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WORK TITLE: The Cake and the Rain: A Memoir
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 8/15/1946
WEBSITE: https://www.jimmywebb.com/
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Webb
RESEARCHER NOTES:
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PERSONAL
Born August 15, 1946, in Elk City, OK; married Laura Savini (a producer and host for PBS); children: five sons, one daughter.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, songwriter, composer and singer.
AWARDS:Grammy Awards for music, lyrics and orchestration; Ivor Novella International Award, 2012; Academy of Country Music’s Poet Award, 2016;
WRITINGS
Webb has released ten solo albums and writes music and lyrics for other musicians, including Fifth Dimension, Donna Summer, and Amy Grant.
SIDELIGHTS
Jimmy Webb is a writer, songwriter, composer and singer. As the youngest person ever inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Webb has been an influential musical figure for years. He is the only artist ever to have received Grammy Awards for music, lyrics and orchestration, and was named Rolling Stone‘s top 50 songwriters of all time in 2016.
Webb has released ten solo albums and writes music and lyrics for other musicians. He has written music for artists including Fifth Dimension, Donna Summer, and Amy Grant and worked alongside Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, Joe Cocker, Billy Joel, and Barbra Streisand. Webb tours the world playing music and participating in musical collaborations. Webb is married to Laura Savini, a producer and host for PBS. They have five sons, one daughter, and one granddaughter.
Tunesmith
Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting, Webb’s first book, is designed to offer amateur songwriters the tools needed to take their writing to a professional level. Webb covers technical matters, such as basic chord theory and rhyme schemes, as well as more business-related topics, such as the protocol of pitching songs. Greg Johnson on the No Depression–The Journal of Roots Music website, described the book as “a comprehensive dissection and depiction of the songwriting process and the uncertain world in which the songwriter must live.”
Webb opens the book with a comprehensive history of songwriting. He then breaks down the components of songwriting, dedicating a chapter each to lyrics, form, chord progression and melody. He then puts the pieces together through example, introducing a song he wrote for the book, Problem Child. He walks the reader through his writing process, starting with an idea, writing, editing, and fine tuning the final result. “Aspiring songwriters will benefit from the experience of this truly gifted and often tortured artist,” wrote Ronald Sklar on the Pop Entertainment website.
The Cake and the Rain
In The Cake and the Rain: A Memoir, Webb writes about his life, focusing primarily on a fifteen year period between 1955 and 1970. It was during this time that Webb’s musical career began and blossomed. David Pitt in Booklist noted that Webb writes in a “comfortable, conversational way” as he bounces between different stories from this period of his life.
While the book is primarily about Webb’s musical career, he also includes details from his childhood in rural Oklahoma up through 1969, which he viewed as a pivotal point in his career. He includes juicy details about the lives of other well-known musicians of the time, including Joni Mitchell, Harry Nilsson and Glen Campbell. He writes about his difficulty with nearly all of the members of the Beatles, and talks openly about his own days of partying and womanizing.
Shane Murphy in Daily Review noted that Webb is “direct enough to realise that his behaviour wasn’t good,” writing instead from the perspective of one redeemed, or at least one willing to be honest about his mistakes and thoughtless choices. Webb writes about how he cheated on his first love, the woman for whom he wrote songs “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “MacArthur Park,” just after she had finally agreed to be with him. He describes the events of his womanizing days, while also emphasizing that he was lonely and unfulfilled during this time.
Though Webb does not focus heavily on drug use in the book, he does include his own experiences in the book. Most notably was in 1973, when he was offered what he believed to be cocaine by Harry Nilsson. The drug, which turned out to be street-level PCP, nearly killed him, and resulted in his inability to play, write, or sing for a time. The book spans Webb’s times of darkness as well as his successes, “written with the same sense of poetry and story as his song lyrics,” wrote Dale Kawashima on the Songwriting Universe website.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 15, 2017, David Pitt, review of The Cake and the Rain: A Memoir, p. 6.
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2017, review of The Cake and the Rain.
Publishers Weekly, July 27, 1998, review of Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting, p. 62.
ONLINE
Current, https://www.thecurrent.org/ (April 12, 2017), Jay Gabler, review of The Cake and the Rain.
Daily Review, https://dailyreview.com.au/ (July 15, 2017) Shane Murphy, review of The Cake and the Rain.
Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/ (November 18, 2017), Johnny Rogan, review of The Cake and the Rain.
My Statesman, http://www.mystatesman.com/ (October 20, 2017), Peter Blackstock, review of The Cake and the Rain.
News OK, http://newsok.com/ (May 7, 2017), Brandy McDonnell, author interview; (March 20, 2017), Brandy McDonnell, review of The Cake and the Rain.
Newsday, https://www.newsday.com/ (April 14, 2017), Glenn Gamboa, author interview.
No Depression–The Journal of Roots Music, http://nodepression.com/ (October 31, 1998), Greg Johnson, review of Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting.
Pop Entertainment, http://www.popentertainment.com/ (February 16, 2018), Ronald Sklar, review of Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting.
Rolling Stone, https://www.rollingstone.com/ (April 18, 2017), Jon Dolan, author interview.
Songwriting Universe, http://www.songwriteruniverse.com/ (May 1, 2017), Dale Kawashima, author interview.
Wall Street Journal Online, https://www.wsj.com/ (June 23, 2017), Dominic Green, review of The Cake and the Rain.*
The Songwriter
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Few singers blend grit and grandeur like Jimmy Webb…[his] voice is like an old Mustang heading through a treacherous yet often gorgeous landscape.
– Rolling Stone
At an age when other singers are losing their voices, Mr. Webb finds his mercurial, unguarded, singing…attaining the gritty authority of a softhearted country outlaw’s…Mr. Webb is still at the top of his game.
– Stephen Holden, The New York Times
Jimmy Webb is an American songwriter, composer and singer known worldwide as a master of his trade. Not many artists can say they premiered a classical nocturne and had a rap hit with Kanye West (“Do What You Gotta Do” on “Famous”) in the same year, but Jimmy’s career is full of surprises. Since his first platinum hit “The Worst That Could Happen,” Webb has had numerous hits including “Up, Up and Away,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” “All I Know” and “MacArthur Park,” and has also become a leader and mentor in the industry as a champion for songwriters.
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Webb is the only artist ever to have received Grammy Awards for music, lyrics and orchestration. His numerous accolades include the prestigious Ivor Novella International Award (2012) and the Academy of Country Music’s Poet Award (2016). In 2016 Rolling Stone Magazine listed Webb as one of the top 50 songwriters of all time. Jimmy Webb was the youngest person ever inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and served as its Chairman. He has also served proudly as the Vice Chair of ASCAP. Time and again Webb has paved the way for songwriters in an everchanging media landscape, spearheading the ongoing effort to preserve the rights of songwriters and their intellectual property in a world of free downloads.
Webb is also an author - his memoir The Cake and the Rain (April 2017) brings to life a 15-year span in Webb’s unique career, written with the same sense of poetry and story as his many hits. Webb’s first book, Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting, in addition to being a good read, is considered a “bible” among musicians.
Jimmy Webb’s songs have been recorded by some of the greatest voices of all time including Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Elvis Presley, Isaac Hayes, Art Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, Michael Feinstein and Judy Collins as well as bands like R.E.M. Per BMI, his song “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” was the third most performed song in the 50 years between 1940 and 1990. Webb continues to write and record, and has released ten solo albums since the 1970s, while also writing for other artists. His latest two CDs, Just Across the River and Still Within the Sound of My Voice, feature duets with friends including Billy Joel, Jackson Browne, Vince Gill, Willie Nelson, JD Souther, Glen Campbell, Lucinda Williams, Mark Knopfler, Brian Wilson, Lyle Lovett and Keith Urban, among others.
Webb currently tours the world (50 concerts in 2016) with a variety of concerts, “An Evening with Jimmy Webb” - a humorous master class of songs and stories; “Jimmy Webb: The Glen Campbell Years” - a multimedia celebration of his friend and collaborator; and a Pops concert. In October 2016 Webb premiered his “Nocturne for Piano and Orchestra (Nocturne for “Lefty”)”.
Webb is happily married to Laura Savini, a producer and host for PBS. He has five sons, the perfect daughter and is a new grandfather to precious Josephine.
Download Bio (PDF)
Read the American Songwriter article – American Icons: Jimmy Webb
Award Highlights
1967 Grammy Award for Song of the Year ("Up, Up and Away")
1969 Oklahoma Baptist University Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia honorary membership, Pi Tau Chapter
1986 Grammy Award for Best Country Song ("Highwayman")
1986 National Academy of Popular Music Songwriter's Hall of Fame inductee
1990 Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee
1993 National Academy of Songwriters Lifetime Achievement Award
1999 Oklahoma Hall of Fame inductee
1999 ASCAP Board of Directors member, current Vice Chair.
2000 Songwriters Hall of Fame Board of Directors member
2003 Songwriters Hall of Fame Johnny Mercer Award
2006 ASCAP "Voice of Music" Award
2011 Chairman, Songwriters Hall of Fame
Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame
2012 Ivor Novello Special International Award
Great American Songbook Hall of Fame 2013 Songbook Award
The Cake and the Rain
David Pitt
Booklist.
113.16 (Apr. 15, 2017): p6. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Cake and the Rain. By Jimmy Webb. Apr. 2017.352p. illus. St. Martin's, $26.99 (9781250058416); e-book, $12.99 (9781466862579). 782.42.
Singer-songwriter Webb's autobiography skips around chronologically: there's a chapter set in 1969, then one in 1941, then back to '69, then 1945, then 1970, then 1960, and so on. Confusing? Not really. Webb tells us about his childhood, early successes, and stardom in bits and pieces, in stories that take place in various stages of his life, and it all makes perfect sense. Autobiography as collage, perhaps? Webb made his name as a songwriter; he's worked with such artists as Johnny Cash, Rosemary Clooney, Frank Sinatra, Glen Campbell, Joe Cocker, Billy Joel, Barbra Streisand, and many, many more. He's written a lot of songs, but he's perhaps best known for the often-lampooned "MacArthur Park" (which contains the classic line about leaving a cake out in the rain). In the early 1970s, he transitioned from writer to performer, finding a whole new kind of success. Webb writes in a comfortable, conversational way, as though he's telling a few close friends some stories from his fascinating life, and the book makes a great way for a music fan to pass a few hours.--David Pitt
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pitt, David. "The Cake and the Rain." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2017, p. 6. PowerSearch,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A492536056/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=10c82fc6. Accessed 15 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A492536056
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Webb, Jimmy: THE CAKE AND THE RAIN
Kirkus Reviews.
(Mar. 15, 2017): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Webb, Jimmy THE CAKE AND THE RAIN St. Martin's (Adult Nonfiction) $26.99 4, 18 ISBN: 978-1-250-05841-6
All the sweet icing melts down, and some bitterness and tragedy lie exposed in the life of the hit- making songwriter.Webb (b. 1946), famous for "MacArthur Park," "Up, Up and Away," "Wichita Lineman," and many other 1960s- and '70s-era pop classics, has a bit of a bone to pick. He wants readers to know, as if we don't already, that his songs have been transformative; an 11-page double-column appendix listing artists who have recorded them is just one bit of testimonial. But more, he's ticked at the "left-wing folkie exclusivity" that has relegated him, in the pantheon of songwriters, to the establishment-supporting, squaresville corner where has-beens like Marilyn McCoo and Glen Campbell live. Never mind that plenty of people worship both singers and that plenty of hipsters live and breathe by Webb. The chip on the shoulder never quite falls off, but thankfully, it gets less pronounced as the author presses on with this spry, mostly pleasing memoir that has more than its share of rough patches. For instance, he writes, when he came to Los Angeles from Oklahoma, he was a nice Christian boy who didn't smoke or drink. At the height of his fame--and this book mostly dwells on the golden age of the late '60s and early '70s-- he hoovered up a line of what was supposed to be good cocaine but turned out to be "a super dose of crude street level PCP, enough to kill an elephant." Along the way, mostly with an affect of not quite believing his luck, Webb recounts brushes with fame and his many high points, from idol Paul McCartney commissioning a song from him to losing a few brain cells during John Lennon's lost weekend--to say nothing of sessions with Richard Harris, prime interpreter of his greatest and perhaps strangest hit. An insider's view of the star-maker machinery and a treat for Webb's many fans.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Webb, Jimmy: THE CAKE AND THE RAIN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2017. PowerSearch,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A485105258/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=d2d0ba15. Accessed 15 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485105258
2 of 3 1/15/18, 10:50 PM
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
TUNESMITH: Inside the Art of Songwriting
Publishers Weekly.
