nttThe song that inspired him: u201cWichita Linemanu201d (Jimmy Webb, 1968)</strong>t</h2>nnnn
ntWilliams pointed to the line, u201cAnd I need you more than want you/ And I want you for all time,u201d which many regard as one of the best lyrics ever written.</p>nnnn
ntu201cYou know, I went looking for a ledge when I heard that,u201d Williams said. u201cIt doesn’t get any better than that. Anyway, I wish Iu2019d written that one. And I should have. My dad was a lineman in Wichita! Jimmy Webb, I love him, and he’s brilliant, and he’s as nice as he is talented, and he’s a purely authentic Oklahoma songwriter.u201d</p>nnnn
ntWarren also raved about u201cWichita Lineman.u201d u201cI was a huge, huge Jimmy Webb fan, and I remember reading that he wrote all the songs, like, about one girl or something u2014u00a0when he was 18, 19, and 20, and I was here, I was 25, getting turned out everywhere, and just being totally depressed, like, u2018Can I be Jimmy Webb?u2019 But we’re supposed to be who we are, right? You know, our path is our path. But I remember that song is my favorite Jimmy Webb song. And he has so many great ones, u2018Didnu2019t We,u2019 u2018Where’s the Playground Susie.u2019 Anyways, that one line, u2018And I need you more than want you/ And I want you for all time.u2019 It’s so simple, but it’s profound and brilliant.”</p>nnnn
ntJimmy Jam concurred: u201cIt’s one of those [sentiments] that can’t be said any better. I think, as songwriters, a lot of times when we hear a phrase, we go, ‘Yeah, but how can we change that?’ Or, ‘How can we make that better?’ And that’s one you just leave it alone.u201d</p>nnnn
ntWilliams added that he nearly picked another Webb song. u201cActually, if it had been in the [Grammy Hall of Fame], I would have chosen u201cHighwayman,u201d because u201cHighwaymanu201d also has a line that I cannot listen to without getting teary.u201d He pointed to the fourth chorus and its key line, u201cOr I may simply be a single drop of rainu201d: u201cAnd when I reach the other side/ I’ll find a place to rest my spirit if I can/ Perhaps I may become a highwayman again/ Or I may simply be a single drop of rain/ But I will remain.u201d</p>nnnn
ntu201cThere is a spiritual lesson in that thought alone,u201d Williams said.</p>nnnn
ntFor the record, neither Williams nor Webb were included on The New York Times</em>u2019 recent, much-debated list of 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters. (Both Warren and Jam & Lewis were.) Warren may have had that slight to Williams in mind when she told him on stage near the top of the event: u201cI want to say that you’ve inspired me, and so many other songwriters. You’re f–king great.u201d</p>nnnnt
nttThe song he wrote: u201cI’m Going to Go Back There Somedayu201d (written with Kenny Ascher) from The Muppet Movie</em>, 1979</strong>t</h2>nnnn
ntu201cI loved Jim Henson,u201d Williams said. u201cI loved the Muppets. I went over and did The Muppet Show</em>, and I was never one of those kids that had buddies that had a tree house. When I met Jim Henson and all the Muppet performers, I felt like I had a bunch of friends that I was part of a gang in a tree house. Jim asked me to write the songs for a [1977 TV movie] called Emmet Otteru2019s Jug-Band Christmas</em>. I think that was actually my audition for The Muppet Movie</em>.</p>nnnn
ntu201cSo there’s this landlocked bird, because Gonzo is a landlocked bird. I think we’re all landlocked birds, frankly. But Gonzo is a landlocked bird, and they’re sitting out there in the middle of the desert. I know what those desert skies look like, and it will, if you don’t believe in God or aren’t touched by some sort of spiritual energy. You look at that sky in the middle of the desert and you are touched. And Kenny and I wrote a song that was not called for in the movie, called ‘I’m Going to Go Back There Someday,’ for Gonzo.”</p>nnnn
ntThe songwriters played it for Henson, who two days later told them he would add a scene to the film to feature the song.</p>nnnn
