A Beautiful Mind: Rock journalist Paul Williams copes with early onset dementia.
As
the door opens to a modest Encinitas, Calif., apartment, I’m reminded
that those who devote their lives to cultural enrichment are seldom
rewarded with material gain. The first person I see is Alexander, 8
years old, eyes spaced wide.
“Who is she?” he asks, his stare meeting mine with a steadiness uncharacteristic for a kid his age.
“She’s
here to talk to us about Daddy,” answers his mother, Cindy Lee
Berryhill, a honey-voiced, California blonde. Alexander pauses for a
beat, then nods his approval, retreating to the kitchen to resume work
on his laptop. Berryhill explains that he wants to be an
astrophysicist—a left-brain aspiration that places parents and progeny
on opposing sides of the cerebral divide. Berryhill is a
singer-songwriter, noted for her witty and emotive brand of rock-infused
honky-tonk, as well as for her role as co-founder of the anti-folk
movement in the 1980s. Her husband, Alexander’s dad, is Paul Williams,
creator of Crawdaddy magazine and largely regarded as the father of rock criticism.
“Seminal” is a word that tends to get thrown around a lot, but in Williams’ case, there’s simply no other word that applies. Crawdaddy,
started in 1966 when he was just 17, was the first publication to treat
rock as a serious subject (paving the way for future mags like Creem and Rolling Stone),
and Williams was the first to realize that the music was less a
generational byproduct than a cultural catalyst. He had the prescience
to recognize history taking shape around him and assumed the crucial
role of its interpreter. In an era populated by genius and defined by
iconic moments, Williams was almost magically omnipresent.
He smoked his first joint with Brian Wilson while listening to the masters of what would become Smile;
he counseled a struggling Springsteen on musical direction (just before
The Boss finally broke through with Born to Run); he and pal Timothy
Leary spent a night with John and Yoko during the Toronto
Bed-In-For-Peace, and Williams later rejoined the couple to sing on
“Give Peace a Chance.” He bitched out Jim Morrison for leaving a book
Williams lent him behind on a plane; he hitched a ride to Woodstock in a
limo with the Grateful Dead; and, all the while, Williams was
writing—refracting the pure creative energy around him through a
powerful critical lens. And he did it so well that he, as an individual
figure, doesn’t tend to register in our contemporary consciousness. Rock
criticism (and its various offshoots) has become such an integral
thread in the cultural fabric that we assume, in a way, that it’s always
existed. But ask anyone familiar with its history and they’ll tell you
that the genre was born of Paul Williams.
To
avoid any movement towards melodrama, we’ll dispense with the facts:
The reason I’ve come to Encinitas to talk about this crucial figure
rather than to him is that Williams suffers from early onset dementia, a
condition likely brought on by a bicycle accident in 1995. After making
what appeared to be a near total recovery from the traumatic brain
injury sustained in the accident, Williams’ health began to decline
shortly after Alexander was born in 2001. He became irritable and
fatigued, forgetful and foreign. He grew increasingly less like himself.
Eventually, Berryhill could no longer manage his care, and Williams,
60, lives now in a nursing home not far from the apartment he used to
share with his wife and son. While he can recall certain aspects of his
past, the dementia has severely affected Williams’ short-term memory,
meaning his ability to maintain a grasp of the present is steadily
deteriorating.
“For
Paul,” Berryhill says, “the life of a thought is short.” To dwell on
the facticity of Williams’ present condition would be to risk inspiring a
level of pity that he would likely neither want nor appreciate.
Berryhill, in order to introduce a dimension of Williams’ mind that is
no longer accessible, gave me a copy of one of his earliest works, Das
Energi. It’s best described as a collection of aphorisms—scattered bits
of hippie wisdom composed while he was living in a Canadian commune.
The
affirmation of one’s own life—the acceptance of one’s destiny as it
manifests itself in each moment—is the supreme act of faith.
It’s incredibly fucking easy. It’s a hell of a commitment.
This is a mind that betrays no tendencies toward victimhood, consciousness in seemingly perpetual ascent.
But
I asked, anyway, if Berryhill thought what befell Williams was a
special sort of tragedy, being that he was a man who, more so than most,
was defined by his thoughts.
“I
asked Paul not long ago if he missed writing,” Berryhill says, hands
encircling a mug of tea. She radiates an unbelievable sense of calm (the
strain, both emotional and financial, has been immense). “Because he
was the kind of person for whom it was never enough. No matter how much
he accomplished, he was never done. When he finally had to stop working,
he left a few unfinished manuscripts behind.
“So I asked him if he missed it, and he told me ‘no,’” she says. “ ‘No’, just like that. Quickly and definitively.”
I asked if somehow, beneath it all, Berryhill gets the sense that Williams is still anchored in a sense of self. She smiles.
“Very much so. “Paul has a sense of self,” she continues. “He’s just lost his sense of place.”