245.30 (July 27, 1998): p62. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 1998 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Jimmy Webb. Hyperion, $24.95 (448p) ISBN 0-7868-6131-2
The only artist to receive Grammy Awards for music, lyrics and orchestration, Webb has written many of the most memorable songs performed by the Fifth Dimension ("Up, Up and Away"), Donna Summer ("MacArthur Park") and Amy Grant ("If These Walls Could Speak"), among others. Here he seeks to impart the tools of the trade to songwriters "who may be attempting the delicate transition from amateur to professional" Covering technical matters from basic chord theory and rhyme schemes to the protocol of pitching songs, Webb draws on a trove of personal anecdotes from a career spanning more than two decades. In addition to salient comments on today's music scene, Webb cites numerous examples from the past and includes sections on writing for the stage and film. Of greatest value, perhaps, are the exercises suggested for developing song ideas, which will help anyone stumbling through a period of writer's block While Webb's fans will revel in the behind-the-scenes details of his career and a candid view of his artistic process, others may wish that the asides, finger pointing (at arrogant co-writers) and Webb's own pet peeves (e.g., no-talent spouses who insist on songwriting credits on their partner's records) had been left out. And Webb's nuts-and-bolts approach somehow undercuts every songwriter's need for that spark of absolute inspiration. For those interested in the latter. Songwriters on Songwriting. The Expanded Version (Da Capo, 1997), a collection of interviews between editor Paul Zollo and a variety of songwriters, including Webb, is the ticket. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"TUNESMITH: Inside the Art of Songwriting." Publishers Weekly, 27 July 1998, p. 62.
PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A20971456/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=ee7a35b0. Accessed 15 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A20971456
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Tunesmith: Inside The Art Of Songwriting
by Archive
October 31, 1998
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A comprehensive dissection and depiction of the songwriting process and the uncertain world in which the songwriter must live, Jimmy Webb's brilliant new book is both a textbook and a behind-the-scenes glance, gloriously woven by the writer's heartfelt love of the art of songwriting and his pull-no-punches guidance through the minefields of the music business. Webb is one of the most gifted and accomplished songwriters of the century. "By The Time I Get To Phoenix", "MacArthur Park" and "Wichita Lineman" are only the most famous of his hundreds of songs that have been recorded by a diverse group of artists ranging from Glen Campbell, Linda Ronstadt and Isaac Hayes to Urge Overkill, the Scud Mountain Boys and Freedy Johnston. After a lengthy historical overview of songwriting, Webb breaks down the components of a song, with chapters on lyrics, form, chord progression and melody. He then puts it all together by introducing a new song, "Problem Child", and walking the reader through the idea, editing and fine tuning of the writing process. The middle chapters may be difficult for the non-musician, as they require a strong musical vocabulary and some understanding of theory. The inventive diction Webb has exercised in song is even more pronounced in his prose. Combining a down-home, common-sense style (his Okie heritage) with erudite wording, Webb proves to be a very talented writer beyond the little three-minute, three-act plays he is so famous for. In between the meat and potatoes of the book, Webb carefully sprinkles in anecdotes about his years in the business. He often will not name names, but if you think hard enough, you might know who he is talking about. Still, such tales are really only a smidgen of what this book is about. From pop to country to films to theater, from the nature of collaboration and the emotional aspect of being a songwriter, Webb offers advice and encouragement that is both straightforward and uplifting. He maintains that there is no right or wrong way to write a song, only a wrong destination sometimes. Michael Stipe, Burt Bacharach, Nanci Griffith, Stephen Sondheim and Felice Bryant are also interviewed, but it is Webb's own words on songwriting that leave the most lasting mark: "The paramount joy of the craft is that, however simply it is begun, it can take the songwriter on a lifelong voyage across many distant and wondrous musical seas."
Jimmy Webb
All He Knows...
by Ronald Sklar
Copyright ©1999 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
If you are under thirty and have even the slightest retro sensibility, chances are you are familiar with the classic pop songs of Jimmy Webb, and good for you. And if you are over thirty, endlessly toiling in an office and music appreciation is just a faint childhood memory, put down that mouse and try the following: simply relax...breathe...and search your inner-sub-consciousness. Return to your half-forgotten childhood...think back... all the way back ...to your parents' hi-fi system...The Dean Martin Show (in color!)...AM radio stations that feature not news but HOT HITS...and that's where you'll finally rediscover the perfect pop goldmine of Jimmy Webb.
It's all coming back to you now, isn't it? The tunes that are spinning endlessly in the windmills of your mind are worth bringing forward. Yes, Jimmy Webb gave you the greatest hits of your early years, including "Wichita Lineman," "Up, Up and Away," "By The Time I Get To Phoenix," "The Worst That Could Happen," "Didn't We," and, of course, the greatest song that makes no sense, "MacArthur Park ("Someone left the cake out in the rain...I don't think that I can take it...cause it took too long to bake it...and I'll never have that recipe again! OH NOOOOO!!!!")".
The main reason why you may not immediately know Webb's name is that not Webb but many of your favorite pop stars recorded his tunes. You see, Webb had gotten down on his knees and prayed to God to let him become a songwriter, but he forgot to ask Him to let him become a recording artist as well. Still, with influences as diverse as Dave Brubeck and Burt Bacharach, Webb delivers for others.
With a harmonious family background of musical moments, including memories of his mother strapping on an accordion that dwarfed her entire body, Webb had the genes that fit right. When Webb was blown away by a college professor who would cry while listening to Bach, he knew he had to unlock the mystery and get to the bottom of the passion. And when he earned his first big check ($320) for penning a forgettable Christmas song for the Supremes that was no threat to Rudolph, Webb knew he caught the bug. He went from making $600 in 1963 to $60,000 in 1964. It truly is like no business you know.
Of course, Jimmy is far from being left out in the rain. True, the hits are few and far between these days, but some folks still swear by him -- namely Dylan, Streisand, Cash, Warwick, R.E.M., Mathis and Ronstadt, as well as Willie Nelson, Ray Charles and Carly Simon. In fact, Jimmy is so widely respected by those who do what he does that he's written a unique book that addresses a subject rarely discussed in the light of day: songwriting!
Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting, (Hyperion Press) is a result of four years of examination of the rarely examined art of not just creating tunes, but creating tunes that sell, baby. With a little help from his friends (including Stephen Sondheim, Michael Stipe, Burt Bacharach and Nanci Griffith), Webb manages to make some sense out of the most baffling of creative acts: writing music. An art form that offers everything from "three little fishies in a little bitty pool" to "time is never time at all," songwriting is complicated, frustrating, elusive and -- well -- often fruitless. And that's before you even consider writing a hit.
"The creative processes are so mysterious," Webb says in a recent interview. "Anytime we start formalizing it and trying to articulate it, we're immediately in trouble. We are trying to describe the indescribable. It's impossible, but I'm going to try it anyway, and take what you can from it. I took a swing at it, and if anyone is out there who can write a better book, then please do it, because we need it. You reach a certain point in your life where they things you do and say do make a difference."
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Aspiring songwriters will benefit from the experience of this truly gifted and often tortured artist. The book itself takes on a rhythm -- the rhythm of a songwriter's mind, with a rambling, all-over-the-board, way-out-there quality. Like writing a song, you never know where this book will take you next, swerving from techniques to anecdotes to rhyme schemes to marketing to dealing with writer's block. In the end, you have something with a good beat that's easy to dance to.
"Writing this book was like riding a bucking bronc," Webb says. "Sometimes it would head off in some direction, and I would ask, 'where am I going?' but I never put too many artificial constraints around it. If it wanted to go somewhere, I let it go."
Webb, an Oklahoma minister's son with six children of his own, says that he wrote the book as a gift to his three oldest boys, all of whom are songwriters. And surprisingly enough, Jimmy is not as supportive of his boys' choice as you may think.
"I would not recommend it at all," he says. "It's fifty percent harder to get a start today then it was in 1964. And that's optimistic. We as songwriters are in the same position as a professional fisherman. Our fishing grounds are kind of fished out. Three or four singers are not going to support a very large community of songwriters. We are in a moment of decision -- it's almost a crisis, in a way. We could lose a lot of the instinctive knowledge of things that had been handed down for generations. The kids don't seem to be too concerned about rules and regulations anymore. In fact, there seems to be an anarchistic movement among many young writers that says the less you know the better off you are. And the way one markets oneself in today's music business is very simple: one has to sing and one has to go out and get a hit record. And if there's anything harder than being a singer or a songwriter, it's being a singer/songwriter. When I was starting out, playlists weren't as tight as they are now. They were playing all kinds of different music at the same time. Now you're looking at markets that are very discreet. It's like segments of an orange. Record companies are faced with a real dilemma because they don't have a real broad-based listening audience like they used to. Record companies are in disarray. It's chaos. They don't know where to go. The industry is in a state of flux. The people who are making money are the ones who are writing and singing their own songs."
Such grim words from the man gave the world his beautiful balloon. Say it isn't so, Jimmy. There is hope. Isn't there?
Didn't we, girl?
"The sad fact that so many songwriters kill themselves and destroy themselves in other ways is something we can't politely ignore anymore," Webb says. "There has to be some reason for that. I'm not really qualified to go into the psychological reasons for it, but I do know that there is a good incidence of manic depression in our ranks because it just seems to go with the creative persona. That's pretty fairly demonstrated and documented. It's a kind of lone eagle kind of mentality. We really do work alone. When one imagines jolly songwriters, like in the movies, writing songs together and laughing it up, they have the wrong picture. It's a lonely profession, and I don't mean to sound self-pitying, because I really do love my life. Writers get off into weird areas emotionally and it's very strange terrain. We travel it, for the most part, alone. We should encourage more of a spirit of sharing our feelings with each other. We should communicate more about what actually is going on in our lives. Not: I'm the only one. Or: I've got to get a record. I've got to get a hit. In actuality, all songwriters are having these problems, all at once."
Reading Tunesmith is a start. And you'll be amazed at how a song can change a life, or at least touch one. There is no overestimating the power of a great song. It can change the world. Jimmy remembers a British couple approaching him after a concert, telling him that one of his songs, "All I Know," recorded by Art Garfunkel, kept them from splitting up. Now the couple is happily married with two kids.
"This is heavy," Webb says. "You put your songs out there in the world and they do things! They're making babies and doing all kinds of stuff that you never imagined possible!"
Webb's double-dilemma is rare among songwriters: trying to pound out sellable songs while being in the public eye. For a few years in the late 60s, Webb was actually a semi-celebrity, on par with McCartney, Bacharach and Smokey Robinson. The exception -- and it was quite noticeable -- was that Webb was not having his own hits.
"I don't think since Hoagy Carmichael had a single songwriter been singled out the way I was," Webb recalls. "I don't even know why. To this day, I can't account for it. Some songwriters are just blessed in some way. I was blessed by having people like Glenn Campbell putting my work out there. Frank Sinatra would go on stage and sing 'Didn't We' and would say, '...and that was a song by this great kid, Jimmy Webb.' I can't account for it. Perhaps I deserved it, perhaps I didn't. It was heady. Maybe I believed some of it, which is very dangerous for a youngster."
