Bill Withers, famed singer and songwriter of classics “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Lean On Me”, passed a couple of weeks ago on April 3rd, 2020. I was a big fan of his music and decided to sort of commemorate him with this blog post, more of an exploration into how masculinity might be part of his musical legacy. I’ve read few gender studies pieces on music so I thought it would also allow me to explore what we’ve been learning in class in a new context.

Initial searches for “Bill Withers” and “masculinity” brought up few fruitful results. I looked at the lyrics of some of Wither’s top hits and nothing really jumped out to me about directly relating to masculinity. I thought I had probably picked the wrong topic. Even in a podcast episode of Death, Sex, & Money with Anna Sale explicitly titled “How to Be a Man, with Bill Withers”, it didn’t seem like the episode really contained answers to that title. The host asks about losing his father and how that impacted him becoming a man,

AS: You describe [your father] as a man of stability and consistency. What was it like to lose him when you were just becoming a man? 

BW: Well, it wasn’t like he dropped dead from a heart attack. He was sick for awhile so there’s a reality to life that you can see certain things coming so you prepare. You know, you miss somebody that dies but I was prepared to go on with life. Or maybe that’s just my personality. 

And in his response, despite the prompting, Withers doesn’t really talk about manhood, but rather understanding death and sickness. She also tries to ask about how fatherhood affected his musical career, but again Withers doesn’t really have an answer that confirms her question:

AS: How much did becoming a father have to do with your reexamining touring, the life of a touring musician and thinking about committing to putting out studio albums, one after the other.

BW: Well I knew I couldn’t raise kids in Los Angeles if I was in Philadelphia and New York and London and somewhere every night. You see, we do what we’re licensed to do. By me being a songwriter, most of my money came to my mailbox. I didn’t make a lot of money going on tour. So for me being a songwriter, which I could do in the toilet on an old paper bag or even a piece of toilet paper. And my ego didn’t need the applause approval. 

 

Only once does Withers actually voluntarily mention masculinity, in reference to the stutter he grew up with and a male figure who helped him sort it out. 

BW: So when Virgil noticed that I stuttered, rather than laughing like everybody else did, he said “I think you can get some help for that.” As fate would have it, that little man who couldn’t walk without crutches, became my male figure because that was very macho to me. You know, a bunch of guys walking around flexing their muscles drinking moonshine and fighting each other on the weekends. That wasn’t masculine to me, that was dumb. Virgil kind of, he let me know that maybe something could be done about it, that I didn’t have to stutter for the rest of my life. He got me one session with a therapist and we couldn’t afford to go back but it put the seed in my mind.

Learning that this man with a delightfully smooth, melodious voice once had a stutter really surprised me. This quote from Withers about masculinity really exemplifies his personality as I understood it from the interview. Throughout, he has a no-nonsense, calm and determined attitude. When the interviewer prompts him on how his childhood growing up in a poor, rural, Black community affected his life perspective and his music, he sort of denies it and explains how he got through it. He didn’t seem to want to dwell on challenges but rather to move through them. When he first had kids, he simply tried “to learn how to do that.” He doesn’t thank people who worked on his album because he was uncomfortable being in the spotlight because of his background, it’s “just manners”. When reflecting on his life, he simply says “I could have done better but I did alright.” From what I can tell from this interview, Withers sees masculinity as simply confronting the problem and getting it done, a particular type of humble masculinity but more importantly a perspective on the world that I think resonates in his songs “Do It Good” and “Let It Be.” 

This helped me understand masculinity as not simply how people think what a man is, but rather as an understanding of a demeanor one must take up as part of participation in society. As we’ve reiterated, gender as performing actions, not so much an identity. Withers take on masculinity seems to reflect actions that he found important as part of life, not just as part of being a man. A Medium article by Scott Woods explains that his music resisted “blaxploitation”, toxic masculinity in Black film and music, and embraced a “post-civil rights Black vulnerability”, heard in “Lean On Me.” His music doesn’t have to directly confront notions of manhood to contribute to its formations.

I tried to research more into masculinity in soul music, but really only found a couple articles about rap and hip hop. In both styles, the authors explain how representations of the Black body in these genres is an important subversive act to the dominant racial discourse of Black men and their bodies. Both articles explain how masculinity in these genres is not primordial, but is produced, often drawing on stereotypes to appeal to white audiences to make a profit. What I think is really interesting considering this idea with Bill Withers is how he is often cited as universally appealing, with a number of music accolades. Alongside other huge musicians of his era, Withers was able to enact a largely ignored Black masculinity, I believe. 

Throughout the writing and research of this blog, I listened to Withers’ albums “Just As I Am” and “Still Bill”. Thank you Bill Withers for gifting the world such beautiful music, and rest in peace.