{"id":806427,"date":"2020-04-15T19:09:49","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T01:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=984844"},"modified":"2020-04-15T19:09:49","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T01:09:49","slug":"tom-waits-pens-tribute-to-hal-willner-wry-and-soulful-and-mysterious-historical-rememberer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/tom-waits-pens-tribute-to-hal-willner-wry-and-soulful-and-mysterious-historical-rememberer\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Waits Pens Tribute to Hal Willner: \u2018Wry and Soulful and Mysterious Historical Rememberer\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tom Waits<\/a> and collaborator and wife Kathleen Brennan penned a tribute to late producer and longtime friend, Hal Willner<\/a>. Willner died<\/a> last week at the age of 64. The cause of death has not yet been publicly confirmed, but he was reportedly suffering from symptoms consistent with the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

In 1974, the pair met after one of Waits\u2019 shows when he was 24 and Willner was 18. Calling the producer \u201cmore than kin and more than kind, more than friend and more than fiendish in his daunting pursuit of the lost and buried,\u201d Waits remembered Willner\u2019s knack for recalling the past and orchestrating unusual pairings.<\/p>\n

\u201cHal was the wry and soulful and mysterious historical rememberer. He specialized in staging strange musical bedfellows like Betty Carter and the Replacements or The Residents backing up Conway Twitty. Oh, the wild seeds of Impresario Hal,\u201d Waits wrote. \u201cHe was drawn equally to the danger of a fiasco and the magical power of illumination that his legendary productions held. Many years ago he bought Jimmy Durante\u2019s piano along with Bela Lugosi\u2019s wristwatch and a headscarf worn by Karen Carpenter. Some say he also owned Sarah Bernhardt\u2019s wooden leg.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe frequently kvetched. He could conjure up the past like a crystal ball or Ouija board,\u201d Waits also added. \u201cHe reminded us of a bumblebee crawling out of a calla lily\u2026 He was a furtive and clandestine and crafty treasure seeker and archeologist of forgotten islands in popular culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among Waits\u2019 recollections of Willner\u2019s memorable traits was that he \u201cspoke regularly in asides\u201d and he had \u201can impish rumpelstilskin delight dance of laughter that offered refuge to those suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune on the slights of a critic\u2019s pen\u201d and that \u201cHal applauded riptides and deviants of musical, literary and human behavior. And, of course, he loved the exceptions to every rule.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you took a cross section of Hal\u2019s heart\u2026 you would see the rings of a wise old tree,\u201d Waits said. \u201cAbove all, let\u2019s remember that Hal loved music\u2026 and from all appearances it seems very much to have loved him right back big time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waits joins a long list of admirers and friends who have paid homage to Willner in the wake of his death. Saturday Night Live<\/em> cast members and alumni covered Willner\u2019s good friend Lou Reed\u2019s \u201cPerfect Day\u201d<\/a> last weekend in remembrance of the show\u2019s longtime music producer. Nick Cave<\/a> and Elvis Costello<\/a> are also among his friends to recently pen tributes.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Waits and collaborator and wife Kathleen Brennan penned a tribute to late producer and longtime friend, Hal Willner. Willner died last week at the age of 64. The cause of death has not yet been publicly confirmed, but he was reportedly suffering from symptoms consistent with the coronavirus. In 1974, the pair met after one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-806427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-14 00:38:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}