Ultimately Webb's advice to songwriters is simple and straightforward.
He says, "Everybody's looking for a great song. How can I get serious with myself and write a song that is so good that it will blow somebody's socks off? That's what I have to do. I have to get up tomorrow and write a good song. If I write myself a good song, the mountain will come to me. Any young writer who has really done their homework can sign a deal with a half a dozen good songs."
Good luck. We'll all be listening.
Special Interview with Legendary Songwriter Jimmy Webb, About His Classic Songs And His New Memoir, The Cake and the Rain
May 1, 2017
By Dale Kawashima
Jimmy Webb
Jimmy Webb
Since breaking through as a young hit songwriter in the mid-1960s, Jimmy Webb has had a tremendous career as a singer/songwriter who has written many classic songs. He has won multiple Grammy Awards, and he’s been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Notably, in 2016 he was named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the top 50 Greatest Songwriters of All Time.
Still going strong after 50 years in the music business, Webb has just released his memoir, The Cake and the Rain (published by St. Martin’s Press). This book brings to life a 15-year span of his unique career (roughly 1955-1970), written with the same sense of poetry and story as his song lyrics. This is Webb’s second book; his first book Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting, was published in 1998.
As a songwriter, Webb has written many pop standards which are now part of the Great American Songbook. The following songs were all Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart: “MacArthur Park” (recorded by Richard Harris and later a #1 cover hit for Donna Summer); “By The Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” “Honey Come Back” and “Where’s the Playground Suzie” (recorded by Glen Campbell); “Up, Up And Away” (the 5th Dimension, which won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year and Record of the Year); “Worst That Could Happen” (Brooklyn Bridge); and “All I Know” (Art Garfunkel).
In addition, Webb has written other songs that have become classics. His song “The Highwayman” was recorded by the country supergroup, The Highwaymen (consisting of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings & Kris Kristofferson). Their version became a #1 country hit, and won the Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1986. Another Webb standard is “The Moon’s A Harsh Mistress,” which was recorded by Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, Josh Groban and other artists.
Webb has been such a respected songwriter, that some popular artists have recorded albums that consisted of all Webb compositions, or a substantial number. In 1974, Glen Campbell recorded the album, Reunion: The Songs of Jimmy Webb. Then in 1977, Art Garfunkel’s album, Watermark, included 10 songs written by Webb. Also, Linda Ronstadt’s triple platinum, 1989 album Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind, featured four Webb songs.
Notably, it was recently announced that Glen Campbell, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, will be releasing his final album in June. The album is called Adios (named after a Jimmy Webb song) and includes four songs by Webb.
Besides the artists listed above, here’s a list of other artists who have recorded songs by Webb: Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross & The Supremes, R.E.M., Roberta Flack, Carly Simon, Tom Jones, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Johnny Rivers, B.J. Thomas, Harry Nilsson, Dionne Warwick, Cher, Judy Collins, Gregg Allman, the Everly Brothers, Amy Grant, John Denver, Kenny Rogers, Weird Al Yankovic, Sheena Easton, David Crosby, Michael Feinstein, Nina Simone, Dusty Springfield and Aimee Mann.
The cover of Jimmy Webb's new book, The Cake and the Rain.
Here’s the cover of Jimmy Webb’s new book, The Cake and the Rain.
Webb also remains active as a live performer who tours the U.S. and internationally. This week (on May 3) he is performing at a special concert to be held in his honor, at Carnegie Hall in New York City. He will be joined onstage by Art Garfunkel, Toby Keith, Dwight Yoakam, the 5th Dimension, Judy Collins, Graham Nash, Michael Douglas, Hanson and other artists.
We are pleased to do this new Q&A interview with Jimmy Webb:
DK: Congratulations on the release of your new memoir. I read that the book mainly covers your years from 1955-1970. Is that correct?
Jimmy Webb: Yes that’s true, except it really starts before the war (World War II), with my father and my mother meeting. So it’s actually a little wider window (of years), but that’s close enough.
DK: Will you be writing a second volume of your memoir, that will cover your later years?
Webb: Well I would hope so, but you know, it all depends on the public, and the reception the book receives. So far, we feel really good about [the book}—we’ve had a lot of positive feedback, and we’ve had very successful events (to promote the book). We’re sold out for our signing event (and show) in Los Angeles (at the Grammy Museum). So the signs are good, and I can answer you this way…I’m primed to write another book. Once I got into the stride of it, I really enjoyed doing it. [It was nice to] break out of the 3-minute limit, you know…the (approximately) 47 words…that you can throw down into a song. And it was edifying, an epiphany in a way to be able to completely write pages and pages of what to me are just lyrics (laughs).
You know, I’ve been saving stories all my life, thinking someday I might write a book, and I was never really sure I would. But I got a good answer from (book publisher) St. Martin’s Press—they were very excited about telling these stories. And so I went ahead and did it, and I’m glad I did.
DK: When people read your book, what are some of the key things they’ll learn about you?
Webb: Well, I think they would learn that I’m a dichotomy in many ways. That I lived in a traditional world of songwriting and wrote music and communed closely with people like Mr. (Frank) Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Liza Minnelli and Glen Campbell among others…sort of the middle of the road world. But on the other hand, I was working with rock & roll artists like Artie Garfunkel and Linda Ronstadt, and I went to the Monterey Pop Festival. I very much wanted to be a member of my generation…I wanted to stand for something. I wanted to do something about the world. And part of my struggle was really to identify myself as a member of my own generation.
DK: Back in the 1960s and ‘70s, when you were one of the hottest songwriters in the music business, how did it feel to be in a great creative mode and have your songs reach so many people?
Here’s a video of Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb performing
their hit, “Wichita Lineman.”
Webb: Well, what’s not to like…it was great. I went from paying no taxes to [paying a lot of taxes]. I was living the dream. You know, the California dream that everyone talks about, really became a reality for me. It was…dizzying, and it was confusing in a way. [There was] all of the good energy that was coming at me, and with that came some bad energy as well. You know, I made some mistakes. In the book, I don’t duck anything. I made up my mind when I decided to write it, that I would tell the truth about myself. I would tell the God-honest truth to the best of my ability, because I didn’t see any point in writing a memoir if one isn’t gonna do that. So you know, it was very exhilarating (writing the book)—I would go there and I would come down and then I would go there again. And I learned that it was a roller coaster, and that was the life I’d chosen. As I got older, I began to take it in stride, take the good with the bad. Take those moments that don’t seem quite real, and appreciate the fact that they really aren’t quite real.
DK: You’ve had a longtime friendship and collaboration with Glen Campbell, and your song “Adios” is the title track of his upcoming, final album. Can you tell me about your collaboration with Glen, and his new album?
Webb: Well, I know that the album was produced by Carl Jackson, who is an old, dear friend of mine. He’s a virtuoso banjo player, and he was on the road with Glen for many years. I personally didn’t have anything to do with the record, and I don’t really have any information on that. I did hear the four tracks that are my songs, and I think it sounds absolutely fantastic. It sounds like Glen in his prime to me. I’m very honored that what essentially will be his last album will have four of my songs on it.
DK: Your new book is called The Cake and the Rain, which paraphrases your lyric from your hit, “MacArthur Park.” Of all your songs, would you say “MacArthur Park” has had the greatest impact?
Webb: I wouldn’t say that. But I would say that it’s been covered more than any other song I wrote. It’s also caused some controversy, [because] it has its detractors. It has people who absolutely love it and it has people who absolutely hate it. People who don’t understand it and don’t want to understand it. I mean, it’s been a very notorious song—that’s a good word. It’s also had a career in parody, with Weird Al Yankovic (covering it as “Jurassic Park”). It’s been recorded by jazz artists like Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson, and Motown artists like the Four Tops. Mr. Sinatra recorded the middle section of “MacArthur Park.” So it gotten a lot of attention—the Beatles noticed it. They noticed it was 7:21 long and they went into the studio and lengthened “Hey Jude” so it measured out at 7:17. So yeah, I think it had some impact on the world of Top 40 radio, because it was probably one of the first times they were playing a song longer than three minutes.
Here’s a video of Jimmy Webb performing his hit, “Galveston.”
DK: Of all the songs you’ve written, are there a couple songs that have the most meaning to you, that you’re most proud of?
Webb: It’s very hard for me to do the list thing. A lot of the songs mean different things to me. But there are some songs that I’m very proud of: “The Moon’s A Harsh Mistress,” “The Highwayman.” And probably one of my favorite records is still “Wichita Lineman.”
DK: Last month, I saw Art Garfunkel perform in concert, and he said that you were one of his all-time favorite songwriters. And I know that he will be performing at your special concert at Carnegie Hall. Can you talk about your collaboration with Art?
Webb: Well, Art was a wonderful encounter in my life, because he opened the door for me to get involved with some rock artists on a pure level. He introduced me to people like James Taylor. I think [he just] shored up my street cred as something more than a middle of the road songwriter. We did a whole album together called Watermark in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and that was quite an experience. But our relationship goes beyond that, into family—his son James if my godson, and one of my sons is his godson.
We’ve played at Carnegie Hall together before, and he sang on my last album, Still Within the Sound of My Voice. It just turned into a very close and loving relationship. We both love books, we both sort of collect experiences, and we love to share them. And we love to communicate on an intellectual level. So it’s interesting that you would ask me about Art, because it started off as a musical [collaboration] and it’s become much more than that. You know, it just wouldn’t be right to have a concert, and not have Art there.
Book review: The Cake and the Rain by Jimmy Webb
By Shane Murphy
July 15, 2017
For those who may not be familiar with the name, Jimmy Webb (not James or Jim, but Jimmy — it’s on his birth certificate) is one of the great songwriters – primarily of the late 1960s/’70s. He wrote such classics as MacArthur Park, Wichita Lineman, By the Time I get to Phoenix and Galveston, oh … and Up, Up and Away too.
By now many of these songs have gone down in musical history as cheesy MOR fluff, but they are among the great songs of the era. He just happened to have songs that were tailor-made for smooth, beautifully voiced singers — and let’s face it, rock bands tended to write their own material in any case (unless you were The Monkees).
This is one of the main currents underlying The Cake and the Rain (St Martin’s Press): the almost palapable dissonance between how Webb saw himself and the very real success of his songs performed by acts at the opposite end of the socio-political spectrum to him. Glen Campbell – his most important interpreter – thought of him as a hippie who needed a haircut. This distance is all the more surprising because they came from not dissimilar backgrounds – Campbell was an Arkansas sharecropper’s son, Webb was from rural Oklahoma.
They did not even meet until the Grammy Awards in 1968, despite Jimmy Webb destroying a tractor he was using when he first heard Glen’s voice on the radio. That’s the irony of this discord – Webb consciously sought out the voice that was so opposed to much of what he wanted, because he instinctively knew that it would serve his songs best.
The pushback he got from the sector of the music industry which appealed to him most was one of the drivers behind him performing for himself. This book details much of that struggle, but suffice to say that much like Kris Kristofferson, Jimmy Webb’s solo career never eclipsed his writing for others, even with major believers such as David Geffen behind him. It’s hard to know if this was because there was no escaping the box he was pushed into, or that he just wasn’t good enough. This book has prompted me to look up some of Webb’s solo catalogue and listen.
The Cake and the Rain is a memoir not an autobiography. It’s impressionistic and focuses on loosely linked stories covering his early life into the late ’60s and the period from then to 1973 when Webb had accidentally overdosed (on what was meant to be high quality cocaine, but was in fact street level PCP) which deprived him of the ability to play, sing and write for a time.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the book is the presence of the Devil as a character. I spent a large chunk of time in trying to decide whether it was meant as an alter ego for Webb , or because one of his friends in LA took that role in his life. The answer becomes clear eventually, but the journey there gives his story some extra sizzle.
