The Harder They Fall

by Gary Stromberg

  You read in Emerson’s essay he talks about the artist using mead, drink, tobacco, whatever, that it’s the nature of the artist to open up these doors with these substances. Hemingway would get plowed and stand at his mantel and pour out brilliance. So I became really defiant about my drug and alcohol use. I drank and used very much in public. I sat there and smoked and drank on The Tonight Show and was glib. But I was not glib because of the alcohol. My ability to entertain people or act/react within the moment was not connected to the drug. The drug was the confidence-builder, but the confidence-builder working hand-in-hand with the success I was having. So how do you separate the two? What’s giving me confidence? Drugs or the success?

  You’re the wave, as Deepak Chopra says. Behind that wave is an ocean. And it’s all connected. The ideas are flying around and you can tap into them. And probably thirty thousand other people in the universe could have tapped into that same idea at the same moment. I wrote a song called “Magical Mystery Tour” about the time The Beatles were writing theirs. Theirs actually did better!

  As time passed, I became a recluse. I never went out. Chris Caswell, my keyboardist—we were just in New York, and it was the day off before recording a soundtrack we were working on. We were running around and went to the Metropolitan Museum. As we grabbed a cab, I hear Chris behind me say, “God, I can’t get used to it. It’s so weird to see you out there, Paul, running in front of me there on the street. Because you never left the hotel!”

  I mean, I would take the limo to the airport, go up to the Admiral’s Club, have a drink, go at the last minute, of course, drink on the plane, go in the limo to the hotel, into the hotel room where I stayed until showtime. This was my MO; I hid out. Sure I went through the hippie years, but I was never comfortable sitting on the edge of the pier naked in the sun with a bunch of people. I was really good in a darkened room, at my best peeping out the venetian blinds at 4 a.m. watching the “tree police.” (That’s what I started calling my imaginary adversaries lurking in the dark. Life at the edge of hallucination can be exhausting, you know, but seldom boring!)

  So the songwriting was an accident. I love the idea that while I’m telling this story, new stuff will happen. And to really see for the first time that those two things happened at the same time—my creativity being born and my addiction. How easy it was to assume they were connected.

  As I look back, I realize that I was such a throwback in some ways musically. I wrote dreamy, catchy romantic songs … my lyrics were so vulnerable … “That’s enough for me,” “If I can make you cry,” “If I can fill your eyes with pleasure just by holding you, in the early hours of the morning … when the day that lies ahead’s not quite begun … ah well, that’s enough for me, that’s all the hero I need to be,” “I smile to think of you and I … and how our pleasure makes you cry.” And then at the end of the song, “How our pleasure makes me cry.” I was saying stuff that I think a lot of guys were not writing at that time. “We’ve Only Just Begun” was the number-one record in the country around the time “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” by the Iron Butterfly was the number-one album. My songs were almost alternative at the time.

  Something in my DNA went back to the music that I’d heard and knew. The first rock and roll that I loved was The Beatles. It was a big deal for me to get an Elvis cut when I got an Elvis cut, but I didn’t give a rat’s ass about Elvis when I was a kid. I didn’t listen to rock and roll in high school; I listened to Sinatra. It was a sense of being a part of a movement; there was safety in that. I see now that part of the attraction of The Beatles was the camaraderie. I saw this camaraderie in the band which I never had in my life.

  I wasn’t the only one who was writing intimacy, but I didn’t know anything about having a relationship and yet that’s what I was writing about with great intimacy and great identification. When you look closely at my lyrics, it’s pretty clear I’ve written a lot of songs that are basically codependent anthems. The idea of a healthy world and a balanced relationship never quite found its way into my songwriting. Let’s face it, “I Won’t Last a Day Without You” isn’t the healthiest of thoughts. So I didn’t know anything about how to have a relationship, but I’m writing songs about relationships—deeply personal, vulnerable. And the relationship that I’m developing is a relationship with drugs.

