A Conversation with Bill Withers (continued)

PM: This idea of where songs come from is interesting. I interview a lot of songwriters and they all have different takes on the subject. On the one hand, you have a writer like Smokey Robinson who says that all songs come from God. On the other you have David Gates from Bread who says that songs don't come from an outside source, but rather from his own experiments with melody and chord changes. Both great writers, with different ideas...

BW: I think the whole fun part about it is not really understanding it. [laughs] Like I said, there's enough stuff in our lives. I mean, I'm sitting in here in my wife's office, and everything is a computer and all this kind of stuff. A palm pilot. Everything is something that you've got to do this to make this happen and you push this button and you do this and do that. It's kind of fun just to walk around with something that just happens sometimes. Maybe I might be just lazy about trying to figure everything out, but it's sort of individual. I think when we write songs or books, it's feelings that we have that we would like somebody else to know about, and we hope they kind of feel the same way. And then sometimes it gets down to, you know, what can I say here that rhymes with "fruit."

PM: You gave the world some great songs and albums in your career, and that should be enough. But then there are many fans who say, "But just think of all the great music that Bill Withers could've made or has been making that we haven't heard over the past 20 years."

BW: Well, you know, I'm in the process now of trying to gather up all of these thoughts that I've had and maybe trying to put stuff together. I'm 65 now. Friends of mine are starting to die and nobody really asks why. So I'm at the age of mortality or at least thinking about it. And sometimes I think, "If I don't organize this stuff and do something with it, somebody will probably come in here after I'm dead and throw it in the trash can."

I'm always flattered when somebody like you calls and we have a conversation, because it causes me to think about times when I was a different guy. In other words, that guy in his thirties who did most of the stuff that people bring up to me now, that guy is gone.

And I think back, and some things I liked about that guy and some things I didn't. And some things I don't know about that guy. But when I look in the mirror now, I don't see that same guy. You know what I mean? The things that I think about are different now. Then, there was a certain innocence that's not here anymore. A lot of stuff changes in your life. There was an energy that's not here anymore. But there are other things in its place. I like things now that I didn't like then. And I don't like things now that I liked then. My opinions have changed. A lot of things are different. It would be interesting to see what this age and this guy would say now.

PM: Yes, I think so.

BW: I'm using all these self-motivating tools, and when somebody like you says, 'Yeah man, you should do something else,' I try to use that. I try to transfer all of these things into motivation and an energy that will make me move. Art's kind of in your head. I need to move from the art stage, where I just sit around and think, to the craft stage--where I actually start doing stuff. I mean, I built this little studio in my house. I've got all this equipment that I don't know how to operate, because I just haven't felt like sitting around reading books and doing it.

You've heard of the term "borrowed equity"? That's when you take somebody else's energy or notoriety or anything, and you try to incorporate it into yourself. So, just talking to you--you're obviously a young person with energy and a certain amount of ambition--I try to steal some of that so it'll make me get up out of this chair and think about doing something rather than just going and seeing what Judge Judy's talking about today. [laughs] Or the big trap for me, Court TV. [laughs] There are all kinds of things. My wife just got me a membership in the gym to start trying get moving around.

PM: I play your records all the time and they still sound fresh to me. I would love to hear you sing again.

BW: I appreciate that. Hopefully, I can get fired up here at least enough to get up out of this chair. Thank you so much for your validation and maybe I can try to live up to some of it.

[If your listening library lacks Bill Withers and you're looking for something to start with, we suggest Lean On Me: The Best of Bill Withers. Also, the good people at Columbia/Legacy have begun re-releasing newly remastered versions of his classic albums, with Menagerie and Still Bill already available and more coming soon. We're eagerly anticipating the mid-October 2005 release of Just As I Am in the DualDisc format. (A DualDisc is a single disc with playable information on both of its sides, in this case a re-mastered CD of the original 1971 album on side A, with live performances and other extras including a new, half-hour filmed conversation with Bill Withers on the DVD flip-side.)

[Interviewer Bill DeMain appeared in these pages originally as an interviewee: he and Molly Felder, the duo known as Swan Dive, were the first artists we interviewed in our premier issue in 2000. We also had Bill and Molly back for another Q & A in issue #40. (You can find out more about Swan Dive at their site, www.swandive.org.) Bill has recently been contributing reviews to Puremusic, in this month's issue covering albums by Cibelle and Sam Cooke.]

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