If you are into tell-all books, then The Cake and the Rain delivers. There are some quite explicit scenes and it’s fair to say that Webb had a difficult relationship with most of The Beatles, caused sometimes by them, and sometimes by him, but plainly mostly founded around professional competitiveness. There is a lot of name dropping but the circle he found himself in LA included Joni Mitchell, Harry Nilsson, Geffen and many more.
Drugs and their influence on his behaviour is a chunk of the story too, not like a Keith Richards’ plot where the action is all about where the drugs are and the next fix – but more like Fleetwood Mac where nose candy was at the centre of their partying and ultimate dissolution.
Webb is also very honest about his relationships and his womanising. So much material was generated by these dalliances and romances. He’s direct enough to realise that his behaviour wasn’t good – cheating on his long lusted after first love, (the inspiration for By the Time I Get to Phoenix and MacArthur Park amongst others) almost as soon as he’d finally convinced her to get together with him – and to write about it without justification. There are times he paints himself as a spoiled playboy – gliding, fast cars, partying, self-abusing, skirt-chasing but never quite happy.
He doesn’t afford himself a lot of sympathy either – the memoir is written from the perspective of a survivor who has dealt with his baggage and no longer feels the need to justify nor reproach – but to know that the stories themselves are of interest enough in themselves. There is not a large amount of reflection within these pages.
As a music fan, I’d have liked a little more detail around how various songs came about – there is some of this – especially with regard to Macarthur Park. Maybe that is a for his next book — he is already preparing his next set of memoirs which will presumably cover the rest of the ’70s and beyond.
As an insight into the elite world of the music industry in LA and London from the late 1960s to the ’80s this book is right up there with the best rock bios in detailing indulgence and excess. But it’s also a deeply personal set of memories committed to extending Webb’s legacy and designed to defend himself against the perceived dismissal of his work as “music for housewives”.
Listen to his songs as performed at their best and read this book to make your own judgement. For me he is part of the canon – with Lennon/McCartney, Goffin/King, Bacharach/David and Holland/Dozier/Holland, plus a few others – defining the sounds of the era we think of as the swinging ’60s.
The Cake and the Rain is available here.
Rock and Roll Book Club: Jimmy Webb's 'The Cake and the Rain'
by Jay Gabler
April 12, 2017
rock and roll book club
Jimmy Webb's 'The Cake and the Rain'
Jimmy Webb's 'The Cake and the Rain' (Jay Gabler/MPR)
The title of Jimmy Webb's new memoir might be a little confusing, unless you happen to be familiar with one of the most infamous surprise hits of the rock era — a 1968 song Webb wrote and produced for the debut album by the great actor Richard Harris. Against all odds, the 441-second song became a top-five hit in both the U.S. and U.K., and later became a chart-topping disco hit for Donna Summer.
As delivered by Harris (who, sloshed on Pimm's, couldn't manage to sing "MacArthur" without making it possessive), the last verse goes:
MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh no!
It's an epic song about the demise of one of Webb's many relationships, which flow into and around one another in the hazy narrative of The Cake and the Rain. As music memoirs go, this one is on the experimental end — which doesn't mean it's bad, it just means that after you finish you may find yourself taking to Wikipedia to figure out what actually happened, in what order.
Webb tells his story on two alternating timelines. One begins with his birth, in rural Oklahoma in 1946, and moves forward as he discovers a passion for songwriting. The other timeline begins in 1969, which Webb sees as a pivotal year in his career. Having established himself as a songwriter, he was embarking on a solo career that would ultimately prove more of a critical than a popular success.
Okay, let's back up a minute. Even if you've read this far, you might not realize exactly who Jimmy Webb is, or why his memoir merits coverage on The Current. Well, let me just direct you to the appendices of The Cake and the Rain. The appendices include lists of chart hits (dozens, mostly performances by other artists of Webb songs like "Up, Up and Away"; "Wichita Lineman"; and "Galveston"), awards (loads, including a shelf full of Grammys, and Rolling Stone recognition as the 44th greatest songwriter of all time), and artists who have recorded Webb songs (hundreds, ranging from James Brown to Nick Cave to Sammy Davis Jr. to Aretha Franklin to Kool & the Gang to R.E.M. to Stone Temple Pilots).
From today's standpoint, one of the interesting things about Webb's career is that it peaked at a critical moment of transition for pop music. Even into the late '60s, there was still a respectable career to be had as a writer of songs for other artists: Webb had been closely associated with Johnny Rivers and Glen Campbell, as well as the 5th Dimension. In the early '70s, though, Webb swung into the orbit of David Geffen, with artists like Laura Nyro and Jackson Browne. Just being the guy who wrote the songs wasn't going to cut it any more: singer-songwriters were all the rage.
It was the Me Decade, and Webb's account will have you wondering how he — or anyone — managed to survive. Webb's book ends in 1973, when his life and career had the hardest of resets after Harry Nilsson handed him a supposed dose of cocaine that turned out to be street-level PCP that almost killed him. The run-up to that fateful moment included a John Lennon encounter you'll wish you'd never heard about, a near-crash in a sailplane (while shooting an album cover, natch), and a close encounter with a "mega-gaggle" of seagulls while speeding to an Art Garfunkel session that Webb forgot all about because he was having so much fun doing sports-car stunts with his girlfriend while blasting Son of Schmilsson.
Oh, did I mention the private orchestra concert where the rule was that everyone — even the visiting members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and even an unsuspecting Joni Mitchell — had to get naked?
Ultimately, The Cake and the Rain may be less illuminating as a record of Webb's art — he doesn't spend much time on the details of songwriting or recording — than as an impressionistic voyage through the music scene in the era when the '60s faded and died, giving way to a world where you'd go to a party and the most gorgeous woman there would be hanging on the arm of Dudley Moore.
Webb visits a Beatles recording session where both Paul and John have their partners (Linda and Yoko) essentially draped over their shoulders as they cut tracks for the White Album. He describes the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, where performances ranged from Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar (to the horror of the fire marshal) to Otis Redding delivering "probably the most nuclear-powered forty-five minutes in the history of rock 'n' roll." The Devil appears throughout the narrative as a supporting character, described as matter-of-factly as though he was there in the flesh.
And somehow, at the story's weird and quiet center, there's "MacArthur Park." Webb originally wrote the song for the Association (yes, the "Windy" group) — who listened politely and then took a hard pass. When Webb was later summoned to England to make what would turn out to be an entire album of Webb songs with Harris, the thespian immediately took to the number. "That's a song fit for a bloody king!" boomed the man who famously played King Arthur in Camelot.
Every once in a while, you can have your cake and eat it too.
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Long Island songwriter Jimmy Webb discusses ‘The Cake and the Rain,’ a memoir of his life and career
Songwriter Jimmy Webb is out with a memoir,
Songwriter Jimmy Webb is out with a memoir, "The Cake and the Rain." Photo Credit: Jessica Daschner
By Glenn Gamboa
glenn.gamboa@newsday.com @ndmusic
Updated April 14, 2017 6:00 AM
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Jimmy Webb has been famous for his words for more than 50 years as the Grammy-winning songwriter behind classics such as “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “MacArthur Park.”
Carnegie Hall will host a tribute to Webb’s music on May 3, with an eclectic slate of artists, from Art Garfunkel to Toby Keith, performing his songs in a fundraiser for his friend Glen Campbell’s I’ll Be Me Alzheimer’s Fund.
But when it came time to begin writing his memoir, “The Cake and the Rain” (St. Martin’s Press, 341 pp., $26.99), out Tuesday, April 18, Webb says he discovered a freedom of expression that he hadn’t felt before — one that comes outside the constraints of a three-minute pop song. He’ll discuss the book and sign copies at Book Revue in Huntington on Wednesday, April 19.
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From his home in Bayville, Webb told Newsday about the wild ride of his early career, some of the drug-fueled adventures of famous friends such as John Lennon and Harry Nilsson, and what he learned from chronicling them. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you like the writing process?
It’s been a very, very positive experience. I think there was one point when I almost broke because I overwrote the book by a couple of hundred thousand words. I did that deliberately because I had a lot of stuff to get out, but I knew there were some hard parameters that the publisher had for a book like this. I believe it was Socrates that said “The unexamined life is not worth living” and someone had coupled that with a corollary that “The unlived life is not worth examining.” I think I found out a lot about my own life. It’s an invigorating experience because you find out that you didn’t do as badly as you thought you did and at times you find that you came a little bit short of the mark. I was lucky to be given the opportunity, and I worked on it as hard as I have ever worked on anything.
That shows. But the most striking thing about the book is your honesty.
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Early on, I confronted a couple of things where I asked myself, “Am I really going to tell the truth about things?” The answer was, “What is the point of going through all this just to tell yourself some frivolous lie about something that, in the long run, doesn’t really matter anyway.” One lie devalues the whole book. And, in a way, it devalues your life experience.
Your approach is unusual. Even though you look backward, you’re basically only writing about five years of your life.
I decided that I was going to spend a little more time on backstory than would be fashionable in the publishing world. These stories were about my two grandfathers — sort of statues of the Plains, these hard men, these real individualists. And my father was of the same cast. He lied to get into the Marine Corps so he could go and fight the Japanese and, truth be known, kill as many of them as possible, and then came home and became a Baptist minister. To me, their lives were a lot more interesting than mine. I sort of hit on this idea of constantly shifting the timeline between what I call the front story and the backstory. That worked for me.
Were there times when you wondered if some of these stories weren’t really yours to tell, especially when you write about friends?
Maybe. I didn’t tell any stories that I wasn’t personally involved in. There are times when I felt, “Should I really be talking about this?” especially in the case of Harry Nilsson and John Lennon. But they were part of the mosaic of this life experience, what I consider this unique perspective or I wouldn’t have written a book. I weighed things carefully before I included them. My personal ruler or scale was how important it was to what was happening to me.
Are you looking forward to your appearance in Huntington?
I think it will be an almost unfair, extremely biased audience in my favor. [Laughs.] It might go on a little bit longer than usual. Book Revue is one of the great venues still in existence. I feel very lucky to be there. It’s such a great store and I’ve driven by and seen that I’m in the window. That feels good.
WHO Jimmy Webb discusses his new memoir, “The Cake and the Rain”
WHEN | WHERE 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 19, Book Revue, 313 New York Ave., Huntington
INFO 631-271-1442, bookrevue.com
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By Jon Dolan
April 18, 2017
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All Stories
During the late Sixties and early Seventies, Jimmy Webb was arguably the most successful mainstream songwriter alive, churning out sweeping, richly orchestrated hits for Glen Campbell, Barbra Streisand and Frank Sinatra, among others. Yet while that success made him famous, it also saddled him with a "middle road" reputation that was totally out of step with his actual lifestyle. "I'm out partying for three days at a time and plowing a furrow through London's underground, and I'm perceived as this squeaky-clean writer," he says.
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Webb's new memoir, The Cake and the Rain, follows his rise from Oklahoma preacher's son to L.A. pop aristocrat. At the heart is his struggle to carve out his own identity as he lived a double life as a Middle American fixture with countercultural artistic ambitions "[It was] like going from the Soviet Union to Estonia," he says.
In advance of "A Celebration of the Music of Jimmy Webb," a star-studded tribute at Carnegie Hall on May 3rd, featuring Dwight Yoakam, Judy Collins, Toby Keith and more, in addition to Webb himself, we spoke to the songwriter about his famous collaborators from Sinatra to John Lennon, his hard-partying early days and more.
There was a pretty big paradox between the way you were perceived culturally and the way you actually lived your life. Is that something you wanted to get at in this book?
Yes. I think it's an itch that I've always wanted to scratch, you know? It defines so much of my early career in terms of public perception and some of the kind of gratuitous ... I don't know ... diminishing of my work. At the same time, I think there's kind of a humorous aspect to it.
How do you mean, humorous?
