Vulture has a great interview with songwriter Paul Williams, who co-wrote songs for The Muppet Christmas Carol and The Muppet Movie, including "Rainbow Connection." It turns out that success from the latter, as well as his other musical achievements, led to a decade-long struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. He got clean two months before Jim Henson died, and was asked to come on board for The Muppet Christmas Carol, the first major project without the Muppets' creator, shortly after. The classic story was an instant fit.
“I was longing to live life in a totally new way, one day at a time, trusting that what I needed was within me to get things done," Williams told Vulture. "And I’m sitting down to write these songs, and I’m writing about Scrooge: a man who’s learning to live life in a whole new way, who’s having a spiritual awakening [laughs]. It’s like, okay now, this is my inventory of dealing with where I am in my own life.”
Williams also shared the history behind "When Love Is Gone," a tragic song about loss of love that was cut from The Muppet Christmas Carol for fear of losing the child-heavy audience, and describes how Michael Caine's inspired the movie's opening song.
Read the full article here.