by Jimmy Webb
We listened to both sides, the acid kicking into deep-space drive. Even Johnny seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words. My imagination soared under the inspiration of these Beatles. Sgt. Pepper was nothing less than a heroic album. It was as important as any music ever written. What could I do? What could I accomplish?
Suddenly, in a refutation of all the peace and beauty that suffused the room, there was a deafening blast of horns and sirens. A helicopter swooped low over the house, swinging high-intensity searchlight beams through the windows and into our shocked faces. Outside doors slammed, voices were raised, and the roar of multiple diesel truck engines surrounded us. On the peaking acid our outraged brains amplified this assault of glare and noise.
“It’s a bust!” yelled Johnny. “The cops are all over us!” We were running around in circles grabbing up our stash from wherever it had ended up, emptying ashtrays and dumping everything into a trash bag. Outside the noise increased and the helicopter sounded as though it were hovering over the front yard. Johnny made a pass through his bedroom and came back with every single baggie, ready roll, brick, and even some stuff I had never seen before. He dived into the guest bathroom and started flushing madly. Everything went. Just as suddenly as it began all the noise ceased. We looked up at the ceiling as the helicopter seemed to move away. Cautiously Johnny and I crept out through the big double doors onto the front porch. No cops. Out on the street we saw big Beverly Hills Fire Department trucks moving past the gate at a sedate pace. Firemen were yelling at one another.
“It’s all over here, boys!”
“Yep, another damn false alarm!”
Police cars were turning off their blinking emergency bars and slamming their doors as the crisis de-escalated and adrenaline subsided.
“We just flushed all … all of our shit down the john!” Johnny said indignantly.
We both tried to keep a straight face, but couldn’t help but laugh, remembering the undignified panic of our late crisis all too well. Shortly thereafter Johnny Rivers stopped using drugs altogether. Too much stress.
1972
The morning after the Albert Hall concert I was awakened by peals of laughter from outside my hotel door at the Inn on the Park. I slipped into my terry-cloth robe and went to the door in search of someone to yell at. Sandy Gallin’s room was just across the hall, his door open. It was the pealing of Rosemarie’s musical laugh that pulled me across the hall to where I peered inside. Sandy was on the bed doing calisthenics, sit-ups, and what not, and begging a critique from Rosemarie, who stood at the end of the bed.
“What about my glutes? What do you think?” Sandy was asking as he flexed his behind. “Oh, hi, Jimmy.”
Rosemarie’s only response was to laugh until the tears ran down her face. She was wearing blue jeans decorated with swatches of antique lace around the bell-bottoms. This morning, her hair, with its auburn tinge, was caught up, gathered in a bun and pulled back underneath a wide-brim black hat, her eyes hidden behind designer sunglasses. She was the cutting edge of current rock fashion.
“Oh, hello!” she exclaimed as I dared edge into the room. “Hell’s bells, it’s Jesus Christ himself!” she taunted.
For the first time my jungle of facial hair discomfited me as well as the waterfall of loose curls that cascaded down far below my shoulders.
“I wonder what you look like under there?” she speculated aloud. “Perhaps you’re extremely unattractive and all of that fur is there to hide the fact that you look simply ghastly!”
Her mouth twisted into a funny little challenge as she stood chewing on the inside of her cheek in deep thought.
“Perhaps, you would like to find out,” I answered, meeting her frank appraising glance with one of my own. Little sparks flew.
“Now, kids! No fighting and no flirting either!” Sandy stood up on the bed unsteadily, wrapping his bodywork in a white sheet.
“Would you like to come in for some tea?” I directed specifically at Rosemarie.
Her mouth, like a rose, uncurled and she said, “Oh no, darling, it’s not going to be as easy as all that. Cuppa and a cuddle? I don’t think so.” She giggled.
Everything she said was meant to keep me off balance. Sandy stood there with his eyes open wide, knowing something was in progress, perhaps had been in progress for some time.
“How about dinner?” I heard it coming out of my mouth so I must have said it.
