The Incomparable Allee Willis

Even if you don’t know Allee Willis’s name, you probably know her work.

Like many people in the music business, Willis was well known by her peers even while much of the record buying public had no idea who she was. Her accomplishments include co-writing the hits “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire; “Lead Me On” by Maxine Nightingale; “I’ll Be There for You (AKA the theme from Friends)” by The Rembrandts; and “What Have I Done To Deserve This” by The Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield.

Willis also collaborated on the score for the groundbreaking Broadway musical The Color Purple with Brenda Russell and Stephen Bray. She was inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 2018 and is one of the few people to win a Grammy, an Emmy and a Tony!

She was born Alta Willis in 1947 to Jewish parents in Detroit. At an early age, she developed a love for music — particularly R&B and, more specifically, Motown (which makes sense given both her age and her close proximity to the label).  After graduating from college at the University of Wisconsin and a brief spell in New York City, Willis moved to Los Angeles in the mid 1970s. She never left.

Beyond her success as a songwriter, Willis was known for her diverse social circle, her early interest in social media and her colorful and unique appearance. The latter included an asymmetrical haircut and vintage clothes. She was a well known kitsch collector and had parties at her L.A. home, where people of all walks of life would converge.

But below the surface, not everything in her life was fun and games. Willis remained scarred by some of the events of her childhood: her mother died suddenly when she was still in her teens and her father was a more traditional type who did not take easily to her career in music or her sexual orientation (she was queer). She also suffered a minor trauma early in her career when her one album as a performer, Childstar, was misunderstood. 

Allee Willis died in December of 2019 of an aortic aneurysm. But she lives on — not only in her lengthy catalog of songs but also in a new film. The World According to Allee Willis is a documentary that was directed by Alexis Manya Spraic. Beyond interviewing Willis’s friends, family members and collaborators (including some of the aforementioned musicians), Spraic was faced with the daunting task of sifting through tons of audio and video footage; Allee Willis was a woman who literally documented everything!

I recently caught up with Spraic, who is based in L.A., for the Rock and Roll Globe.

You were brought into the project by Paul Reubens [AKA Pee-wee Herman]. Were you aware of Allee when she was alive [and] to what degree?

As it turns out, I was. But Paul Reubens was a very talented matchmaker. [He] introduced me to Prudence [Fenton], Allee’s life partner — kind of under false pretenses. While we were on the phone, [Prudence] mentioned that she was looking for someone to do this documentary about her partner who had passed away. I Googled Allee while we were on the call and I was like, “Oh!” You know, I recognized her. I think if you saw Allee once, you’d remember her. She had a very iconic look, with this asymmetrical haircut and this cacophony of colors and prints.

And I’m [also] a fourth generation Angeleno. So I knew about her house and kind of was aware of her. But I did not connect it to [her] credits. I think, like many people who are going to see the film, most of it was there to be discovered for the first time!

There was so much footage in so many different places. How could you possibly decide, making this film, what to include and what not to?

That was definitely the challenge going into it. But I think that was also what drew me to the project. To make an archive documentary like this — she had six storage units. She had 10 thousand hours of footage. You know, she started having someone film her regularly in 1978. She’d been documenting her life since she was a kid. She bought a piano in 1969; she had the classified ad! I mean, she really kept everything.

The key was to understand and have a clear point of view going into it of what I was telling the story, so that I could make choices as I was going through the material. You know, when I sat down with Prudence [for] the first time, I think I asked her, “What’s the conflict [here]?” I was trying to figure out what the tension there was. And Prudence didn’t immediately have an answer. But as we looked at the archives and I started to do interviews of people in her life, what I realized was that her persona — she was this beacon of individuality, so larger than life and so positive! But underneath it all, there was a lot of fragility and vulnerability that she hadn’t really figured out how to let people in on. But it permeated the lyrics of her songs — it was there to be discovered.

She has a line that we use early in the film, from one of her audio journals, where she talks about how her dream was that somebody would put the trail together that she left behind into a documentary — if she didn’t lose her nerve and destroy everything. That really was a tipoff to me. Because if you’re just gonna put together your greatest hits and all the good stuff, there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Right. It seems like she contained multitudes, as Whitman said. She was very confident [and] successful on the surface. But also fragile and insecure in certain ways. 

