{"id":14840,"date":"2018-07-10T05:30:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-10T09:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=14840"},"modified":"2018-07-11T07:51:13","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T11:51:13","slug":"paul-williams-someday-and-today-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/07\/10\/paul-williams-someday-and-today-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Williams: “Someday” and Today (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Boutique record label Ship to Shore is releasing a vinyl reissue of Someday Man<\/i>, the 1970 album by Paul Williams. A singer, songwriter, actor and all-around celebrity, Paul Williams was an ubiquitous fixture of pop culture \u2013 especially in the United States \u2013 throughout the 1970s. The blond, bespectacled Williams had a hand in the success of some of that era’s biggest names; on his own or with collaborator Roger Nichols, Williams wrote songs that would become massive hits for the Carpenters, Three Dog Night, Helen Reddy, Barbra Streisand and others.<\/p>\n

Williams and Nichols wrote songs for the films Bugsy Malone<\/i> and A Star is Born<\/i>, and Williams’ acting career included prominent roles in Smokey & the Bandit<\/i> and a starring role in Brian DePalma’s camp classic Phantom of the Paradise<\/i>. (Williams also wrote the music for the latter film).<\/p>\n

Williams wrote the lyrics to the theme for the long-running TV show Love Boat<\/i>, wrote the popular song \u201cRainbow Connection\u201d for the Muppets, and was a frequent guest on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show<\/i>, appearing nearly fifty times. To date he has earned a Grammy Award, multiple Golden Globe and Oscar nominations and an Oscar win.<\/p>\n

After lowering his profile and going into recovery \u2013 he’s been sober 27 years \u2013 Williams continued his creative endeavors in a more behind-the-scenes manner. He was elected President of creative rights society ASCAP in 2009 (a position he holds to this day), collaborated with Daft Punk on the duo’s 2013 album Random Access Memories<\/i>, and appeared in the 2017 film Baby Driver<\/i>.<\/p>\n

But before that staggering run of accomplishments got underway, Paul Williams was a struggling actor \u2013 and then a struggling songwriter \u2013 trying to eke out a living in Los Angeles. He thought that The Chase<\/i>, a 1966 Arthur Penn film starring Marlon Brando, would be his entry into a serious film career, but in the end Williams had only a small part in the movie. But while on the set, something happened that helped set in motion the rest of his life. \u201cI bought and started playing with a little guitar,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd all of a sudden that little guitar and me were sitting up all night.\u201d He began getting together with like-minded musician friends. \u201cThey would sit and play my songs with me,\u201d Williams says.<\/p>\n

Soon he landed a job in music as a staff songwriter with White Whale Records, the label run by Lee Lasseff and Ted Feigin, and home to the Turtles. While White Whale initially seemed enthusiastic at having Williams on staff, they quickly cooled to the idea. Called into the front office mere weeks after being signed to a $50-a-week deal, Williams was told, \u201cWe don’t think you have a future in the music business.\u201d He watched as his contract was torn in two.<\/p>\n

Out of work \u2013 \u201cI remember going home and thinking, ‘Oh my God, now what do I do? How do I even tell my girlfriend?’\u201d he says \u2013 Williams headed over to the record label run by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss. \u201cI showed up at A&M as an out of work actor in a stolen car,\u201d he says, clearly enjoying the telling of a story he’s shared countless times. \u201cWell,\u201d he adds after a pregnant pause, \u201cit was actually just borrowed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alpert and Moss liked what Williams had to offer, and introduced him to composer Roger Nichols. The two immediately got to work. \u201cRoger played me a melody \u2013 which I really liked \u2013 and I took it home and wrote lyrics to it,\u201d he says. \u201cI brought it back the next day. It was called ‘It\u2019s Hard to Say Goodbye,’ and was recorded by Claudine Longet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams scored an early success when his song \u201cFill Your Heart\u201d (co-written with Biff Rose) was recorded by Tiny Tim and released as the flip of the worldwide smash \u201cTiptoe Through the Tulips.\u201d David Bowie would cover the song on his 1971 LP Hunky Dory<\/i>. Williams and Nichols’ \u201cSomeday Man\u201d was recorded by the Monkees and featured as the b-side of the 1969 single \u201cListen to the Band.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1968, Williams assembled a group \u2013 primarily as a studio project \u2013 called the Holy Mackerel; the rather fluid lineup would feature him plus brother Mentor Williams, former Turtles drummer Don Murray, longtime Elvis Presley bassist Jerry Scheff, and (briefly) Buffalo Springfield drummer Dewey Martin. Reprise Records released the band’s eponymously-titled LP in 1968, by which time The Holy Mackerel had broken up. Neither the album nor any of its three singles would chart.<\/p>\n

But shortly after the end of The Holy Mackerel chapter in Williams’ budding career, he embarked on another project, the making of his first solo album. With music by Nichols and lyrics by Williams, Someday Man<\/i> would be a showcase for the pop music the singer-songwriter was so skilled at creating.<\/p>\n

Paul Williams’ songwriting has always had a decidedly mainstream pop character; though he later discovered ’50s rock ‘n’ roll by working his way backward from his beloved Beatles, the songs he wrote generally tended to come down on the soft-pop, folk and even MOR (middle of the road) end of the music landscape. But there would always be glimmers of musical ambition and sophistication, even in those relatively straightforward pop songs. With the benefit of 40-plus years of hindsight, a good argument can be made that Williams’ late 1960s and early ’70s songwriting is in a class with some of the best pop composers of that era, a list that includes Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson.<\/p>\n

But Williams dismisses such notions; he sees himself as an unsophisticated songwriter. Still, he sees value in that characterization. \u201cI was never sophisticated enough to be a real failure,\u201d he says. \u201cI think I write from the center of my chest. And when I write honestly about stuff that I feel, people relate to it. Because we\u2019re all equipped with the same set of emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boutique record label Ship to Shore is releasing a vinyl reissue of Someday Man, the 1970 album by Paul Williams. A singer, songwriter, actor and all-around celebrity, Paul Williams was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,51,64,73],"tags":[1670],"class_list":["post-14840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-pop","category-reissue","category-vinyl","tag-paul-williams","cat-41-id","cat-51-id","cat-64-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14840"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14846,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14840\/revisions\/14846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}