Andy Williams launching autobiography at the Barber Institute, Edgbaston

Oct 9 2009 by Adrian Caffery, Birmingham Mail

AFTER a music career spanning six decades Andy Williams has given up touring and quit recording but tonight Midland fans are being given a rare chance to meet their hero.

The 81-year-old is launching his autobiography, Moon River And Me, at the Barber Institute, in Edgbaston, at 7.30pm.

On Monday, at the Royal Albert Hall, he performed what is likely to be his last British concert.

“I’m through touring,” he says. “I just work in my theatre in Branson, Missouri, although I’ve got a very short Christmas tour in the States, just four dates. But it will be the last one.”

A Best Of album was released this week and Andy admits he is highly unlikely to ever record again.

“If Vera Lynn, at the age of 92, can be top of the charts maybe I could have another hit record but the record business is in a terrible shape right now,” he says. “All the record stores are going out of business, record companies are releasing CDs by big names like Neil Diamond only in Wal-Mart stores and people are making copies of records and not paying for anything.

“The record business is going down the tubes. Kids will still buy rap and hip-hop, which I’m not into. There comes a time when everybody’s recording career fizzles out. I’m 81-years-old, why would I want to try and buck this whole trend of music and put out something that isn’t going to sell very well?”

So instead of making new music Andy has turned to recording his memoirs on the printed page.

“Why am I doing this now? Because in another few years I’ll be dead,” he laughs. “I don’t think people should write their autobiographies when they’re 27. That wasn’t the sort of book I wanted to write, I wanted my book to be more of a novel.

“I wanted to write it from the standpoint of when and where I grew up, what I did, what people thought, what I thought about being brought up in the Depression, what that was like. From reading this, people will get a pretty good picture of what America was like.”

Andy’s story began on December 3, 1927, when he was born in the mid-West, the youngest of Jay and Florence Williams’ four sons.

“The book covers the struggles my brothers and I had getting started singing on the radio, the dedication my father put into it, how he taught us to work hard. There’s the early days of Vegas, the gangsters we met in the early times, my friendship with Robert Kennedy, being there when he was killed and singing at his funeral,” he adds.

Andy admits it was emotional recalling the death of Bobby Kennedy and the incidents surrounding his first wife, Claudine, who, in 1976, a year after their divorce, was charged with shooting and killing her boyfriend.

“It was difficult writing about my ex-wife’s problems and the trial,” he says. “And it was difficult writing about Bobby Kennedy’s death. To go over those emotional events again was hard, I wept when I was thinking of Bobby and Claudine. But it was therapeutic.”

Andy says nothing has been left out, even things that may surprise his fans have been included.

“I went to hospital and had LSD treatments, trying to find out why I wasn’t happy with my marriage. I think that will shock some of my fans,” he says.

“But it’s a well balanced book – tragedy and a lot of laughs.”

The laughs include the time a then unknown singer called Elton John was booked for the first time onto Andy’s TV show.

“When I saw him he was wearing a cape and weird glasses. I thought ‘What kind of person is this?’ But I then found out how talented he was and I think he’s absolutely terrific.”

And then there was the time he tipped off Judy Garland about the state of the dressing rooms at a theatre in which she was due to perform.

“I told her I’d played at the Greek Theatre and the dressing rooms were terrible. When she arrived she called the manager and told him ‘Cheetah wouldn’t dress in a place like this’ and made him repaint it and replace the couch, chairs and make-up table,” he adds.

Tonight, at the Barber Institute, Andy will talk about his career before signing copies of the book. He’ll also have a pianist with him so there’s a chance he’ll croon a little.

“There won’t be much singing but a lot of talk,” he says. “I’ll sing little bits and pieces that are referred to in the book, like the theme song of a radio station where my brothers and I sang.”