ntu201cThe reason I wanted to play that song, and the reason I wanted it to be played all the way through, is for the line, ‘There’s not a word yet for old friends whou2019ve just met,’ because that’s the sauce. And also that song was played at Jim Henson’s funeral [in 1990, when he died at 53 from toxic shock syndrome]. I think that everything I’ve done with that was involved in Muppets, including after he was gone, for The Muppet Christmas Girls</em>, had this amazing energy in it that was the power of kindness u2014 and it’s the power of kindness that was part of Jim Henson. And I think u2018Rainbow Connectionu2019 has the life that it does because of the power of kindness, and it’s Jim Henson. And I think I think that this song will probably wind up being for my whole entire life my favorite song I ever had the opportunity to write, and [to] write that also with Kenny, whose music is so beautiful.u201d</p>nnnn
ntWarren interjected, u201cMay I just say one thing. That line is so beautiful u2013 u2018There’s not a word yet for old friends whou2019ve just met.u2019 What a beautiful line.u201d</p>n</div>”,”alt”:””,”image_credit”:””,”url”:”https://www.billboard.com/lists/diane-warren-jimmy-jam-paul-williams-talk-songwriting/”,”image_id”:0,”image”:””,”sizes”:{“pmc-gallery-s”:[],”pmc-gallery-m”:[],”pmc-gallery-l”:[],”pmc-gallery-xl”:[],”pmc-gallery-xxl”:[]},”fullWidth”:0,”fullHeight”:0,”mime_type”:”image”,”ad”:””,”appleSongID”:null,”enableAppleGA”:false,”additionalDescription”:null,”subtitleColor”:null,”additionalSubtitle”:null,”additionalSubtitleColor”:null,”ads”:{“html”:”t
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nnnnnnnnnnn
ntAfter the panel discussion, Emmons allowed a few questions from audience members. One person asked Warren u201cWhy do you prefer working alone versus writing with people?u201d</p>nnnn
ntThe songwriter gave a thoughtful reply. u201cI love being in a room and wrestling a song to the ground, really. I just love it. It’s weird that it’s weird to write by yourself… I mean, I just love it. I know I write my best songs that way, you know. I just have a thing u2014 I’ll just sit there for like hours to get one line. I did that today. I literally spent all day u2014u00a0like, three lines out of a bridge, my whole f–king day. But I got it, and it was worth it. But I just.. that’s just what works for me. I mean, I’ve co-written, and I do on occasion, but I get so much joy [out of] just really taking something, taking nothing, and just carving it into something, and making it as great as I possibly can.u201d</p>nnnn
ntBy contrast, Jam and Williams have written most of their best-known songs with collaborators.</p>nnnn
ntu201cI always liked the idea of collaboration,u201d Jam said. u201cI always did, and it may have stemmed from… I don’t know if this is my psychosis or whatever, but it was maybe because I was an only child growing up. I had to have brothers and sisters that were all much older than me, and I remember meeting Terry when I was, I think I was 13 u2014 and I felt like he was like the brother I never had. And so the whole idea of collaborating, or being able to bounce ideas off of people, was always cool to me. </p>nnnn
nt“Now, the interesting thing is, Terry and I, a lot of times, work alone. I like to say we’re together individually, if that makes sense. So, there will be songs that Terry will write totally by himself. There’s songs I’ll write totally by myself. But at the end of the day, it’s always Jam & Lewis u2014u00a0and our agreement was, we shook hands, and we say 50/50, so it doesn’t really matter who writes it. Yeah, Lennon & McCartney, kind of that same thing. And that’s the way we do it.”</p>nnnn
ntWilliams has worked with several collaborators, chiefly Roger Nichols, with whom he wrote u201cOut in the Country,u201d u201cWeu2019ve Only Just Begun,u201d u201cRainy Days and Mondaysu201d and u201cI Wonu2019t Last a Day Without You.u201d He also wrote u201cYou and Me Against the Worldu201d and u201cRainbow Connectionu201d with Kenny Ascher, and is now collaborating with Oscar winner Gustavo Santaolalla on songs from a stage musical based on Guillermo del Torou2019s 2006 film Panu2019s Labyrinth</em>.</p>nnnn
