by Jimmy Webb
I snapped my attention back to my instruments where my grasp on the thermal had started to slip. I was at about eight thousand feet. If I was going to Las Vegas, it was time to get moving.
Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell meet for the first time, at the Grammy Awards. (Courtesy of William Eastabrook)
CHAPTER TWELVE
And I have dined in palaces, drank wine with kings and queens
But darlin’ sweet darlin’, you’re the best thing I’ve ever seen …
—Lowell George, Roll Um Easy, 1973
1967
I began work on a new concept album for the 5th Dimension called The Magic Garden. Bones Howe—who produced and engineered the first album—and I were to coproduce this record and Johnny gave us carte blanche.
I was bitter about my limited situation as a contract writer for Soul City. “I can’t believe it Harv,” I said one day as he was counseling me. “I’ve had two big records this year and the only way I can see it is I’m in bondage for the next seven years.” There was a long pause in the conversation and then with a sigh Harvey Linnman rolled his big eyes heavenward, and placing the tips of his fingers together, said with an exaggerated vowel: “Not necessaaaaaaaaarily.”
I stared at him, fascinated by his malevolent grin and the unwavering contact in his eyes that suggested a plot of some sort.
“All right, tell me about it, Harvey.”
He smiled at the use of his full name.
“Weeell,” he said, affecting a lazy Southern drawl, “it’s lak this. Mr. Rivers has to fulfill the option on your contract once a year. In fact, by the end of the month.” He licked his lips. “If he doesn’t … there’s noooo contract anymore.”
Just like that? No contract? There were a lot of questions floating around in my head. What were the liabilities involved in screwing around with a contract when you were in a fiduciary sense the guardian of that contract? Our conversation thus far was probably already a conspiracy.
“What makes you think he’ll forget about it?” I questioned.
“Oh, he’ll forget about it, don’t you worry.” I wasn’t randy to bed down with Harv but seven years in show business is a lifetime. I had never done anything remotely unethical in the world of business. My conscience kicked in. I should simply try to negotiate my way out of this deal, I thought. Nah.
The Devil stopped by my house in Laurel Canyon one afternoon with some marijuana, riding a brand-new Harley Sportster. We sat in the shade on the front steps and admired the paint job on the bike while we smoked. I told him I thought some changes might be coming down. I didn’t know exactly where I was headed but I wondered if he would be interested in bringing his radio expertise into an enterprise of some sort, a label perhaps or maybe even a film company? Satan was most interested.
As the end of the month came closer I prepared for what I was sure would be a Sicilian storm of outrage when the ploy was discovered. To avoid confrontation with any unexpected visitors I moved into a hotel. I told the Devil what I was doing and he came by and kept me company while the betrayal unfolded.
Harvey prepared a letter disavowing any contracts, implied or otherwise, between Jimmy Webb and Johnny Rivers Music based on the fact there had been no renewal of the option. It hadn’t been renewed precisely because Harv neglected to do so. I felt like shit.
Johnny, for all his imagined faults, had been good to me. He had given me the star stuff. I had lived under his roof. He had given me a studio and an orchestra. He had promoted my music to other artists, which is something that publishers swear they’ll do but they rarely, if ever, deliver.
In the days that followed my discomfort faded a little when I became acquainted with the torrent of possibilities that suddenly poured through an unobstructed door. I could now have my own publishing company and own my own copyrights. Harv immediately staked a claim on a rightful share of any proceeds from this new publishing firm. We spent hours in his office pouring over the range of options and he began drawing up his own contract with me. I can’t help smiling at the thought.
I came up with an idea for the name of my new company. It was from the bridge of “Up, Up and Away”: “suspended under the twilight canopy.” That’s the way I felt. Suspended and uncertain of the future. But the “canopy” was an overarching protection for a variety of business pursuits. I would call the company Canopy.
One afternoon, after we had been in meetings for days, Harv and I pulled out of 9255 Sunset Boulevard and onto Doheny in the new Maserati he had bought off The Monkees, and we stopped at the light at the intersection of Doheny and Sunset.