Well, because I'm out partying for three days at a time with Harry Nilsson and I'm publicly perceived as this kind of squeaky clean writer of middle music for Glen Campbell, famously, and Mr. Sinatra and the Fifth Dimension, who were kind of a less polarized version of a Motown artist. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Glen was way over right of where I was. So taking a stance on political issues that I thought were sort of immutably unilateral – like "War is bad." "War in Vietnam is a bad thing." It was very hard for me to really define myself in that atmosphere.
Did you and Glen Campbell ever talk about politics?
Yeah, it would come up. It would come up in very short discussions. I felt that there was nothing to be gained by pursuing the conversation.
That's a smart attitude to have. A lot of people don't have that attitude these days.
I was a professional. I came into the business wanting to be a songwriter, wanting to make my living making music. So really, that was somewhere in the forefront, and I found that I was kind of caught up in a political storm. But there was no mistaking where I stood. I played at the Monterey Pop Festival. I remember one time saying on television, I think it was Merv Griffin or somebody asked me, "So how do you feel about marijuana?" And I just sat there for a second, I'm on national television, and I said, "Well, be cool." He said to me at the time, he said, "You don't mean you're encouraging young people to smoke marijuana?" And I said, "Oh, of course not." You know, because I wasn't. But, in a way, I was colored by a kind of phenomenal success with an older, kind of more traditional artist. I was recorded by Streisand, by Tony Bennett, Stan Kenton. So a lot of people thought I was older than I was.
Why do you think you never crossed over as a solo artist?
Well, you know, the records weren't very successful but there was a following, and a sort of cult, if you will, that's alive and well. There are people out there who have all of those records and they come to my concerts and they follow me very closely. My social media stuff is very alive, very healthy with questions. And when I autograph at a concert I see Richard Harris albums, I see a lot of Glen Campbell albums and I think that Glen is almost synonymous with me, which is something that I don't resent because I think our records were of very high grade. And that they stand up extremely well. But in a sense, I think I was competing with the artists who recorded my music, and they were phenomenal singers; they weren't sort of woodshed singers like I was. I was on Asylum. David Geffen was my manager. I was working every angle, you know. But I think that one hit single would have probably changed a lot of things.
Webb with Glen Campbell. "I think that Glen is almost synonymous with me," he says. Rick Diamond/WireImage.com
Sinatra hated hippies but he clearly liked you. Did you have a personal rapport with him?
I had a good relationship with him. He was a man who liked songwriters very much and never did a performance and hardly ever played a song without crediting the songwriter, which, you know, again the songwriter's role is under attack in this present day and we don't see that much. He had an amazing tolerance to sit in a chair for sometimes a couple hours and just listen to everything. He would ask me up to Vegas; he would pick up the check. I mean, on everything. The hotel. He memorably, he took my father and I to the Jockey Club one night for dinner and my father was never the same man after that. He walked with a spring in his step.
Paul McCartney was also a big fan of your work and you visited the Beatles in the studio while they were working on the White Album. There was a lot tension and acrimony going on within the band at the time. Could you sense that?
Well, the room was set up [so] that the characters were sort of presented in this tableau, with John on the right with Yoko and Paul on the left with Linda and George sort of standing uneasily in the middle. It was pretty clear to me that it was Paul's album, it was his song, and John didn't come in to listen. Even though he was sort of diffidently strumming an acoustic guitar. There were candles on that side of the room. It was very much like a shrine over on the Lennon side. And over on the McCartney side, it was just hijinks. It was Linda and Paul clowning around and she's sort of hanging onto him from behind and sitting around him on a piano bench, which, from a piano player's perspective is, like ... almost impossible [laughs]. It's almost impossible to be in that position, but you know ... And then there's the disembodied voice of Ringo Starr. Literally almost from somewhere else because the drum booth was down below the control room, so he wasn't visible, and we rarely heard from him. He'd be like, "Hello." And he would knock on the microphone. "Is this working?"
In that scene, McCartney keeps referring to you as Tom Dowd, who was a famous engineer for Atlantic Records. It's pretty weird, since he'd called you the previous year and asked you to write a song for a project he was involved with. They obviously knew who you were. What was going on there?
Well, I know for certain that George Martin and George Harrison knew exactly who I was. John didn't come into the booth, nor did Ringo. There was a schism going on in there, so it was a sensitive moment, and to be honest, I didn't know how much they hated to have people around during their sessions. I mean, you don't really know something about that when you're just a kid and you're reading fan magazines, but they really hated the people – and I don't know why I was invited, first of all, but once I was there, it was pretty clear to me that I was being sent up, and when I talked to the people about it years later they said, "Oh, they would always do that." You know, they loved to take the piss out on someone. Preferably someone who thought they were important. Or might be important, and when they came to America, in a way Americans fell in love with that kind of deadpan ... you know, "You're taking this very seriously but we're not." That sort of thing. I don't know. I don't know what it was with them.
You were a witness to John Lennon and Harry Nilsson's infamous "lost weekend" in the early Seventies. There's a scene in the book where they call you up at 3 a.m. to bring them hundred dollar bills and cocaine (or as they call it "hee haw"). What was it like growing up looking up to the Beatles and then to see John Lennon at the worst state of his life? That's a very dark passage in the book.
I was as taken aback as you probably are by reading it. And I guess that's what I'm trying to communicate. I really want to hasten to add that when John was struck down the way he was, I was absolutely shattered, and I ended up writing a lot of music about it and really going through some bad emotional stuff. It may be perceived as some sort of a get-back or something, but he never did anything to me. He basically was an impassive person. I never got a reading off him, ever. If you ran a magnetometer over him, it wouldn't indicate anything. He was, like, so placid.
But I think that he revealed probably a lot more to people who were closer. Harry Nilsson was very close, but I was sort of called in as the bag man when they had gotten themselves into some sort of a jam. It was done out of love. It was done out of dedication. I mean, why would you be out in the middle of the night doing a drug run unless you ... I wasn't getting paid for it. I had a lot of money. So there was a loyalty there, and there was a code. There was an unwritten code that if the Beatles ask you to do something, you did it. And I'm not kidding about that.
Singer-guitarist John Lennon (center right), formerly of The Beatles, attends a Smothers Brothers comedy performance with girlfriend May Pang and fellow singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson (far right), during Lennon's infamous 'Lost Weekend' period, at the Troubadour on March 12, 1974, in West Hollywood, California. Lennon and Nilsson would later be kicked out of the show for drunken heckling.
"The combination of John Lennon and Harry Nilsson created a nuclear self-destructive device," Webb says. Michael Ochs Archive/Getty
What was it like to watch Harry Nilsson's disintegration?
Some people had a sense of abandonment that was awesome to behold, like someone sitting a Lotus race car and holding the accelerator wide open and trusting to fate. And most of those people died. I can't explain the attitude. I might go out and spend three or four days but at some point I'd look up and say, "I think I need to get back to my house." My drummer used to call it "a lifeboat."
I didn't wanna die. I came close a couple of times. The impulse to just run the machine wide open until it broke. It's easy to write someone off as a druggie or a drug addict. There was in the case of Harry a magnificent brilliance. I would've killed to sing like him and I loved his voice and I loved his records. I really wanted to record something Harry would like. He came in one night spitting blood into my kitchen sink and he said, "I left it on the mic," and I said, "That's not funny. What are you doing?" The combination of John Lennon and Harry Nilsson created a nuclear self-destructive device – they found some negative energy that was overpowering.
The book ends in 1973, when you had a near fatal overdose after accidentally snorting some angel dust and briefly lost the ability to play piano. Why did you end it there?
It's the opposite of ending the book on top of a mountain conquering Everest or whatever. It's an image of a man who's given over to emotion to the point where he's almost helpless. That's the state I was in. And it was certainly accentuated, and excoriated by this drug use. And I don't mean to imply, by the way, that in any way that was a turning point. Because I continued to use drugs. I've been sober for 17 years. But after that incident, my life was different. I got married, I had children, the Sixties were well behind me, the Seventies were passing quickly, and everything that I had set out with, this idealistic package, the communal lifestyle that I embraced, the idea that I could take everybody with me on this trip, and I didn't have to leave anyone behind, and it really wasn't.
It seems like "Wichita Lineman," which you wrote for Glen Campbell, is an autobiographical song, not just in the way it evokes the part of the country you're from but in its sense that hard work can lead to redemption, which seems like something that kept you writing so much commercial music even when you had other ambitions.
You're striking very close to the center and to the way I was brought up in an agrarian setting. There was a lot of religion in there too. I've never been able to siphon that out; even with massive jolts of cocaine I've never been able to ditch the way I was brought up in a Southern Baptist household, particularly the work ethic. I play 50 shows a year and I will keep working and performing until the life leaves my body. I can't imagine any other ending than I walk out onstage and suddenly I'm not there anymore.
John Lennon describes the first time he took LSD. Watch here.
Jimmy Webb’s remarkable memoir has its cake and eats it
The songwriter behind ‘Wichita Lineman’ has a hell of a story to tell – and what a cast
Songwriter Jimmy Webb: deserved the credibility he craved. Photograph: Michael Putland/Getty Images
Songwriter Jimmy Webb: deserved the credibility he craved. Photograph: Michael Putland/Getty Images
Johnny Rogan
Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 06:00
First published:
Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 06:00
Book Title:
The Cake And The Rain, A Memoir
ISBN-13:
978-1785586187
Author:
Jimmy Webb
Publisher:
Omnibus Press
Guideline Price:
£20.00
There is a fairy-tale quality to Jimmy Webb’s autobiography, hardly surprising when you consider his remarkable life. He was born and raised by a preacher in Oklahoma and achieved incredible success as a composer in LA, writing some of the most enduring and moving songs of the late 1960s.
Two aspects linger: prodigy and maturity. For some, Webb was a fantasy figure whose ability to compose instant standards – from Up, Up And Away to Didn’t We – seemed mind-boggling. He recalls reading a description of himself as a “wunderkind” and had to consult a dictionary to discover the word’s meaning. His melodies were wondrous, surpassed only by a precocious lyrical maturity. Despite his inexperience and modest upbringing, his songs suggested the wisdom of a man twice or three times his age. His observational skills, sense of place and wistful yearning were enshrined in that remarkable trilogy for Glen Campbell: By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Wichita Lineman and Galveston. Many more would follow.
The Cake and the Rain is fascinating, as it alternates between Webb’s Midwest childhood and rise to Hollywood fame. He evokes a past of religious observance, accompanied by bullying, transcendent joys and small terrors. By contrast, LA offers hedonistic highs, fast cars and a house on the hill with “six acres of pools, gardens and waterfalls . . . century-old white oak trees”. Inside his home are grand pianos, a recording studio, an ornate temple to rock icons and a floor-to-ceiling pipe organ even larger than the one seen in the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
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For all this opulence, Webb craves credibility, which he rightly argues was often denied him by snobbish, hipper-than-thou rock critics offended by his Las Vegas shows and middle-of-the-road image. In truth, Webb was a countercultural proselytiser himself. Witness his outlandish “nude concerto”, experimental songs such as The Yard Went On Forever or his series of self-penned albums, all of which failed to sell but deserve critical respect. His anti-war sentiments and drug excesses also placed him firmly in the hippie camp. By the 1970s, he became a cocain addict and even had his own recipe: baking soda mixed with coke, washed down with Champagne.
Irish grudges
Webb’s life is dominated by music and muses. There are many heroines in the story, notably Susan Horton, a goddess-like cheerleader who inspired several of his greatest compositions. There are also great friendships, not least the mercurial Richard Harris, who deserves several chapters of his own. He disappears from the narrative rather abruptly. Webb extrapolates mysteriously: “The Irish can silently bury a grudge deeper and hold it longer than any other creatures under Heaven.”
