by Jimmy Webb
I rented a Learjet for a quick flight to Tahoe, where Susan was sheltering with friends. I knew one thing for sure: She had been hurt. In a couple of hours I was there.
“How could you do it?” Susan wanted to know through tears. How could I sleep with a big fat Hells Angels woman with pierced nipples and tattoos all over her?
It was a highly decorated and enlarged version of my encounter with sylph-like Linda. And the damning story could have only come from one place, from someone who liked to say he was my best friend. I told her the basic story was true. I met a girl who rode a motorcycle. I intended to choose my own time and place for this revelation, but that was over the dam.
We flew back home, tentative with each other, but she was still part of my world for the time being. When we got into the house there was hell to pay.
“You son of a bitch,” I told him. “You slept with my girl while I was out working, you bastard you! You lied to me! You lied to her! (He had told her she was in danger; he had personally put her on the plane to Tahoe; had invoked terror tales of STDs, of violence and retribution from the Hells Angels, etc.) There was no outright and swift denial of these grave charges from him. To paraphrase Mose Allison he looked at me as if to say, “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in!” I told him to go far and fast.
The Serpent left by the kitchen door without even a suitcase. Even now I am boggled by the immensity of the insult he had offered me. The armor-plated, wicked confidence that took him out to the airport to pick me up. He had planned to keep us both: her on the outside and me as a ticket to ride.
Susan and I sat in silence for a while and then she started crying.
“Come on,” I said, “you look like hell.”
Her face was swollen and she had good reason to be pissed at him and me both. I took her upstairs and we lay down on the gold velvet bed and watched the TV in the ceiling. I reached out and took her hand. She didn’t pull hers away.
I now remembered what Freddy had whispered to me when I had walked onto the bus with Linda in Philly. “What happens on the road stays on the road.” This canon was moved to the top of my show business rules list.
1962
One rainy, chilly morning toward the end of October we left town at first light in Alma Jo’s gold and brown Caddy. We were hysterically happy. We listened to rock ’n’ roll loud and with impunity. We rehearsed my songs that we intended to record: “Gray Skies Are Better Than Blue” and “Just Excuse the Slip,” among others. We performed for fellow travelers in other autos at the risk of their lives and our limbs.
It took five hours to drive from Laverne to the city but no one complained or got tired. Once there, we stopped for breakfast and then went over to WKY-TV to audition for the Tom Paxton Show. I played, Jayne sang, the producers rolled their eyes. We heard our first industry song and dance, “We don’t need anyone just now, but please come back and try again!”
We retreated to the sacred premises of a decrepit recording studio in the aging redbrick part of town. Inside, every vertical and horizontal surface was covered with the tang and yellow brown wheeze of old tobacco smoke. Still, we looked in wide-eyed wonder at the technological mystery of the glowing recording desk with its circular “pots” and jiggling analog needles on dials. The engineer regarded us with dubious enthusiasm as he set up a vocal mike and I tested for the very first time what had been described to me as a “grand” piano. Our financier and manager Alma smiled through the glass as we made our way through a couple of songs. The chain-smoking engineer grunted monosyllabic encouragement through the talk back from time to time. We learned that each version of the song was called a “take” and we picked the two we liked best. He then crouched over an old recording lathe, an instrument that carved the music into an acetate material called a blank. As the music went from the tape onto the record a fine curl of black acetate hissed into a vacuum hose and was carried away. The finished product was an elegant disc of finely wrought grooves that smelled faintly of formaldehyde. And in those grooves was the music. Jayne and I were in awe at the thought that we could take this item home and play it on a real record player.
“Well!” Alma Jo shouted after we exited the dark little room. “Which recording star would like a malt?”
We sat in a Sonic and ate hot dogs and slurped up malts, as excited and happy as if we had just played the Ed Sullivan Show. Then, somewhat sadly, we entered our fine and fancy transportation. Jayne succumbed to fatigue in the backseat, and Alma Jo and I watched the lines march past us in the middle of the highway. She, perhaps musing on the life she had imagined before her marriage hit the rocks, and me, certain that I had finally found something worth all my energy and concentration.
