The new documentary about Bill Withers, Still Bill, begins with a live in-his-prime performance of Ain't No Sunshine. The film's sprinkled throughout with Withers classics like Lovely Day, Grandma's Hands, and Who is He (though She'd be Happier doesn't for some reason), but Ain't No Sunshine is a fitting way to open the movie. Withers talks about how the record company people were asking, "Where's that R&B intro?" Like that song, the man's career was unusually clipped, famously at the back end when he just up and left the music industry in his prime, no new output in the last 23 years.
There's much written already about how Withers had butt heads with music execs. The white ones he encountered he calls blaxperts, one asking him (Withers) to cover Elvis Presley's In The Ghetto. Withers was also the victim of tragic administration. When his record label collapsed, he never received the letter informing him that he could buy his master tapes back. The tapes were sold elsewhere and eventually made it into the hands of Sony.
Before all this, Withers was a young boy, then a young man afflicted with a stutter. "Spit it out," people used to yell at him in school. In fact, he was 28 years old when he beat it. Amazingly, he released his classic Ain't No Sunshine when he was 32. If you believe him, he just one day decided to give music a try professionally and appeared on talk shows and on tours alongside James Brown and The Spinners a fully formed, sure performer.
The film is built around two extended 5-hour interviews with Withers. There are long stretches where he simply sits in his living room and talks about the artist's life ("It's ok to aim for wonderful, but you better be ready to pass through "all right", and when you get there, you better take a good look around, because most people don't get passed all right"), on his family (his son is in law school and his daughter a budding musician), and his Appalachian childhood. Though this sounds like a pretty simple way to structure a film, Withers is such a thoughtful man that it would almost be a crime to infringe on his words.
Despite his pretty regular life, there is no conventional, behind the music VH1 portrait. There's his pretty honest, no frills coaching of his daughter's music. Years after his first devastating appraisal of her work, we get to see her perform for her dad again, and we hold our breath waiting to see if her stuff is finally up to snuff. Then there's Withers's work with Our Time, an artistic program for kids that stutter, where he's sung to. "You kids helped me remember something I forgot," he says, tears streaming down his face.
The directors Damani Baker and Alex Vlack craft a very tight film combining old and new concert and interview footage. But as is the case with most documentaries, the filmmakers greatest acheivement is not in the craftsmanship itself, but in the legwork they put in. Withers rarely gives media appearances yet the two young filmmakers got almost unfettered access to the man for two years. They got into his home, followed him to his high school reunion, and even filmed him while he recorded a new song with blind musician Raul Midon. They even organized a New York tribute concert. All of this was self-financed and took them the better part of a decade.
Withers describes himself as an artist of feeling, deep and diverse. And it's not just that romantic feeling that dominates the catalogues of other soul artists. His two most famous songs are about male friendship and love for a grandmother. The song he writes with Midon is about a Spanish friend whom he misses talking to. There's no way an artist like Withers could keep two and a half decades of varied emotion to himself forever, no artistic outlet, no sharing with the world. This film, with his extended monologue seems like, without him knowing, something he'd been waiting for. It's almost overflowing with his expression. But is this all, or is it just the first step? Withers works with Midon and with his daughter, and one of the final scenes sees him giving an impromtu performance at the New York tribute concert. Baker says that while he was filming at Withers's home studio, he spied a hard drive labeled "Unreleased Bill Withers Songs". At worst, it just stokes fans' curiosity. Hey, I'll take the possibility of more Withers, than no possibility at all.