ntu201cFirst of all, I wrote with Roger Nichols, who was my first really full-time partner for years u2014 [we] wrote all the Carpenters hits. He was my music school, you know, and also there was a sense of brotherhood to it, and community, it was greatu2026 For me to sit down and write with somebody that is as brilliant as Kenny Ascher or Roger or Gustavo is, I mean, all of a sudden my music suddenly sounds like it was written by a grown-up.u201d</p>n</div>”,”alt”:””,”image_credit”:””,”url”:”https://www.billboard.com/lists/diane-warren-jimmy-jam-paul-williams-talk-songwriting/”,”image_id”:0,”image”:””,”sizes”:{“pmc-gallery-s”:[],”pmc-gallery-m”:[],”pmc-gallery-l”:[],”pmc-gallery-xl”:[],”pmc-gallery-xxl”:[]},”fullWidth”:0,”fullHeight”:0,”mime_type”:”image”,”ad”:””,”appleSongID”:null,”enableAppleGA”:false,”additionalDescription”:null,”subtitleColor”:null,”additionalSubtitle”:null,”additionalSubtitleColor”:null}],”galleryCount”:”4″,”galleryID”:”1236260358″,”previousPageLink”:””,”nextPageLink”:””,”template”:”item-featured-image”,”ordering”:””,”galleryTitle”:”Diane Warren, Jimmy Jam & Paul Williams Each Name One Song That Inspired Them u2013 And Theyu2019re All Classics”,”isList”:”1″,”logo”:[],”i10n”:{“backToArticle”:”Back to Article”,”backToAllGalleries”:”Back to All Galleries”,”backToReview”:”Back to Review”,”backToAllReviews”:”Back to All Reviews”,”thumbnail”:”Thumbnails”,”nextSlide”:”Next Slide”,”prevSlide”:”Previous Slide”,”skipAd”:”Skip Ad”,”skipIn”:”Skip In”,”of”:”of”,”missingSomething”:”You’re missing something!”,”subscribeNow”:”Subscribe Now”,”next”:”Next”,”nextGallery”:”Next Gallery”,”closeThisMessage”:”Close this message”,”closeModal”:”Close Modal”,”closeGallery”:”Close Gallery”,”startSlideShow”:”Start Slideshow”,”lightBox”:”Lightbox”,”scrollUp”:”Scroll Up”,”scrollDown”:”Scroll Down”,”look”:”Look”,”readMore”:”Read More”,”showLess”:”Show Less”,”vertical”:{“photo”:”Photo”}},”ads”:{“rightRailGallery”:{“html”:”t
The songwriters swapped stories at “Tower of Song: Iconic Songwriters & Recordings,” sponsored jointly by the Grammy Museum and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Jimmy Jam, Diane Warren and Paul Williams speak with Jasen Emmons at “Tower of Song: Iconic Songwriters & Recordings,” at GRAMMY Museum L.A. Live on May 28, 2026 in Los Angeles, California.
Photo by Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Paul Williams has written some all-time classics, including “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainbow Connection,” but he’s human and is not above feeling a little tinge of jealousy when he hears a great song.
“When I hear a great song, I experience two things,” he said at the Grammy Museum in downtown L.A. on Thursday (May 28). “The first thing I experience is jealousy, dreadfully human, and I go, ‘Oh, shit…’ That lasts about seven minutes, maybe. And the second thing I feel is inspiration, and that inspiration lasts a lifetime.”
Williams made the comment at “Tower of Song: Iconic Songwriters & Recordings,” a panel discussion and exhibit sponsored jointly by the Grammy Museum and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The panel discussion featured two other legendary songwriters, Diane Warren and Jimmy Jam. The mutual respect the writers have for each other was obvious and heartening to see. Williams seemed to speak for all of them when he said, “It’s such an honor to be a songwriter.”
Each was asked to name one song that inspired them and one song of theirs they particularly like. All three songwriters answered both questions, without complaining that the questions are practically impossible to answer (which of course they are). All three picked superlative songs that show excellent taste and discernment. (Here’s an odd-but-true fact about their song choices – none of them won a Grammy at the time or reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.)
