Just the two of us

I've never had much use for autographs.

Early in my professional writing career, the part where I first began interviewing famous and sort of famous people, I was told by the creator of "Mountain Stage" to avoid asking for anything.

"It's just bad taste," he said.

Aside from being a little rude, given that I had come to work, it was a kind of an abuse of the access. In over ten years, I've never asked for an autograph. I have a couple, but they were sort of just given reflexively. I ended up with Landau Murphy's signature because he was practicing them on paper towels and left one in my office. I have a picture signed by two actresses given to me by the publicity/marketing guy who was shepherding them around town.

I don't ask for souvenirs, but I have asked for other things. I've asked questions that have nothing to with any article I'm writing. I just wanted answers to things I don't understand and just thought they might know some truth I didn't.

I spoke to Bill Withers the other day. 

I was 12-years-old when I first heard Withers, the guy who wrote, "Lean on me," among others. It was on a drive to Michigan. We drove up at Christmas to visit my grandparents --a little unusual. Typically, we only went north in June, but my grandfather was already sick, had been sick for a while. He'd gotten the cancer diagnosis, I think, the summer before. The grownups sent the kids outside while they discussed what was about to happen.

Under a pear tree, we listened to  Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust."

Thump, thump, thump, another one bites the dust.

It was the first album I ever bought. A late bloomer, as usual, I was just becoming aware of music and my tastes were both very mainstream and, at the time, a little unfortunate.

I remember the drive at Christmas. We drove at night. My sisters and mom slept in back, while I kept my father company. We talked or he talked and we listened to the radio. It was the night that I first fell in love with radio.

In the wee hours, while we passed through Ohio, old radio shows from my father's boyhood came on -- "The Great Gildersleeve," "Fibber McGee and Molly," "Dragnet" -- but before midnight, we drove through West Virginia. The mountains cut up the signal and we kept having to tune for a new station.

Station after station, Bill Withers came on over and over. His song, "Just the two of us," was on the charts and the state must have been proud of him, wildly proud. Sitting in the dark, driving, we must have heard it four times. I loved the song, would sometimes hum it or sing bits of it for years later, but never caught the title or the artist.

I didn't listen much to radio until I was deep into high school and didn't know who that song belonged to until Bill Withers was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.

Speaking with him for a story and then writing about him later, I learned a bit about the man, though he's made a post-career in music as a kind of enigma. He's still kind of a mystery.

Not long after "Just the two of us," Withers quit music --probably a wise move given what was coming. In a world with rap and hip hop, there wasn't going to be much room for guys like him to make new music, but I don't know that he thought much about it when he left.

According to his Wikipedia page, his recording contract ended and even though he was still selling records and still capable of making radio hits, he just quietly stepped away. He took his winnings, and went on with his life.


The first time we spoke, he told me about growing up, about loss and about watching his first television program in the upper floor of a funeral home. It creeped him out.

This last time, I asked him about his stammer --or the one he used to have. I asked because I still have mine. After so many years, it still refuses to be gone and it worries me, still. So many times I have been told that I have a wonderful voice, a warm voice, a great radio voice, and with that voice I used to dream that it might take me somewhere.

But it never has.

If I am rested and careful and cautious, if I'm practiced, I can sound polished and clean. Take away any of those things and I can stumble. My mother used to tell me that I just had too much to say and couldn't get my mouth to say it all.

"Slow down, Bill. Slow down," she'd say.

I still fight to do that, to slow down, to get it to come out right. Most days I do ok, but I've never gotten rid of it, and when my my mouth comes unhinged, I end up feeling dull and stupid: pitiful.

Bill Withers beat his stammer. His voice, so warm and personable, is clear. What he says comes out the way he wants. So, I asked him, "how did you do that?"

He told me his stammer was about conquering fear. He learned he needed to stop worrying so much about what other people thought of him. Fear was something he knew something about. He knew how to beat it.

I told him what my mother used to say. I told him sometimes it feels like I have a lot to say and I can't get it out fast enough.

He said he wasn't that smart and wondered if my stammer might be fear --or arrogance.

"You would be the first," he said. "I've never met anyone with a stammer who was arrogant."

He'd insulted me a little, but I laughed and said, no, I didn't think so and then supposed that I might be.

"My ex-wife said I was arrogant," I told him.


Actually, both of them had. Lots of people had called me arrogant or some variation of it, often.

I've been called pompous, a know-it-all, egotistical and in love with the sound of my own voice. I've been accused of being cocky, smug, and loving to be right more than anything else.

"You think very highly of your own opinion," I was told. "You have to think you're so smart."

Sometimes, I'd been told this while in the heat of arguments. Often, the pronouncement had come lightly, off-handedly, as a matter-of-fact, a truth that needed to be repeated because somehow I'd forgotten.

Before we hung up, I congratulated Bill Withers on his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and thanked him for his time. He doesn't give a lot of interviews. It was a gift that he gave me ten minutes on a day he probably had better things to do.

I'm humble now, but it's not my natural state, obviously.