by Jimmy Webb
I brought it into the bedroom and laid it on the table. It effused menace and my interviewer seemed unable to take his eyes off it.
“Here, you want to hold it?” I asked, adding, “Have you ever handled a gun?”
“No, I haven’t,” he said, staring with undisguised fascination.
“Well, first thing is safety, you know,” I said, and popped the full clip out into the palm of my hand. I jacked the weapon open routinely and no cartridge was ejected so I closed the breech, flipped on the safety, and handed it to him. He held it up and squinted through the sights.
“So if I took off the safety I could pull the trigger right now, right?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said, and watched him do it.
With a tremendous roar the firearm bucked and discharged. A forty-five slug penetrated the floor of the bedroom. Later I dug it out of the back wall inside one of the kitchen cabinets below.
The young white-faced reporter dropped the gun onto the table shaking like a leaf. I wasn’t feeling that good myself. There was no mention of the incident in the very upbeat article that appeared in RS.
1964
My mother fell over a piece of furniture in the front room of the house in early April. She and Dad laughed over it and later she came out on the patio with a glass of iced tea. I noticed she was closing her right eye against the bright spring sunshine. I remember teasing her about that squint because she looked like a baby, shading her eye with her hand.
Soon after she began to complain of headaches and pain in her eye. Her medications were adjusted, her condition improved, and for the next few weeks she seemed her old self. However, her sensitivity to light grew and she wore sunglasses most of the time. By June her condition caused her to be admitted to the hospital. There was a dreadful gnawing apprehension in my gut. I graduated high school. Mom missed the ceremony. It seemed like something that was happening to someone else in another room.
Her brother, Joe Verne, arrived with my aunt Jean and stayed for a couple of weeks. By July my mother’s sister, Joy, was there for a week and then just as suddenly she too was gone. I was smart enough to know that these brothers and sisters had come to say good-bye. Dad gathered all the kids into the car and drove us over to St. John’s Hospital to see our mother. The habit-clad nuns surrounded us in the corridors and shepherded us to the perpetually dark room where our mother was kept.
My eyes strained to adjust to the reduced lighting in the hospital room but I could see that Mother was transfixed by tubes and needles, her head slightly raised so she could see in front of her, a smile on her face and her blue eyes clear and loving.
“Ann,” my father said to her as he sat down by her side and took her hand. “Do you remember who this is?”
Her smile widened to see me. “That’s my Jimmy Layne,” she said.
My eyes opened like the floodgates on a dam. “Mom, I love you,” I said through the tears. She didn’t cry. How could she be so radiant in such darkness? We had come in our childish way to comfort her only to find that she was—as always—the ultimate comforter. Even in this. One by one the children said good-bye.
After an exploratory surgery the following day our mother died of complications resulting from an inoperable brain tumor. She was thirty-six years old.
Twin funerals were held first in Colton, California, and then Oklahoma, at the First Baptist Church in Sayre, the latter being her final resting place. Before the first funeral, Dad called all us children into his pastoral study just off the sanctuary. We all lined up in front of his desk, little Sylvia and Susan seated, Janice, Tommy, and I standing.
“Now, kids,” he said, “I don’t want to hear a lot of blubbering and bawling out there today. We don’t want to make a spectacle of ourselves.” He paused. “Let’s go out there and show them how the Webbs bury their dead.”
He needn’t have worried. We were catatonic. I was excused from playing the organ for the day. The sermons, the sentiments, the favored hymns and remembrances all wash away in a breaking wave of grief, smeared across the neurons of my brain in a muddled stain.
Dad was strong, almost superhuman, and handled everything with the same aplomb with which he conducted a Sunday service. No onlooker could have guessed how deeply shaken he was, how apprehensive he was about carrying on without her, or least of all that his belief system was in dire jeopardy. He continued to preach on Sundays; at times it seemed with as much fire as ever. However, at nightfall he would sink into an armchair in the living room, not much interested in dinner, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” (w. Fred Rose) in constant rotation.
