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In 1972, while visiting California, a friend of a friend got me into an A&M recording session. The singer in the studio was Paul Williams who was primarily known at the time as a songwriter for other singers, notably The Carpenters. They had just had a big hit with one of his songs, so Williams decided to record an album of his own version of his songs. This was the song he was working on the day I visited. It’s a perfect Monday song.
Thanks to YouTuber marvin santiago
Williams was a minor celebrity when I was a kid. I remember him from Phantom of the Paradise as the villain… When he appeared on variety shows, the working joke was that he was short…
He is 5’2″. He tells a funny story in an interview of meeting the 6’5″ Pat McCormack on a movie set, who said that looking down at Williams is like doing aerial photography.
That got an LOL out of me, this morning…
Nice music, Jack! Thanks!
Last night I was watching a Beatles documentary on PBS and was told that they were so turned off by the experiences they had on their US tour in 1966(?) that they decided to totally remake themselves and never appeared live in concert again, only performing publicly live as a group once, one day on top of the building where their recording studio was!! They appeared much older by then. I had not really followed them but was quite surprised at that. Is that common knowledge??
Well, the Beatles had gotten very tired touring, and with the crowds and the large venues, they could barely hear each other’s instruments, so some of those concerts were pretty raw, musically. They also became more intrigued by what could be done in the studio by playing around with multiple tracks and tape editing. And of course by that time they were taking psychedelics which influenced their later music.
That last rooftop performance is pretty famous. They sung “Hey Jude,” “Lady Madonna,” and “Let It Be.” Here in the US it was broadcast on television on The Smothers Brothers Show which was a pretty popular variety/comedy show. I remember watching that rooftop concert on it as a teenager.
What a lovely version of the song, and nice to hear the original writer’s ‘vision’ of it (although I loved the Carpenters’ version too). Love that cello at the end. I always liked Paul Williams; he was everywhere back in the day. That must have been quite the experience, getting to see him at work in a studio…wow…
Thanks, Patti. As I remember it, for almost the whole three hours I was there, he and his producer were working on getting the last few measures phrased just the way they wanted it…”Yes, walk on around, Oh some kind of lonely clown, Rainy days and Mondays always get…me a-down.”