Jimmy Jam chose Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” (which the Motown legend co-wrote with Renaldo Benson and Alfred Cleveland). Gaye’s single reached No. 2 in April 1971. Williams chose Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman.” Glen Campbell’s sublime recording of the song reached No. 3 in January 1969. Warren chose Gerry Goffin & Carole King’s “Up on the Roof.” The Drifters’ classic recording reached No. 5 in February 1963.
The songwriters were asked to select a song that was in the Grammy Hall of Fame. Gaye’s What’s Going On album was inducted in 1998. Campbell’s classic single was inducted two years later. Incredibly, “Up on the Roof” has yet to be inducted. (The event organizers bent the rules a little to let Warren discuss it.) Grammy Hall of Fame voters: There’s an excellent candidate for next year’s list.
The session was moderated by Jasen Emmons, chief curator and vice president of curatorial affairs at the Grammy Museum. “This is a total experiment,” Emmons said. “We have not rehearsed any of this in any way. I just said, you can actually pick a song that really inspired you as a songwriter, and then talk about why, and then can you pick a song that you wrote, and then do the same thing.
Here are the three panelists’ responses to those questions, followed by their views on whether they each prefer to collaborate or write alone.
Diane Warren
The song that inspired her: “Up on the Roof” (Carole King/Gerry Goffin, 1963)
“Okay, such a great song. … I remember seeing this record and hearing that song, seeing in the parentheses, Goffin/King, and like, I know Carole King from that [era] more than Tapestry. The Brill Building is like my north star of writers, like that era was just a just classic songwriting. I remember seeing that I want to be there, I want to be in the parentheses. I remember thinking when I was a little kid, like I didn’t want to be the singer. Well, I suck [as a singer], you know? I wanted to be there [in parentheses]. Kids, there used to be things called singles records – these round things that had little parentheses and they would have our names in them, and that was that was a profound thing, seeing that and going, ‘I want to be that. I want to be a songwriter.’ So that’s why I picked that song, and it’s a great song. You could feel like you’re there climbing on the roof.”
Jimmy Jam added: “I was just going to say about the between the parentheses, that was my experience too. There was the [1967] Supremes album, The Supremes Sing Holland-Dozier- Holland. And I remember asking my dad, ‘What does Holland-Dozier-Holland mean’? I’m thinking Holland is a country, and he said, ‘Those are the songwriters.’ I said, ‘The songwriters.’ He said, ‘Yeah, you know, when you get a single,” he said, “The little words in between the parentheses, those are the people that wrote the songs.’ And that’s what led me to that, and every song I got, no matter who the artist was, I was always looking at who the writers were.”
The song she wrote: “Only Love Can Hurt Like This” (2014)
“Yeah, I love that song,” Warren said. “I love that whole, like I said, Brill Building/girl group era, Phil Spector, that wall of sound. That’s kind of like one of my favorite eras. And it was just really fun to write that song — and I wrote it, and I’m like, ‘I don’t know who it’s for…’ I just write a lot of songs that I want to write, you know, and someone turned me on to this artist named Paloma Faith. I heard her voice, I’m like, ‘Oh my god, she has to do the song,’ and so I found out when she was coming to LA.”
They two had dinner, but Faith insisted she wouldn’t record a song she didn’t write. Warren, who is indeed “relentless,” the title of a recent documentary about her, implored the British singer to take a listen. “She emailed me. She goes, “That’s the best song I ever heard. I’m booking my flight, I’m coming out,’ you know. And it did change her life. I just really love the song.”
[Editor’s Note: The song reached No. 6 on the Official U.K. Singles Chart in 2014. Faith performed it on the Brit Awards in February 2015, where she won the award for British female solo artist.]
Jimmy Jam interjected: “By the way, I thought it was a cool arrangement on that song — and a couple of the songs we’ve heard tonight have this, where it doesn’t complete the whole bar, it goes straight to the next part. And I love that. And that was the thing I loved about Thom Bell’s writing, about Burt Bacharach’s writing — they were the best at doing that, the efficiency of the song… the song had that element to it, which I love.”
Warren summarized that songwriting tactic as ‘Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.”