The author’s prose is vivid and at times so florid that it resembles some of his more abstruse lyrics. He appears to be channelling MacArthur Park when he writes: “I remember her plain country short-sleeved dress and the pattern of tiny faded flowers run amok.” Other rhetorical flourishes: “I supposed life, if it continued , would be an endless series of ghostly tabernacles, rising like abandoned dreams from the white chalk of the West Texas back roads.” Elsewhere, he is more colloquial: a limousine is inelegantly referred to as a “black bastard” for no apparent reason.
Great raconteur
Webb is a great raconteur whose reminiscences appear honest and self-deprecating rather than sentimental or boastful. A recurring figure in the text is the devil, who accompanies Webb in several strange episodes. It’s not entirely clear whether he’s a person or an abstraction, but he’s real enough to Webb. The author’s tales of Nilsson, Lennon, McCartney and Harrison are all new to me and most welcome.
Even they pale alongside his own quixotic adventures: a sailing trip featuring UFOs and aliens; a crazy, dope-smuggling escapade to Brazil during which one of the party disappears in scary circumstances; a hubristic visit to Galveston, where he barely gets out of town alive; an air crash in which he nearly kills photographer Henry Diltz; and so on. The book closes with a harrowing account of Webb overdosing on PCP and briefly losing the ability to play the piano as the entire world is turned into rubber. It reads like an episode of The Twilight Zone.
The conflict between art and commerce, a motif that runs throughout the text, is oddly re-enacted in the book’s production. Originally, Webb presented his American publishers with what sounds like a MacArthur Park-style epic, but evidently met editorial resistance: “. . . the thought of losing half of my stories became too subjective and emotional”. The decision to spread the material over two or more volumes suggests economic rather than aesthetic reasoning. That said, they do justice to the integrated photos by using expensive glossy paper.
Several names are misspelled: Moke Stoller (Mike Stoller), Judy Sill (Judee Sill) and Harvey Linnman (Harvey Lippman). Ludicrously, there is no index. Considering the fantastic stories and celebrated figures Webb interacts with – Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, David Crosby, Jackson Browne, Richard Harris, David Hemmings, Sammy Davis jnr et al – this omission is both careless and immensely frustrating. Webb’s evocative autobiography deserves better stewardship and one hopes such infelicities are rectified in the next volume.
Sat, Nov 18, 2017, 06:00
BAM's Blog
Jimmy Webb to release memoir 'The Cake and the Rain,' to be honored at Carnegie Hall show
Brandy McDonnell by Brandy McDonnell Published: March 20, 2017 6:23 PM CDT Updated: March 20, 2017 6:36 PM CDT
Elk City native and legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb will release his memoir "The Cake and the Rain" April 18 via St. Martin's Press. Photo provided
Elk City native and legendary songwriter Jimmy Webb will release his memoir "The Cake and the Rain" April 18 via St. Martin's Press. Photo provided
NEW YORK, N.Y. - "America's Songwriter" Jimmy Webb, who hails from Elk City, will be honored with a special tribute show May 3 at Carnegie Hall. Presented by City Winery, the event will celebrate Webb's singular legacy and his timeless hit songs, including "Wichita Lineman," "MacArthur Park," "Galveston," "Didn't We," and "All I Know."
"A Celebration of the Music of Jimmy Webb: The Cake and the Rain" will feature a stellar initial lineup of artists, many of whom have personal ties to the songwriter. Fellow Oklahoma native Toby Keith, Ashley Campbell (daughter of Glen Campbell), Art Garfunkel, Amy Grant, Judy Collins, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. of the Fifth Dimension, Johnny Rivers and Dwight Yoakam are all confirmed to perform, with more artists to be announced soon.
In addition, Webb himself will be performing at the event, according to a news release.
Proceeds from the concert will be donated to the Alzheimer's Association and the I'll Be Me Foundation in honor of Webb's dear friend Glen Campbell.
The tribute event coincides with two milestones: Webb's new memoir, "The Cake and The Rain," set for publication on April 18 through St. Martin's Press, and the upcoming 50th anniversary of "Wichita Lineman," a smash single that Webb penned and Campbell recorded.
"The Cake and the Rain" provides a snapshot of Webb's unlikely rise in the 1960s, whipsawed from the proverbial humble beginnings into a moneyed and manic international world of beautiful women, drugs, cars and planes.
Webb's songs have topped the charts in multiple genres with a stunning array of artists, including Campbell, Frank Sinatra, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, Barbra Streisand, The Supremes, Donna Summer, Richard Harris, Nina Simone, and many more. His numerous accolades include the prestigious Ivor Novello International Award (2012) and the Academy of Country Music's Poet Award (2016). He received his first gold record at the age of 18 and was the youngest inductee into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
His diverse songwriting style was especially apparent in 2016 when he premiered his classical piece "Nocturne for Lefty" and had his music featured prominently on Kanye West's Grammy-nominated song "Famous." From the first crossover country pop hit with Campbell, to a No. 1 disco hit with Summer, to a Grammy-nominated rap song, Webb remains the only writer to receive Grammys across writing, music, and orchestration.
Webb's first book, "Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting," is considered a bible among professional musicians and college students. He has time and again paved the way for songwriters in the ever-changing media landscape, and spearheaded an ongoing effort to preserve the rights of songwriters as the former chairman of the Songwriters Hall of Fame and longtime board member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).
The Oklahoma native has released 10 solo albums since the 1970s, while continuing to write for other artists. 2010's "Just Across the River' features duets on some of his biggest songs with friends Campbell, Billy Joel, Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, JD Souther and fellow Okie Vince Gill, plus Lucinda Williams, Michael McDonald and Mark Knopfler. A follow-up, "Still Within the Sound of My Voice," featuring Brian Wilson, Art Garfunkel, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Lyle Lovett, Carly Simon, Keith Urban and more, was released in fall 2013.
"A Celebration of the Music of Jimmy Webb: The Cake and the Rain," will be presented by City Winery, whose founder by Michael Dorf, is known for his annual "Music Of" tribute series at Carnegie Hall, which has successfully raised more than $1.3 million for music education programs in New York City. In the past, the "Music Of" series has honored David Byrne, Paul Simon, Prince, Neil Young, and many others with legendary lineups that have included Ed Sheeran, D'Angelo, The Roots and Elvis Costello. Dorf is uniquely suited to create the impressive and eclectic rosters he assembles each year as a founder of two seminal NYC music venues: the Knitting Factory, which he started in 1987 and sold in 2002, and City Winery, the venue he founded in 2008 in NYC, that now has locations in Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta and Boston. For nearly 30 years, Dorf has programmed for stages across the globe.
VIP ticket packages are available now, while general admission tickets go on sale at 8 a.m. Wednesday at www.musicof.org.
-BAM
Brandy McDonnell
Brandy McDonnell
Brandy McDonnell, also known by her initials BAM, writes stories and reviews on movies, music, the arts and other aspects of entertainment. She... read more ›
Extended interview & video: Oklahoma songwriter Jimmy Webb returns to home state to sign new memoir 'The Cake and the Rain'
Brandy McDonnell by Brandy McDonnell Published: May 7, 2017 7:29 AM CDT Updated: May 7, 2017 7:49 AM CDT
Elk City native Jimmy Webb released his memoir "The Cake and the Rain" April 18 via St. Martin's Press. Book cover photo provided
Elk City native Jimmy Webb released his memoir "The Cake and the Rain" April 18 via St. Martin's Press. Book cover photo provided
An abbreviated version of this story appears in the Sunday Life section of The Oklahoman.
Let them read 'Cake'
Oklahoma songwriter Jimmy Webb returns to home state to sign new memoir 'The Cake and the Rain'
Although he just served his first helping of literary cake, Jimmy Webb is hoping to dish up a second portion soon.
The legendary songwriter and native Oklahoman released last month his first memoir, titled “The Cake and the Rain,” after the indelible lyrics to one of his most enduring and curiously enigmatic hits, “MacArthur Park.”
“I think ‘The Cake and the Rain’ is a metaphor for the good and the bad – and sometimes the ugly. It’s also probably the thing I’ve been most asked about in my life is the cake and the rain. If I had a dollar for every time somebody’s asked me ‘What does the cake out in the rain mean?’ then I would have a boat as big as David Geffen’s boat,” he said, referring to the Asylum Records founder who appears in the memoir.
“It’s readily identifiable: It identifies the music, it identifies the era, and it’s something that the public honestly has demonstrated an insatiable curiosity about,” he added.
“You know, I’m 70 years old, and I really want this book to sell because I’d like to write the sequel. I would really like for a lot of people to read this story, so I chose the title that I thought would get the most bang at the bookstore, to be honest.”
Told in a nonlinear fashion, “The Cake and the Rain” offers surreal snapshots of Webb’s life from 1955 to 1970 – an era of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll when he quickly gained fame and fortune penning smash singles for artists as diverse as Glen Campbell, The 5th Dimension and Richard Harris – collaged with a vivid view of his Oklahoma heritage and conservative childhood as the eldest son of a traveling Baptist preacher and a loving mother determined to have him take piano lessons.
“I really started the book on my grandfather’s farm. It was most important for me to establish the backstory and my origins and the kind of simplicity, the work ethic, the churchgoing background of not only myself but of my parents and my grandparents. The love affair that was my mother and my father, I really wanted to establish early because it’s very much a pivotal point of the book when my mother died at 36,” said Webb, who was born in Elk City.
“She had a brain tumor. … Probably today she would have been saved but in that day, it had gone undiagnosed for two years. She actually died on the operating table. It was a nuclear strike on our family. Without going into a lot of detail, I stayed in California where the family was living, my father returned to Oklahoma, my sister Janice got married immediately to her boyfriend, and Dad wavered for a while but eventually he left the ministry.
“That’s why it was important for me, because I believe that that is the event that sent shockwaves through the rest of our lives.”
Jimmy Webb is featured with his Shelby Cobra 427 Super Snake in a vintage photo from his memoir, "The Cake and the Rain," released April 18 from St. Martin's Press. Photo provided
Jimmy Webb is featured with his Shelby Cobra 427 Super Snake in a vintage photo from his memoir, "The Cake and the Rain," released April 18 from St. Martin's Press. Photo provided
Candid remembrances
Webb will return to his home state Wednesday for a book signing and question-and-answer session at Oklahoma City's Full Circle Bookstore.
“We’ve had pretty near a full house everywhere we go. A lot of interest in the book, a lot of positive feedback. I mean, I think that there’s a lot of reaction which … some of it is kind of difficult,” Webb said by phone last month after appearing at a Tulsa event. “As far as the writing of the book goes, the approval rating on the book has been very high.”
The follow-up to his well-reviewed 1990s songwriter’s guide “Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting” not only chronicles the penning of his iconic hits like “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Up, Up and Away” and “MacArthur Park” but also recalls his youthful penchant for illegal drugs, married women and fast cars. He said show-biz success became a bubble for him, and like many others, he made the mistake of believing that bubble was real.
“Before you know it, you start believing what they write about you. Things become too easy. You forget how to fix a flat tire. There’s always someone there to take care of whatever needs to be taken care of,” Webb said.
“To not put too fine a point on it, but writing a memoir is a kind of minor ordeal. One is confronting a lot of dirty laundry and sometimes unflattering surrounds. To get into it, I think, is to get into it whole hog and tell the truth and be as candid as you can be, then keeping one eye on the people that you’re writing about because you don’t really want to destroy anyone else’s life. I realized very quickly that if I wasn’t going to tell the truth about what I was discussing, there was no point in writing the book.
“It was Socrates that said that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’ And the corollary is ‘the unlived life is not worth examining.’ I lived it. I am guilty of what I am guilty of, and I’m also responsible for some of the good things.”
The memoir recaps entertaining encounters with Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra. Hosting a nude outdoor chamber music concert attended by Joni Mitchell, surviving a sail plane accident with musician and photographer Henry Diltz and getting drawn into the debauchery of John Lennon and Harry Nilsson’s infamous “Lost Weekend” are some of the other memories he shares in “The Cake and the Rain.”
