(The composer, not the guitar player.)
“You have a good day, you have a bad day, next week you look at what you wrote last week and it’s rubbish and you throw it out,’’ says Williams, who is the picture of refinement in a dark jacket, black knit shirt, and gray trousers, with a neatly trimmed beard and rim of white hair. “I write all the time, not so much for pleasure but mostly from habit, which is what anybody who writes anything needs to do. It’s pretty good, or it isn’t, and I try to do better next time.’’
Impeccably gracious and unerringly modest, Williams seems more like a genial professor than an industry powerhouse. It’s not false modesty, according to his daughter Jenny, a psychotherapist who practices in Beverly Hills, Calif. Rather, it’s that “my dad wouldn’t be caught dead saying anything good about himself. He believes that no one should. It’s impolite.’’
