The Hard World Of Grown Folks -- Brought To You By Bill Withers

The music that was being played when I first started paying attention was early-mid 60s R & B and pop. Lots of Motown. Dionne Warwick singing Bacharach-David tunes. East coast vocal groups doing Brill Building songwriters. Curtis Mayfield songs done by the Impressions and Major Lance.

So as a kid, I got the pop lyricist's take on love gone wrong. "I cry so much just like a child that's lost his toy . . . Make believe that you don't see the tears; just let me grieve in private, 'cause each time I see you, I break down and cry . . . Sentimental fool am I, to hear an old love song, and want to cry . . . "

It wasn't hard to get the picture. Somebody went away. Or came and went. Or spent time with somebody else. Or stuck around, and was mean. Whatever went wrong, the response was lots of crying. It sounded so standard, so routine, that it didn't seem much more serious than the sniffles brought on by a December cold. In fact, some supposedly sorrowful songs didn't have much sorrow in them at all. Like the Temptations' Girl, Why You Wanna Make Me Blue? Bright and breezy enough to be your on-the-way-to-a-party soundtrack.

As I got older and closer to adolescence, the sad songs didn't change; they stayed inside the safe, abstract boundaries I'd heard since preschool: "I found love on a two-way street, and lost it on a lonely highway . . . Every street you walk on I leave tear stains on the ground . . . I spend my nights alone, crying bitter tears . . . "

Then, all of a sudden, I heard a dramatically different take on the Love Gone Wrong concept from Bill Withers.



The rolling, ominous bass line that starts in the intro and remains an undercurrent throughout the song is more surely a harbinger of coming trouble than the shark's theme in Jaws.

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.
Dadgummit, who is he, and what is he to you?

The lyrics of Love Gone Wrong songs had always included rhetorical questions of the "Why Do You Treat Me So Bad?" and "How Long Must I Suffer?" variety. This question, though, was demanding an answer. And it provoked a couple of thoughts. First: if the answer isn't the right one, there will be tears, but they won't all be his. Second: there might not be any right answer.

Something in my heart and in your eyes
Tells me he's not someone just passing by.
And when you cleared your throat, was that your cue?
Dadgummit, who is he, and what is he to you?

As my almost-teen brain was trying to nail down a concrete concept of the ill wind that was blowing through the song, Withers was kind enough to provide some interpretation assistance from real life. Withers was married to actress Denise Nicholas, who was, in my estimation, about as pretty as women needed to get. Rumor had it that Nicholas had suffered injuries bad enough to require hospital treatment (the juiciest of the rumors reporting those injuries to include a broken arm), and that those injuries were caused by her husband.

When I add the sum of you and me
I get confused, and I keep coming up with three.
You're too much for one man, but not enough for two.
Dadgummit, who is he, and what is he to you?

My life experiences as of that time left me short of the imagination necessary to think of exactly what I'd do with Denise Nicholas if she'd been my wife. But I knew that hitting her wasn't it. I couldn't imagine anybody doing such a thing. And yet I wasn't hearing loud denials from either of them.

You tell me men don't have much intuition.
Is that what you really think, or are you wishing?
Before you wreck your old home, be certain of the new.
Dadgummit, who is he, and what is he to you?

This didn't sound like it was coming from some standard pop songwriters' toolbox. It sounded personal, three-dimensional, real, and tangible. And it opened my eyes to an idea that I hadn't really grasped before: the business of romance -- that inspired so many cute and nonthreatening songs of woe -- was a business that set in motion forces that were potentially dangerous. Those forces had to be handled carefully: you didn't want to be a person who couldn't manage his own internal storms, and you didn't want to end up stuck with somebody who failed that management test, either.

Back when, drivers' ed classes for teens used to show students pictures of car wrecks to let them know that the motoring world they were about to enter contained not just the fun and frolic they imagined, but also a serious, potentially deadly side. That kind of lesson might not be a bad addendum to our teaching of the birds and the bees. Who Is He? plus a little of the Withers backstory would make for a great intro to that part of the lecture.


[YouTube video courtesy of 19urban72].