PAUL WILLIAMS, DAFT PUNK, AND GOLDEN SEEDS
Nothing creative is ever really wasted. Its all grist for someone or something, somewhere and somewhen....
Singer-songwriter Paul Williams’s back catalog sits at the very outer edge of mawkish sentimentality—where pop comes dangerously close to ‘easy listening’.
Nevertheless, his writing skills have produced a seemingly endless list of hits recorded by everyone from Sinatra to Streisand. Of course, his most famous interpreter is Kermit the Frog who articulated his classic: ‘Rainbow Connection’ better than Willy Nelson ever could.
But Mr Williams’s career took a precipitous nose-dive after his greatest triumph: ‘Evergreen’ from the 1976 movie: ‘A Star is Born’ for which he received the Oscar for best song.
Afterwards-- as seems to often happen after a moment of supreme triumph-- the arse fell out of his world and he descended into a decade-long period of obscurity and rampant substance abuse—reappearing in the 90’s to cabaret bars rather than the adoring TV audiences and sizable auditoriums he’d been used to in the 70’s.
Paul Williams was also a thespian. Quite a good one, actually—appearing in films for Oliver Stone, Edgar Wright and other prominent filmmakers. Perhaps his most infamous role was in a totally bizarre 70’s obscurity called ‘Phantom of the Paradise’.
A sort of schlocky, deranged pop version of ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ --directed by Brian De Palma of ‘Scarface’ fame—it featured a soundtrack by Williams and the kind of ‘nothing exceeds like excess’ aesthetic De Palma is famous for.
The film was derided on release and would’ve sunk without trace were it not for a die-hard band of fans who were so besotted with the film that they created a kind of hermetically-sealed feedback loop of adoration that endures to this day and exists primarily in two places: Winnipeg, Canada and Paris, France.
The film still plays in those two places to acolytes who have watched it time and time again. In fact a pair of Parisian die-hard’s have seen it over 30 times. These two obsessives are in a pop band you may have heard of: Daft Punk.
So, when Daft Punk were looking for a collaborator for their new album they called up Mr Williams and the results are two of the best tracks on their epochal album ‘Random Access Memories’.
Paul Williams, it’s safe to say, will probably never need to play a cabaret bar again. What a way to bookend a career…
And all because of a ‘golden seed’.
A golden seed is an act of creative willfulness, goodwill or contrariness that we plant never expecting it to grow, come to fruition, or flourish.
It could be a seemingly ill-advised recording that sank without a trace. A wayward article that virtually no one read. A book that was 500 trillionth on an Amazon list— even a long conversation that seemed a vast waste of time. At the time.
Any of these, like ‘Phantom of the Paradise’ could flower weeks, months, years-- even decades later. But at the time they just leave you feeling useless, dejected, rejected and remorseful.
Often golden seeds are weird. Career outliers. Seeming mistakes. Odd, bizarre eccentricities that just go to prove we should stick to what we know and leave the outer edges of the envelope unexplored. Put simply, a bloody waste of time.
But I would contend that nothing creative is ever really wasted. Its all grist for someone or something, somewhere and somewhen.
So make something odd. Put it out there. Plant it and let it grow. You might not get a call from Daft Punk 40 years later.
But then again, you might.