The family had a difficult time generating much excitement or joy for anything in my mother’s absence. My oldest sister, Janice, took refuge with her boyfriend Dennis Linnens and spent at least half her time with him and his family. My brother Tommy, always a tall kid, went out for freshman football. His smile became a rare thing. Susan and Sylvia, only seven and five, retreated in on themselves.
I, on the other hand, turned my back on the horror of it. I found a high lonely place where a secret door led to my room with the impervious walls. I enveloped myself in the radio and hits of the day: “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” by Dusty Springfield (w. Vicki Wickham, Simon Napier-Bell, Pino Donaggio, and Vito Pallavicini), “Baby I Need Your Loving” by the Four Tops (w. Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Edward Holland, Jr.), and “Goin’ Out of My Head” by Little Anthony and the Imperials (w. Teddy Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein). I was fascinated by the superimposition of string orchestras over rock ’n’ roll tracks. The best example of this was Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” (w. Ben E. King, Jerry Leiber, and Moke Stoller) The string arrangement by Stan Applebaum was nothing less than a classical masterpiece.
I started calling up radio stations and talking to disc jockeys. I focused all my energy into music, and organized an all-female group: The Contessas. Suzanne Weir, Alyce Wheaton, Sharon Johnston, and Susan Horton. All blondes, all gorgeous, and all inspired with the idea of making a splash in the suddenly preeminent music business, heady with promise at the high tide of the British Invasion. We began rehearsing in the garage at night with the door open. Dad no longer yelled about the noise or came out to restore order. He continued preaching with, to my ear, a subtle lack of conviction, as though he were trying to persuade himself as much as his listeners. Lachrymose Ray Charles and Hank Williams dominated the home hi-fi.
A Sunday or two later my father calmly surmounted the dais at the Laurel Church and delivered a sturdy sermon. Afterward he announced his intentions to resign his post in Colton and return to his homeland; the better to weather the storm that God in his wisdom had loosed upon his family. My father was a much-beloved figure by many in that church and there were members weeping openly at the end of the service. In spite of his stratagems to cut his losses, to fall back and regroup, there was yet one small trauma for him to endure.
I had started classes at San Bernardino Valley College as summer ended and moved in with the Penyak twins, Mickey and Billy. They were identical, good-looking guys with lots of hair. They would have made a great recording act. I was slowly moving my stuff out of the house and over to the Penyaks’ apartment as Dad sold everything that wasn’t nailed down. A truck headed east down the long curling of Route 66 loaded with clothing, Mom’s old piano, and other major items. Dad told me to get ready to leave, that he would meet me over by the Sunset Palms Motel, near the college, and he would load my few possessions for the trip back home. I met him there. His station wagon looked like something from The Grapes of Wrath, loaded to the gills with odds and ends tied on the luggage rack on top. Inside were my brother and sisters.
“Where is your stuff?” Dad asked. “I’ve saved a place up top here.”
I looked at him in silence for a moment.
“Dad, I’m not going with you.”
“Don’t talk stupid, son, of course you’re coming with me,” he growled.
“Dad, I’m in too deep here. I want to writ
e songs. I’m where people write songs and…”
“This songwriting thing is just going to break your heart, son,” he pronounced with finality.
We stood there looking at each other for a long minute, neither wavering.
“Jimmy, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he said at last.
He dug into his pocket and pulled out a battered, slick wallet. He took two twenties out.
“This is all I’ve got, son. I wish I could do better.” He turned and walked back to the wagon, beaten. He got inside and slammed the door. He looked at me one more time as the starter squealed and the engine started. The neon palm trees blinked and buzzed above my head and a stained California half-moon navigated through the smog and the San Bernardino mountains in the distance. The adrenaline rush of confronting him was ebbing and turning into something like grief with a tinge of fear. He drove away.