Johnny Rivers pulled up next to us in his red Ferrari, adjacent to me on the passenger side, and glared at me with a look that was emasculating. His face was pale and frozen in a grimace. I felt a dagger of ice in my belly. The light changed, monolithic gears turned in the galaxies hanging over our heads, and he drove on.
Harv looked at me and must have read my utter despair.
“You’ve got to pay your dues, kid.” He smiled.
My factory coating of innocence was peeling off at an alarming rate.
In a subdued frame of mind I packed my bags for a trip to Oklahoma. I hadn’t seen my father or my brothers and sisters in over a year. Dad had married the wife of a former church member named Ken Sadler, who had died three years ago, within weeks of my mother, in the twisted metal of his truck. He left behind his wife, Lily, and two sons, Garth and Randy. When Dad moved back to Oklahoma he had begun to see Lily socially. After a suitable interval they had joined their fortunes together. Now, in the same house, was my brother Tommy, who was a high school basketball superstar, the two “little boys” Randy and Garth, my sisters Susan and Sylvia, and Dad and Lily. I showed up with presents for all. The crown jewel was a miniature Ferrari from FAO Schwarz, with a real gas engine, perfectly scaled for ten-year-old arms and legs.
Over supper, I told my father I was starting a new company and I wanted him to come out to California. I needed some perspective on people that were beginning to surround me.
He told me he would have to think about it and talk to Lily. He said his heart had not really been sincere in delivering the gospel for a while.
“My beliefs have changed,” he said. “I don’t believe half the stuff that comes out of my mouth. I’m at the end of my rope in the pulpit.”
“It’d be reassuring to know you were there to help me, Dad,” I said.
My brother Tommy had been on the All-State basketball team two years in a row and was fully six and a half feet tall. He carried the family banner in the athletic world, and his team was on their way to the state tournament for the third time. I told Tommy quietly if he won the state championship I would throw in a new Corvette. Was I right to be meddling in my father’s affairs in such an overt manner? I had spoiled their simplicity already. This was Jimmy’s magical mystery tour and I wanted to bring everybody with me, no man or woman left behind.
Back in Los Angeles, during the last days of 1967, Lou Adler and Bobby Roberts sold Dunhill Records to a cigar-chewing record mogul of the old school named Jay Lasker. Harv set about planning a creative deal for Canopy Productions at Dunhill.
The first day I walked into his office, Jay was bubbling over with enthusiasm for his new acquisition. Behind his desk was a sign that read in large letters: “You hear a lot about Vincent, but what about Theo?” This veiled rebuke to the artistic temperament referred to spendthrift and layabout Vincent Van Gogh and his organized, businesslike brother Theo who worked at a real job and got little or no credit for supporting the family. I picked up on it right away: “Artists, be on your best behavior.”
In exchange for producing a number of albums for Dunhill Records exclusively, Jay Lasker gave Canopy a great deal of money and the promise to promote and market those releases at the full extent. Jay put me in Lou Adler’s old office and furnished it with a genuine Louis XV desk. The wall behind my desk was decorated with an old French painting of balloonists making a massed ascent f
rom a park. Looking on was an admiring crowd of ladies and gentlemen dressed in the parachute-like skirts and top hats of the Victorian era.
When in his best form, Jay could talk on three telephones at the same time and smoke a cigar while playing a remixed demo for a reluctant jock in Duluth. If his mark remained unconvinced he would heave his ample bulk out of the chair and bring his hand down on top of his desk with the force of a sperm whale’s fluke. Then, his face, as red as a cardinal, would gradually give way to a possum-eatin’ grin. Another station on the record. He was of that old school who roused themselves at four in the morning and by five were “on the phones” speaking with every Top 40 program director in America.
In 1966 I hadn’t made enough to be required to file a tax return. In 1967 Harv predicted I would probably make well over $60,000.
