Los Angeles-based musician Ben Golomb describes himself as “a pop-culture nerd who likes to make art.”
Golomb, who for several years has led the band Modern Time Machines—whose music he describes alternately as “dreamy alternative rock” or “shoe-gazing”—briefly found a fellow traveler in his nerd-dom back in 2019, when he shared a brief but meaningful collaboration with lesbian songwriter Allee Willis.
Willis’s most popular hits included Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” and “Boogie Wonderland,” as well as Pet Shop Boys’s “What Have I Done to Deserve This?,” which the duo sang with Dusty Springfield. Among her numerous accolades, she was among those who won a Grammy for her work on the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack, and she won an additional Grammy for composing music for the stage production of The Color Purple. In 1994, she composed the theme song to Friends, “I’ll Be There for You.”
A documentary focused on Willis’s life, The World According to Allee Willis, is currently streaming on Hulu.
Her short collaboration with Golomb resulted in Modern Time Machines’s new single “Ornamental,” which the band released in early September. Though he had just a few work sessions with Willis, Golomb regards them both as especially fruitful and meaningful.
Golomb first met Willis when both were involved in a retrospective documentary about the 1986 cult film Howard the Duck, a film that Golomb confessed to having a “weird fascination” with; he wrote the score for that documentary. Willis wrote several songs for the 1986 film with Thomas Dolby and George Clinton; they were performed onscreen by Lea Thompson.
Golomb had not yet heard of Willis before working on the documentary, but “I looked her up, and I [thought] ‘She’s incredible—what an amazing career.”
He and Willis hit it off when Golomb was assisting with the documentary’s production. “It turns out we were kind of cut from the same cloth,” he recalled. “We were both like these pop culture nerds.”
Willis indeed referred to her home as a “museum of kitsch” and as “Willis Wonderland.” Golomb described it as “truly a magical place that is both welcoming and a surreal museum all at the same time. Everywhere you look, there are mind-blowing pop culture artifacts that put a smile on your face instantly. There’s a reason why Allee was called the ‘Queen of Kitsch.’”
Golomb recalled seeing among Willis’s collections, “LSD cologne, a vintage 1950s department store information booth sign. and the CHiPs 1970s toys in original box. This all just scratches the surface of the amazing items there.”
Golomb confessed, “I’m the same way, except that I don’t have anywhere near as big a collection or as big a space. But I appreciate it very much. It was so nerdy. It was amazing.”
He sent Willis a recording he thought she’d appreciate—a deep cut composed of television theme songs—The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Get Smart, Gilligan’s Island, etc. Much to his surprise, she emailed back asking if he’d like to collaborate at some point.
“She was working all the time…and so it was a couple of months before she had any free time,” he recalled. “But then she did, so I went over to ‘Willis’s Wonderland,’ brought a laptop and we just started writing and came up with a demo.”
Golomb recalled the demo for “Ornamental,” being “very rough, but with a vocal melody and it had some lyrics…. We just literally pulled it out of the ether.”
The pair scheduled another session, and in the meantime Golomb and his band “started chiseling out a bit of an arrangement.”
Willis came to Golomb’s apartment for their second session on Dec. 16, 2019. He said, “We kept working on the sound and it was coming along for sure. A lot of the lyrics were there, but it wasn’t done yet, But it was definitely quite a bit further than it was before.”
After that session, Golomb emailed Willis a few versions of the song, knowing that she was planning on taking time off for the holidays. But on Christmas Eve 2019, Golomb received a shocking text from his friend Ernie Trinidad, director of the Howard the Duck documentary.
Golomb recalled, “He [texted], ‘You’re not going to believe who passed away. … Allie.’” It was so shocking. She seemed like she was in fine shape. When we worked together she was sharp as a tack and completely vital. That was just a real shocker and was very sad.
He kept working on “Ornamental” for a few months longer, but the song’s completion faced yet another obstacle: the pandemic, which sapped a large part of Golomb’s inspiration.
“I got to a point where it was about 75% done, and I just didn’t want to [work on it anymore],” he said. “I was like, ‘I’ll come back to it at some point…it was just a weird zone emotionally to think about.”
Hearing that a new documentary about Willis was in the works ultimately inspired Golomb to complete the song. With awareness about Willis’s life on the rise, “Maybe people will appreciate ‘Ornamental’ more. … [So] we started working on actually finishing the song.”
He’s grateful for the short amount of time he got to spend with Willis. As a youngster he owned the Pet Shop Boys’s cassette Actually, featuring the “What Have I Done to Deserve This?”
“Of course, I didn’t know who Allie Willis was, and I didn’t even read yet,” Golomb recalled.
One burning question he never had the chance to ask Willis about was her collaboration with Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee Wee Herman. Willis released a single—shaped on vinyl like Pee Wee’s head. … There’s a music video that you can see online at YouTube. … It was definitely made for the movie but it’s not in the movie.”
“[Willis] and Paul Reubens is a whole other fascinating part of her life,” he said. “Like pretty much every kid in my generation, I thought Pee Wee Herman was the coolest.”
“Ornamental,” Golomb suspects, is likely the final tune Willis worked on. He said the song was “a very different thing for her. I guess it’s just dreamier.”
On reflection, “Ornamental”’s distinction is for Golomb “a huge honor. I just wish I knew her better, because we had so much in common in terms of being nerds. … She just wanted to lift people up. She was just the least snobbish person. She had no problem coming to my dumpy apartment in Glendale. If she thought you were cool, it was not about anything but making art and whatever good vibrations are brought into the universe by collaborating with somebody … you have a connection with.”