My routine this morning was jarred by reading of the peaceful death of one of my heroes, Paul Williams. Paul's wife, Cindy Lee Berryhill, announced it this morning on her Facebook page. Paul was someone I never met in person, but with whom I exchanged several letters through the years before his mental faculties declined due to premature onset of Alzheimer's Disease brought on by his head injury in the mid-Nineties.
Paul's brilliance led him to many different intellectual pursuits during the years, including helping develop the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He was not a person who stood still...his mind was vigorous and inquisitive. My first exposure to Paul's nonmusical writing came through Das Energi, a book which had a profound influence on the nature of how people think about human creativity. Paul was better known for his writing in music, which was my baptism into the world of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks's Smile work. Paul's conversation with David Anderle is a brilliant expedition into the world and creative mindset of Brian Wilson during those months in 1966 when music flowed through Brian like water over a dam's spillway after a monsoon. If you have never read anything else about Smile, Paul and David's conversation is the gold standard in music journalism on this topic.
Paul's comprehension of the humanity and complexities of the artists he wrote about is what makes his writing so essential. He did not bring presuppositions to the artists he covered, and was not scared of being labeled as being "unhip." Paul's work in Crawdaddy Magazine in the Sixties was groundbreaking for his refusal to write only what the counterculture of the time believed was worthwhile. He drew analogies with writers and composers outside of the Rock Era, and then went about proving his points cogently.
In this respect, Paul's writing is outside of it's time, yet also brilliant within the context of the cultural periods he was examining. His reflections on so many artist's creative output go far beyond whether a given composition or album was "good" or not, and delve into the realm of his own subjective response to the music. In this sense, Paul understood there was no objectivity he as a writer or critic could fall back on. In the process of hearing or seeing an artist's creation, the marriage of experience and perspectives of the composer and the listener he saw as the only true evaluation that a listener or observer can give someone else's creation. Through the laws of cognitive association, our minds search for a context in which to make sense of new music or art. Paul understood that sometimes, there is no association to fall back on.
Paul's book on his 100 favorite singles is an example of how his exploration into his reactions to music were governed by his emotions and intellect. The conversation that he has with the reader throughout the singles book is as if we are sitting with him in our music room and he has brought a backpack full of his favorite singles to play for us. His reflections on rediscovering Rock Music in the Nineties in his MAP book is a similar experience for the reader. He does not tell us what to like, he shares with us what he likes, and why he prefers the selections he has made.
Not being a huge Dylan listener, his work on Dylan opened my mind to the work Dylan has created through the years, and allowed me to set aside my presuppositions about Dylan's work. More than Griel Marcus, or other writers, Paul's exploration of the humanity of Dylan's music made him accessible to me. I thank him for that.
The letters I exchanged with Paul usually centered on music. I profoundly respect his openness to being surprised, delighted, and moved by music. I treasure a copy of his How Deep Is the Ocean book on Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys which he inscribed to me. He told me he liked my notes for The Beach Boys' Capitol Years Boxed Set. His reflections on the 1993 Good Vibrations Boxed Set are the best discussion I have read on that set and perhaps some of the best writing ever put down on The Beach Boys.
Paul's quality of life deteriorated over the last few years as the Alzheimers Disease advanced. Cindy Lee Berryhill's illustrated reflections on his life with Alzheimers and traumatic brain injury are deeply loving and yet so similar to my own with my mother as she descended into the depths of that disease. In the end, we all have Paul's writing and his deep and abiding openness to life to celebrate, and his memory lives on in his family and the people his writing so deeply touched.
copyright 2013 by Peter Reum-All Rights Reserved
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