{"id":345,"date":"2007-11-29T17:03:41","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T00:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/?p=345"},"modified":"2007-11-30T14:08:34","modified_gmt":"2007-11-30T21:08:34","slug":"cindy-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/?p=345","title":{"rendered":"Hail Hail, Cindy Lee Berryhill &#038; Paul Williams!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/pix-2007\/cindylee-paul.jpg\" alt=\"Cindy Lee Berryhill &#038; Paul Wiliams \u00a9 Jill Jarrett\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>(This is a blog I originally wrote for my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/meaningoflouie\">MySpace page,<\/a> carried over to my Louie Report pages, as opposed to the other way around)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I fell in love with <strong>Cindy Lee Berryhill<\/strong> back in 1992.   <\/p>\n<p>I was walking around the American Book Association convention in Anaheim that year, casually bumping into all sorts of people- <strong>Jimmy Carter<\/strong>, <strong>Dr. Ruth Westheimer<\/strong>, and all sorts of other folks that happened be at the big book publishing industry tradeshow.  I went to this event to meet up with <strong>Dave Marsh<\/strong>, who was about to release a book about LOUIE LOUIE, and see this new band he was in called the <strong>ROCK BOTTOM REMAINDERS<\/strong>*, featuring all sort of literary types you wouldn&#8217;t expect to do music- <strong>Stephen King, Amy Tan, Dave Barry, Matt Groening<\/strong>, and a handful others.<\/p>\n<p>Anyways, so I&#8217;m walking around the convention, and I see a very pretty blonde woman sitting at a booth, strumming a guitar.  I decide to talk to her, and find out she&#8217;s written some very entertaining songs.  I tell her about my LOUIE LOUIE documentary project, and she tells me all about her experience with the song, playing it at a high school talent show. It&#8217;s such a great story that I decided to go to my car and get my bulky 3\/4&#8243; camera package to shoot a segment with her.   It&#8217;s an absolutely wonderful story and performance that I&#8217;m happy to get on tape.   She introduces me to her friend <strong>Paul Williams<\/strong>, who just happens to be the founder of <strong>Crawdaddy<\/strong>, which was the first serious rock and roll magazine, coming out years before <strong>Rolling Stone<\/strong> magazine.   It was one of those great days for me, as I fell in love with a great singer-songwriter that just happened to be a very nice person that shared her story for my documentary.<\/p>\n<p>After meeting Cindy Lee, I decide to track down some of her CDs, which I all enjoyed.  She had a funny song about &#8220;wishing she was a man&#8221; so she could &#8220;have a belly like Jack Nicholson.&#8221;  She wrote really catchy songs with well-crafted lyrics.   Over the years, she&#8217;d do shows in San Francisco, and it was always a treat to see her again.  I&#8217;d continue to buy her new CDs, including &#8220;Garage Orchestra,&#8221; which was practically glued in my CD player for the longest time.  Every song on that CD I loved &#8211; &#8220;Gary Handleman,&#8221; &#8220;I Want Stuff,&#8221; &#8220;I Wonder Why,&#8221;&#8230;. not a turkey in the bunch.<\/p>\n<p>Then, I hadn&#8217;t heard about Cindy Lee in many years.  I heard she married Paul Williams and dropped out of the music industry to raise a child.  She certainly wasn&#8217;t the first musician to drop out to raise a kid, so it was nothing unusual.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, I heard that Cindy Lee was back doing music.  She wrote a new song called &#8220;What If Jesus Was a Republican&#8221; and was about to release her first album in many years.  Around the same time, <strong>Neil Young<\/strong> was releasing his &#8220;Living with War&#8221; so there was some similar synergy going on-  pissed-off people that happened to be musicians. It was a theme I could definitely relate to.<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;s got her new album out, and as I created <a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/meaningoflouie\">my MySpace profile<\/a>, I had to add her along my list of friends, just to re-connect and all&#8230;  Today, she sent out a little email to her fans about an article about her new album and her marriage with Paul Williams.  I didn&#8217;t realize that Paul suffered a traumatic brain injury back in 1995.  Her new album addresses her experience of living with a husband recovering from and living with traumatic brain injury. In the article she states &#8220;The song came from my experience with Paul but I couched it in a story about a soldier coming home from war with a brain injury.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the article, Cindy says &#8220;I can&#8217;t know what it&#8217;s like to have a loved one coming back from war injured, and my fingers are crossed as my nephew is stationed in Baghdad with the Army right now, but I do know what it&#8217;s like to be with a loved one after a traumatic brain injury and all the daily challenges in the long term of sustaining a relationship with that loved one.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;We definitely have our problems to work out: getting disability in place, child care, and so on . But Paul still has a lot to offer, I mean he is the &#8216;<strong>Forrest Gump<\/strong>&#8216; of rock.. How many folks do you know that marched and cocked rifles on <strong>the Doors<\/strong>&#8216; &#8216;Unknown Soldier&#8217; or got a phone call in his college dorm from <strong>Bob Dylan<\/strong> or smoked pot for the first time with Brian Wilson in a tent in Brian&#8217;s living room while listening to the acetates of <strong>the Beach Boys<\/strong> lost Smile album, or sold his New York City loft to the great beat writer <strong>William Burroughs<\/strong>. He also sang with <strong>John and Yoko<\/strong> on &#8216;Give Peace A Chance&#8217; at their Bed-In For Peace. I mean Paul really is the great &#8216;Almost Famous&#8217; of rock and roll and still such a fine writer.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You can read the full article at:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/top40-charts.com\/news\/Pop-Rock\/Cindy-Lee-Berryhill-The-Story-Of-A-Song\/36991.html\">http:\/\/top40-charts.com\/news\/Pop-Rock\/Cindy-Lee-Berryhill-The-Story-Of-A-Song\/36991.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I knew Paul Williams had some interesting experiences in the rock and roll universe, but I had no idea his life was so diverse.   As I&#8217;ve been digging through a pile of old Crawdaddy magazines that were given to me a few years ago, I&#8217;ve been discovering some great writings.<\/p>\n<p>Both Cindy Lee Berryhill and Paul Williams are exceptional human beings.   I applaud them for their persistence, their courage, and their spirit.<\/p>\n<p>They both have MySpace pages.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/mscindyleeberryhill\">http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/mscindyleeberryhill<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/crawdadpaul\">http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/crawdadpaul<\/a><\/p>\n<p>With love and respect,<\/p>\n<p>ERIC PREDOEHL<\/p>\n<p>* Of course, I really should mention that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dqydj.com\/\"><strong>Kathi Kamen Goldmark<\/strong><\/a> is responsible for putting the <strong>Rock Bottom Remainders <\/strong> together.   You can read all about this group, and her &#8220;<strong>Don&#8217;t Quit Your Day Job&#8221; Records<\/strong> label at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dqydj.com\/\">dqydj.com<\/a>.  If you&#8217;re in San Franciso on a second Tuesday of the month, you might be able to join her at the <strong>All-Star Jams with Train Wreck<\/strong> shows at El Rio.  It&#8217;s a fun scene&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(This is a blog I originally wrote for my MySpace page, carried over to my Louie Report pages, as opposed to the other way around) I fell in love with Cindy Lee&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,15,24,20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-los-angeles-music","category-music-business","category-24","category-old-versions","category-production-at-louie-central"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.louielouie.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}