THE PSYCHEDELIC AWAKENING OF
ANDY WILLIAMS!
A fairly recent wire news story had Andy Williams, 70+ male vocalist archetype and discoverer of The Osmonds during their preteen barbershop phase, confessing to having taken LSD in the late 60s.

Of course that would come as no surprise whatsoever to the handful of citizens on this planet who have themselves “dosed” while listening to Williams’ 1970 mind expansion prototype “Get Together With Andy Williams.” And that may or may not include you, citizens.

Flashback…

Andy Williams, once the unmitigated crooning idol of millions, the very epitome of the ass-kisser who tries so hard to please everybody he loses his personality and becomes irrelevant. 

He’d hit the top of the charts in the 50’s with the scathing musical gotterdammerung of Moon River and Can’t Get Used To Losing You as, if you will, the spokesman of his generation, in this case being a mythical all-white, all bland nation perpetuated in the mass electronic media since it began — c.f. Ozzie and Harriet, Mitch Miller, Dinah Shore — but the era of the Rolling Stones, free love, LSD and what have you left him looking bewildered and way out of sync with the synapse-rooting antics the new breed of entertainment consumer seemed to demand of their musical stars.

His marriage to the much younger, marginally hipper and infinitely more arousing Claudine Longet no doubt reinforced just how out of touch he was, and by the time of, say, the Altamont Speedway Atrocities of 1969, the couple sought professional help, LSD therapy being the trend of choice of the Beverly Hills In Crowd. Other celebrity couples, such as Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon, were giving the process rave reviews, so Williams steeled himself for a virtual odyssey into previously unglimpsed inner worlds of religion, mystique and self-knowledge. 

Those dues he’d paid to get to the top of the show business food chain were in actuality an ongoing account that always had to be settled in full. Williams hadn’t stayed on top for so long by ignoring this fact. What was a male vocalist to do, but go buy a flowered shirt and book a session with a qualified health-care professional? Andy and Claudine decided to give it a try. 

As Williams put it,
“A psychiatrist told me I should take some LSD trips. He said he had gone through medical school studying it and taking it and he felt it helped people find themselves a lot quicker than going through 20 years of analysis. I began to feel that not too many things were that important. The important things are children, honesty, integrity and faith.”

Whatever whatever soft revolutions stormed the couple’s mental barricades of “hang-ups“during this experience, it changed the two of them forever. Longet eventually killed a guy, while Williams went through a metamorphosis not unlike the arguably more famous example of Bob Dylan going electric after himself “turning on.” Like Dylan, Williams got himself a rock band to back him up. Also like Dylan, Williams looked to more “relevant” material to perform.

There is no evidence that Williams was actually “buzzing” in the studio while recording this rendition of the summer of love anthem Get Together, but the tripadelic flotsam and jetsam of the Aquarian Age exudes from every bejeweled facet of this certifiably post-magnificent epic. Languid and groovy sitar draws the listener into Williams’ post-cynical world vision of tomorrow. Sure, call the man a fool, or a dreamer, whatever, but at least he’s somewhere, saying something! The message is peace, the message is love and happiness, not just for some, but for everyone, he seems to be saying as the crack session musicians get just loose enough to seize the gestalt of that faraway love celebration and just tap out a little dose enough to up the rgbs of the universe a little… just a little… yeahh…

“If you hear the song we sing,” Williams croons at one point, “You will understand,” then, not content to merely provide a workaday reading of the song, he adds, in an obviously improvised whisper, “Listen…” and you’re reminded of the pure magic that the spontaneous communication between human beings, how truly glorious it can be when even approaching it’s full potential.

Like all truly great cultural confluences, Andy Williams’ psychedelic period ended soon after its brief flowering, and it was back to crowd pleasers, one nighters, V‑neck sweaters and post-Brill Building material, but forever after, the trained eye would observe a tiny but signicant glint in Williams’ eye — the sign of a man who has made his statement and gone his way back into the rushing streams of evolution, its water that much sweeter for being infused by his surging essence…