“Well, I was waiting for Sandy to ask me but you seem to be a man of action. The only thing is, if I come to dinner, you must promise that we will discuss a means of trimming your beard properly.”
“Okay,” I said with a wide grin. “Nothing’s off the table.”
She was gone suddenly, with a couple of tote bags from expensive boutiques, and from somewhere down the hall she called, “Sandy’s got my number!”
Sandy and I stood there looking at each other. He was shaking his head.
“This could be the biggest mistake you’ve ever made,” he commented dourly. “Her husband’s a great guy. He’s in a successful band. You know the song ‘love grows where my Rosemary goes and nobody knows but me,’ written by the last guy who went down the garden path.” (w. Tony Macaulay, Barry Mason, and Sylvan Whittingham)
“Tell me more,” I commanded while he pulled his outfit together.
“They’re a happy couple, you home-wrecker!” He faked indignation. “She is a former Miss World. She’s famous in England. She was in A Hard Day’s Night. She’s been to Vietnam with Bob Hope repeatedly to buck up the troops, a job for which she seems to be particularly well qualified. She’s funny.”
Around six o’clock she came by the hotel in a white dress, an intricately embroidered white silk shawl, and white leather platform shoes. Her hair was down and brushed to an iridescent sheen, curling loosely over her shoulders.
We walked out into Hyde Park where the daffodils waved gently as far as the eye could see across the green grass. We didn’t hold hands.
“So you’re married,” I said as we walked.
“Oh, yes,” she paused. “Seven years ago we were married on LSD. I love him, he’s really a wonderful person,” she said as though it was something that needed to be said.
“Why do I encounter so many beautiful English wives living apart from their beloved husbands?” I ventured, a cheeky comment more for my benefit than hers.
“What’s the harm?” she asked. “You’re not a dangerous person, are you?”
“Extremely dangerous.” I made a fierce face at her and she cackled. It really depended on the way one defined danger. I suppose I had every intention of upending her happy life as she knew it, but to do so I would have to know that in some sense she was unfulfilled.
I had the big Phantom V of Terry Naylor pick us up in the park and we went out of the city for dinner, avoiding all the places where it was virtually certain we would be seen. Terry found us an elegant country inn dripping with Jacobean charm. There were no more than three couples cooing in front of the comforting fire. I had venison, she had grouse, both in the English manner: roasted and basted in a savory wine sauce. The sommelier opened a Château Margaux and we lingered over it, talking about music and the life of a rock star’s wife. They lived just off Sunset on a little street called Miller Drive. They had been lucky to get a house on the hillside that had once belonged to F. Scott Fitzgerald. As we conversed I watched my hand as it crept across the table toward hers in the flickering firelight. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it when it arrived over there but it was moving as though of its own accord. Finally I took a drafty full breath and laid my hand down on hers, mine twice as big.
“Why are you touching a married lady’s hand?” Rosemarie asked sternly.
“I am now ready to discuss trimming the beard,” I said. She studied me intently for a moment and then locked her fingers through mine.
“All of it must come off. The beard has to go, period. Hair we can talk about later.”
“Agreed,”
I said.
Back at the hotel I stood at the mirror in my bathroom in front of an empty sink with scissors, a new razor, and some blades. I started shearing great hanks of my treasured Leon Russell chin shrubbery into the trash can. The almost forgotten contours of my face began to emerge from the chaos. It took an hour but I whittled it down to within a half inch of my face. I ran the sink full of water as hot as I could stand it. I soaped up a brush in a mug and, when I had a thick lather, saturated my remaining beard with shaving soap and steaming water.
Rosemarie lolled on the bed watching the BBC, patiently waiting for the transformation while she drank red wine. Occasionally she would shout encouragement. “Need a nurse? How’s it going in there?”
I started in with the razor and the blades at the base of my whiskers and went to the scissors when needed. A face appeared through the steam. It was still there, though my features were red from scraping and marred by a couple of lacerations. A figure appeared in the doorway behind me.