Jimmy Webb in a hot air balloon. (Courtesy of Garth Sadler)
CHAPTER SEVEN
I’m a skywriter, rebel without a cause, drifter without a name
And I can’t seem to give up this flying game
I’m a wing walker, working without a net
That’s all I’ve ever been
And I wonder if I’m ever coming down again
—JLW, “Skywriter,” 1993
1964
Disc jockeys were as popular as most of the recording stars of the day. On the radio is where I first heard the Devil Himself, doing his top-rated drive-time show. He was glib and fast, and so borderline obscene you had to love him. I would telephone the overnight jock at two in the morning when no other living creature could possibly be listening to his show and ask him about the Devil.
“Well, kid, he puts his pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us,” he would intone in a pretend plaintive wail. “You can call him up and talk to him as easy as me.” Before the end of the call I would ask him to dedicate the Four Tops’ “Baby I Need Your Loving” to Susan and he would always do it. Finally one afternoon I called up the Demon himself. He was a charmer.
Professionally there were good omens on the horizon. A local entrepreneur, a tall blond kid named George Clements, had seen the Contessas perform, and whether impressed by their considerable talent or good looks, he was prepared to put up some money to start his own record company. I was commuting to Hollywood, visiting Dick Glasser at Warner Bros., where I landed a couple of Everly Brothers cuts. I had struck up friendships at Jobete, the publishing arm of Motown Records, and they offered me a songwriting contract. Next door at Bob Ross they were offering me studio time in exchange for publishing rights. The trip back and forth to Hollywood was expensive and time-consuming. As for college, my grades were abysmal. I was failing music theory and harmony and musicianship, mostly because I was always late. I would slink into the back of Russell C. Baldwin’s—the dean of music—classroom, and he would survey me with one dour eye.
“Recalcitrant again this morning, Mr. Webb?” he would drily muse. I had to look up “recalcitrant.” Seemed fitting.
I had two songs I wanted to record with the Contessas. As it happens I had never written parts for an orchestra but this was a minor problem that could be surmounted once we had a decent-looking logo for George’s label. We came up with a white “E” on a Grecian pedestal rampant on a red field. “E” Records for “E” Street San Bernardino. George, a kid my age, was now prepared to invest his entire inheritance in the prospect. The sum was not insignificant for the time, approximately $3,500. He was given approval of the songs and allowed as much input as was practical, but I don’t think George ever fully realized the ephemeral nature of money in the delicate and chancy environment of the music business. Possibly I could have been more emphatic in warning him of the danger.
Instead, we plunged ahead. We set a date for our first recording session at Bob Ross’s studio. On the back of George’s inheritance, we were able to book the world-famous Wrecking Crew for the rhythm session.
I knew the intricacies of orchestration involved transposing for some instruments, such as the French horn, clarinets, trumpets, and others. In some cases instruments called for special clefs and an arranger needed to have a precise understanding of the ranges of all the different instruments. I had a general idea about some of these limitations, but with a recording session coming up in a few days I had no time for in-depth study. My solution was pragmatic. I decided to write only for instruments all played in the same key. Violins, violas, celli, and basses all played in “C” or “concert” key. Among the brass instruments I had trombones. In the woodwind section there were the flutes. Aha! Almost forgot the harp! And all the percussion keyboards like vibraphone, orchestra bells, and even timpani. Voilà! I had my ideal orchestra.
Before the day of the session I had copied parts for every musician in amateurish blue ballpoint pen on lined notebook paper.
I showed up at the little studio that day, my Contessas in tow and my heart in my throat. Technicians were running the spaghetti factory of wiring that was necessary to capture a whole orchestra, tripping over earphone boxes and cue lines that linked all the players into a single organism. The musicians jabbered in a completely dispassionate way about their lawns, their wives, their instruments, or the damn union in a huge chorus that threatened to engulf me and push me back into the earth.
