Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, Garth Brooks and Joan Baez were honored as top songwriters at ASCAP’s Centennial Awards on Monday at the Waldorf-Astoria — where Motown icon Berry Gordy told us the key to any top tune is, “I would always say when a million people want to buy it.”
Trisha Yearwood called her husband Brooks a poet, adding, “I’ll walk into the house and hear him humming … or singing something. I’ll go, ‘What is it?’ And he’ll go, ‘I don’t know.’ It’ll be a piece of something that sounds amazing to me, and it’s something he just pulled out of thin air.”
She sang his hit, “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” among other performers including Sting, who brought down the house with a lesser known 1986 Joel tune, “Big Man on Mulberry Street.”
“Ain’t No Sunshine” singer Bill Withers — who’s nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015 along with a hip class including Lou Reed, Green Day, the Smiths, N.W.A., Nine Inch Nails and Kraftwerk — told us he actually isn’t so jazzed about the honor.
But, “My wife and kids are,” he said. “I’m looking for something to get excited about. Excitement is rare these days. They got pills for people that want to get excited.” Do tell.