“Let’s have a look then!” she announced, as though she were examining a cabbage at the grocer. I turned around. She walked around me, inspecting me thoroughly. She touched my face and went over my features carefully. She stuck her finger in my ears and swabbed out the excess hair and soap.
Her clothes hit the floor. She reached over and turned on the shower as mist and steam filled the little bathroom. We stepped into the shower together and I was purged of blood, soap, and all the tiny clippings of my once magnanimous beard. She kissed me. She gently coaxed me to the bed. We listened to After the Gold Rush. It was the only album I had.
1967
Johnny called and told me about a friend of his, Frank Silvera, a character actor who had played many a Mexican bandito and also ran a nonprofit called the American Theatre of Being. A benefit gala was being planned at the Coronet Theatre on La Cienega. The nights would consist of readings, poems, musical numbers, and scenes, all with a decidedly antiwar message. Johnny wanted me to volunteer for the job of musical director. The theatrical director was an Irishman named Richard Harris. I was familiar with his performance in Camelot opposite actress Vanessa Redgrave earlier in the year, and anxious to do something for the cause.
First I would have to meet the director. Richard Harris lived at that moment in a pink and tangerine Italian villa on a hilltop in Bel Air. It sprawled over a six-acre plot of fountains and lush landscaping, and boasted a classic Romanesque bathing pool surrounded by appropriate statuary. When Johnny and I pulled up in front of the house I recall quite specifically that George Harrison was singing “Within You Without You” on the radio. “With our love we could change the world…”
Richard met us inside, and enveloped us in huge bear hugs, planting wet kisses on our ears. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. I was in awe of the sheer size of the man; even onscreen at the Cinerama Dome he didn’t appear as large as he did in life.
“Ah, ’tis good of you to help us out,” he said in a whispery Irish brogue accompanied by a sly wink and a quick wide smile while he capered with joy like a spiritual pony.
He clapped his hands together as though striking a set.
“You must meet Kathe,” he said, gesturing to a pretty blonde, all of nineteen, holding a gut-string classical guitar suspended from a strap around her neck. “Kathe is going to sing in the production,” he announced, placing a protective and possessive forearm over her shoulders. She smiled up sweetly, revealing a fawn’s large brown eyes and betraying an adoration and trust of this flamboyant figure that was touching to behold.
“Sing us a song, Kathe,” he commanded, and she dove immediately into a performance of “Where Is Love?” from the musical Oliver! by Lionel Bart. My ears were deceiving me. She was singing exactly like the little boy in the film. Richard delighted in revealing she had actually sung the role of Oliver in the smash film scored by her father, the respected Johnny Green.
We talked a bit about the show and what was expected of us, which is to say, not very much. It would seem, in the spirit of the times, Richard was going to make this up as he went along.
Johnny and I rehearsed a band of the usual suspects and then showed up for run-throughs a few days later with a half-dozen songs in the sub-genre of war protest. We watched with interest as Richard jumped like a madman from platform to rope to floor and back again, and cajoled, pleaded, cried, and laughed maniacally, as he forged his impromptu cast into a functioning theatrical unit. Walter Pidgeon sang 1922’s “Going Home (w. Duorzak, Fisher)” from a rocking chair. Edward G. Robinson read masterfully the Alan Seeger poem “I have a rendezvous with Death / At some disputed barricade…” He read in a voice cracked with emotion; I wish I had spent a little pride and asked him for his autograph. Among other notables were Faye Dunaway, at the peak of her career, Bobby Morse, Mia Farrow, Robert Mitchum, Elsa Lanchester, Peter Sellers, and Jean Simmons.
I met Mia, wide-eyed and delicate to a point near frailty, looking like a very concerned child of twelve and unnervingly precise with her questions and answers. I had seen her on occasion at the Daisy, where I was sometimes a wallflower. She was in the process of obtaining a divorce from Mr. Sinatra.
It was after rehearsal that the situation began to gather steam. Richard had taken a shine to me. We found a tavern somewhere by the wayside with an upright piano and he demanded I play as we drank.
