Bill Withers Lives
By Michael A. Gonzales
Contrary to popular belief, Singer/songwriter Bill Withers is not dead. So take heart, fans who never stopped bumping his laidback 70s soul classics “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Lean On Me”—the man is still alive and writing music. “Jesse Jackson recently called me to find out if I was still alive,” Withers told a reporter in 2006. “He said his wife was walking around the house upset because she heard that I had died. We get a lot of those calls from foreign countries and everything. I’m used to it by now.”
In their lovingly enlightening documentary Still Bill, filmmakers Damani Baker and Alex Vlack have constructed a brilliant portrait of a musician who’s currently more in tune with his family than with show business and the endless demands of stardom. As Withers admits candidly, “The fame game was kicking my ass.”
Like many of us who grew up in the 1970s, Living Colour vocalist Corey Glover, who performed a riveting version of Withers’ jealous guy anthem “Who is He (And What is He to You?)” at a tribute concert in Brooklyn last year, was raised under the spell of Bill.
“When I was a kid, we played that tape in my fathers Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme,” remembers Glover, whose performance was captured in the documentary. “Those are some of my earliest memories of Bill Withers. Driving with my family to cookouts and picnics while everyone sang along to ‘Lean on Me’. His music is literally therapeutic for him and us. To me, he is what Bob Dylan wants to be.”
After writing and recording a classic catalog that includes “Harlem,” “Use Me,” “Lovely Day,” “Just the Two of Us” and many others, Bill Withers left the industry in 1985 and never looked back. Yet, while his music continues to be sampled by producers like Teddy Riley (“No Diggity”) and used in film soundtracks (Jackie Brown), many seem to have forgotten the man behind songs.
“This is my first tribute concert,” Withers says matter-of-factly in Still Bill as he enters Prospect Park. Produced by Hal Willner in conjunction with Celebrate Brooklyn, the concert featured performances by Angelique Kidjo, Corey Glover, Nona Hendryx, The Swell Season, James “Blood” Ulmer, Sandra St. Victor, The Persuasions, Eric Mingus, Jim James, Howard Tate and Henry Grimes backed by a great band featuring Lenny Pickett, Steven Bernstein and Cornell Dupree.
However, the biggest thrill for the thousands gathered that balmy August night in 2008, was when the man himself stepped to the stage and sang the achingly autobiographical “Grandma’s Hands.”
Lounging in their Chelsea office space laughing at the memory, the Still Bill directors remember well the first time that the singer decided to take to the stage twenty-three years after walking away from the business. “We thought he was going to the bathroom or to get a drink or something,” says Vlack. He and co-director Baker have known each other since they were teenagers growing-up in the Bay Area twenty years ago. “We had no idea that he was headed to the stage.”
See if you recognize the sample in this Blackstreet & Dr. Dre banger? Yup, it’s Still Bill.
Ten years in the making, Still Bill is a rare kind of music documentary, one that doesn’t fit into the usual ripped-off, drugged-out, and messed-up template of so many American soul men. But my one problem with the film is how they completely avoided talking about his first marriage to actress Denise Nicolas in 1973.
When they divorced a year later, reportedly after he had assaulted her on the set of the Fred Williamson’s blaxploitation flick The Soul of Nigger Charley, Withers told Jet magazine, “I’m too old fashioned to have married an actress. I couldn’t deal with things like her doing kissing scenes with other men in movies. I could never accept that. The world today would look on me as being very square and narrow-minded, perhaps. But, man, that’s the way I am.”
However, as Baker explains, “We wanted to make a movie that came from Bill the father, Bill the husband as well as Bill the musician. We weren’t interested in making a Behind The Music episode.”
Vlack once played in a cover band that performed Withers’ material and Baker recalls his pops playing Withers’ Live at Carnegie Hall disc repeatedly. The fact that both men were devoted fans of Withers helps explain why they invested nearly ten years researching and making this film.
“There wasn’t much on the internet when we began in 1999, but we did find some magazine articles on EBay,” says Vlack. “Then, somebody passed us his wife Marsha’s email address and we built from there. It still took a long time.”
“But, I guess you never lost hope,” I say in a corny way.
“Oh, we did lose hope, but luckily it kept coming back,” he laughs. The film remains a labor of love, and enough of a grassroots project that Vlack and Baker remain very open to local screenings—until they can secure major distribution. The film makers encourage SoulSummer readers to hit em up at the official Still Bill website to request a command performance in your area.
One of the most interesting aspects of Still Bill is the amazing archival footage from The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, Soul!, and various BBC specials. “If we were doing a documentary on Stevie Wonder, it might’ve been easier to find more material,” explains Baker. “But, with Bill, he really didn’t make that many appearances and didn’t have any video footage of himself.”
While the filmmakers interviewed friends and admirers Grover Washington Jr., Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and Angelique Kidjo, it’s fellow singer/songwriter Sting that best sums up Bill Withers’ music when he says, “The hardest thing to be in music is simple, yet profound.”
Like Curtis Mayfield and Sam Cooke before him, Withers also understood the business of music as much as he did his own art. Indeed, retaining the publishing on most of his songs, has given Withers a very comfortable life. Yet, what best comes across is how regular a dude he is, reminding me of my own grandfather and uncles.
“Bill was always a simple kind of guy,” recalls guitarist Craig McMullen, who played on a few gigs with Withers including The Tonight Show and the vintage concert series Midnight Special. “He was a more down-home boy who never had an entourage; working with Bill was like kickin’ it with a homie.”
While Withers admitted to Wax Poetics writer Dan Nishimoto in 2006 the he “can’t really play the guitar,” he still managed to strum just what he needed to convey the messages of life, love, pain and joy in his timeless material. “Bill played just enough guitar to do what he did,” agrees McMullen. “But, what he did was really good.”
Watching how the music business grinds down even the toughest superstars, you can’t really blame Bill Withers for shunning the spotlight. Withers devotees will just have to make do with this documentary for now. But anytime he
feels like blessing us with a few tunes, rest assured that we’ll all be here for Bill—still.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
thanks for the memories-one of my favorite artists.