Released in 1986, “Rumors” became an out-of-nowhere indie smash, peaking at #8 on the Hot 100. He pressed up the records at Macola, the Los Angeles pressing plant that Eazy-E used for N.W.A’s early records. King and those other songwriters became Timex Social Club, and King released “Rumors” himself. King suggested that the songwriters should form a group and release the song themselves. King listened.īack in the Bay Area, King got together with a few other songwriters and came up with a track called “Rumors.” They offered it to Con Funk Shun, and Con Funk Shun turned it down. (Con Funk Shun’s highest-charting single, 1977’s “Ffun,” peaked at #23.) Con Funk Shun told King that he should head back to California and write some songs. After his discharge, King stayed in Alaska, and he booked a show there for the Californian band Con Funk Shun. King, a native of Vallejo, enlisted in the Air Force at 18, and he got himself discharged after getting into a fight while stationed in Anchorage. Bill Withers himself had very little to do with it, but his song helped usher in a new era of pop music.Ĭlub Nouveau, formed in 1986, were the brainchild of producer Jay King. The group’s sound - a hard, synthesized, club-ready version of R&B - didn’t have a name yet, but it was already starting to take over pop charts. Before them, only Donny Osmond, Grand Funk, the Carpenters, and Bananarama had taken old #1 hits and brought those songs back to the apex of the Hot 100.Ĭlub Nouveau were already R&B hitmakers before they released their version of “Lean On Me,” but they’d never charted on the Hot 100. The Bay Area group Club Nouveau joined a strange and select group of pop-chart reanimators. In 1987, “Lean On Me” became only the fifth song to become a #1 hit twice, by different artists. He just had no desire to share that music with the rest of the world.īill Withers’ songs never left, though, and “Lean On Me” had an unlikely afterlife.
The 2009 documentary Still Bill shows Withers making music at home.
Over the next few decades, Withers popped up a few times to accept plaudits or to bask in public adulation, but he lived the rest of his life as a private citizen. After his 1985 tour with Jennifer Holliday, Withers was done. When he’d finished with that one, Withers was fed up with his label rejecting his records, and he figured that he’d made enough money that he could depart from the music industry completely. In 1985, Withers released his final album Watching You, Watching Me. Bill Withers had retired in disgust by the time “Lean On Me” reached #1 for the second time.