Bill Withers, a onetime Navy aircraft mechanic who after teaching himself to play the guitar wrote some of the most memorable and often-covered songs of the 1970s, including “Lean on Me,” “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Use Me,” died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 81.
His death was announced in a statement from his family. His son, Todd, said he had heart problems.
Mr. Withers, who had an evocative, gritty R&B voice that could embody loss or hope, was in his 30s when he released his first album, “Just as I Am,” in 1971. It included “Ain’t No Sunshine,” a mournful lament (“Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone/And she’s always gone too long/Anytime she goes away”) that cracked the Billboard Top 10. Other hits followed, perhaps none better known than “Lean on Me,” an anthem of friendship and support that hit No. 1 in 1972 and has been repurposed countless times by a wide variety of artists.
There were also “Use Me” (1972), “Lovely Day” (1977) and “Just the Two of Us” (1981), among other hits. But after the 1985 album “Watching You Watching Me,” frustrated with the music business, Mr. Withers stopped recording and performing.
“I wouldn’t know a pop chart from a Pop-Tart,” he told Rolling Stone in 2015, when he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“Bill was a mystical man,” Leo Sacks, who supervised the rerelease of Mr. Withers’s catalog for Sony Legacy Recordings in 2012 (a package that won a Grammy for best historical recording), said by email. “Like a Greek oracle. But he let the songs speak for themselves. He sang so conversationally and universally, like he was sitting next to you. His songs made every word count.”
At 17, eager to avoid a coal-mine career himself, Mr. Withers joined the Navy.
“My first goal was, I didn’t want to be a cook or a steward,” he told Rolling Stone. “So I went to aircraft-mechanic school.”
(Excerpt) Read more in: The New York Times