Happy 50th Anniversary to Bill Withers’ second studio album Still Bill, originally released in May 1972 (specific date N/A).
In 1972, Al Green was keeping us together. Fresh from the success of Shaft, Isaac Hayes became Black Moses. Curtis Mayfield gave wings to Super Fly, and Marvin Gaye was about to teach us how to get it on. All of these extravagant personas were taking shape, taking place, taking flight. And who was Bill Withers?
Oh, he was just Bill.
Where his contemporaries were flaunting their powers, Withers’ superhero persona was that he didn’t have one. He put brazen unpretentiousness on display with his 1971 debut Just As I Am. On the cover, he poses with lunchpail in hand at the factory where he worked (he kept his job even after its release). It’s been said he was cleaning toilets when he discovered “Ain’t No Sunshine” had become an unlikely hit.
By March of 1972, that single earned the 33-year-old absolute beginner a trio of GRAMMY nominations for Best New Artist, Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male and Best R&B Song. He ultimately collected a trophy for the latter. His success put upstart label Sussex Records on the map, paving the way for impactful subsequent releases by Sixto Rodriguez and Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers.
Sussex wanted the next album in a hurry and issued its first single on April 21, 1972—a modern hymn called “Lean on Me.” In the parent LP’s liner notes, Withers describes it as a song about “love that says simply, ‘I am human. So are you. We need each other to survive and grow.’” In all of its unadorned sincerity, it cut straight to the heart, a warm cross-section of country, soul, and gospel, a Kumbaya for the ages. “Lean on Me” wasn’t trying to appeal to everyone, it just happened to be the song that did so. The seven-inch was quickly certified gold and reached #1 on both pop and R&B charts.
Simplicity is key to how this anthem found its place in music history. As with Lennon & McCartney, Withers’ best works do not thrive on complexity. Their simplicity makes them accessible. Accessibility lends them resonance. And resonance makes them ubiquitous. Once the blue-collar troubadour figured out that staying true to his identity was the secret to success, he dug his heels in.
Showing up “just as I am” made him someone to talk about, and he planned to stay that way. His sophomore project Still Bill lined store bins that May. With a focused array of offerings ranging from smooth funk to smoky blues and bombastic gospel, it seated the understated Withers at the table of great soul men.
Where veteran musician Booker T. Jones oversaw Just As I Am, Withers took the reins himself to produce the next record. Enlisting the help of Ray Jason, James Gadson, Melvin Dunlap, and Benorce Blackman from Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band—best known for the oft-sampled 1970 hit “Express Yourself”—Withers had the personnel to do any job needed.
They did exceptional work on “Use Me,” an irresistible single propped up on rimshots and a toothy electric-piano line that conducts an erotic charge throughout. Withers slips comfortably into flesh and frivolity here (“I wanna spread the news that if it feels this good getting used / Well, you just keep on using me / Until you use me up”). The eye-twinkle as he laments his troublesome lady love begs the question “who’s using who?” Again a gold-seller, “Use Me” reached twin pop and R&B chart peaks of #2, making an easy case for Withers having a long career ahead of him.
One track that surprisingly wasn’t a single is the paranoid pinnacle, “Who Is He and What Is He To You.” The band fires on all cylinders consistently, but turn in their most stout performance here. An ominous bassline tosses and turns beneath yowling guitars and sinister strings. Withers delivers the Stan McKinney lyrics with first-person conviction (“A man we passed just tried to stare me down / And when I looked at you, you looked at the ground / I don't know who he is / But I think that you do”). One gets the sense that his fist curls and teeth clinch each time Withers sings his coldly minced “dadgummit” oath. Fear and despair notwithstanding, this cut stands strong like a funk Stonehenge.
On the lighter side, “Let Me in Your Life” entreats a place in the heart of a wounded woman. He sings on “Kissing My Love” with a wide country smile (“I can feel my heart / Just a-thumping and a-skipping / When I’m kissing my love… / I feel the blood pump-pumping in my veins”). For the third and final single, it managed a respectable R&B chart showing with its romantic abandon and chipper whistling. Equally endearing is “I Don’t Know” with its easy Roberta Flack saunter (“I get a warm summer feeling walking through the snow / Even chilly darkness has the brightest glow / And I just love you so, sometimes I just don’t know”).