I walked into the booth as pale as a white grape and went to where Bob Ross and the guys from Motown sat coolly behind the console. “What do I do?” I asked plaintively. Bob walked me out into the studio where the A-list players were poking and squinting suspiciously at the primitively copied parts with hand-drawn staves on their stands.
“Are these the real parts?” someone bellowed conspicuously. Several huge guffaws followed.
Bob and I stood on a two-inch-high podium with a music stand sitting on it.
“Uh, fellas, let’s show a little courtesy here. This is our arranger and conductor Mr. Jimmy Webb.” I was a nobody, a seventeen-year-old kid.
There were a few polite little taps of bows against the stands. I looked back into the rhythm section and got a big smile and encouraging nod from the great Hal Blaine. He flourished his sticks and said, “Mr. Webb, do I need to count this off for you? Where do you want this, looks like a ballad, right?” He clicked his sticks together in a moderate tempo and I seized this life ring with a passion.
“Has everybody got ‘This Is Where I Came In’ on the stand?” I asked in my first coherent sentence of the day. Uh-uh. Yup. Everybody had it.
“Yes. Well, uh … then Hal you could give us four counts … and, uh, we could start.”
The four clicks came like a metronome and the rhythm section came in as one man, all in tune, playing the way I always imagined a band could play: Joe Osborn with his head down concentrating on the bass strings, Larry Knechtel as casual as a rag doll with his long blond hair and movie star good looks playing an exploratory and rock solid piano. Tommy Tedesco with a sunburst Gibson jazz guitar. They were all playing the chords exactly right the very first time.
My heart leaped as halfway through the verse the vibraphone joined in. They could do it! They could read my homemade manuscript. As we approached the big chorus where the Contessas sang “So this is where you’re gonna leave me,” Hal played a nice drum lead-in, something I hadn’t bothered to write, and then, in a feeling that must have been a little bit like that of a skydiver seeing his parachute open the very first time, the strings, twenty strong, and the three big trombones came in right after a harp glissando. It was gorgeous. There was a smile on every face in that room. I looked to the control room; The Contessas were there, faces pressed against the double-paned glass with huge smiles and gigantic blue eyes. Gil, the record promotion guy for Motown, came out on the floor at the end of the take and said, “It’s a fuckin’ hit!” George Clements had to be scraped off the ceiling. For the rest of my life there would be no thrill remotely approaching the high of hearing a professional orchestra perform one of my
arrangements. I still get that narcotic buzz every single time it happens.
After the session, Hal Blaine motioned me over.
“Hey, Jim. This is your first time arranging, right?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“You need to stick with this. This is a good thing for you, ’kay?”
He looked at all the guys in the control room glad-handing one another and making deals.
“I know this is all confusing, but you just stick with the music, ’kay?” His kind dark brown eyes lingered on mine. He smiled and walked away and just left that great big drum set sitting there. Imagine that. He didn’t even stick around to load his own drums.
1971
It is hard to convey how instantly pervasive cocaine became in the corridors of Hollywood office buildings, recording studios, movie soundstages, and private homes. With blinding speed, it became a universal pass code for a generation of people who came from nice families and didn’t necessarily think of themselves as drug addicts.
My dealer was an aging beatnik named Dope Danny. He approached the subject of drugs with a spiritual reverence. Even in his seventies he always sported a tastefully dressed young woman on his arm. Cocaine seemed respectable, and its use, a pursuit of refined inside people. It was infamously, cruelly expensive. A hundred dollars at least for a gram, which might last an evening. Top commercial-grade was usually made in the Columbian jungle and then cut with something like novocaine, or a laxative.
In short order it became de rigueur to have a gram, a small bottle of the powder, in one’s pocket when heading out for an evening’s entertainment. Tiny silver coke spoons for the nose, worn on platinum chains, became fashionable neckwear. More commonly, lines were laid on coffee tables or small mirrors. Banknotes were rolled into compact tubes and used to inhale the powder through the nose and into the sinuses. It was considered cool to use a high-denomination bill.