The evening before Elaine Stricht left New York for Michigan, she spent listening to Paul Williams at the Cafe Carlyle and after Paul dedicated the nights performance to Elaine said "you're the warmest human being I've ever seen on stage"
High praise but one that appears to be all too true. This is indicative by Paul's generous reply to songwriter and the writer of our Cafe Carlyle review, Jack Phillips inquiries into the process of writing as follows:
"People always asked me if I studied music. I never did. If anything I studied people after a time but from the beginning writing was always very therapeutic. A place to plop down all the mixed and passionate emotions of youth and love, returned and otherwise. My music schooling has been largely my collaborators. I learned from Roger Nichols, Kenny Ascher, probably every time I sit with a composer I take away a little information about how they work.
“It’s very organic for me these days. I get out of the way. If I have an assignment to write I’ll read the details of the scene, character or situation I’m writing for .. then not think about it for a day or two. While I’m not thinking about it my inner creative unconscious is doing the real work. So when I sit down to write it may feel like it’s coming out of thin air but I believe it’s something I have been silently working on .. It’s like when you’re trying to remember the name of a movie or someone from your past. The harder you work at it the further away it runs … Think about something else and after a bit it will pop into your head on it’s own.
“That’s the creative process for me. Get out of the way. Don’t stand on the hose.
“It’s all a gift. No matter what. All a gift.”
These two tell you something about the great Williams process. He allows his subconscious to work and he s a naturally warm person and that warmth comes through organically.
Watching Paul at Cafe Carlyle, a set I was less enthralled with than Jack, I was impressed with how he built to places you didn't quite see coming. It is not a joyful evening, it is warm but a little sad, and 23 years of sobriety can't hide that strange deep well of sadness. The set is constructed to get to "You're Gone". Paul tells of going to the home of professional country and mainstream songwriter Jon Vezner, who Paul wanted to compose with and being intimidated by the brusque man, till he saw the Alcoholics Anonymous "Serenity Prayer" on the wall of the bathroom. A fellow traveler! They embraced and wrote togethe rDiamond Rio's "You're Gone". Much better by Williams himself, you can find it on his terrific I'm Going Back There Some Day,
The song emcompasses so much of Paul's genius. He is extremely, intensely personal. It couldn't be more personal, but it can be shared by many. Williams, broken from alcohol and other drug abuse, finds love and gets sober, but loses the love in the process. It is warm and sad, personal and sharing. I had been discussing John Lennon with Jack Phillips before the set began, and Lennon, the reason he is greater than McCartney, is because he makes the objective political life very very personal. Williams takes his most human moments and makes them so easily shared by all.
Williams tells how at the age of 27 Williams was living on his mother's coach and how she would tell him everything was gonna be alright and then wander off muttering to herself: "I'm talking to myself and feeling old…"
So warm and sad, so touching and universal. Williams is right, it is a gift and one he didn't actually get through sobriety, rather it is perhaps innate? Inherited? Something deep inside of him. And I don't think he understands himself when he claims "from the beginning writing was always very therapeutic. A place to plop down all the mixed and passionate emotions of youth and love, returned and otherwise…" It seems to me that it isn't a question of scripting his passions in rhyme, but rather reaching somewhere else where the ego is submerged and the emotions that flood out are more eternal and shared.
The evening before Elaine Stricht left New York for Michigan, she spent listening to Paul Williams at the Cafe Carlyle and after Paul dedicated the nights performance to Elaine said "you're the warmest human being I've ever seen on stage"