by Jimmy Webb
At five to eight I came out on stage in my rough trade black outfit with my sister and Susan Horton as backup singers, and the band. We settled ourselves self-consciously and when all seemed ready I counted off the first number. There was immediate shock in the audience. This wasn’t Glen Campbell or anything like it! This wasn’t the soaring high string passages of “MacArthur Park.” This was rock ’n’ roll. The opening number was a raucous and direct assault on, of all things, critics in the ill-tempered quatrains of “Dorothy Chandler Blues.” Anticipating that the assembled critics would hate my departure from the center of the road, I rashly decided I would attack first.
The self-destructive energy of this tactic waxed as the first act progressed. Rarely were the live musicians and the band in the same place. With no conductor, the playing frequently turned into a musical free-for-all. Fred Tackett commented sagely afterward that the music had an enthusiastic “Ivesian” quality, which is about the most that could be said for it (Ives’s Three Places in New England included a sonic collision between two marching bands).
Even though there is no way to suppose the audience had any idea what had just transpired on stage, they arose as one and gave us a consoling grand ovation, after which they stampeded to their limousines and probably emptied their respective car bars before they reached Beverly Hills. Most of the backstage visitors had little to say, other than to pass along the obligatory pitying praise or condolences in whatever guise.
“Webb’s theory that a writer can sing his own works better than anyone else, even if he is not a real singer, was destroyed,” Leonard Feather, jazz critic for the L.A. Times, summed up. On a lone upbeat grace note, the expensive sound system had performed flawlessly.
1961
In Laverne, Oklahoma, Alma Jo Lotspeich was the hot tamale. She was a divorcée, which—right there for starters—put her on a planet far away from dour, Calvinist Laverne. She drove a dark gold ’57 Limited Edition Cadillac Biarvitz and wore red dresses to match her flaming red hair and reveled, it seemed, in the stir that followed her wherever she went. She was twenty-something, and the best-looking woman within five hundred miles of Laverne, except maybe for Jayne, who was not yet sixteen.
Sometimes, to my father’s chagrin, Alma Jo would take me for a ride in her Cadillac after Sunday morning services and treat me to a cherry Coke. I indulged in telling her of my dream of making a trip to Oklahoma City to record some of my new songs. She was fascinated by my skill at the keyboard and more than ready for an assault on show business. She encouraged an expedition to Oklahoma City, to visit all the major television studios and also make a recording. I somewhat hesitantly broached the subject of such a trip to Jayne Jayroe, fearing that Pete would put a screeching stop to any such shenanigans. I misjudged him seriously. He knew his daughter; she was capable of behaving like a lady in any foreign country.
I fantasized about some sort of encounter with Alma Jo and made the mistake of committing some lyrics to paper about her one day. My father found them and hit the ceiling, all his suspicions confirmed. Dad thought I needed a proper job to keep me busy, and fixed me up with a farmer a few miles outside of town who wanted the stubble of his wheat crop turned over so he could start some “winter” wheat, a year-round source of income in some parts of Oklahoma. The tractors that accomplished this were on an industrial scale and complicated, but I’ve never been scared of a machine.
Farmer Ballard was a right enough fellow and I started in with him, driving Dad’s old ’57 Plymouth Fury to work and taking my lunch in a paper sack. I had a green plastic transistor radio that dangled from the tractor’s umbrella. Radio in those days was a mélange of styles comprising the “top forty.” It might include an R&B number followed by the Weavers, then “Still” by “Whispering Bill” Anderson, a Bobby Vinton ballad, then Bert Kaempfert with a trumpet instrumental, Mitch Miller maybe, Ricky Nelson, Ferrante and Teicher (piano players), and maybe Elvis. It was anything goes, and it was good for America!