Jimmy Jam
The song that inspired him: “What’s Going On” (Renaldo Benson, Alfred Cleveland, Marvin Gaye), 1971
“That takes you to another place,” Jam said. “That changed the whole world, like, put you in a different place, and that’s one of those songs. What I really love about it, first of all, the fact that it’s lyrically so relevant is very bittersweet, because it shouldn’t be. Those lyrics that he’s saying should not be happening now, but what I liked about it was it’s almost a lullaby, the way he sings it. You can just listen and let the music happen, but then you can dig into the lyrics, and the lyrics are very provocative.
“The other thing I like about it was he wasn’t trying to solve the problems, because it wasn’t — you couldn’t really have a solve the problems moment. But the fact that he’s asking a question, and the first two songs actually on that album are ‘What’s Going On,’ where he’s asking what’s going on, and then the next song after that is ‘What’s Happening Brother.’ So he’s kind of asking the questions and letting the discussion happen, and then he’s observing other things like ‘Inner City Blues [Make Me Wanna Holler],’ and so on and so forth. But yeah, ‘What’s Going On’ to me is just — it’s so good that I can’t even be jealous of it, because that’s not even anywhere in my… I can’t even be jealous.
“It was the changing of Motown… that changed the whole idea. Berry Gordy didn’t want [Marvin] to do that album, because, you know, he was a love song guy. He actually produced a couple of songs for a group called The Originals that actually were big hit songs, and that kind of proved that, ‘Yes, I can produce my own stuff, so let me make my record.’ And I know it’s Smokey Robinson’s favorite album ever. So yeah, that’s a good one.”
The song he wrote: “Rhythm Nation” (written with Terry Lewis and Janet Jackson), 1989
Emmons opened the discussion by saying, “All right, so Jimmy Jam, one of the things you had talked about when you picked ‘What’s Going On,’ that you had said that Rhythm Nation wouldn’t exist without What’s Going On. So we have “Rhythm Nation” queued up here, which just got inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.”
“Yeah, so first of all, thank you, Sly and the Family Stone,” Jam began. “Because the way that song came about was, we had the concept for ‘Rhythm Nation,’ but we didn’t have a track for it. We knew that it was, you know, kind of the theme we wanted, and I was out at dinner, and you know, when the restaurants play music, and it’s just kind of background music, like you’re not really hearing it. And I heard, ‘Thank You [Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin],’ come on, Sly & the Family Stone. So I heard it come on, and I kind of, for a minute, I thought, ‘Oh, I love this song,’ and then I went back to the conversation, and then, for some reason, when it got to the kind of, I don’t even know what you called it, like the instrumental breakdown, it’s the kind of guitar where it goes, ‘Jing, ding, ding, ding, ding,’ I said, ‘Oh my god, check please.’
“I went back to the studio, and I basically took that one little piece of the guitar part from ‘Thank You,’ I looped it, I put some drums on it —and I remember Janet walking in the room, and she just said, ‘Is that “Rhythm Nation”?’ And I said, ‘I think so.’ And then we wrote it from there. But thank you, Sly & the Family Stone.”
Emmons also asked about Jam & Lewis starting work on the Rhythm Nation album, three years after their blockbuster success with Jackson’s previous album, Control.
“So there was a three-year period between records, and she walked in very confident,” Jam said. “She knew what she wanted to talk about, and that was different from Control [where] she was still kind of finding her way. But Rhythm Nation, she walked in and just was excited about working. The other thing I remember was it had snowed. We were working in Minneapolis — and the first thing she did, she got so excited when she saw the snow, she lays down and starts making a snow angel. And we’re like, ‘No, you’re gonna catch a cold.’ And of course, she did. But some of the vocals that she did, she had a cold, but it gave it a kind of a cool little rasp to it. The memories of making that album were really great, and everybody left us alone because we were up in Minneapolis, so nobody could just drop by the studio.
“And, A&M, I will say, did a wonderful job of letting us sequence the record the way we wanted to, to put those songs up first. There was a suggestion — not so much from the label — but there was a suggestion that we should call the album Escapade, put a nice color picture of Janet on the front of it, and basically take ‘Rhythm Nation,’ ‘State of the World,’ ‘The Knowledge,’ those types of songs, and put them at the end of the album. And we were like, ‘No, no, we’re going to start the album with these…’ like, ‘We have a whole concept.’ So I will say they were very creative, they let us kind of do it … And, A&M believed in us, and the fact that they believed in us, and they really backed us on it. And then the fact that it was so successful — that was to me what made it feel really great.”