The latter sets up the autobiographical tale’s most harrowing episode: his graphic recollection of a near-fatal overdose.
“That overdose was accidental. It was me taking something that I had not identified as, in this case,PCP, which is just one of the worst things in the world. Someone had told me afterwards that I had taken enough to kill an elephant. Up until then, it was just social and it was just fun. It was just part of the scene. I think I pointed out that it was pervasive: It was in the boardroom, it was in the studio. We used drugs to pay musicians. It was certainly part of the social circle, and any sort of dating thing that you were into involved cocaine, involved drugs. And people were telling us that it was good for you. I’ll never forget that one. ‘You know, it’s really good for you. The Peruvians, they swear by this stuff,’ which was obviously a great, big lie,” he said, laughing.
“I suppose what I’m trying to point out, maybe in a cautionary way, when you’re in that atmosphere and surrounded by those people and those events, that you can unintentionally kill yourself.”
In the aftermath of the overdose, he was so addled he not only briefly lost his musical ability but also become convinced the whole world was made of rubber.
“The results could have been no less than catastrophic,” he said. “I actually forgot what the piano did. I forgot the principal of what it was for. That’s how much I was damaged, and it’s nothing short of a miracle that I had virtually a 100 percent recovery and recall of every song I’d ever heard, every person I’d know. Everything that happened to me came back. I think that’s a miracle.”
From left, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Laura Savini and Jimmy Webb appear backstage Wednesday, May 3 at "A Celebration Of The Music Of Jimmy Webb: The Cake And The Rain," a benefit concert marking the release of Webb's new memoir "The Cake and the Rain" at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Photo provided by Al Pereira
From left, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Laura Savini and Jimmy Webb appear backstage Wednesday, May 3 at "A Celebration Of The Music Of Jimmy Webb: The Cake And The Rain," a benefit concert marking the release of Webb's new memoir "The Cake and the Rain" at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Photo provided by Al Pereira
Longtime friendship
The memoir opens with Webb reminiscing about his first meeting with Campbell – the country star famously asked the long-haired songwriter “When ya gonna get a haircut?” – and recounts the moment the songsmith added the distinctive organ part to the smash “Wichita Lineman.” Since the book focuses on a specific 15-year span, it doesn’t delve into Campbell’s devastating 2011 Alzhemier’s disease diagnosis.
However, the tunesmith celebrated the release of the memoir Wednesday night in New York at a star-studded Carnegie Hall concert featuring fellow Oklahomans Toby Keith, Hanson and B.J. Thomas; musical luminaries like Judy Collins, Art Garfunkel, Amy Grant, Graham Nash, Johnny Rivers and Dwight Yoakam; and Oscar-winning actors Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Proceeds from "A Celebration Of The Music Of Jimmy Webb: The Cake And The Rain" will be donated to the Alzheimer's Association and Campbell’s I'll Be Me Foundation. (See more photos and videos of the event here.)
“Alzheimer’s never really goes away … and it can last decades. It crushes the strongest people. It’s really a diabolic disease, and its side effects and its byproducts -- what it does to people around the family, what it does to people connected to them – it just spreads out like ripples on the pond. So we would like to see some more help for the people directly affected,” said Webb, adding that he continues to visit Campbell, who is the late stages of Alzheimer’s, when he is in Nashville.
Campbell’s final studio album, recorded five years ago at the end of the country music legend’s “Goodbye Tour” will be released June 9. Produced by Campbell’s longtime banjo player and family friend Carl Jackson, it is titled “Adios,” after a Webb song that Campbell recorded for the first time for the album. (To hear the title track from "Adios," click here.)
“He’s a very careful, kind of deliberate sort of Southerner who very carefully went through, and having a working knowledge of Glen before and after Alzheimer’s, I think was able to elicit some amazing performances that pretty much sound like Glen Campbell in his prime,” said Webb, who makes his home on Long Island.
“It’s a great honor that they called the album ‘Adios,’ which is one of my songs. I’m very, very proud that there’s three more of my songs on there. It was a special relationship, and to some degree I felt like I wasn’t as close to Glen’s musical career towards the end as perhaps I would have liked to have been. But there were other agencies at work then, other producers and record labels, and they were steering things. And I think Carl was sort of standing back from the hoopla … so I like very much that this record sort of stands apart from Alzheimer’s. And I know that these are truly the songs that Glen loved, that he truly loved, when he was fully cognizant. When he would sit in front of the fireplace with his Ovation (guitar) and sing, we would always kind of end up singing the same songs, and I think the album’s a good representation of that.”
Celebrated songwriter and Elk City native Jimmy Webb is returning to Oklahoma for an Oklahoma City book signing May 10 at Full Circle Bookstore. Photo provided
Celebrated songwriter and Elk City native Jimmy Webb is returning to Oklahoma for an Oklahoma City book signing May 10 at Full Circle Bookstore. Photo provided
‘Cake’ recollections
While the book chronicles the success of the Campbell hits “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Wichita Lineman,” Webb also spends considerable ink explaining the origins, recording and surprise sensation of his epic “MacArthur Park,” which provides the lyrics used for his memoir’s title. Perhaps because of its unusual orchestral grandeur, Webb said the song has always mystified people despite what he feels is its fairly literal storytelling.
“If you look at the contemporary era, there are songs there that are clearly encrypted. There’s songs like ‘The Day the Music Died,’ a song like ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale,’ ‘Strawberry Fields.’ Almost anything that you pulled out of Haight-Ashbury would definitely be encoded and demand some sort of mental effort to figure it out, as it were,” he said.
“But ‘MacArthur Park,’ I was thinking about this before and as I was writing the book and going back to the very origins of Motown coming to me and saying, ‘Could you write a long piece?’ Really examining myself and what I was thinking, I wasn’t thinking about creating a mystery and certainly not an object of ridicule. I was really just recounting physical events and objects that I had seen in that park on Wilshire Boulevard with my girlfriend, who I had an obsession with. And really our relationship ended in that park when she told me she was marrying another guy.”
“It’s about as literal as I can get,” he added. “However, I can do that and I’m 100 percent certain that people will still ask me what it means.”
GOING ON
Jimmy Webb Q&A and book signing
When: 6:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday.
Where: Full Circle Bookstore, 50 Penn Place, 1900 Northwest Expressway.
Information: fullcirclebooks.com or 842-2900.
-BAM
Brandy McDonnell
Brandy McDonnell
Brandy McDonnell, also known by her initials BAM, writes stories and reviews on movies, music, the arts and other aspects of entertainment. She... read more ›
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Jimmy Webb’s memoir takes a long look the legendary songwriter’s career
music
By Peter Blackstock - American-Statesman Staff
0
SASA TKALCAN
Jimmy Webb performs Thursday at One World Theatre. Contributed/Sasa Tkalcan
Posted: 4:30 p.m. Friday, October 20, 2017
If you loved the late Glen Campbell’s city-named country-pop crossover hits — “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” — much of the credit goes to Jimmy Webb, who wrote all of those songs in the mid-to-late 1960s when he was barely out of his teens.
The son of a Baptist minister who grew up mostly in Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, Webb moved with his family to Southern California just before his senior year in high school, then stayed there to pursue a career in songwriting after his father moved the family back to Oklahoma.
Webb’s adventures over the next few years would leave an indelible mark on American popular music. “Up, Up and Away” came first, winning Grammys via the Fifth Dimension’s recording of the song. Next were the Campbell hits, and renditions of Webb tunes recorded by everyone from Isaac Hayes to Waylon Jennings to Frank Sinatra.
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“The Cake and the Rain,” published earlier this year by St. Martin’s Press, is Webb’s memoir of those magnificent-yet-tumultuous years. And, yes, it tells the story of “MacArthur Park,” perhaps Webb’s best-known song. The oft-maligned chorus gives the book its title. “MacArthur Park” may have been a seven-minute slice of melodrama when actor Richard Harris sang it in 1968 — and a decade later via disco queen Donna Summer’s remake. But it arose from a very humble and sincere place.
“I began to keep a notebook on one side of the keyboard and filled it with vignettes” from the days he used to meet a teenage love interest at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, Webb writes in the book. The old men playing checkers? The yellow cotton dress? The cake, and the rain? “Events and conversations, all real,” Webb writes. “I wasn’t creating a sucker punch for unwary listeners. I was pouring my soul out on a surreal canvas.”
Much of “The Cake and the Rain” is highly personal and emotional, following the manner in which Webb always approached lyrics as a songwriter. His first book, 1998’s “Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting,” focused more on his extraordinary gift as a musical composer.
In the new memoir, he gets a lot more personal, digging deeply into the experiences that shaped both his life and his songs. “There are times when I emphasized my fragility as a human being,” he says, “because I think that’s part of the story.”
We spoke to Webb at length in advance of his two Austin appearances coming up. He’ll play many of his best-known songs in a solo-piano performance on Thursday, Oct. 26, at One World Theatre, after visiting Waterloo Records on Wednesday, Oct. 25, for a conversation about the book with yours truly.
American-Statesman: “The Cake and the Rain” has an unusual non-chronological structure, bouncing back-and-forth between your circa-1970 heyday as a songwriter in Los Angeles and the formative years of your family growing up in Oklahoma and Texas. How did you come up with that?
Jimmy Webb: I read a lot of memoirs, and I guess my problem is that most of them are very linear and they can get to have a kind of drone-y quality to them. I also was very interested in delving into my family’s history, particularly my grandfather’s, and my father’s kind of sudden departure for the South Pacific in the Second World War.
So somehow I came up with the idea that I would carry two storylines forward: One would begin in 1969 and one would begin before the war, with my mother and father living on opposite sides of the creek, and the kind of dynamics that created my father and then created me. I was juxtapositioning these two stories and bringing them forward. I set out in a very chaotic way, because I wasn’t sure it would work. But as I brought it forward, I could see that actually the timeline was going to work out just about right.
Some of those early years involve spending time in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, where your dad worked as a minister. What was that like?
My father had performing aspirations. I think that’s the real secret reason he became a Baptist minister, is he enjoyed being in front of a crowd. He was an imposing figure. He was quite the orator. He began to devise an upwardly mobile path through post-war America, which was very difficult. Money was hard to come by in these small towns in West Texas.
That’s where I first went on the road with my father, and I became a performer. I wouldn’t exactly say I was a prodigy, but I was fairly clever with the piano by the time I was 10 or 11 years old. And he took great pleasure in having me perform. I noticed there was a direct correlation between the quality of the performance and the amount of money in the offering plate!
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The book stops right around 1973, about the time you started raising a family. What was the reason for ending there?
Well, I’ve always envisioned a Volume 2. That may not happen, but if it doesn’t, then I’m pleased with the ending of the first memoir. I sort of came to the conscious decision not to deal with my family life in the first book. I’m not, as has been suggested, avoiding writing about my family. But that’s another subject; it’s a whole reshuffling of ideas and priorities. I think it reflects my whole generation, in a way, because I think we all began to realize, hey, here comes real life. We’re going to have to cut our hair and we’re going to have to get jobs. So there were lots of very good reasons to stop where I stopped.
There’s an innocence in the early chapters, with your childhood and your first breaks into the music business, that gradually gives away to some rather dark episodes toward the end of the book. Was it hard to look back on some of those memories?
Well, my relatives won’t read it! (laughs) But, yeah, we lost some incredible people because of drugs. What I tried to stress in the book was that we thought so much that these drugs were good things, they were expanding our consciousness, and all these things that are now clichés. But back then, they were things that we attached ourselves to. I can actually remember a psychiatrist from Beverly Hills telling me that I should really try free-basing cocaine because it was really good for you.