One day close to the end of my shift, I got the tractor out to the end of Ballard’s field and stopped. I pushed the lever that lifted a thousand pounds of shiny curved plows out of the ground simultaneously until they were clear of obstruction and ready to be transported. I started up the road to the house and the barn a quarter mile away. A song came on the radio. My ears snapped to attention; I had never heard such a mellow gold singer. It was contemporary but sounded as though it had been pulled from the furnace of folk standards and then blown into a glossy glass bubble:
“There is someone walking behind you, turn around look at me
There is someone watching your footsteps, turn around look at me…”
I heard the splintering scream of raw metal and felt warm hydraulic fluid on my back. In my music daze I had turned the wrong way, with the plow stuck in the ground, and now I couldn’t get the machine to stop. All of the threads on the lift mechanism stripped simultaneously, dropping the big plow into the graded road in front of the farmer’s house. I bulldozed onward for about twenty feet, creating a gigantic furrow where a duck pond and flower beds had once been. I finally just turned the ignition off, ending up near the front porch where Farmer Ballard was reading his newspaper. We looked at each other, unmoving, shocked, as the transistor radio swung back and forth, blaring idiotically.
The lovely song had finished during this cacophony and the DJ was saying, “That was red-hot wax ‘Turn Around Look at Me’ from newcomer Glen Campbell. Keep your ear on ’im.…” I had just heard the most beautiful record I ever heard in my young life: song, singer, and arrangement in perfect balance. At the same instant I had totaled a $20,000 plow and tractor into a smoldering misshapen wreck and transformed Mrs. Ballard’s flower garden into a landfill.
I lost my job on the spot.
That night, after facing my mortified father, I kneeled beside my bed. My prayer arose from one of the most isolated, underpopulated corners of a huge busy earth, rich in peoples and prayers, rife with hopes, troubles, needs, demands, cries for mercy, and even prayers for death itself.
“Dear Lord, if it be your will, one day would you help me to write a song half as good as ‘Turn Around Look at Me.’ And Lord if you could work it in, someday could I be fortunate enough to have Mr. Campbell record one of my songs? Thank you, Lord. Amen.”
The Lord was listening to a hopeful boy in Oklahoma that night. My musical destiny—and perhaps even Glen’s—was codified and put into action by the mysterious workings of the universe. During my career I would write at least a hundred songs half as good as “Turn Around Look at Me.” And within four years, I would have a hit on the charts with Glen Campbell himself.
1970
The diabolical recording machine was moved lock, stock, and barrel into Campo de Encino. Phil Harris’s gigantic cedar closet, built to house a half-thousand expensive suits, became a more than adequate professional studio control room. Now the band was able to rehearse and listen to ourselves. I still have two of the Voice of the Theater speakers from the original setup that looked and sounded so elegant on stage. Huge monsters, but absolutely useless around the house.
Meanwhile we had a tour booked. It combined a few flying segments with a lot of time on the bus. We were to play colleges, concert halls, and some of the larger clubs. “The Circuit,” as it was known to some, consisted of Doug Weston’s Troubadour in Los Angeles, Marvelous Marv’s in Denver, the Main Point in Philadelphia, the Cellar Door in Georgetown. And in New York the funkiest hole of them all, the Bitter End. In between were one-nighters in far-flung, out-of-the-way places such as North Dakota, Montana, Sioux Falls, and so forth. The bus itself was not any luxury coach with a portrait of Jimmy Webb painted on the side. It was rather more of a school bus with some double bunks nailed to the floor, a chemical toilet in the back, and a handful of passenger seats just behind the driver.
I prepared to say my good-byes at Campo de Encino. The Devil assured me he had everything in hand. Susan was not happy about the separation but
also not keen to share a chemical toilet with a bunch of musicians. More than once it occurred to me: Why am I doing this? I could just stay home and write songs. The planets would still follow their courses. I have this wonderful girl to love. I have many enchanted spindrift lyrics that I can set swinging on strains of stardust melody. But I had set my heart orbiting around this idea of being a singer. In my mind there was no reason it should or could be denied me. I kissed Susan good-bye and shook the Devil’s hand with a mutual nod meant to transfer responsibility for the castle into his hands. I turned my back on Vegas and the easy buck, determined to be part of my generation and relevant to my time.