Jam also saluted John McClain, the A&M executive who had an executive producer credit on the album, who died on Tuesday (May 26). “He [had] faxed us the roster, he said, ‘Who do you want to work with on the roster? We looked at it, and our fingers both stopped on Janet’s name, because not only did we feel like we wanted to hear her voice on something we wrote, but we also felt like we knew not so much what was missing, but what she hadn’t had on the two albums before. Which was basically that attitude, that feisty attitude that she had when she was an actress. So that was the thing. But for us it’s really the inspiration if someone inspires us. So I think that’s the thing that we always kind of look for. Who inspires us?”
Jam hedged a bit on his choice of favorite song he’d written. At another point in the conversation, he pointed to another Jam and Lewis song, ‘Optimistic,’ which they co-wrote with Gary Hines.
“I know that whenever someone asks our favorite song, and favorite is always really tough, but I always say that if there was a song that was put in a time capsule in 100 years from now, but aliens or somebody came down and opened it up and it said Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis on it, the song they would play would be ‘Optimistic’ by Sounds of Blackness. And the reason we say that is because that song explains everything that we are… our rhythmic sense, our lyric sense, so on and so forth. That was the song that people said got them up in the morning, or when they were having a bad day, that was the song they put on — and it’s one of those songs that you know, some 30 plus years later, it’s still that having that same effect on people. And we always call music the divine art, and I think that’s a good representation of it, as far as we’re concerned.”
Paul Williams
The song that inspired him: “Wichita Lineman” (Jimmy Webb, 1968)
Williams pointed to the line, “And I need you more than want you/ And I want you for all time,” which many regard as one of the best lyrics ever written.
“You know, I went looking for a ledge when I heard that,” Williams said. “It doesn’t get any better than that. Anyway, I wish I’d written that one. And I should have. My dad was a lineman in Wichita! Jimmy Webb, I love him, and he’s brilliant, and he’s as nice as he is talented, and he’s a purely authentic Oklahoma songwriter.”
Warren also raved about “Wichita Lineman.” “I was a huge, huge Jimmy Webb fan, and I remember reading that he wrote all the songs, like, about one girl or something —when he was 18, 19, and 20, and I was here, I was 25, getting turned out everywhere, and just being totally depressed, like, ‘Can I be Jimmy Webb?’ But we’re supposed to be who we are, right? You know, our path is our path. But I remember that song is my favorite Jimmy Webb song. And he has so many great ones, ‘Didn’t We,’ ‘Where’s the Playground Susie.’ Anyways, that one line, ‘And I need you more than want you/ And I want you for all time.’ It’s so simple, but it’s profound and brilliant.”
Jimmy Jam concurred: “It’s one of those [sentiments] that can’t be said any better. I think, as songwriters, a lot of times when we hear a phrase, we go, ‘Yeah, but how can we change that?’ Or, ‘How can we make that better?’ And that’s one you just leave it alone.”
Williams added that he nearly picked another Webb song. “Actually, if it had been in the [Grammy Hall of Fame], I would have chosen “Highwayman,” because “Highwayman” also has a line that I cannot listen to without getting teary.” He pointed to the fourth chorus and its key line, “Or I may simply be a single drop of rain”: “And when I reach the other side/ I’ll find a place to rest my spirit if I can/ Perhaps I may become a highwayman again/ Or I may simply be a single drop of rain/ But I will remain.”
“There is a spiritual lesson in that thought alone,” Williams said.
For the record, neither Williams nor Webb were included on The New York Times’ recent, much-debated list of 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters. (Both Warren and Jam & Lewis were.) Warren may have had that slight to Williams in mind when she told him on stage near the top of the event: “I want to say that you’ve inspired me, and so many other songwriters. You’re f–king great.”
