n Adam Behr
Bill Withers: Songs for the world to lean on His relationship with record company finally deteriorated due to what he saw as the failure of the “blaxperts” – his label for the record company personnel – to accommodate his own style Photo: onetwothreefourfive / Flickr.com
E
ven before Bill Withers passed away from heart complications at the end of March, his 1972 hit Lean on Me had already become something of a marker for public solidarity in the face of the coronavirus. From schoolchildren in Scotland, to quarantined apartment residents in Dallas and online virtual choirs around the world, the song has been a prominent feature of musical responses to the crisis. This is unsurprising. It was already a staple of charity concerts, and had been performed at the presidential inaugurations of both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Its appeal, like much of Withers’ music, lies in its accessibility, universality and the simplicity with which it aligns the spiritual and the secular. Simple, however, isn’t the same as easy. What made Withers distinctive was the extensive applicability of his songs, and the deceptive ease with which he packed straightforward structures with emotional content. This was of a piece with his background and uncharacteristic path into – and out of – music making. Having grown up in the hard-
Bill Withers arrives at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony
scrabble mining town of Slab Fork, West Virginia, he arrived in Los Angeles to begin a music career – self-taught and having overcome a stutter – after a nine-year stint in the US Navy. Uncertain and rough around the edges, he kept his job at the aircraft factory throughout the recording of his first album. He had to be told by an impressed Graham Nash: “You don’t know how good you are”, and can be seen carrying his factory lunch box on the cover of his debut album. This is reflected in his work, which carries an air of understate-
14 ColdType | Mid-April 2020 | www.coldtype.net
ment that reinforces its effect. Having imbibed the country music as well as the gospel of his hometown, Withers straddled the traditional hinterland of soul music and the emerging “singer-songwriter” format, and has been described as “the last African-American Everyman”. His rich baritone notwithstanding, and despite undoubted vocal prowess (the long-held note on Lovely Day, for instance) he largely eschewed the pushing at the edges of the range that marked much soul music of the 60s, and the vocal gymnastics that followed in the 1980s. His songs, also, veered away from the punch and pomp of the genre. As he described it in a 2009 BBC documentary, the record companies had a different idea: “They didn’t want me to do anything quiet. They had this rhythm and blues syndrome in their mind, with the horns, and the three chicks and the gold lamé suit, and I wasn’t really into that. I had a job … I don’t need you guys”. The power of Withers’ music rests in the way it aligns the purely personal with wider concerns, often through straight description,