“Come here, Jimmywebb, and give us a song! Play that lovely song ‘Didn’t We?’” In return he would teach me some of the grand old Irish standards like “Carrickfergus” or “She Moved Through the Fair.” He taught me scores of them and I soaked them up like a sponge, finding them to be not unlike some of the more stirring Baptist hymns. He had a much better than average ear when it came to picking a bonny air. His soul was hopelessly wound up with the written word and he wept over Brendan Behan and Dylan Thomas and Cavanaugh. There are men too gentle to live among wolves …
This was the innocent in Harris, but if someone on the crew made him angry, his face would turn red and he would bellow fiercely, “For fuck’s sake!” or “Bollocks! That is bloody bollocks!” “Bollocks” is an Irish way of saying “balls.” He was a profane saint on that stage, calling on the powers of hell to turn back the accursed war. Fighting fire with fire.
The performance came off on June 5 and 6 of ’67 if not without a hitch, then with a hell of a lot of good will and camaraderie. I came away with Mia’s phone number and thought idly of perhaps taking her out, momentarily forgetting my station in life. On further reflection I came to the conclusion that this might be a good way to end up stuffed into a Dumpster in Palmdale. I decided to wait until the divorce was final.
When Richard and I said good-bye outside the theater, as he was on his way back to London and its rain, he put his big arms around me and gave me one of those snuffling wet man-kisses in the ear. I hadn’t been raised in a culture where grown men embraced each other with such abandon but I didn’t really see anything wrong with it. I had found a big brother I didn’t know I had.
“Ah, Jimmywebb, maybe you’ll come over soon and you’ll make a recording with me then.” He laughed.
“If you ever want to make one let me know,” I called after him. He was gone with Kathe close by his side and it was as though someone had removed something without my permission. A wall or an oak tree or a favorite mountain.
1972
I did a lot of joyrides in my Schweizer 32 sailplane with friends and celebrities. People wanted to come out and see what I was doing. I flew Joni Mitchell, who became extremely ill as we circled at low altitude near the airport; Rosemarie, who hated the whole business; and master lyricist Paul Williams, future chairman of ASCAP, who was blessedly oblivious to the fact that we barely made it off the ground alive.
David Crosby came out one day in his black Mercedes 450SEL to see “the madman in the desert.” He braked to a stop in a cloud of dust and came walking out of the red fog like a Viking god with his handlebar mustache and hefty build, a gigantic smile on his
face. I never had a passenger more ready or willing to put his life in my hands. He relished the ride even though conditions were difficult. I ended up taking a long tow, all the way up to ten thousand feet because that was the only way we were going to get a ride. I apologized all the way down and tried to explain why we weren’t climbing up the side of the mountain. I needn’t have bothered. He was happy as hell. A longtime sailboat skipper, he understood what it meant to be becalmed. We would be friends and shipmates through thick and thin.
I would often fly out over Death Valley, always peering anxiously ahead for the first sign of big cumuli. On one such trip, at about four thousand feet I stumbled onto a sprawling monster of a thermal in a little declivity between two spurs and climbed on an elevator to heaven. Suddenly a shape materialized under me and my first thought was: midair collision. Out of the corner of my eye behind my left wing something came up even with the glider and hovered off my left wingtip. I risked taking my eyes off the instruments and was taken aback by the presence of a large golden eagle pacing me around the thermal. This huge bird was dark brown and had at least a six-foot wingspan. Unaccountably, she was looking at me. Calm and regal she moved her body along the upper surface of my left wing, soaring all the while and yet exhibiting the most singular curiosity about the cockpit. I had to concentrate fiercely to stay in the thermal.
She came close enough to the cockpit that I could have reached out and touched her with a pool cue. I could see the fine reddish feathers shining around her ruff and shoulders. Her huge golden brown eye transfixed me.
She climbed past me. Now she was above my head and displaying her mastery of the air around us. She soared with the assurance of a virtuoso, wingtip feathers flared upward. She flicked her tail and adjusted her circle radius once or twice as she climbed until I had to crane my neck upward to follow her. She went up and away from me like a banshee. No machine could or would ever touch her.