"Lean on Me"

Bill Withers

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This week we have focused on friendship here at Word & Song. Today’s Sometimes a Song is about a singer-songwriter who qualifies as an “old friend” to some of our readers, and perhaps a “new friend” to others. Who is that, you ask? Well, he’s a fellow with a rather short career as show business performers go, a fellow who kept his feet on the ground and after a little under two decades of big hits, took his exit from the scene and returned to the ordinary life he’d lived before he hit it big.

I’m talking today about Bill Withers, son of a coal miner in Virginia, and according to him, the first man in his family not to work in the coal mines. It isn’t that Bill, youngest of six children, aspired to a career in music, though he did get some musical training singing gospel music in a church choir growing up. His parents divorced when he was only three years old, the same year when Pearl Harbor was attacked and the United States entered World War II. There’s no doubt Withers developed his work ethic because of the times he grew up in. His mother had to move the children in with her parents, and everyone worked to support the family. Bill did odd jobs, even as a child, but at age seventeen he decided to “join the Navy to see the world.” He liked his work in the navy, and served for nine years, stationed in Guam, where he put his mechanical talents to use working on aircraft. It’s no surprise then that after his discharge he moved to Los Angeles and took a series of aircraft factory jobs, with Weber, Douglas, and Boeing. Evidently he developed his interest in singing while in Guam. After his stint in the navy, he used some of his earnings from his factory work to pay for demo recordings of his own songs, which were mostly pop ballads in the rhythm and blues vein. And he began hawking them to record publishers in Los Angeles.

In the 1950’s a musical style called “soul” grew out of a union of rhythm and blues and gospel. I’ve talked here at Sometimes a Song about how gospel music influenced folk singers such as Paul Simon, whose music stole the charts starting in the mid-sixties. Soul music came into its own in the 1960’s, and there’s no doubt that Bill Withers was influenced by that musical convergence. He got his first recording contract with Sussex Records, and in 1971 and at the “ripe old age” of 33, Bill Withers released a soulful little pop song called “Ain’t No Sunshine,” his breakout hit, which reached Number 6 on the Rhythm & Blues Billboard charts and Number 23 on the Pop charts. Have I mentioned that Bill Withers was an ordinary guy? He credited the 1962 film, “The Days of Wine and Roses,” for inspiring him to write his early songs. The influence wasn’t so much musical as emotional, psychological; it made him think about how people often don’t see important things right under their noses because they are preoccupied with — or trapped in — the pressures of the moment.

In his short career of 15 years, Bill Withers wrote and recorded relatively few songs and only a handful of albums. But his music touched heartstrings, and he played at such varied venues as “The Rumble in the Jungle” (the much-promoted heavyweight championship fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali) and a Concert at Carnegie Hall. Today’s song, “Lean on Me” is truly an ode to friendship. It was released in 1972, the same year that Withers won his first of three Grammy Awards, for “Ain’t No Sunshine.” “Lean on Me” shot to Number 1 on the Billboard Charts on its release, earned Withers his second gold record, and fifteen years later would earn him a third Grammy, for a 1988 cover recording of the song. Despite his early retirement from an active career, Bill Withers continued to win awards for his music throughout his lifetime, including induction into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 2005 and the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. Both of his songs I have mentioned in this essay were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

So why did Bill Withers walk away from a successful musical career in the mid-1980’s? He had grown frustrated with the vagaries of the recording industry and the practices of those who ran such businesses and often treated the artists who worked for them with disregard. When asked about his retirement, Withers said that he had no regrets and did not miss the business in the least. Yet he did still perform on occasion, when invited, and was greatly appreciated by audiences when he did. But he said that he was raised to think of himself as an ordinary guy, and that he was happy to return to a quiet life with his wife and his family. And there’s everything in the world right about that.

Enjoy!

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!

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