“It will be all right, honey,” Alma said softly, reaching over to squeeze my hand. “You kids will show them a thing or two before it’s over.”
1970
Susan and I settled into something a little more like a conventional relationship. The mutual episodes of infidelity, along with any discussion of the Devil himself, were put behind us.
On the other side of the house, in the home studio, the band and I wasted no time mourning over past mistakes but plunged into a new album project. When I sat down like a punter and listened to Words and Music alongside any of the newer Beatles albums, my record withered by comparison. Trying to put this misstep of a record behind me, along with the betrayals and tinhorn amateurism of my first tour, and the “studio on the stage” disaster, I decided to call the second album And So: On.
Anyone who has ever owned a home recording facility will attest to the fact that there is a constant demand for studio time, mostly for free, by friends and associates who are likely to stop by at any hour, bearing wampum and a new song or riff. Iggy Pop cut a solo album right there underneath my nose. I saw Iggy around the house a few times and found him affable and smart, but I had no clue he was making an album. I left scheduling to my stepbrother Garth, who divided his time between my digs and an actual job at the Record Plant in Hollywood.
Harry Nilsson visited often. We cut a duet of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant’s “Love Hurts.” Harry just wailed on the thing, shuffling around his repertoire of goofy sounds, masterful high chops, and inimitable ornamentations. No take was ever the same. The duet never made it on my album, for a simple reason: I didn’t want to be perceived as hitching a ride on Harry’s coattails.
Ringo Starr was a regular visitor to the home studio, most often with Harry. Mal Evans, another refugee from The Beatles meltdown, showed up often, seeking advice on songwriting. A huge, gentle bear of a guy, Mal had been The Beatles’ road manager. Songs were difficult for him: He had specialized in Beatles crowd control with a minor in gophering. He made agonizing but steady progress as a songwriter. I helped him as much as I could.
The pulse of Hollywood was vigorous and rapid and it throbbed through my home. I went one night to Doug Weston’s Troubadour to catch Randy Newman live. After the show I sought Randy out in his dressing room. He was bespectacled Lennon style, with a pile of tousled, curly hair and a perpetually concerned expression. I asked him to come out to the Camp for a beer and a game of pool. P. F. Sloan, the master songwriter from Dunhill Records, came in behind me and I invited him along, too.
Randy looked worried. “Listen,” he said. “If I come out there, cause I would like to come out there, but you aren’t going to play me any songs or anything like that, are you? No live music, right?” He looked at P.F. and back at me.
“Hey, we just play eight ball and drink Coors, so I think you should be okay.” I laughed. I didn’t blame Randy. There was always some doper hanging out and playing all of his songs, as though that was what other songwriters would want to listen to. We ended up in a convoy, with Randy right behind me, and behind him P. F. Sloan. Somewhere along the way Sloan must have missed a turn because when Randy and I arrived at Campo de Encino, he was M.I.A. As promised, Randy and I played pool and had a few beers, and nobody played any live music.
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At the big house in the oak trees, we partied, we recorded, and the humiliation of Dorothy Chandler and the missteps of the previous year were mostly forgotten. I focused on And So: On. Many of my early hits had been written for Susan, so I continued in that vein. It was soppy going. A reviewer in a fashionable magazine wrote that the only thing that would empty a room quicker than a Leonard Cohen album was a Jimmy Webb record. Harry Nilsson suggested that if I tried hard and did some simple exercises, I might be able to work up a sense of humor.
Freddy and I were keen to involve the great Larry Coryell, a globally famous jazz influence of the rock fusion era, and concentrate more on the sound of each instrument. One night Larry, small and dark with his crow-black hair in a curl, a fixed smirk on his well-made face, came into the studio and blasted a backward guitar solo that will forever stand favorably in comparison to McCartney, Clapton, or John McLaughlin. Afterward, Larry walked into the kitchen of Campo de Encino and threw a little folded white paper packet onto the countertop.
