The Smiley Smile Message Board

Cindy Lee Berryhill, the wife of Paul Williams, has just confirmed on Facebook what had been going around Twitter, etc since this morning - that he died last night, peacefully.  PW, until the effects of a head injury silenced him some years back, was one of the BB's foremost champions among rock critics - a profession he pretty much created by founding Crawdaddy magazine. He wrote early and often about the importance of Pet Sounds and Smile. He will be missed.

(Also notable for recognizing the importance of Philip K. Dick - he was PKD's literary executor for many years.)

That's sad news. His book (there may be more than one) contains a lot of interesting writing about the group.

Sad news indeed, may he rest in peace.

I have his How Deep Is The Ocean and I purchased the GV Box, although I was by no means affluent then, more or less because he wrote: get this box, even if you have to eat peanut butter sandwiches for a month! I will never forget this particular, and particularly funny, incitement to go get that set...

So sorry to hear about this. I used to read How Deep is the Ocean in between classes at college and I have fond memories of that. Cindy Lee Berryhill often used to post on the old Wheeler board and Shut Down, and is a very kind hearted person...my heart goes out to her.

Sad news indeed.  "how deep is the ocean" is one of the very best books on the boys out there. Great writer. Great champion of our band.

What a great fella and a terrific, engaging writer with enthusiasm that burst off the page and got you excited about whatever excited him...

 He used to humor my PKD-based pestering in the 90s and we exchanged lots of fun letters about Phil's Exegesis. I wish I had the sense to drop a Brian Wilson reference back then, I would've loved discussing the Beach Boys with him! Sad that I never got the chance, but it's a good time to pick up that copy of How Deep is the Ocean and fall for his box set review all over again.

quick check in...

seek out paul's book from ~1969 called "outlaw blues" for details about smile. great reading back in the day...

checking out...

I was just going to post that, Steve. That little paperback book "Outlaw Blues" along with the '71 Tom Nolan article in Rolling Stone were the ones that really turned me onto The Beach Boys in the early 70's. Then Tim White's Crawdaddy article in '76......

Paul Williams was there, in Brian's house, during the Smile period and saw what was going on first hand. Williams was a great writer and I enjoyed his book "How Deep Is The Ocean" (essential reading). The "Outlaw Blues" article, originally published in 1968, talks about the Smile, Smiley Smile, and Wild Honey periods of 1967 and are incorporated in the "How Deep Is The Ocean" book. "Outlaw Blues" was really written from a fan's perspective and was essentially extracted from an interview with him.

He is in a better place now.  RIP and thanks for the articles and reviews and books about Brian & The Boys, Paul!

RIP

Godspeed Paul, and thank you.

http://www.boo-hooray.com/paul-williams/

Last Sunday at the Boo-Hooray gallery in New York, there was a special one-day exhibit of Paul Williams/Crawdaddy memorabilia, featuring a performance by Cindy Lee and Lenny Kaye, who got his start as a writer at Crawdaddy in its earliest days.  The webpage has some vintage photos of Paul. There's one of him in his Crawdaddy office, probably from late '66 or early '67, and one of him with Philip K. Dick.

RIP.

His Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young books were all really enjoyable reads for me. I think I may need to revisit his Beach Boys one, at least...

My God, I am very sorry to hear this.  I met Paul at the Dylan El Rey concert in 1997.  It was a pleasure to meet him as I own all his books.  A great guy.

Oh no! My favourite BB author. So sad to hear this.

I had wondered who'd be the first to put up a picture of "the other" Paul Williams in one Paul's obits, and Contact Music has obliged:

http://www.contactmusic.com/news/crawdaddy-founder-paul-williams-dead-at-64_3579704

Which gives me the feeling that the Rainbow Connection man is going to have to go on Twitter before long to explain that the title of the documentary feature about him, Still Alive, still applies.

Paul was a great guy.  I was honored to have been able to meet him in person and hang out with him and Cindy Lee, before his injury.

It's probably well-known to most of the older rock fans here, but Paul was present at John & Yoko's Montreal "Bed In," and can be seen in the film of the recording of "Give Peace a Chance."  It was about 1997 when I hung out with Paul and Cindy, so almost 30 years later, but I remember that he still shook his head to the music just like he did in that film.

