Bopping to Her Own Beat
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Los Angeles
STEPPING out of her home near North Hollywood to get the mail on a recent sunny morning, Allee Willis noticed a bowling ball in the garden that needed cleaning.
"It's the blue one," she called to an assistant. "Get the bucket!"
The ball got a bath on the front lawn with warm water, window cleaner and something like tenderness. Ms. Willis watched from the shade in front of her 1937 Streamline Moderne stucco house. She used to shellac the bowling balls that are lined up like rose bushes in her sand garden. But they peeled in the heat. Some exploded.
"Now I just let them age naturally and fade in the sun," she said. "I feel the same way about bowling balls as I do about my own aging. I'm just letting it happen."
Ms. Willis, who is ageless at 63, is a Grammy- and Emmy-winning songwriter, producer, artist, set designer, director and collector. She is also the curator and head cheese of an online museum of kitsch, on her antic Web site, AlleeWillis.com.
Apart from her career successes -- which include writing the theme song for "Friends" and the soundtrack for "Beverly Hills Cop," as well as songs for Earth, Wind & Fire, the Pointer Sisters, the Pet Shop Boys, Patti LaBelle, Boy George and the musical "The Color Purple" -- there is little about Ms. Willis that is conventional.
Her home was built by William Kesling, a prolific Southern California architect who faded from public view because of a fraud conviction and business troubles. While he is now revered for his use of large windows, pocket doors and an open style suited to the local climate, he was disdained by his peers Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler for his less-than-rigorous adherence to Bauhaus principles.
Ms. Willis also eschews rules in favor of her own idea of beauty. Her love of kitsch, once shared by other members of her generation then pushed aside by later trends, guides her decorating and landscaping, as well as her hairstyle and mismatched ensembles, which make Julian Schnabel's pajamas-in-public habit look conservative. But that does not mean she's laid back or lackadaisical in any way.
First Published May 27, 2011 12:00 am