While producer Bones Howe worked on the 5th Dimension’s The Magic Garden with me, he was also producing another project across town. Bones called up one night in a very serious mood, which was unusual, as we clowned around for the most part. I hoped all was well with the 5th Dimension and no feelings had been hurt, which was a constant concern.
“No, nothing like that,” Bones replied. “I’m nearing the end of production on an album with the Association. I’m imagining a kind of climactic tour de force for the end of the album. I’ve always thought you would be the guy to ask about this. Can you imagine a classical piece for Top 40 radio with different movements and tempos? I would like to use a full symphony orchestra. I’m talking about something probably no more than ten minutes long, with singing parts for the band, solos, the whole shamazola. What do you think?”
The Association, known for hits such as “Along Comes Mary,” “Cherish,” and “Wendy,” was fresh off the Monterey Pop Festival and had been my favorite band when I was in high school. I knew I was going to say yes. He probably knew that just as well as I did, but I gave him the courtesy of thinking about it for a full twenty seconds.
“I could do it. You came to the right place.”
“It comes with the usual caveat,” he said. “I need it yesterday.”
“Then you will have it yesterday!” I declared theatrically. Then we both calmed down a little. This was seriously a hell of a lot of work. It would take time to just imagine what shape it might take.
“This is a single, right?” I asked. He laughed. “Let me think about it, Bones,” I urged. “I could let you know in a couple of days if I’m making any headway. Meanwhile, shop it around.” He was still laughing.
“See you at the studio,” he said. Click.
I sat down at the piano and idly tinkered with the right hand. This could be my magnum opus for Susan Horton. It could be symbolic of the meltdown of our love affair, the sad last night at MacArthur Park. I couldn’t deny I was still missing her and the relationship that had never really happened.
My right hand found a D minor chord. I began thinking of images from the park, cozy symbols of innocence, like Susan feeding the birds and enticing them into her hands. She was gentle enough to do that. The lunches on the grass, a birthday with a small store-bought cake that had green icing. I started playing. A downpour with the two of us footracing through the rain and up the steps in front of her office building. I began to keep a notebook on one side of the keyboard and filled it with vignettes from “Mac Park.” Events and conversations, all real. I wasn’t creating a sucker punch for unwary listeners. I was pouring out my soul on a surreal canvas.
Three days later I surfaced. I looked around, stunned by the storm of dirty Kleenex and rancid beer cans, the dozens of busy, unkempt pages half stuck together by Scotch tape so they looped over the grand and touched the floor on both sides. I hadn’t eaten. I had fallen asleep a couple of times at the keyboard and awakened with my face playing a G13 with a demented fourth. At those intervals I had crawled under the piano and buried myself in pillows for a couple of hours. As soon as I had been able to, I roused myself and continued. I was deep into the score, writing French horn parts and strings, woodwinds, and percussion. During the entire process I took no drugs of any kind. I was getting ahead of myself. I needed to call Bones.
He answered on the fourth ring.
“Bones?”
“I’ll hafta call sum bak,” he answered. I looked at my clock. “Oh, my God, it was three in the morning!”
“Bones, I’m sorry, but I needed to let you know. I’ve written it.”
“What?” He was suddenly wide-awake. “Can I hear it?”
“I’m going to sleep for a while. I can play it for you tomorrow.”
Before long I was nervously waiting outside of United Western Recorders, walking back and forth beside my car and holding a folded manuscript that felt very, very heavy. Around 10 P.M. Bones came out into the parking lot and said, “Here, I’ll take you right into the studio.”
A huge slab of the building slid back to reveal a spaceship-like bright interior. The Association, all nine of them, stood around their amplifiers surrounded by empty pizza boxes, Chinese food cartons, and pyramids of stale cigarette butts. I slipped through and the crew closed the loading door behind me. The group gave me a warm welcome and I shook each hand as I was introduced.
Eventually I sat down on the piano bench in front of the grand. As I lowered my behind down onto that little landing pad, with Bones sitting down alongside me to turn the pages, my cheap jeans gave way in the seat. With a sound like Errol Flynn unzipping a tautly trimmed sail and riding his dagger blade all the way to the bottom, I arrived at a seated position. To their credit the band tried not to laugh. But eventually, as I swelled up luridly around the face, there were gasps and then giggles and then guffaws. I had split my striped pair of pants.
