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VOLUME 1, ISSUE 12 | April 1 -30 2006
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From top: Jimmy Webb at work in the ’60s;
resting in the ’70s, and holding his
Johnny Mercer Award in 2003 |
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Words and Music: Jimmy Webb
By Ken Shane
 When Paul Gauguin arrived at the Society Islands, he was searching for paradise. He expected to be greeted by native maidens in canoes, beauties bearing flowers. What he found were thieves and hookers waiting for him on the wharf. The information that had informed his quest was 100 years old; paradise had moved on.
Gauguin was not deterred. He had given up everything to make his voyage of discovery: His wife and children, his job as a stockbroker’s chief assistant, the critics who savaged his paintings. He had simply taken the train to Marseille and sailed away. He was not an activist. He didn’t try to change society. He simply left, and when he didn’t find what he was looking for in Tahiti, he left there as well.
You can stand on a beach on the easternmost Society Island and look out to sea. If you were able to see far enough, you’d see the Marquesas, 3,000 miles away – surely one of the most remote places on earth – the end of the world. That’s where Gauguin went, and that’s where he found his paradise. He died in 1903, and is buried there, in the Calvaire Cemetary in the town of Atuona, on the island of Hiva Oa.
The story of Paul Gauguin is not new, but when told to you by another great artist who was inspired and even awed by Gaugain’s journey, it becomes special indeed. Songwriter Jimmy Webb was so taken with Gauguin’s story that he called the epic opening track of his most recent album, Twilight of the Renegades, “Paul Gauguin in the South Seas”.
Webb knows what it means for an artist to be moving constantly in search of his ideal. Recently I had a chance to speak with him, and I asked him why, despite already by then having achieved a great deal of success, he once, in one of his songs, referred to his career as “borderline.” He replied that he felt he hadn’t really focused on one aspect his career, or one particular sound for his music. Instead, he’s always been interested in and enthusiastic about all kinds of music. He recalls chatting with Lewis Armstrong, producing records for the Supremes, and Cher, watching the Beatles as they recorded the White Album in London, and hanging out with Elvis in Las Vegas. He describes himself as the Zelig of the songwriting world, and it’s an apt description because while his name and face may not be instantly recognizable to most people, his songs certainly are.
It’s been a long and fascinating journey for Jimmy Webb, a Southern Baptist preacher’s son from Oklahoma. He began piano lessons at an early age, and by the time he was 12 he had realized his mother’s dream of her son playing in church and doing special performances for the congregation, accompanied by his father on guitar and herself on accordion.
The family moved west when his father got a new ministry, where Jimmy became exposed to the Southern California lifestyle depicted and made famous by the Beach Boys – which is when Jimmy decided to make his life in music.
Three pivotal events occurred next in the young man’s life: John Kennedy was assassinated; Webb was graduated from high school; and his mother died – all within a few months. He still regrets that his mother never got to hear any of his songs on the radio, or watch him receive any of the many awards he’s received.
Shortly thereafter, Webb’s father decided to move the family back to Oklahoma, but Jimmy was adamant about remaining in California. Determined to make a name for himself in the music business, he was already sneaking out to play dances with his band for $15 or $20 a night.
Father and son stood beside the family’s packed van in the parking lot of the Paradise Palms Motel in San Bernardino. Said the father: “This songwriting thing is going to break your heart.”
Today, as Webb reflects on his father’s words, he realizes they comprised some truth at various points along the way. Still, the son knew that he had to try, and when his father realized there was no changing Jimmy’s mind, he reached into his pocket and pulled out $40.
“It’s not much, but it’s all I have.”
He handed his son the money and drove off, at what was the start of a long, lonely night for the young Webb whose journey had just begun in the motel parking lot against a backdrop of neon palm trees flashing on and off.
Webb borrowed $1,000 from friends, bought a VW for $600, and proceeded to squeeze out a living as a musician. He attended junior college, majoring in music, but knew the academic life wasn’t for him. The first break came within the year – a songwriting deal with Jobete Music, the publishing arm of Motown Records.