  I wrote when I was high and when I wasn’t. What the amphetamines and cocaine were good for was staying up. ’Cause I didn’t want to go home alone, so I would stay at A & M and write with anybody who would write with me. And all Chuck Kaye wanted me to do was write with Roger Nichols, to go home, get some sleep, and come back and write with Roger. Roger and I would write, and songs were getting recorded. We were productive and very successful. Roger was my music school. It was an amazing time of growth and learning for me. We’d write our songs, and Roger would eventually do something that I hadn’t gotten the hang of: Going home to bed! He’d go sleep and return the next morning around 10 a.m. expecting to write again. In the meantime, I’d survived a twelve-hour chemical experiment that left me looking like the Road Runner had been living in my hair.

  I knew I was able to get in touch better when I was in a physically diminished state—when you push yourself and were up all night. The place where we go to as writers that’s real open and real undefended, where you don’t edit. Sometimes when you’re tired and open, it comes easier. In a sense being loaded contributed. But I also noticed that I would stay up all night generating ideas, and then I’d collapse and get two or three hours sleep and write something after that was sensible. The way I write now is in complete contrast. I meet someone at ten in the morning; we’re done by 12:30. At 12:30 I’m out the door—you know, “I love you, good-bye!” We just jump in. What we’re doing is we open up all our filing cabinets of our experiences together as two people. Whatever is going on in your life and mine, let’s let it fly! It’s much easier to write from a healthy place. You and I could write a song right now. It might not be worth much, but we could do it. Part of this is craft; a lot is trust. A lot not trying to control what happens but just creating.

  I think I was born an alcoholic and my addictions were inevitable. But the times certainly nurtured my disease. The sixties and seventies took drug use out of the gutter and into the boardroom. Needless to say, for the creative artist it was as environmental. As expected and accepted in a recording session as flour and sugar in a bakery.

  And cocaine wasn’t addictive. I remember reading that as I buried my face in a pile of Peruvian enthusiasm. A big toot of cocaine combined with the rush of acceptance as a member of the creative community, and I was higher than I’d ever dreamed of. Again, it’s important for me to look at the timing of my exposure to the drugs. The fact they showed up in my life at a time when I was blossoming. In my mind, they remained connected until I had a little sober time under my belt.

  The needs to be held, accepted, admired, loved, nurtured—all those basic human needs—they’re the source of the strongest hunger I’ve ever experienced. And to have those needs met by my peers, the public at large, and the industry at the same time as I was experiencing the illusion of those emotions created by the drugs … It’s easy to see how enmeshed the actual and the fictitious become in my past.

  The seventies were this incredibly productive time when I had great success, six Oscar nominations, and the win for “Evergreen.” Nine Grammy nominations and wins for The Muppet Movie and “Evergreen.” My career grew. It went from just writing songs for other people to cutting an album for A & M Records and appearing on The Tonight Show. Once and that was it! I was so comfy in front of the camera. As scared as I was before I’d walk out. I remember standing behind the curtain—going in—that I couldn’t breathe. I saw the red light of the camera and Johnny, and just entering into this parallel universe that was home. It’s interesting to see an addiction being born here, one of those clear moments. I went to New York, did The Tonight Show, sang the first song, and Johnny called me over to talk to him. I was f
unny. I did a second number, and I was funny. Denny Bond, my manager, and I were staying at the Sherry-Netherland, and we had a lunch at the New York Athletic Club the next day. So we got up, breakfasted, and walked. We were strolling along Central Park South and doormen were saying, “Hi-ye! You were good on The Tonight Show!” And, “That’s that little guy who was on The Tonight Show.” And it was like a first hit of cocaine. It was “I’m on top of the world, man.” I was Jimmy Cagney in White Heat. All of a sudden, it was that ego-serving self-importance. At that moment something very specific happened. I went from being different to being special in my own perception. Being different is hard; being special is wonderful. That moment may have been the birth of an addiction to celebrity. I was being treated with a level of respect I’d never experienced. And I don’t mean better tables at restaurants. I’m talking about a core sense of belonging. Of being “more than enough” in a world where I’d always come up short. It’s no wonder I became better at showing off than at showing up. The celebrity was a kind of balm—an ointment for some childhood pain, which was long overdue.