I remember him telling me the story of Brian inviting him to come over and try out his brand new home videotape setup.  He talked about how you could point the camera directly at a light source and over-saturate the tape, to the point that the current going through the recording heads would cause the tape to start smoking.  Of course Brian thought that was so cool, so he kept doing it!

RIP Paul.

Lee

http://news.yahoo.com/pioneering-rock-journalist-paul-williams-dies-64-235441370.html

Another article about Paul's passing illustrated with a photo of the singing, songwriting Paul.  But the latter is being a good sport about it - this evening he Tweeted his condolences to Paul's family and friends.

A nice fellow, he will be missed.

that was a classy thing to do.

Sad news, indeed.  Paul's writing, and especially his pieces in How Deep, was everyman's writing; heartfelt, sincere and like talking with your closest friend about something cool and shared and sacred.

RIP, Paul.

Wow! That is strange, I was just writing about him on my Facebook and reading his stuff on open sky magazine, the first issue I believe.

One of the best, and most idiosyncratic, rock critics ever, possessed of a much deeper strain of humanism than virtually all of his fellow practitioners then and now. He was nice enough to reprint one of my early manifestos about Dennis' music in one of his latter-day Crawdaddy issues, and I know that he saw the bigger picture with respect to the group despite the fact that his written output about the BBs focused strongly on Brian.

A shame that his enthusiasm was cut short...the time since his accident has been a good one for "classic" rock and its reassimilation into the current scene, and he would have been all over that had he been able to continue practicing his craft.

A very good article on Paul from UT San Diego, with this BB/BW reference: "The first joint he smoked was offered to him by head Beach Boy Brian Wilson."

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/mar/29/tp-founder-of-crawdaddy-music-magazine/

I'll tell you one thing - I would have liked to see what Paul would have had to say about C50 and TWGMTR, were he still in his prime last year.  Not to mention what Volume 4 of his Dylan series would have been like - taking on Time Out Of Mind through Tempest, and all the live versions thereof.  I figure his analyses of the Theme Time Radio Hour or whatever that show's called would have been especially stimulating.

One thing I would like to see down the road is Cindy Lee Berryhill, with or without a collaborator, maybe trying her hand at a biography. Only three rock critics have ever been the subject of one - Lester Bangs, Lilian Roxon and Paul Nelson. And the books about them all tell stories of talent largely unfulfilled. Even Nelson, who lived to almost 70, simply withdrew from circulation just at the point where his writing career really should have gone into high gear.   But Paul Williams,  right up until he could no longer write, steadily realized his talent. 

RIP

http://fridaynightboys300.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/paul-williams-rip.html

From Brian's official Facebook page:

Several of the people commenting on the post thought Brian was talking about the songwriting, singing Paul Williams. I wouldn't be surprised if that fellow has to breathe on a mirror in front of David Letterman on the air to prove he's alive. (Which is what Dave made actor Abe Vigoda do about 20 years ago to dispel similar rumors of his passing - Abe still being very much with us.)

I've been laid out with an evil flu and missed this.  Damn.  Paul Williams has everything to do with the kind of Beach Boy fan I am.  Starting with "Outlaw Blues" which I ordered from the back of "My Weekly Reader" I learned about "Pet Sounds", "Smile", and "Wild Honey", which brought my fandom to another level of consciousness.  I'd say that Williams pretty much created the Smile myth which was a large part of their currency as they went forward in the 70s and beyond.  Regardless, he was their champion at a time when there were precious few, and his writing was a place you could get hard core Brian/BB thought prior to the internet.  As he called them -- "The Wilderness Years."

I subscribed to Crawdaddy in the 70s and as a fanzine in the 90s.  Once had a nice long chat with him on WFMU about the GV boxset when it came out.  I was pleased as pie.  In October, Superstorm Sandy flooded my apartment and I lost virtually all my books, writings, records etc.  One book I made a point of pulling out and cleaning off was my signed (now warped!) copy of "How Deep Is the Ocean?"

Enjoy the Music of the the Spheres my brother, and bless your family.

He was one of my favorite music writers ... really, along with Greg Shaw a little later (another gone too soon), sort of created pop music journalism in my opinion ... or some special variation of it. RIP Mr. Williams !

I can dig the relationship to Shaw though their styles were different.  But they were both first and foremost fans -- your buddy who has a new record that you need to stop everything and listen to because it's going to change your life.  Not nihilists or narcissists or trying to be the story themselves.  There was Love in their words.

