{"id":3552,"date":"2014-01-28T21:11:50","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T21:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/music\/long-beach-s-paul-williams-accepts-album-of-the-year-grammy-for-daft-punk\/"},"modified":"2014-01-28T21:11:50","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T21:11:50","slug":"long-beach-s-paul-williams-accepts-album-of-the-year-grammy-for-daft-punk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/music\/long-beach-s-paul-williams-accepts-album-of-the-year-grammy-for-daft-punk","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach&#8217;s Paul Williams Accepts Album of the Year GRAMMY for Daft Punk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ap55mNjC4sE\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Local music geeks got a surprise Sunday night when elfin Long Beach-based songwriter Paul Williams appeared on stage at the GRAMMYs to give an acceptance speech on behalf of French electronic duo Daft Punk, who won Album of the Year for <em>Random Access Memories<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Williams was one of the main collaborators on <em>Random<\/em>&nbsp;and was joined on stage by the pop robots themselves&#8211;Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter&#8211;as well as&nbsp;Pharrell Williams, Nile Rodgers and&nbsp;presenter Yoko Ono as he served as a spokesperson for the project.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You know, back when I was using and doing drugs, I used to imagine things that weren&#8217;t there and were frightening,&#8221; he said as he started his speech. &#8220;And then I got sober and two robots called me and asked me to make an album.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\" alignright size-full wp-image-27576\" style=\"float: right;\" src=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/paulwilliamsgrammy.jpg\" alt=\"paulwilliamsgrammy\" width=\"350\" \/>Williams, a singing, songwriting and acting industry veteran with two previous GRAMMYs under his belt, sang on the Daft Punk song &#8220;Touch&#8221; and penned lyrics for <em>Random<\/em>&#8216;s &#8220;Beyond.&#8221; He has more than 40 years of experience in the music industry and has written songs (like &#8220;Rainy Days and Mondays&#8221;) for The Carpenters, Barbara Streisand, Three Dog Night and Helen Reddy.<\/p>\n<p>In 2007, he collaborated with pop-disco group Scissor Sisters, though the most familiar song he has written to date may be &#8220;Rainbow Connection,&#8221; the Oscar-nominated theme to <em>The Muppet Movie<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I just got a message from the robots and they had something they wanted me to say,&#8221; Williams said Sunday as one of the Daft Punk members put his hand on Williams&#8217; shoulder. &#8220;As elegant and classy as the GRAMMYs have ever been is the moment when we saw those same marriages [during the &#8220;Same Love&#8221; performance]. This is the height of fairness and love for all people at any time in any combination is what they wanted me to say.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Williams moved to Long Beach as a teenager and attended Wilson High School before starting his career as a theatre actor in local productions.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/life\/paul-williams-2\/#.Uua_72TTmLI\">Paul Williams: From The Center Of His Chest<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Local music geeks got a surprise Sunday night when elfin Long Beach-based songwriter Paul Williams appeared on stage at the GRAMMYs to give an acceptance speech on behalf of French electronic duo Daft Punk, who won Album of the Year for&nbsp;<em>Random Access Memories<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":68801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[1538,1539],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-grammys","tag-songwriting","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3552"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=3552"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}