  All that energy spent out performing and playing at being a celebrity, making people laugh and love me, and being as good as I was on the talk shows was balm for old hurt I think. Unfortunately, what had been a developing craft as a songwriter was now being ignored. All of a sudden unbridled ego and celebrity took over. For instance, Johnny Williams asked me to write the lyrics to Superman. I wrote what I thought was a brilliant lyric and the director had the audacity not to like it. Instead of changing the lyric as many times as necessary until he did like it, as I would today (“let’s find a way to something wonderful we both love”), I went, “It’s done.” Then it was, “Don’t you know who I am?” Who I used to think I was!

  In a way, the ego is a double-edged sword. The drug is keeping that thing whistling in the air, that ego, that self-absorption. There’s a complex relationship between drugs and songwriting, and there’s a greater relationship between drugs and career and ego than between drugs and creativity. Drugs ultimately diminish creativity because they’re artificial. I believe all of my success came out of authenticity. When I wrote honestly about what I felt, other people related to it. It’s interesting that even the parts of my life that I can look back on—and the first reaction might be to say that cultivating the celebrity was a mistake, and it was a failure—evidently it was something that my little soul needed then.

  I love it when someone grabs me going down the street and says, “God, I really love what you do.” I’m also okay when they say, “And you were especially good on Laugh-In,” which I was never on. I realize they’re talking about Arte Johnson. So my relationship to applause is totally changed. I see it as shared memory now. If someone applauds my performance, it’s like we’re remembering something wonderful about our lives.

  But the damage drugs do is lost in the moment. You live in a maelstrom, a storm, and somewhere along the line, you lose. The drama becomes an element of who you are. Paul doesn’t have time to get a driver’s license. It’s like, Paul always wears an ascot and he’s always late for the meeting. That’s for effect, not the ascot but the being late for a meeting! Or even more absurd, sending my manager to a creative meeting in my place. ABC asked me to write a song to promote their daytime programming. They were using “Let Me Be the One,” calling it “Let Us Be the One.” A few years later, they came back and said they wanted to promote their daytime soap operas. “Would you write a song for us?” I sent Denny to the creative meeting. How rude! What amazes me is I did not see this at the time. What I had done was make the rest of the world bit players in supporting roles in The Paul Williams Show.

  I heard Tom, this Englishman in L.A., say that in recovery you start out as a superstar and work your way into the chorus. I had achieved that kind of status: The Paul Williams Show, isn’t that wonderful? What I think he meant was that the gift of recovery gives you the chance to step into the chorus, become part of the family of man, back away from your own drama, and experience the pure joy of belonging and the greater gift of being a valuable human who can help another. Someone very wise once said, “It’s all about love and service.” I’m beginning to understand.

  Basically I stopped work in the eighties. I was too high to see myself in free-fall. When I finally tried to get sober, it was for a girl, Melissa, a young graduate student. I did aversion therapy for Melissa. They give you injections to make you sick and then alcohol to drink. You throw up and lay there for three hours with a towel around your neck with your own vomit in it. Just lying there thinking about your situation, the smells and all, is revolting. The next day comes a shot of sodium pentothal that knocks you out, like 99, 98, … 3. While you’re out, they ask if you want a drink. Then you go back for more vomiting. But the therapist said, “We’re worried about you, Mr. Williams, because you’re the only person we know that’s been consistently early for sodium pentothal.” I loved it! I wanted another treatment! For seven months, I didn’t drink. But I didn’t reflect or change on the inside—never cracked a book, shared my problem, or had a support system.

  Next I went to Jamaica. Hadn’t had a drink in seven months on pure Paul Williams superstar-willpower. White knuckling it all the way. I went to Jamaica for a project called The Secret Life of Queen Victoria, a musical I’m still trying to get done. And at two o’clock in the afternoon at the producer’s beautiful home, by the pool, a gentleman in a white jacket comes out and goes, “Mr. Williams, would you care for something to drink? Perhaps a rum and coke?” I said to myself, “Wait a minute. I haven’t had a drink in seven months. I’m Paul Williams. I have a star on Hollywood Boulevard. I can have one drink.” So at two o’clock in the afternoon, I had a rum and coke. Two o’clock in the morning, I was at Bob Marley’s grave explaining reggae to a lot of black people I didn’t know. Lying through my teeth. I don’t know how I wound up there.