I was reading about your “Rosebud” moment, when you discovered the Ms. Magazine interview. It sounds like that was a little traumatic for Allee. As a performer, you’re making yourself vulnerable in a way that, as a songwriter, you’re not.

Absolutely. Because you’re the person out in front. I think what happened was Allee wrote an album [Childstar] that came out in 1974.  That was the only album she was the performer on. And she did this interview with a journalist from Ms. Magazine. She was very inexperienced at that point — not the journalist but Allee — in terms of what to say to the media. So she was very candid about the experience [and] we don’t actually hear her revisit [that] until 2018.

She struggled to live up to certain gender norms. She had a very deep voice. When she started to express her own personal style, she dressed in a much more masculine way. And the record label she was with, Epic, thought they should depict her the way they were selling their other female singer-songwriters — like Joan Baez and Carly Simon. So on the album cover,  she’s got long hair, she’s wearing a dress, she’s inexplicably doing the dishes with a tear in her eye! I mean, it’s so feminine. And she would sing in a kind of falsetto voice for the recordings — these very sensitive and soulful lyrics. And then she’d come out onstage and she was presenting something very authentic to her, but different from that image. She’d get booed onstage.

When I look back at it, the reviews of the album are really positive. But she really heard the negative. It was sort of an Achilles’ Heel with her. Her father had become very critical of her not meeting these gender norms and she felt very rejected at home. Then she’d get onstage and have music critics — I mean, the way she’s described physically — now [it] would be the meanest thing that a troll would say. The fact that it was respected music journalists is kind of stunning! There’s a whole other documentary to be made about that. [But] it really debilitated her.

[Allee was involved] with Prudence for something like 28 years romantically. How do you think her relationship with Prudence affected Allee either personally or creatively? 

I mean, they were soulmates. There’s a great line that Prudence said that, unfortunately, didn’t make it into the film…She said to me, “I’ve been looking for cool since the sixth grade. And when I met Allee, I finally found it.”  (laughs)

Prudence was a really supportive person. And I think Allee never probably experienced unconditional love before. I think a lot of what fuels you as an artist is loneliness, a feeling of not being seen or loved — wrapped up in the rejection she felt from her own family. So I think that Prudence was always there for her and a very stabilizing force. I think Allee really found a lot more love for herself through that relationship. And also found a creative partner.

I wanted to touch a little on The Color Purple. I don’t know if that was the apex of Allee’s career but maybe it was one apex. Tell me a little more about her work on that, and her collaboration with Stephen Bray and Brenda Russell. I’ve always thought Brenda is a real underrated talent. 

Oh yeah!  The Color Purple definitely was one of the apexes. I mean, that was Allee: she would kind of get to a point of complete drought and then there’d be a flood. And The Color Purple was one of those moments. But I think what’s most interesting about it is that Stephen and Brenda and Allee — collaboration was just so in her DNA. She always liked to work with other people. You’d think after all that success, there might be tension between the three of them. But the spirit that they shared was incredible. And it changed Broadway. They created a sound that was outside of the norms or expectations of musicals. And in hindsight, it seems like a great idea. But when you read that book, you don’t necessarily think “Broadway musical.”  It’s a very dark book that Alice Walker wrote. And they pulled it off! I think it paved the way for a lot of the best things that we’ve seen come out of Broadway and off-Broadway. [There are] more stories featuring people of color, people from marginalized groups. I don’t know that that would have happened without The Color Purple. This was [also] the first time that there was really a gay love story told on Broadway. And it’s done in a very — I don’t [want to say] graphic because that makes it sound not beautiful. But it’s done in a very honest and candid way.

As a filmmaker, when you’re looking for a story to tell, what are one or two things that you look for?

I’m really drawn to stories of outsiders and underdogs. And this was a funny situation because Allee doesn’t immediately present that way. [But] I felt other points of connection. I’m from Los Angeles. I’m a vintage collector as well.

But I think with her, it was that idea that she could emotionally connect to people. I like to tell emotional stories. People watch movies and listen to music because they wanna see their own experiences reflected back to them and feel safe and understood. And I felt that there was a huge well here of that kind of material. [The] most gratifying response that we’ve gotten to the film is when people [say] it helps inspire them or [that] it’s awakening their inner artist. Just the idea that you watch the movie and you [have] permission to be a little bit extra. To do that thing that you might have felt inhibited to do.