When our tatty bus arrived in front of the Main Point in Philadelphia, it was raining buckets. There was a real marquee out there and I was headlined in Roman block font: JIMMY WEBB. Right underneath were my supporting acts, FEATURING MAURY MULHAUSEN WITH JUDY SILL. A line snaked around the corner. Overcoated, muffled figures stood in the rain buying tickets. We were raucous on stage, the four of us. We could make more noise than three bands our size. That night in Philly I got irritated with Skip and Fred, but especially with Ray. I turned around on my piano bench and said something like “Goddamn it, you guys have to turn it down!” Eventually this caused me to add Show Business Rule #2. Rule #1, as I had learned the hard way, is “Don’t write rude songs about the critics and then sing them to the critics in front of an audience.” Rule #2 is “Don’t chew out the band on the stand in front of an audience.”
As I was walking out of the Main Point’s stage door, angry at myself and my band, she was there. A tall, willowy figure with a waterfall of black hair, thick and rich, her face a pale, moonstone complexion. Thin as a rail, her height was such that she could look me directly in the eyes. It made me look at her feet. She was wearing motorcycle boots and a gang jacket. As I drew closer to her I could see not the battered and burned-out features of a motorcycle moll, but a delicate poem in moonlight and shadow.
“Hi,” she said. “How ya’ doin?”
Even if she was a vicious vampire, I was going to take the whole ride.
“I hope I’ve had better nights, but right now I’m not so sure,” I said, drawing closer, aroused by the size of her, swayed by the power of her chakra.
“I thought you did pretty well.” She put her arms around me and kissed me on the mouth and the chemicals ran wild. It was a long kiss. We had our arms around each other.
“Wanna go for a ride?” She leaned back on a Harley-Davidson Sportster, waiting on its kickstand.
“Do I get to know your name first?” I asked, slinging my leather gig bag over my shoulder.
She turned around and rolled the motorcycle off its stand like it was a toy. “I’m Linda,” she said, kicking her ride to life as I climbed on behind her. “Where are we goin’?”
She rode fast and expertly with no trace of hesitation. We arrived at the Holiday Inn after a couple of shouted directions and went straight up to my room, landing with a crash that provoked yells through the thin walls. There was a terrifying scene of unfettered lust. Leathers went flying all over the room and we pounded the cheap mattress right through the bed and down to the floor.
After, we lay there hands intertwined, keeping pressure on each other’s palms.
“Are you by any chance a person who would be known as a Hells Angels chick?” I asked her, teasing.
“Why, am I a little too much for you?” She laughed. “You scared a’ me?”
I was a little scared, but not the way she thought.
“Do you want to go to New York?” I asked. “I’ve got a gig up there for a couple of days.”
“I would have to park my bike somewhere and…”
“Oh, I’ll make sure you get back … uh, I mean if you really need to get back.”
I don’t know what kind of crazy thing it was she did to me but I knew it could get serious in a hurry. Susan? Oh yeah, there was that, too.
“Have you got an old man?” I asked her.
“Doesn’t everybody?” she questioned in return. “We’re having a fight. He’s off with some other piece of trash so I…”
“A little revenge?” I finished the thought.
“Anything wrong with that?” she challenged.
Things started up again.
The next morning, while she went to stash her bike, I called up the Devil. A rough transcription would read, “Wow, you can’t believe the chick I ran into out here! She rides her own Harley. Get this, she tears the thing down and does all this manly shit. But listen, she’s pretty. She’s pretty like nobody I’ve ever seen.” He wanted me to lay it all out for him, all the details. “How’s the old fort? How’s Susan?” Susan was out shopping but everything was fine. Silky smooth fine.
