Nan Spowart spoke with composer and songwriter Gareth Williams on the 10 things that changed his life.
1 Billy Connolly
I WAS born at the end of the vinyl era and there was a record player in the house with a small collection of records.
Way before it was appropriate to do so, I found a stand-up comedy album, Get Right Intae Him, with a picture of a man wearing bananas on his feet on the cover.
I worked out how to put it on, listened to it repeatedly and fell for the Scottish sense of humour.
I think I moved to Scotland in 2000 with the hope that everyone here would be as funny as Billy Connolly (above). That wasn’t exactly the case, but everyone here was nice, so I stayed.
2 The piano in my life
I HAVE been sitting at a piano, off and on, for almost 40 years. Every day I’m at the piano for a couple of hours wondering what will come out.
Sometimes it’s a full song, or a nice chord, or an earworm I haven’t been able to shake all morning.
My voice memo app is full of hundreds of half-written songs that may never be finished. If you handed me dozens of pages of words and sent me off to a piano to try and find some songs amongst them, then I would be blissfully happy for days on end.
I do wish I had practised so much more than I did, but I was always too busy just playing.
When I was a student, I played in piano bars in Glasgow for many years to pay the bills, and it was an absolute blast from start to finish. I used to leave the house at 11pm some Saturday nights to go play piano until 3am. The very thought now makes me shudder.
3 Sweet tooth
SOME 80% of my internal motivations rely on rewarding myself with sweets.
As a child, I would have been at your beck and call for even a single fruit pastille. I always figured that I would grow out of it, but I’m 46 and I still love sweets.
When I’m in rehearsal, there will be sweets on the lid of the piano throughout.
You may sometimes find me frozen to the spot in a confectionary aisle trying to make a final choice between Skittles or Maltesers. It’s just not dignified, but I can’t help it.
4 Scottish Opera
I MANAGED to persuade Alex Reedijk (head of Scottish Opera) to come and see an opera I’d written when I was a student at the RCS in the noughties.
It led to my first commission at the company – a “5.15” opera - where I was paired with one of my literary heroes and subsequent best pals, Bernard MacLaverty.
Since then, I’ve had some amazing projects and collaborations there – like Elephant Angel, again with Bernard MacLaverty in 2012, Rubble, with Johnny McKnight and Roxana Haines in 2020, and the Breath Cycle project – where we have worked with participants with conditions such as cystic fibrosis, long Covid, and aphasia over many years now, teaching singing techniques and writing songs “for and with”.
I’ve learned so much working at the company. Alex, and Jane Davidson, always took me seriously as an artist from the very start, though thankfully not as seriously as I took myself back then.
5 Scottish Theatre
I HAVE written lots of “classical” music – chamber music, instrumental music, even orchestral music.
But if I am honest, I’ve never really felt at home or at ease within the world of classical music. It’s not for the likes of me.
I know others feel this way too – someone should really look at why it’s the case for so many of us. We are drawn in by the scale and the gorgeousness of it all, but then let down by the rigidity, the strange hierarchies and the etiquette. I didn’t have this feeling for a second when I became involved with theatre in Scotland, much later.
I was welcomed, listened to, trained on the job, and let in on the gossip. Places like Dundee Rep, National Theatre of Scotland, the Tron, the Traverse – Scottish theatres are welcoming places, hyper-creative, interconnected and full of characters.
I love being behind the stage, seeing how things get made.
6 Working with Oliver Emanuel
I MET Oliver in 2012 when we worked on a show with the Red Note Ensemble called The End Of The World (For One Night Only).
We talked so much after that and had so many ideas together that I can’t remember not knowing him. I think his writing is gorgeous – I don’t think there’s a sentence he has written that I haven’t looked at and thought “I could make a song out of that” – it’s all so musical to me.
We got to make a trilogy of shows at the National Theatre of Scotland – it took five years in total, and so, we promised ourselves a smaller-scale project to follow – something that would allow us to sit around a piano and write and sing songs together – which was always our favourite bit. “That would make a great musical,” I once said of Oliver’s extraordinary radio play - A History Of Paper.
He had a knack for making things happen, and, so, it has come to be a musical. It only took five years.
My favourite memories of Olly are making him laugh. I really loved making him laugh and he really loved giving me advice.
Often, it was good advice.
I was lucky when I became a dad that he had two young kids already – a notable percentage of my dad skills are thanks to him. I bloody miss him.
7 Teaching
I’M a Reader in Music at Edinburgh College of Art.
I’ve been teaching there for 10 years now, and I get to work with very inspiring young composers and songwriters. I like the side-by-side duality of composing and teaching. Sometimes they run as two parallel and lonely lines, and other times they connect and interact more.
A good week has a nice balance between the two.
Due to this academic affiliation, I still think of a year as something that starts in September – which is perhaps a sign of arrested development.
8 Worrying
IF sweets are the carrot, worries are the stick. A great many of my waking and sleeping hours are occupied with good old worrying. For example, I remember being awake all night once worrying that I might never get the chance to be a parent.
The next day, I found out that I was going to be a dad.
And so, that night, I was awake all night worrying about that prospect instead. The challenges come and go, but the worry remains the same. It has led me to make some songs that I’m pleased with, but on the whole, it’s not worth it.
Usually, when a new show is approaching, I will have a series of anxiety dreams where the audience might not turn up, or where I’ll realise I have forgotten to write the last number. I’m expecting one of these dreams any time soon.
9 Portobello
I FEEL like I did myself a favour eight years ago. I moved to within sight of the sea. Lyn, me, and Sonny love pottering around the neighbourhood.
I like to walk down the beach burying little gemstones, while Sonny walks behind me, digging them up and exclaiming he’s found buried treasure.
The stretch of blue I see when I leave the house in the morning is vaguely medicinal. It’s all pretty much idyllic, but the price of a sourdough loaf does occasionally make me pass out.
10 I Think It’s Going To Rain Today
I VIVIDLY remember hearing I Think It’s Going To Rain Today for the first time, and ever since, Randy Newman has been my go-to guy for my genre of choice – the “gnarly voiced singer telling you something intangible yet seemingly really important if you could just get to the bottom of it” genre. His voice, the piano, the strings – it’s the perfect combination.
The world-building in this song is exquisite but where it transcends is the moment it changes key and he lands on the word “lonely”.
It’s haunting stuff and stops you in your tracks. I always want my songs to have a moment like that. I can manage it sometimes when I’m writing a show, but somehow, Randy Newman can do it in a three-and-a-half-minute song.
A History of Paper by Oliver Emanuel & Gareth Williams is at the Traverse from August 1-25 during Edinburgh Fringe. Directed by Andrew Panton, it is part of the Made In Scotland Showcase