“This,” he announced with conviction and a wide grin, “is gonna change your life!”
Truer words have never been spoken. Inside the bundle was a white, shiny substance called cocaine.
Cocaine’s impact on the music business was of a unique and comprehensive social nature. The whole process of record making, the late hours, the expected garrulous sociability of the workplace combined with the egos of people who more likely than not were egging one another on in the display of outrageous behavior; these almost begged the advent of “marching powder,” some outside influence that would keep the party and the session and the ostentation running at full speed. I took to it like a fish to water.
1962
As I prepared for my senior year at Laverne High, my father did something entirely unprecedented in the history of our uneasy relationship. I walked out the front door to meet him returning from a trip to Oklahoma City and he pulled into the driveway at the wheel of a shiny two-tone ’56 Oldsmobile 98. It was a light tomato cream over the midline and below the chrome, a boisterous brick color. It sported immaculate whitewall tires. He exited the spotless late-model two-door coupe and smiled at me.
“Wh … what’s this?” I sputtered.
“It’s your new car, son,” he said, laughing.
In Laverne most of the rich kids had motorcycles or cars. Tommy Van Meter, one of my hangout buddies, a kid who also wore glasses, drove a ’57 Chevrolet convertible. His father owned the dealership. As I slid in behind the thin diameter ridged wheel and wriggled my butt into the leather-upholstered frontseat I realized that I, too, had arrived in the top of the class automotive-wise.
Pop proudly pointed out each luxurious feature from the passenger seat. The 98 had power windows, brakes, and steering, a signal-seeking radio with a foot switch on the floor for changing stations, an electric eye that automatically dimmed the lights when an oncoming vehicle approached, and it was the first factory air-conditioned automobile I had ever seen. It had an automatic transmission and the mighty 324-cubic-inch General Motors V8 that powered the Cadillacs and Pontiacs as well. This particular mark was the epitome of ’50s rocketship styling, each fender swelling, then tapering at the rear end in imitation of two gigantic thrusters and the red teardrop of each taillight lens emulating the open flame of a spaceship’s engine. Notwithstanding its luxurious trappings and solidity, the two-door coupe was a hot rod.
I was set free. In half an hour every stud and cheerleader in town knew that four-eyed Preach was inexplicably in the most elegant car, driving around with the beautiful Jayne Jayroe. I was in a state of utter delirium and disbelief. My father did love me.
It was about then—when things were beginning to get so good—that I heard rumors about moving to California. It started with my parents breaking off intimate conversations as I entered the room. It ended with my father announcing from the pulpit his intention of leaving First Church Laverne and moving Mom, myself, Janice, Tommy, and my little sisters, Sylvia and Susan, to Colton, California, to pastor in yet another faraway place. All of this was poised for midsummer, just in time for me to miss my senior year with my hard-won classmates. I was stunned, completely outraged. The allure of California, its proximity to all things important to my success as a songwriter, were momentarily forgotten. I saw treachery in my father as he explained to me I wouldn’t be able to take my Oldsmobile to the Golden State. He intended to sell it for moving expenses. I hated him all over. His pattern of nomadism and upward mobility had worked unerringly for him, and his lifelong dream of living in California was there for the taking. He would move us stoically, against all protest, as he had so many times before.
1970
A party was on at Campo de Encino. Fred and Patricia Tackett were temporarily in residence in the guesthouse and Patricia’s penchant for Isadora Duncan-ism had manifested itself in a grand idea for a divertissement: a nude chamber music concert. One might ask why I would sign up for this insane idea, not understanding the passion I had for erasing my middle-of-the-road-Donny-Osmond image and replacing it with a profile more worldly and intellectual.
I woke that morning and fumbled at my Levi’s, only to be interrupted by the apparition of a shockingly nude Patricia coming up my stairway.
“No, no, no!” she cautioned, wagging her finger at me.
Susan wasn’t looking forward to the Nude Concert in the Park and came out of her bathroom wearing a pair of panties with her long blond hair combed down in two tresses that neatly covered her generous bosom.
