She’d hardly be unjustified: Considering that Williams has given the world yet another incandescent record, it’s baffling that folks don’t leave her alone to do what she does best — make music. Even Morlix, someone who has a legitimate beef with Williams, sees it that way: “Who’s to tell an artist how often they should put out a record?” he asks.
“It’s her record,” echoes Miller. “As long as somebody’s giving her money for it [Mercury reportedly paid $450,000 for the right to release Car Wheels], she might as well get it how she wants it.” Not only that, Miller believes the New York Times Magazine feature unfairly portrayed Williams as “unstable for wanting to redo a vocal.
“A lot of thought and emotion goes into making a record,” he explains. “You want to make sure that feeling comes across. I don’t think the guy that wrote the New York Times story understood how records are made. There was nothing that unusual going on. If Lucinda can sense that the wrong emotion is coming through on a vocal and can stop it herself, I think that’s great. That’s a lot better than singing an entire five-minute track and then having to start over.”
The issue, says Holly George-Warren, editor of Rolling Stone Press, “goes beyond an artist being held to task for taking too long to finish a record. A lot of the things I’ve heard said about Lucinda are sexist — that she’s difficult, for example. You don’t hear things like that about Bruce Springsteen and John Fogerty. Both of them have taken a long time to make records.
“It seems that happens a lot,” George-Warren continues, “especially if a woman hears things a certain way — her way — rather than the way a male producer tells her they should sound. Look at Sinead O’Connor. It was the same situation with her second album. She hated the production and started over. That set her on the path of being ‘difficult’ because she didn’t agree with her male producer’s opinion.”
“Guys have a hard time taking direction from a woman,” confirms Miller. “I’ll be the first to admit it working with my wife [singer-songwriter Julie Miller]. When we’re working on a record, things can get pretty intense around the house. But I know it’s my problem and I have to deal with it.”
“We’re all conditioned to react in a certain way,” adds Williams, referring to how issues of gender often complicate things in the studio. “It’s something we’ve learned. I also am conditioned to react in a way that’s not healthy. I have a tendency to back down and allow myself to be controlled. That’s something that I have to work on.
“But I’m trying to grow,” she continues. “And you can’t grow if you’re constantly blaming someone else. You have to look at yourself too. I’m on a path. I’ve been on a spiritual growth path all my life. And I’m still on it. I’m trying to evolve.”
Williams’ willingness to work with — and stand up to — Steve Earle, someone she describes as “intimidating,” is evidence of this growth. “I think Steve is brilliant,” she says. “I love his stuff, but we did butt heads in the studio. But the thing is, I got a great record and he knows it’s a great record.” (Although Earle at one point said he’d have to hear the final Car Wheels mixes before he put his name on the album, he and Williams are, by all accounts, on good terms again: His name is all over the project.)
Doubtless Williams will continue to run up against producers, record execs, and the press; she might even change the locks on a couple more of them. But, as her comments suggest, she knows her greatest challenge comes from within — specifically, from her fierce resolve to close the gap between her artistic desires and what she’s able, within limits, to achieve.
It’s tempting, in fact, to hear “Can’t Let Go”, especially the lines, “It’s over, I know it, but I can’t let go,” as a description of Williams’ creative process. Her account of how the track took shape in the studio certainly points in that direction.
“I really wanted to swamp it up,” Williams says of the song, which was written, ironically enough, by Randy Weeks of the Lonesome Strangers. “Steve [Earle] had loaned me this dobro. The neck was real wide and I couldn’t get my fingers on it. I thought it sounded completely out of tune. Then we put the track down and everyone said, ‘That’s it! That’s it!’…And yet I couldn’t leave it at that. I kept complaining. I kept saying, ‘No, I can’t have that on there.’
“I wasn’t happy,” she continues, “but in the end it was one of those perfectionist things that I was able to accept. But it bothered me for a long time, and I still know it’s there. Nobody else knows it’s there, but the dobro is really out of tune. And yet because of the nature of the song, it sort of adds to that rawness thing. I got vetoed on that one. It was like, ‘No, we’re not doing this one over.’
“And yet I could tell the difference. I know when something’s not right.”
“The way she moves is right in time with me,” says ND contributing editor Bill Friskics-Warren, referring to the way that Williams makes records. Friskics-Warren lives in Nashville, where he writes for the Nashville Scene and The Washington Post.
