at now, which is everything has led me to where I am right now. Yeah, I don't want to go back to my old life. No, No, I love what I'm doing now. I don't want to leave my house. Yeah, I'm obsessed with my kids and then being around them and being participatory.
You have kids, I do have kids, and I was not there for my kids when I mean, when you know my son doesn't want to have kids, he said, Dad, it's like everybody that I know that has kids, they get total I mean, at this point, I think he'll change his mind, but he says he was a wonderful actorney. He said, I also don't want to spend the rest of my life auditioning. So he went off and like
he became a trainer. He was Kamala Harris's private trainer, and then didn't go flying around in planes and training you know, studio heads and stuff like that. Now he's involved in developing plant based foods and at any rate. But it's like, you know, Dad, because all my friends, when they have kids, that becomes their entire life.
I said, I escaped that trap.
I'll show you have it.
Yeah, and he said, yeah, you did.
My daughter, my amazing daughter, Sarah is a therapist. She works as in the Office of Victims Advocacy from a major university and and she's she's amazing, two beautiful kids. And she said, Dad, you were not there. She says, I hear them talking about the Pauli Lama, which is my nickname and recovery. So so yeah, she says, you're the polic She said, I get that. You know, like you're anywhere anytime that you're going to help another. I'll call it her an addict, she said, But when we
were kids, you weren't there. But I have to tell you something to Dad. When she calls me, Pops, she says, Pops, 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.
Now, obviously you've been involved with ASK Captain a member as a professional songwriter and so forth. But then you become the president of Asking Why and what's the task for askcap Now.
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. 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 the rest of the world. But what it does for.
Me and what every I wrote a line in the song once it's said, every act of kindness is a little bit of love behind. We left behind. My favorite line as far as the philosophy is probably you give a little and it all comes back to you. You give a little love, then it all comes back. In two thousand and one, I was I was hal David was a great friend and Hell said, I want you to run for the board of AZCAP. And I had run for the board of ASCAP a couple of times
and was not elected. And I mentioned that to him and he said, and thank God, because you you know, because somebody else was using my body. Then he said, but you're a different man now, and I think you got to run for ASCAP on the board. I was elected to the board in two thousand and one, and eventually, you know, became Maryland's vice chair riders Share, and in two thousand and nine became president chairman. I was raised by a hardcore Republican who my dad called my mom that little communist.
See that little comedy, a little commie.
I'm at a little comedy. And they lied at least every four years. They lied because they'd say, we're going to cancel each other. It makes no sense. Let's agree to not vote. So they would agree, they would swear, you know, they were not going to vote, and as soon as the polls closed, they would go, I voted,
I voted. So I was raised in this household. What and And one of the things that happened when I was very early on, when I did run for the vard and was elected, before I was president, I got to know some people that had nothing in common, that they that disagree to on almost everything in the world, and yet they did meaningful work together. I'm talking about like Ted Kennedy and Orton Hatch, who did the Americans with Disabilities Act?
Who did age suffer? Kids?
Collaborate?
And because I began to understand a little bit what was going on in a very changing worlded as gap, I got excited about, you know, being a hood ornament, about walking in the halls and going on Paul Williams and having somebody like Doug Collins say to me, you know your little venus or smoking the Band? I love that movie. What can I do for you? Any minute?
And the next thing you know, he and Hakim Jefferies are working on somebody called the Songwriters Equity Act, which is going to adjust the rules that we operate under so we can get closer to the fair payment for streaming. Never made it to the floor, but then we come back.
Isn't their fair payment for streaming?
Now?
Why?
Well, you know, business is business, you know, like writers are not exactly you know, you know, most heads and studios. I don't think very luckily wake up in the middle of the night and go, God, I gotta take better care of the writers, you know. I just you know, honey, I think about that, and.
Honey, why can't you sleep? I just keep thinking about the writers.
Keep thinking about the writers. You know those pesky songwriters or you know, they have kids, and I suppose they should be able to feed them.
I need to help them.
But the thing is that there is no music business without a song. Without music and the opportunity to really work on a daily basis and an amaze staff I mean Ascaps one hundred and ten years old, but to be able to show up. And I have friends on both sides of the island, and this is not a collaborative environment we're living in right now.
You know, it's like Terry 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, like I was. I've had great success, but I'm a blue collar writer. I write songs. You got something, you need a song? I love sitting down and chasing the words.
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?
They did not hover while I was writing. I did not hover while they were recording, but I but I would get a phone call. You know the great thing about Karen and Richard when we were introduced to them, they opened up the door, said, this is Karen and Richard. I think you know it was herb Alpert and Chuck Kay introducing the two of them to Roger and I.
Nobody knew who we were.
And Karen and Richard when we loved your Steve Lawrence got the Drifter, and we loved rowing pony By, you know, I mean they knew all these songs we'd written that nobody knew. I mean it was like never been on the radio, but they were fans. When the phone would ring and it would be Karen Love be in my office with Roger we're writing, and she'd be over in the recording studiency you want to hear, and you go over there and you hear. I mean rainy days on Mondays.
Let me be the one. I want less to deal with it. You know, it's like and when an angel sings your songs, your life changes.
Oh god, and in that way that you mentioned about Crosby, when you're writing for Crosby. Whatever, it's been a while, I think this is still the This is accurate. What's a Nick Tosh's book about Dean Martin. He wrote that great biography of Dean Mark Goldino and he says that Martin puts a record on the turntable by it's bing Crosby. They takes it off, 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.
You know.
And the fact is that the great thing about what I think we do is you don't have to give up your fan cards. So if I'm in a room in Quincy Walks and I, oh my god, there's Q and that maybe which you see on the service, but inside there's apartment that's going, I'm like, God, that's Quincy Jones.
You know.
At this point in my life, it's like that whole thing, you know, that whole thing with Scrooge writing for Scrooge. One of the great examples of what's turning in my life is that I'm asked to write songs about somebody who's having his spiritual awakening while I'm having a spiritual.
Awakening live from the front.
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.
Let me just end by saying, do you have any idea how talented you are? Did you really own that in your life? I've just sat there and go, Man, You've done some amazing things, beautiful things. Do you have any idea how talented you are? Do you kind of enjoy that a bit?
I wish I could introduce you to all of them. I wish I could introduce you to the kid that watched a movie about Jane froman called with a Song of My Heart and wound up like walking into it my office the first time at ASCAP, and on the wall next to my thing was the printed sheet music from with a Song of My Heart. I was the first thing with music in it that I ever loved. In that there's some sort of magic going on here.
I haven't quite figured it out yet, but that seems to be one of the things that I am most open to is right now, it just come to me when you need to. With this one. This may be the last big journey whatever, but I think that it's absolutely, absolutely magical, and I don't think that we could have planned any of it. And at the same token, in early sobriety, I've read the writing of Emmett Fox, and he talks about what we dwell on, we create, that
thoughts become things. And if you are inspired, you know in a fashion that is loving, you know, and to the highest good of all concerned. What you dwell on you may experience soon in your life or perhaps later. Phantom of the Paradise opened to nobody in the theater and they closed the can Film Festival with it this year.
Sometimes a dream doesn't come until you're all about just ready to walk away from this life and you go, wow, there's still some wow moments left, I know, for both of us, and I admire you.
There's not a word yet for old friends. You just man, there you go, you got it.
Thank you. My thanks to musicians, songwriter and actor Williams. I'll leave you with a little more of Paul Williams performing I won't last a day without you. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that's brought to you by iHeart Radio.
And there's no getting on that range.
When my storm lust, the dreams won't go one d bucketing.
Madness, the world lesting you.
But I want less today without you