“You’re cheating,” I pointed out.
She went to the kitchen and disguised her panties with a serving tray. For the rest of the day she was the ideal, attentive, and ever-present serving wench, tray perfectly positioned to conceal the desired region, and up top her hair lightly sprayed into a delicate camouflage.
Members of the L.A. Philharmonic began to arrive at the gate down below only to be met by Patricia.
“No! No! No!” I could hear her saying again and again. Among the players was a pregnant cellist who was granted the only garment from Patricia, even though from the baby up she was au naturel.
From my hiding place behind one of the supporting posts on the front porch I was doing my best to keep a smiling face on things and greet some of the fellas I worked with in the studio as they hauled their instruments up the driveway in the nude and tried to wave casually as though this was just another gig. I was learning quickly: There is a big difference between mankind in black tie and the animal itself crawling up out of the Greater Rift.
The phone rang. Susan came immediately with her serving tray.
“I think it’s David Geffen on the phone for you,” she whispered, turning to smile and offer the brass section some cheese and crackers and a view of her derriere as they arrived on the scene, wearing only their instrument cases.
I ran for the kitchen phone, delighted to be even temporarily out of the limelight. “Hello, David, hey! What’s up!… The party … yes, there is a party here … you wanna come? You do wanna come!… uh-huh … yeah … Joni Mitchell … you’ve got Joni Mitchell … You’ve got Joni Mitchell? No … no problem … are you kidding? What a delight … well, we have a couple of dress code things here … no I’m not joking. No, not jacket and tie. Just come as you are … no worries … yeah, really that’s fine. Okay … okay … see you in a few. All right now, bye.”
Patricia made an entrance. “Where do we put the orchestra?” she demanded. She was loving this.
My mind raced.
“Only outdoors,” she elucidated. “All the activities must be outdoors, otherwise what’s the point in taking our clothes off?”
Even after a couple of hits on a joint I was able—just barely—to follow the thin line of logic in her reasoning.
“The orchard,” I said. “We will do the Mozart French horn concerto in the orchard up on the hill.”
This was a decision I had not thought through completely, as it did not occur to me at the time tha
t this would place a rather large group of naked musicians in full view of numerous surrounding residences.
The party was beginning to gain momentum as sangria appeared in huge pitchers and joints were discreetly passed among the self-conscious throng. The pool was crowded with naked people whooping and hollering, casting away their last threads of reserve. Overhead, the Van Nuys airborne police unit hovered watchfully as usual. They would finally see what they had been looking for.
I placed myself on a chaise longue and casually draped a towel over my imposing instrument as a chamber group, sheltered in the shade of an overhanging oak, struck up one of Haydn’s lovely quintets. All over the property music started up, the occasional soloist noodling as well as trios and quartets. On the front porch came the sound of an oboist warming up, rehearsing lines from a Mozart sonata.
The party was getting noisier. The concert grand thundered to life inside the house. Nude Concert Musicians on Drug Bender in Encino: The lead for the evening news flitted through my brain as Susan appeared, offering me a sangria from her tray and bending down to whisper, “David and Joni are in the kitchen.”
My heart leaped into my throat. To this bedlam would now be added celebrity. Patricia and I arrived in the kitchen almost simultaneously so that I was able to hear her cheerful Mary Poppins–like greeting, “No! No! No!”
I threw myself into the breach.
“Joni,” I said, facing her and bending slightly at the waist, turning to hug David. “Well, as you can see, we have a situation here.”
Geffen was unfazed and even droll as he flashed a big smile. “So what do we do?” he asked, laughing at my beet-red face.
“Well, the dress code is no dress code I’m afraid, so would you like to change in here? Oh, my God, I can’t stand this!”
I bolted through the swinging door to peals of laughter from David.
They both disrobed calmly in the kitchen and came out on the front porch chatting amiably with Fred and Patricia. Joni greeted a couple of musicians she knew with stunning sangfroid and a dazzling smile and wasn’t it all just perfectly ordinary and weren’t we all just the coolest?