The song he wrote: “I’m Going to Go Back There Someday” (written with Kenny Ascher) from The Muppet Movie, 1979
“I loved Jim Henson,” Williams said. “I loved the Muppets. I went over and did The Muppet Show, and I was never one of those kids that had buddies that had a tree house. When I met Jim Henson and all the Muppet performers, I felt like I had a bunch of friends that I was part of a gang in a tree house. Jim asked me to write the songs for a [1977 TV movie] called Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. I think that was actually my audition for The Muppet Movie.
“So there’s this landlocked bird, because Gonzo is a landlocked bird. I think we’re all landlocked birds, frankly. But Gonzo is a landlocked bird, and they’re sitting out there in the middle of the desert. I know what those desert skies look like, and it will, if you don’t believe in God or aren’t touched by some sort of spiritual energy. You look at that sky in the middle of the desert and you are touched. And Kenny and I wrote a song that was not called for in the movie, called ‘I’m Going to Go Back There Someday,’ for Gonzo.”
The songwriters played it for Henson, who two days later told them he would add a scene to the film to feature the song.
“The reason I wanted to play that song, and the reason I wanted it to be played all the way through, is for the line, ‘There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met,’ because that’s the sauce. And also that song was played at Jim Henson’s funeral [in 1990, when he died at 53 from toxic shock syndrome]. I think that everything I’ve done with that was involved in Muppets, including after he was gone, for The Muppet Christmas Girls, had this amazing energy in it that was the power of kindness — and it’s the power of kindness that was part of Jim Henson. And I think ‘Rainbow Connection’ has the life that it does because of the power of kindness, and it’s Jim Henson. And I think I think that this song will probably wind up being for my whole entire life my favorite song I ever had the opportunity to write, and [to] write that also with Kenny, whose music is so beautiful.”
Warren interjected, “May I just say one thing. That line is so beautiful – ‘There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met.’ What a beautiful line.”
To Collaborate or Not to Collaborate
After the panel discussion, Emmons allowed a few questions from audience members. One person asked Warren “Why do you prefer working alone versus writing with people?”
The songwriter gave a thoughtful reply. “I love being in a room and wrestling a song to the ground, really. I just love it. It’s weird that it’s weird to write by yourself… I mean, I just love it. I know I write my best songs that way, you know. I just have a thing — I’ll just sit there for like hours to get one line. I did that today. I literally spent all day —like, three lines out of a bridge, my whole f–king day. But I got it, and it was worth it. But I just.. that’s just what works for me. I mean, I’ve co-written, and I do on occasion, but I get so much joy [out of] just really taking something, taking nothing, and just carving it into something, and making it as great as I possibly can.”
By contrast, Jam and Williams have written most of their best-known songs with collaborators.
“I always liked the idea of collaboration,” Jam said. “I always did, and it may have stemmed from… I don’t know if this is my psychosis or whatever, but it was maybe because I was an only child growing up. I had to have brothers and sisters that were all much older than me, and I remember meeting Terry when I was, I think I was 13 — and I felt like he was like the brother I never had. And so the whole idea of collaborating, or being able to bounce ideas off of people, was always cool to me.
“Now, the interesting thing is, Terry and I, a lot of times, work alone. I like to say we’re together individually, if that makes sense. So, there will be songs that Terry will write totally by himself. There’s songs I’ll write totally by myself. But at the end of the day, it’s always Jam & Lewis —and our agreement was, we shook hands, and we say 50/50, so it doesn’t really matter who writes it. Yeah, Lennon & McCartney, kind of that same thing. And that’s the way we do it.”
Williams has worked with several collaborators, chiefly Roger Nichols, with whom he wrote “Out in the Country,” “We’ve Only Just Begun,” “Rainy Days and Mondays” and “I Won’t Last a Day Without You.” He also wrote “You and Me Against the World” and “Rainbow Connection” with Kenny Ascher, and is now collaborating with Oscar winner Gustavo Santaolalla on songs from a stage musical based on Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film Pan’s Labyrinth.
“First of all, I wrote with Roger Nichols, who was my first really full-time partner for years — [we] wrote all the Carpenters hits. He was my music school, you know, and also there was a sense of brotherhood to it, and community, it was great… For me to sit down and write with somebody that is as brilliant as Kenny Ascher or Roger or Gustavo is, I mean, all of a sudden my music suddenly sounds like it was written by a grown-up.”
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