But that’s where I drew the line. I’m clinging to the shreds of my dignity here, but I never got into heroin. I was always scared of that; it was just an internal alarm system that went off every time I was around it. I could smell it; there was something deadly about that scene. I was intelligent enough to know that my behavior was questionable. They call it the drug culture now, but it was unbelievably pervasive. It went from the board room at the record company to the control room in the recording studio to the social life to the parties. This was an atmosphere where people openly wore coke spoons around their necks, and everybody knew what they were for. I mean, it was kind of insane. I try to convey that in the book.
For all the million-selling hits you had in the late ’60s, the records you started putting out as a recording artist in the early ’70s were rather ambitious and adventurous. Do you touch on that aspect of your career in your concerts?
I’m trying to do some songs from my records, because I think it gives a better picture of who I am, what I do, and how songwriting was always a sacred thing to me. It was never anything that I got into deliberately. I never even thought about the commercial aspect of hit records until I started getting hit records. Then I had to deal with it, and I found it difficult to deal with. The sudden influx of wealth was really kind of embarrassing, and I wanted to stay with my friends and I wanted to bring them along on the trip.
I guess there was a certain amount of guilt involved, because I hadn’t done anything extra special that I hadn’t already done practically since I was 14 years old. There was a certain destiny working in my life, because I had dreamed of meeting Glen Campbell. My father thought I was crazy! He said, “You’ll never meet Glen Campbell.” My dad was a good guy, but he thought I was nuts. (laughs) We’re living in the panhandle of Oklahoma, and he’s got this kid who writes songs all day long. Finally he puts a piano out in the garage, and I can remember putting up the garage door on warm summer nights, writing songs till I fell asleep on the piano keyboard.
When I got to Hollywood, I was writing three songs a week, and I just loved it, I wasn’t a packaged product; I wasn’t working for “The Man.” A lot of the book is about my struggle with being pigeonholed as a middle-of-the-road commercial writer. I was offered some pretty big money to play Las Vegas, and I turned it down. I made a lot of decisions in my life to publicly demonstrate my sincerity in terms of my political beliefs, and that my long hair wasn’t just for show.
There is one anecdote early in the book where you talk about going to Las Vegas in 1965 to pitch your song “Didn’t We” to actor/singer Tony Martin at his hotel gig, and you end up meeting an American music icon, just by chance. Can you tell us about that?
I’m sitting in the break room and there’s an old fellow stretched out under a lamp. He was asleep, and he was holding a horn across his chest. I guess I was rustling my papers and he kind of roused up and he said, “Whatchoo got there?” Scared me to death! I said, “Oh, nothing, just some songs,” you know. And he says, “Let me see.” And he leaned over and he looked at it, and he played like three notes or so, that’s all. And then his face suddenly was fully illuminated by the lamp, and I realized that it was Louis Armstrong.
He looked at it for a while, and he said to me, “You know something? You need to stick with it.” He said, “You can do this, but you need to stick with it.” I said, “OK, yes sir, Mr. Armstrong!” Trying to find my tongue, trying to find my music, trying to get back in my chair. I didn’t know whether to stand up or sit down. He got up to go back out to play, and he smiled at me, he walked out the door. I thought he was gone — and all of a sudden, his stuck his head back into the doorway, and he said, “You stick with it” again. And he was gone.
There were many, many nights when I was laying on an air mattress in a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, when I had walked the streets all day long trying to get somebody to listen to one of my songs. And I’d lay there and I could still see his face; I could still hear him saying, “Stick with it, stick with it.”
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JIMMY WEBB IN AUSTIN
A conversation about “The Cake and the Rain”
With: American-Statesman’s Peter Blackstock.
When: 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 25.
Where: Waterloo Records, 600 N. Lamar Blvd.
Cost: Free.
Information: waterloorecords.com
Concert performance
When: 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26
Where: One World Theatre, 7701 Bee Caves Road
Cost: $25-$65
Information: oneworldtheatre.org
Jimmy Webb’s Rise and Fall
The Cole Porter of the ’60s only wanted to be a rock star. Dominic Green reviews his memoir, ‘The Cake and the Rain.’
By Dominic Green
June 23, 2017 4:36 p.m. ET
21 COMMENTS
‘The regret of all novelists who have been brought up on music,” Anthony Burgess rued, “is that counterpoint, which mirrors the multiplicity of life, is not possible in verbal language.” Prose, Burgess wrote, speaks in a single line. The doubled meanings of poetry are at most “chordal.” But music is polyphonic. The best a lyric can do is attune itself to its musical counterpoint—as in Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye,” when the lyrics “change from major to minor” and the harmony shifts ominously.
Just such a strange change recurs in Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman,” a hit for Glen Campbell in 1968. The lineman broods on his connection to a woman he loves but cannot have. “I hear you singin’ in the wire, / I can hear you through the whine.” Mr. Webb reharmonizes that slide with a chromatic bass counterpoint as Porter had done in “Night and Day,” another song in which obsession distorts familiar song structures and chord sequences. The lineman ends up suspended over an unresolved chord, “still on the line,” static atop a telegraph pole, caught in emotional torment.
Jimmy Webb’s Rise and Fall
Photo: Getty Images
The Cake and the Rain
By Jimmy Webb
St. Martins, 346 pages, $26.99
Mr. Webb, then 21, wrote “Wichita Lineman” in a few hours, because Glen Campbell had asked for “something geographical” to follow “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” the Webb composition that the singer rode to No. 2 on the charts in 1967. By 1968, the year Richard Harris recorded the songwriter’s symphonic “MacArthur Park,” Mr. Webb was “The Cole Porter of the Sixties,” according to some of the press coverage of the day. He drove a 427 Shelby Cobra. He owned an old “Valleywood” mansion. Frank Sinatra covered his songs, and Caesar’s Palace was offering him eight-week engagements at $40,000 apiece, white piano included.
Mr. Webb wanted to be a rock star, not a studio hand. He wanted the cars, the fame, the money, the girls. He also wanted the esteem of his songwriter contemporaries, even though most of them seem to have thought that a musical score meant buying drugs at a recording session. “The Cake and the Rain” is the story of how Mr. Webb made it and how unmaking it nearly killed him. It is novelistic, perfectly plotted and quite possibly the best pop-star autobiography yet written.
A writer can approximate musical counterpoint by restructuring the timeline. Anthony Burgess’s “Napoleon Symphony” (1974), a novel of Bonaparte’s life, imitates the structure and non-linear narrative of Beethoven’s Third. Mr. Webb avoids the linear narrative of pop biography and structures “The Cake and the Rain” like “Wichita Lineman.” The song has two sections, each leading from narrative to refrain. The book has two threads, the rise and the fall. The Devil recurs in Mr. Webb’s story as a living presence.
Mr. Webb’s grandfather, Charlie, was said to be the seventh son of a seventh son. The religious call came to his father, Robert, while astride a tractor in Texas. He became an itinerant Baptist preacher, dragging his wife, Ann, and his children to “one-horse” congregations and “plaster-on-chicken-wire” tract homes. Jimmy discovered the Devil’s music secretly, between the sheets with a transistor radio. In Oklahoma City, an older woman taught him the piano: exercises from the Baptist Hymnal, but also improvisation, arrangement and substitution, which creates new counterpoint through “the alchemy of substituting exotic and unfamiliar chords for more prosaic ones.”
In 1963, the family reached Southern California. A year later, Mr. Webb’s mother died of a brain tumor. His father returned to Texas, but 18-year-old Jimmy stayed. He was in unrequited love with California pop, which he wanted to write and record, as well as its blond incarnation, Suzy Horton, “the most bitchin’ girl in the school.” His father gave him $40 and a warning: “This songwriting thing is just going to break your heart, son.” Mr. Webb dropped out of college and began recording the songs he had been composing. The first hits, “Didn’t We?” (recorded by Richard Harris) and “Up, Up and Away” (for the 5th Dimension), came almost overnight. His collaboration with Glen Campbell made him a star.
In the era of Vietnam, youth revolt and “All You Need Is Love,” Mr. Webb was “embarrassed and a little guilty” about his wealth, his apolitical lyrics and Sinatra’s approval. At the Monterey Festival of 1967, he had seen that the “old craft and traditions” were slipping into an “abyss” of “ear-busting rock ’n’ roll.” He jumped anyway. “I want to be an artist,” Mr. Webb told David Geffen, a Mephistopheles bearing a recording contract, in 1970. The author befriends Harry Nilsson and becomes a cokehead. He spends $250,000 on tape players so that a live show can duplicate his studio sound but omits to ask the musicians’ union if he can substitute tapes for its members. A mysterious fire at the rehearsal theater destroys the equipment, so he hires the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The live show is a disaster: He forgot to hire a conductor. He “kidnaps” Suzy Horton in a private jet, whisks her to Hawaii and finally seduces her after giving her LSD or, as the Beatles’ publicist Derek Taylor called it, “the old dreaded heaven and hell.” Then he takes to the road in a mock-Jagger leather suit and cheats on her.
The Devil has the best anecdotes. The mescaline not having worn off, Mr. Webb greets the King with “Howdy, El!” Later, Elvis asks how many French horns he uses on his recordings. It used to be three, Mr. Webb says, but that wasn’t enough: Nelson Riddle used four on Sinatra’s recordings. “Okay, Jimma, that seems about right to me too.” (Sadly, the two never collaborated.) The roguish, broguish Richard Harris invites “Jimmywebb” to stay at Cotchford Farm, where Christopher Robin lived and Brian Jones died. The cuckolded songwriter Leslie Bricusse throws himself across the hood of the author’s Corvette as Mr. Webb elopes with Mr. Bricusse’s wife. Mia Farrow, unsure if she can play Peter Pan in producer Mel Ferrer’s movie, suggests using a young boy she had seen on “The Ed Sullivan Show” with the Jackson Five. Mr. Webb plays it deadpan: “His name was Michael. He would make a perfect Pan.”
Show business is the devil’s work. Mr. Webb sleeps under the piano as he slaves for days on “MacArthur Park,” the seven-minute epic whose cryptic lyrics give the book its title: “Someone left the cake out in the rain / I don’t think that I can take it / ’Cause it took so long to bake it / And I’ll never have that recipe again.” Richard Harris records the vocal while swilling from “a giant, chilled pitcher of Pimm’s No. 1.” He keeps singing “MacArthur’s Park”—as though “a fellow named MacArthur owned the park.” Mr. Webb and his engineer collect “favored lines and passages” on a multitrack recorder, then edit down word by word.
One day in 1973, Mr. Webb crashes a glider into a pine ridge in California. His passenger, the rock photographer Henry Diltz, is “bloodied but not bloody dead,” but the joint in Mr. Diltz’s top pocket is intact. “We fired up the splif and inhaled deeply. . . . Far above was the snow-crowned summit of Baden-Powell, the sun plummeting toward the west, the long shadows reaching out for us.”
Soon afterward, Nilsson and Mr. Webb mistake PCP for cocaine. Nilsson crawls around on all fours, repeating, “Zardoz, Zardoz”—the name of a Sean Connery film “where old age is dispensed as a punishment.” Mr. Webb goes to Hell. Passing from “the realm of demons” to “a bleak, dark plain under a starless sky,” his personality breaks into point and counterpoint: “There were two of me. One suffered the most outrageous fear and insult while the other watched, calm and unsympathetic.” For a month, everything feels like rubber—even the piano keys. He cannot remember “a single tune or chord.” When he eventually strikes a Middle C, he cries. Born again, it seems, he plays “Amazing Grace.” And there this story ends. Mr. Webb, expert at extracting drama from form, ends his narrative with this quiet yet resonant coda.
No one writes songs like Jimmy Webb does, and no musician ever wrote a biography like this. “The Cake and the Rain” is a dream of sin and redemption, told with contrapuntal rigor. And, yes, Mr. Webb explains the lyrics of “MacArthur Park” too.
—Mr. Green is a historian, critic and jazz musician.
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