When I showed up and climbed aboard the bus holding hands with Linda there was absolute stunned silence in the ranks. I was so far into her that the band retreated into a painted backdrop. Was anybody upset with me? I didn’t give a shit. Linda and I sat in the back and she told me she had been orphaned into the foster care system when she was thirteen. The first three foster fathers they put her with tried her. None of ’em made it. The last guy, she broke his nose, and went out the bedroom window in her nightgown and ran for the highway. She was hiking it in her bedclothes when the Angels stopped to see if she was okay. Nobody tried to fuck her. They got her some clothes and she explained, “They looked at me like I was some kind of precious thing.” Nobody had ever treated her like that before. They became her father and mother and brothers and sisters all at once. They taught her to fight and take care of herself. They bought her a bike. She couldn’t wear colors because she was a female but otherwise she was in the family.
They have their own special weddings where girlfriends become “old ladies.” When she was eighteen she hooked up with one of the brothers and she had been with him ever since. I wondered what would happen if he ever came looking and found me in a Travelodge with her.
We got to New York and Linda and I promptly retreated to my room until sound check. When I finally showed my face at the club I apologized to the band for criticizing them in front of the audience. I also did my mea culpas for having four perfectly nice customers physically thrown into the street recently at the Cellar Door (Show Business Rule #3: Never throw your fans out of the show).
Things seemed to settle down between us, but the crew kept a wary eye on Linda, who looked like she could take the whole band and stuff it in a garbage can.
The Bitter End was not spectacular to behold, regardless of its preeminent status as a birthplace of folk music. It was a basement in New York City, in August. Huge fans whirled in doorways to no avail. It was a sweatbox. The venue was one storefront wide by three storefronts long, a rough stage flat against one wall down the length of it. Customers entered by a single flight of stairs and paid at the bottom.
Perhaps in an attempt to alleviate the claustrophobic nature of the place, the walls were painted black and subsequently covered with stick figures and graffiti, GEORGE IS A MONOTONE! and so on. We found out quickly that anything other than a moderate volume from the players would drive the audience out onto the street.
The New York gigs ended on Sunday night. That afternoon I shared a cab with Linda to Grand Central. I bought her a ticket for Philly and we sat for a while waiting.
“They’ll be looking for me,” she said. “I don’t want them to sell my bike!” She laughed to take the edge off.
“I don’t expect they would let me join up, would they?” I joked and smiled but she stopped laughing and looked at me with one of those “what woulda been, coulda been, shoulda been” looks. She was a woman first.
“Wanna give me your phone number?” I asked her.
She looked at the floor and shook her head as the P.A. announced her train. She took my face in her hands and kissed me, not a tear in sight. She turned and was gone in the crowd, and it was a small death I felt. But there would be no whispering on phones for her, and no tears, and no little w
hite lies.
We played a few more shows, gig-zagging our way west across the country. The band had really melded on the road and we were having fun, though I was looking forward to getting home and starting a new album in my new home recording studio.
I missed Susan. It may sound hollow but there it is. I was looking forward to seeing her at the airport. I walked out of baggage claim with one suitcase and my shoulder bag and saw a glistening burgundy XJ 6 sitting at the curb. I supposed that would be my new car, my Cobra still laid up. I leaned down to the passenger window and looked in, expecting to see Susan in the passenger seat. Instead I saw it empty. Beyond where I had expected to see her I focused on the Devil himself, southern smile extended like a mainsail.
“Hey, amigo!” he said with genuine enthusiasm.
“Where’s Suzy?” I asked.
“Well, I thought when we got home we could talk about that.”
“Fuck that, where is she?” I threw my bags in the backseat and got in.
I looked at him and for the first time in our lengthy adventure-filled friendship he looked away. My lips settled in a hard line. I was getting an overwhelming impression of deceit.
“Well, I’m not really sure exactly. She said she needed some space.” He commented as though he was only a bystander.
When we got to the house Susan wasn’t there and I went crazy looking for her. I called her mother and her friends and every friend of anyone she ever knew. Nobody had an answer. The Deceiver sat calmly in his room upstairs reading Sun Tzu. It took me hours and I had phone ear, but finally I got a bite. She was in Lake Tahoe. I went upstairs.
“I’m going up there to get her and if you’re still in my house when we get back you are going to be answering some questions!” I barked, furious.