I'm real sorry to hear that, Aum.   Be happy you're still around - at least you're alive to tell about it.  :)

Shaw was a big fan of Brian & The Boys and Surf music in general.  Remember reading his articles in Bomp! magazine.  Good writer.

Thanks, Mikie!  I'm good.  All the loss was on the material plane.  I think I needed a spring cleaning anyway!

like mikie i also wanted to add that i'm glad you are ok. as for losing your collection..i'm sorry to hear that..i sure can relate to that!

Thanks, Steve -- seems like a lifetime ago.  A few days ago I was on another board and there was an OT discussion of Lillian Roxon (mentioned in this thread). Someone asked if anyone had a copy of her Encylopedia.  I thought hell yeah -- first printing! -- and then remembered oh no I don't....

I will mention that my own music gear got the apartment's highest ground and is fine.  First things first!

A couple of relevant links:

http://www.rocksbackpagesblogs.com/2013/03/listening-to-paul-williams/

in which longtime Newsday pop-music writer Wayne Robins eulogizes Paul and talks about Cindy Lee Berryhill and Lenny Kaye's performance at the one-day exhibit of Williams/Crawdaddy memorabilia in New York, the Sunday before he died. Cindy Lee and Lenny performed two songs by artists Paul wrote much about.

 One, naturally given that multivolume chronicle of Dylan he penned, was "Like A Rolling Stone." The other.... "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times."

http://cindyleeberryhill.blogspot.com/2013/04/more-reflections.html

has some tributes to Paul, leading off with Van Dyke Parks. VDP reports that he was the feller who introduced Paul to Brian. Van Dyke also reminds everyone who helped out Cindy Lee and young Alexander Williams, financially and otherwise, during Paul's last years of illness, that the job is not done yet, as Alexander someday will be going to college...and, you never know, just might change the course of musical history his first year there, as Paul did when he got Crawdaddy going.

VDP also goes into an entertaining digression about Jann Wenner visiting Warner Bros Records's offices to line up ads in the early days of Rolling Stone.  VDP gave him some advice about improving the magazine's physical aspects. If you're younger than 50, you may find the advice given somewhat mystifying. So ask somebody who read the magazine before 1973.

Paul's work had a deep influence on my as a young journalist and writer. The sheer enthusiasm with which he'd embrace new work was amazing. I still remember his laudatory review of Imagination, which I believe only ever appeared in the revived Crawdaddy! He found depths in that album that BW and Joe Thomas only dreamed of. And yet, and yet ... he wrote about those things in such a genuine way that you accepted his insights as utterly valid, even if they were coming from a place of greater artistic integrity than the music itself. A neat trick.

That being said, he was a very particular, very idiosyncratic rock writer, who seemed to confine himself to writing about music and artists that he really liked. But given the breadth of his other work, it seems like that writing was only a fraction of who he was anyway.

It was an honor to meet Paul after Brian's 2004 SMiLE gig in Pala, CA.  I always really loved Crawdaddy!

I'm sad to hear he passed. He wrote one of the first Beach Boys books I ever read, How Deep is the Ocean, and that book was one of the first to really help me begin to understand the genius and soul of Brian Wilson.

In December 1966, Paul visited Brian at his house up in Laurel Way and was one of the first of the 'outside' world to hear the SMiLE music. He smoked a hookah in Brian's tent, went swimming with him, had a little fun with Brian's new movie camera, met the other Beach Boys and attended a recording session where he participated in making noises laying on the floor as directed by Brian. So cool.
Here's a my tribute to him (South Park style as usual for me)  :

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v51/shireling/bwpwsp_zps370213c4.jpg)

:) Paul, you'll be missed. Everybody, if they can, go read his review of the Beach Boys 1993 GV box set from 1993, some of the best writing on music ever.

NICE.

Where would one find said review?

Ah, I've been searching for it online, but I can't seem to find it. I know it's in his How Deep is the Ocean book. Wish I could scan it, but that's very likely against the rules. Copyrighted material and all that.

Sure. I've been meaning to purchase How Deep is the Ocean? somewhere online for years.. guess I'll have to get it now. :)

It is in How deep is the ocean

I pulled out my copy with the intention of scanning it; but with 33- 6 X 9 inch pages you're on your own!

The autumn 1993 issue of Crawdaddy featuring the '93 box set review is worth searching for as it includes some great observations from Cindy Lee Berryhill.