What sells these tunes is Withers’ uniquely resonant voice. It affords him a surprising range of expression, but his secret weapon is genuineness. Even when his playful lyrics border on trite, there’s an honesty about him. If he sings it, it becomes real, relatable, and believable. This is how Still Bill stands out. No one expects Withers—a man of stereotypical Marlboro masculinity—to be working his way toward emotional intelligence with his chosen subject matter.
Like his whimsical musings on love, the writer’s inner thoughts exposed on record paint a complex picture against the backdrop of his unassuming stoicism. In “Another Day to Run,” he introspects that “Sometimes my mind gets so mixed / I can’t tell lust from affection.” Bucking a common myth in “Who Is He,” he counters, “You tell me men don’t have much intuition / Is that what you really think of us or are you wishin’?”
Withers comes face-to-face with his discomfort on the blues-raked “I Don’t Want You on My Mind.” Like a long drag from a cigarette, this tune takes its sweet time to stretch out as Withers grapples with vulnerability after love has gone (“I believe it shows a sign of weakness / I don’t want no lonely nights to catch me crying”). And yet its third act finds his impassioned yelps and wails doing the work tears otherwise might. When done, one may pour a drink or make a psychotherapy appointment—either is appropriate.
The aforementioned “Another Day to Run” is part disco bonfire and part tent revival where he aims to break free of his fears (“If you don’t look into your mind / And find out what you’re running from / Tomorrow might be just another day to run / If you just sit and waste your time / You’ll be going where you’re coming from / Think about that!”). Similarly, “Take it All In and Check it All Out” laces a jam session with some practical tips on anger management. Who knew funk and self-help mixed so well?
Still Bill reached #5 on the US Billboard 200 and #1 on the R&B Albums chart. “Lean on Me” would eventually win the Best R&B Song GRAMMY, but not until 1987 when Club Nouveau’s big beat cover of the classic nudged it into the recognition it deserved. Still Bill would be his only #1 album, but its influence carries forward.
Hip-hop drank deeply from Withers’ well for decades. Gadson’s snapping drum work on Still Bill made its way into “Let Me Ride” from Dr. Dre’s astronomical-selling The Chronic (1992), Kendrick Lamar’s “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst” and Drake’s “Karaoke.” Creative Source’s remake of “Who Is He and What Is He To You” provided the steam to propel LL Cool J’s audacious “Phenomenon.”
Beyond hip-hop, Aretha Franklin reinterpreted “Let Me In Your Life” and titled her 1974 album after it. Without a hetero-requisite pronoun swap, Meshell Ndegeocello’s gender-bent “Who Is He and What Is He To You” enriched her Peace Beyond Passion (1996) album and became a #1 dance hit. Rock priests Mick Jagger and Lenny Kravitz duetted on “Use Me” in 1993 and a winsome animated Pringles commercial repurposed Withers’ original vocals because sex sells everything—including potato chips.
Before Withers could see his music shape the future, he celebrated its success by getting in touch with the fans who carried him on their shoulders. Bill Withers Live At Carnegie Hall (1973) featured the same musicians from Still Bill and a house full of enthusiastic fans vocal about the folk hero they loved. Growing up as a painfully shy stutterer, Withers likely never fathomed he would sing before thousands.
Most artists in the music business clamor for such a moment and find themselves vying for promotion, validation, and attention. That ambition speaks to the desire to be more than we are. Withers’ connection to the human experience, however, speaks to the part of us that accepts and defends exactly who we are. When the R&B everyman from Slab Fork, West Virginia left the music business in 1985, he shed the weight of an entity that was constantly working against who he was.
“Do you know how unhappy you would be if you thought that the way you are is not okay?” Withers asked in the Still Bill documentary (2009). “I started out my life like that. I don’t wanna end up like that.” Withers was certain that when his entanglement with fame was done, he could return to being Bill.
Still.
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