I used to play small clubs, like the Troubadour. ‘I’ve gotten more attention 50 years later than I did then. ‘It wasn’t that big a deal,’ remembers Bill.
Despite the sales and Grammy awards weighing down his mantelpiece, he’s refreshingly self-deprecating. Lean On Me came the following year, then Use Me, both selling millions of copies.įrom 1976 Bill released an album each year with Naked & Warm (1976), Menagerie (1977, containing the classic Lovely Day) and ‘Bout Love (1978). We should probably write that on a bathroom wall.’Īin’t No Sunshine featured on his debut album Just As I Am and was the start of a golden period. I only need to be musical enough to make a package to wrap my poetry.’ ‘I don’t know an F-sharp from Ninth Street. ‘I don’t have any particular technique,’ he continues. Sometimes you’re just scratching yourself, you get a thought and you pursue that. That helped inspire it, but there are always different things. ‘With Ain’t No Sunshine, I remember watching a movie, Days of Wine and Roses with Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon. But he doesn’t believe there are any secrets to the success of his songs. Lean on Me and Use Me were among a line of hits that followed. ‘I recorded Ain’t No Sunshine and some other songs, and there it was: I was in the music business,’ says Bill. The song became a hit and went on to win a Grammy but to him, there’s no magic around its creation, or any of his other hits. I only need to be musical enough to make a package to wrap my poetry.’Īin’t No Sunshine, released in 1971, is widely credited as the song that broke Bill and his music. ‘But they did give me a gold toilet seat when I found success.’ ‘We actually made the whole bathroom for 747s but I guess it’s more romantic to tell a slightly different story,’ Bill says, eyes gleaming. The rumour is at one point he was installing toilets in planes. He ended up doing menial factory work while he hawked his musical wares around LA. Instead he remembers country music on the radio, blues coming out of houses and songs sung in church before he moved to Los Angeles in the mid-sixties to work in the navy.īill says: ‘I was an aircraft mechanic, then approaching 30, I decided to try and pursue music.’ For him, music wasn’t initially a calling. Bill was the youngest of six and the first man in his family who wasn’t a coalminer. It’s a humble attitude that perhaps stems from his family beginnings in West Virginia. He said, “Maybe we’ll pick you up in a limo because we have to go in the back to avoid the paparazzi.” I laughed: “Joe, you guys go ahead. He says: ‘Joe Walsh recently invited me to dinner with Paul McCartney. I was joking with him I said, “I looked that word up and was happy to find out it had nothing to do with the care or feeding of raccoons”.’īill’s low-key profile means no-one recognises him in the hotel bar or gives him any unwanted attention. He says: ‘Paul McCartney sent a nice congratulatory note. Attired in a BB King T-shirt, comfy trousers and cardigan, he seems bemused by the adulation shown to him. They continue to shine via samples and new renditions by the likes of Ed Sheeran and Paul McCartney.ĭespite this, in the hotel the day before he receives the award, Bill is refreshingly absent of any pomp. Ain’t No Sunshine, Lean On Me, Just The Two Of Us… they’re staples in films, radio, TV, adverts, weddings. While his music business dealings ended in the mid-eighties after the release of final album Watching You, Watching Me, his creations are as alive now as when they were first released. So it’s reassuring to know you had some impact while you were here.’Īt almost 80, Bill may be a modest music industry veteran but he has little to worry about when it comes to his legacy. You’ve got two choices: you’re either meaningless or meaningful. ‘But it’s nice really,’ he continues in his Virginian drawl. It’s coming up to my time to die,’ he laughs. ‘I said to my daughter I must be in the “running out of time” line. It followed his 2015 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and sparked a mischievous, yet macabre train of thought. He’s heard this one before, but the revered songwriter was treated to a first in May when he received the PRS for Music Special International Award from George Clinton at the Ivor Novello Awards. Answer? Put it in a microwave until its Bill Withers. The legendary songwriter is responding to a question about how best to turn a duck into a soul singer. When there’s a joke with you in it, you’ve made it,’ winks Bill Withers.
Jim Ottewill gets a rare meeting with a songwriter who chose to leave show business and let his hits do the talking… As penner of Lean On Me and Ain’t No Sunshine, Bill Withers is behind some of pop’s most eternal moments, yet he walked out of the industry more than 30 years ago.
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