  At this point, I realize I have a disease and total abstinence is the beginning of how I deal with it. Total abstinence gives me a chance to stay clean and sober and learn. And I had a capacity to learn. But then I was off and running for two more years of uncontrolled using. During that time, I put up a front about getting sober. To hide my use, I became a chronic and habitual liar. Say I was going to some event or to see people, Melissa would say, “I know you’re getting high. Just admit it. We’ll get you help. I’m not going to leave.” And I’d answer, “What the fuck is the matter with you? You have a lot of issues with men, don’t you? A lot of trust issues?” I’d turn it on her, and she’d go to bed crying, worried about what was wrong with her perceptabilities to perceive reality. She thought she was dented, broken. Then Melissa would go to bed, and I’d sneak out the puppy door and go score more drugs. ’Cause the real door had a terrible squeak. When I’d been up two days and nights, it was roar, the world’s loudest door. So I’d sneak out the puppy door and go score. And I remember sitting next to her when she cried, wanting to hold her and be there for her, but being unable to connect with the emotion. Wanting to, but not being able to find the emotion. And eventually she left.

  In 1989, right before I got sober, I went to Oklahoma City to do a gig. A doctor had prescribed Antabuse to keep me from drinking. Antabuse is a chemical that causes a violent physical illness if mixed with alcohol. So I was taking Antabuse but using cocaine with it, basically playing with fire as I lived the lie. Evidently the lie screwed me up because I had a full-blown psychotic episode before going on stage. Three o’clock in the afternoon, I’m in a tuxedo walking out of my dressing room with a promoter, never having been out of my hotel suite. And it’s like somebody grabbed me and threw me higher than my own head against the wall and then threw me down the escalator stairs. I was dragged by my ears. I experienced an episode—about three-quarters of an hour of pure hell. And in the rear view mirror, as we’re driving to the gig, I can see this little monster behind me. And he’s twisting my ear, laughing and biting chunks out of my neck. It was like a gruesome monster�
��a terrifying psychotic episode brought out by the toxicity. So Gary, the promoter, called the psychiatrist and postponed the show for a day and took me to a doctor who gave me something to calm me down.

  Two months later, in a blackout, I phoned a doctor. He called me the next day. “I found a place for you,” he said. And I said, “What are you talking about?” “Well, you called me last night,” he replied. “You said you wanted to get sober and go into treatment.” I didn’t remember this at all and I started crying. Help was the last thing I wanted, but I went into treatment. … Now cut to ten years later. I’m ten years sober and had just spoken at a men’s lockdown in Nashville, Tennessee. So I’m full-tilt Gandhi-meets-Jiminy Cricket-Paul Williams.

  Back to my hotel. A river to my people, saving lives left and right, I reek with self-importance. I go up to my hotel room, and my key doesn’t work, and I’m like, “Son of a bitch!” It’s a quick trip from Gandhi to Himmler for me. My recovery’s out the window. I want my key, my room, my bed. I go down and get the new room key, and the lobby of the hotel is full of guys with little badges identifying where they’re from. It’s a convention of talent buyers. And this one gentleman comes up to me and says, “My name is Curt. I booked you once and just wanted to say hi.” I noticed the nametag on his chest says Oklahoma City. I went, “Oh my god, are you the guy who booked me when I did my Linda Blair? When my head was spinning? Oh was I possessed!” “Yes, that was me.” And I got all puffed up. “I’m ten years sober now. I just spoke at the prison.” I was pumped up and shining. “Yeah,” he said, “I heard you were sober.” I asked, “Are you sober too?” And he reached in his pocket and pulled out a coin from a recovery program, commemorating seventeen years. “Wait a minute.” I did the math. “You were seven years sober when I had the psychotic episode? What did you think?” “You scared me to death.” “What did you do?” He said they put together a prayer circle the next day in the hopes that I would find a healing for my disease. “That you’d be able to find sobriety, be able to make that choice.” And two months later in a blackout, I called that physician.