“C’mon, guys, let’s cut him a break here, this is business,” Bones said as he tried valiantly to restore some sense of decorum.
I pushed my mortification as far back into my gut as I could, and then played “MacArthur Park,” singing in my tremulous tenor as Bones studiously turned the pages. The band listened courteously to all seven and a half minutes. It felt long to me, but that’s what the doctor ordered and I could feel their interest heighten with the up-tempo section, tailored especially for them. Then came the Wagnerian chorus reiterating the opening theme and the crashing finale, where I rolled the low notes on the piano to communicate a massive prospect of symphonic splendor.
There was silence. Nobody said a word at first. Then came a round of hearty congratulations on a job well done and more handshakes and suddenly I was back in the parking lot.
Bones called me up the next day.
“The dumb sons of bitches are not going to do it. I told them the day ‘Mac Park’ goes to number one with another artist will be the day they need to start looking for another producer,” he grumbled.
“You don’t mean that,” I said.
“I fucking mean it,” Bones insisted.
Various stories have been floated about these embarrassing yet simple events from time to time over the years. The Association were not discourteous and did not mistreat me in any way. Artists have the right—nay, the duty—to select what they deem to be the best material for their projects. I’ve never cried over a turndown. Ninety percent of all songs ever submitted were turned down at least once. Bones was pissed. I just went out and bought new jeans.
Not long after, a telegram arrived for me from London. DEAR JIMMYWEBB (STOP) COME TO LONDON (STOP) WILL MAKE GREAT RECORD (STOP) LOVE RICHARD
1968
Harv and I went to England to talk to Richard Harris in January. This was my first flight outside the United States. There simply was no place on earth, nor has there ever been, like London at the end of the sixties. Anyone who traveled or lived there at the time will be happy to vouch for it. From the first rattle of the Cockney cabdriver’s accent to the streets droning with strangely shaped vehicles and red double-decker buses, I was an instant Anglophile.
As Harv sat rigidly in the center of the cab trying to look dignified,
I bounced from one side to the other shouting, “Oh, look at that!” as an interesting building came into view, or, “How old is that one?” at the driver, pointing at the rococo exterior of a Victorian house.
“Very old,” he replied drily. “It’s all bloody old, Guv.”
All the structures looked like palaces to me, even the British Museum. He took us to Belgravia, extraordinary because virtually every house was painted white and had white pillars flanking the front porch and doorway. It was London’s most fashionable and affluent neighborhood. At 37 Chesham Place, we pulled to the curb and took egress from the pudgie black London taxi.
The number 37 was engraved in a delicate flowing script on a brass plaque, clean and shiny as glass. We rang the bell and a scrappy young fellow with thinning red hair and wiry frame bound out into the street, saying, “Welcome, welcome, I’m Dermot!” He flashed a diabolical grin and, snatching up as much luggage as he could carry, led the way inside.
“I’m Richard’s brother, by the way, the real brains behind this outfit!”
I was swept up once again in the stout arms of King Arthur, or if you prefer, Dicky Harris. He picked me up and twirled me around the room like a pathetic rag doll until his excitement and affection were temporarily satiated. He plopped me down in a stuffed chair by the fire and introduced me to Dermot for the second time, and again to the young Kathe Green, who had a fine blush to her cheek.
We settled into the cushy sofa and had our first real English tea. There were little pots of very strong, hot tea and some other pots that contained piping hot water and milk. There was also a silver platter covered with tiny triangular sandwiches made with odd ingredients—cucumber for instance—and sweet biscuits. Richard quoted Seán O’Casey and Kathe played her acoustic guitar. The wind whined coldly outside but was mostly unnoticed.
I had brought a portfolio of songs with me and soon we moved to the proper grand piano in the corner. As I played. Richard became more and more animated.