My first encounter with the music of Jimmy Webb came, as it did for many people, in the 1960s. He wrote a string of hit songs, and no matter when you turned on the radio, one or another of them seemed to be playing. It could have been the Fifth Dimension singing “Up, Up, and Away,” Richard Harris doing “MacArthur Park,” or the Brooklyn Bridge with “The Worst That Could Happen.” What really cemented his place in the history of American songwriting, however, was the trio of geographically-themed songs he wrote for Glen Campbell that began with “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” and continued on through “Wichita Lineman” and “Galveston.”
Jimmy Webb bought his first record in his native Oklahoma when he was 14 years old. It was a Glen Campbell recording of “Turn Around, Look At Me.” The song didn’t knock Webb out, but he was drawn to Campbell’s performance. Seven or eight years later, they had two hit records on the charts together, and they still hadn’t met.
The first meeting between Webb and the musician who would inarguably become the finest interpreter of his work occurred during the production of a General Motors commercial for which Webb was hired to write the music and Campbell to sing. When Webb showed up for the recording session, he glimpsed Campbell sitting in the studio, warming up by noodling on a guitar. This was the ’60s, and Webb’s hair was not overly long – “Beatle length,” as he describes it. He approached Campbell, but before he could even extend his hand the staunch Republican growled at Webb: “Get a haircut.”
Today the two musicians are the best of friends and working together on a new album, which they hope to release in August. Webb says of the now 70-year-old Campbell that he is singing great, has lost none of his range, and his voice is “indestructible.”
After the early hit records with Campbell, Webb became influenced by new sounds. In a short history of the popular music of the 20th century, he relates how great songwriters like Cole Porter and Rodgers & Hart were called upon to hide the true feelings of their songs, and always appear with a “stiff upper lip.” The air of world-weary sophistication in their work was de rigueur.
When Joni Mitchell came along, she turned Webb’s world of music upside down by setting out to prove a songwriter (herself) could be sophisticated, aware of all the Freudian subtext, yet still write about how she really felt. To say she got Jimmy’s attention is “a gross understatement,” according to Webb. Armed with this new revelation, he decided for the first time to record his own songs, and released a series of albums under his own name. These albums were compiled by Rhino Records last year in a much sought-after limited-release boxed set called The Moon’s a Harsh Mistress: Jimmy Webb in the Seventies.
But the hit versions of his songs by other artists never stopped, as popular singers like Linda Ronstadt (“The Moon’s a Harsh Mistress;” “Don’t Know Much”) and Art Garfunkel (“All I Know”) took up the Webb mantle through the ensuing decades. In 2003, Webb collaborated on an album with Michael Feinstein called Only One Life: The Songs of Jimmy Webb.
Jimmy Webb always has a lot on his plate. Last year he released his latest album, Twilight of the Renegades, to universally glowing reviews, and toured in support of it. This year, while he’s writing and producing the Glen Campbell album, he’s also continuing a four-year journey to bring the musical version of A Bronx Tale to the stage. He’s working on the project with Chazz Palmenteri, who wrote and performed the play as a one-man show, and later wrote the screenplay and starred in the film version. Webb expects the production to open on Broadway in about two years. If that isn’t enough, Webb is also working with producer Rocco Landesman on a musical version of the classic Western, Shane, which Jimmy describes as about half-finished.
Jimmy Webb has stamped an indelible mark on popular music. He is highly respected among his peers, and adored by his fans. There are closet and not-so-closet “Webbheads” everywhere these days, including a great many musicians you wouldn’t instinctively associate with the heartbroken landscape that is the familiar terrain of Webb’s songs. Others might be content to rest on their laurels. Not Jimmy Webb, who will turn 60 this year. He’s still out on the high seas, searching for his paradise.
Ken Shane is a performing songwriter and journalist. His CD, South Ridgeway Avenue, was released in 2003. His writing has appeared in several magazines, and he is currently collaborating on a novel inspired by his songs.
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