by Jimmy Webb
“Good God!” he would mutter. “Bloody fantastic!”
I was close to the bottom of the pile when I ran up on the bulky manuscript to “MacArthur Park,” one I had very nearly left behind as impossible. With a sigh I began the opening motif in the right hand of the piano and then the crashing ascending cadence in ⅜ time. I began to sing.
“Spring was never waiting for us girl
It ran one step ahead as we followed in the dance…”
“Fucking tremendous!” Richard shouted. He was on his feet, walking and singing along as I played and sang. He cried. He orated.
“I’ll have that!” He slapped the top of the piano with the flat of his hand like a gunshot. “Now, Jimmywebb, that’s a song fit for a bloody king!”
Well, it was long enough, tall enough, and wide enough; also, in the zeitgeist of the era, it was obscure enough to confound even the most inquiring intelligence.
He made me play it forty times if he made me play it once. I was shredding my nails. He insisted I tape it instrumentally and then he sang it forty times. Harv and I finally got sick of it and checked into the Carlton Hotel, only a brisk walking distance away.
I slept well in England that night. Some long exiled version of me, locked in my genes and chromosomes, or perhaps my spirit, or even a likeness in another dimension, was glad to be home again. Home after all those years.
We returned to the United States with eleven solid song choices. My plan was to cut all the tracks in L.A. with the storied Wrecking Crew and then cross the Atlantic with the unmixed tapes to overdub Richard’s voice. I would update him with tracks as they were finished and he would practice singing them in my absence.
On February 29, the Devil and I, Harv, Jay Lasker, the 5th Dimension, Glen Campbell, and countless other stars went to the Century Plaza Hotel for the Tenth Annual Grammy Awards. There were perhaps four or five hundred people in attendance and a couple of local news teams outside as we went in. The Grammys were then an “inside” industry ceremony, not a show that would fill a 25,000-seat sports arena and be seen around the world.
I had two songs nominated in the Song of the Year category: “Up, Up and Away” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” The 5th Dimension was nominated for Record of the Year and Best Group Vocal Performance, as well as Best New Artist for “Up, Up and Away.” Glen Campbell had been nominated for Best Male Vocal Performance for “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.” Even the kid who did the artwork on the 5th Dimension album cover, Wayne Kimball, was nominated for Best Album Cover. The two albums gleaned other nominations as well. I began looking forward to the ceremony, but I was convinced any chance I might have had to win the Song of the Year Award had been sabotaged by the fact I had two songs nominated in the category. My supporters wouldn’t know which song to vote for. How could I possibly win?
We sat at a round table, front row center. I was very nervous in spite of the fact I didn’t fancy my chances of winning. Jay chewed on his cigar and leered at me with his good eye and a lopsided grin.
“Don’t worry, kid,” he said with a high school smirk at Harv and Lucifer. “It’s in da bag.” He looked over both shoulders and hunched down into the white collar of his tux.
I was aghast. In the bag? Surely John Hartford would take home the gold for “Gentle on My Mind,” a song I would gladly call my own. Then there was “Ode to Billy Joe,” a hauntingly offbeat mystery novel in three verses by Bobby Gentry that could win for sheer originality. I watched the proceedings innocently without any real thought as to who would be taking home the little Edison phonographs. Eventually I heard the presenter say, “… and for Song of the Year,” there was a pause, “Jimmy Webb for ‘Up, Up and Away’!” A wild cheer swelled behind me. I stumbled up to the podium through a storm of “Attaboys!” and strangers clapping me on the back and beautiful women grasping at my clothes.
I had not prepared a speech and I don’t know what I said except that I thanked Hal Blaine. Like a shot he was there, too, both arms wound completely around me. In that moment I could hear him whispering to me in Bob Ross’s little clapboard studio, “Stay with it kid … you could be real good at this.” Jay Lasker was there to give me a hug and a conspiratorial wink. Did he have foreknowledge? Had he done any fixing? I wouldn’t begin to suggest such a thing. The tumult and euphoria continued as I stumbled backstage in a happy delirium for photos and on-the-spot interviews. Outside I heard the 5th Dimension receive the award for Best Vocal Performance and Best Contemporary Performance. Glen was represented as well for Best Pop Album of the Year and Best Male Vocal Performance.
Glen called me a few days later to ask for a “follow-up” to “Phoenix” and asked me specifically if I had “something about a town.” I told him I appreciated his interest but I had just about exhausted the Rand McNally phase of my career. “Well, could you make it something geographical?” he almost pleaded. I told him I would spend the rest of the day on it and get back to him.
By about four o’clock I had come up with a song I did not believe was completely finished, but I called Glen and Al at United Western Recorders and told them about “Wichita Lineman.” They wanted it right away. I agreed, with the caveat that it might possibly need a last verse. I met Glen in person a few days later, on the set of a commercial for General Motors, a business deal that would leave me with new Corvettes every year for the next three years.
As we were wrapping up the commercial I invited him over to the house to hear some of my back catalog and the roughs on “Wichita Lineman.”
He walked into the music room carrying his Ovation in a sculpted case and sat down on the crappy couch. He whipped out acetates of “Wichita Lineman” and I said to him, “You know this song isn’t really finished.”
“It is now!” Glen crowed.
I listened to the beautiful intro with an especially catchy bass lick from Carol Kaye, the minimal strings gracing the upper registers, and then Glen’s vocal, a match for the melody that must have been made in heaven. Verse three rolled around and I found out what they had done about the missing verse. Glen had detuned a guitar down to a “slack key,” Duane Eddy style, and simply played the melody note for note, an extreme compliment. A lightbulb went off in my head.
“Hey, I’ve got something over here, Glen, it might be nothing but…” I turned to an old Gulbransen electric organ sitting on the opposite wall. I kept it around because it had a lot of electronic presets on it, bells, strings, harps, and other effects. We didn’t have samplers or synthesizers in those ancient days. I selected a preset that was one of my favorites. I played open fourths and fifths up and down the keyboard with only two fingers using an F chord. The organ emitted a sound like a satellite or some other high-powered electronic device; the open fourths and fifths shivering up and down in a fascinating tintinnabulation loaded with reverb.
“That’s fantastic!” Glen marveled. “How did you do that?”
“I’m not doing anything.” I laughed. “That’s the Gulbransen.”
We played the rough of “Wichita” and the organ at the same time. It was a perfect fit.
“We have to record that!” Glen exulted.
“It sounds good,” I cautioned, “but the organ weighs a ton.”
He got on the phone to S.I.R.
“Hey! Shorty, I need you to come over to Jimmy Webb’s house and pick up a great big organ and take it down to Western. ’Kay?”
Later that night we overdubbed the Gulbransen on the fade of “Wichita Lineman.” You can hear it there to this day, sounding a little like the Northern Lights, like vibrating signals from outer space moving upward and downward in fourths and fifths.
When we had recorded all eleven tracks for Richard Harris’s album, including large brass and string sections, as well as “interludes” that we intended to insert between tracks, Harv and I boarded a transatlantic jet and returned to London for the vocal overdubbing with Mr. Harris. The task was a challenge, namely to capture the vocal essence of a hard-drinking, heavy-smok
ing Irish thespian who was widely known for his mercurial temperament.
We had reserved a small studio on the outskirts of London called Lansdowne. Richard would not undertake a trip to the studio without a giant, chilled pitcher of Pimm’s No. 1 Cup, a traditional British concoction that tasted no more threatening than a strong cup of lemonade but packed the wallop of a bad-tempered Oklahoma jackass. Richard was a novice and yet performed admirably with this one caveat. The fact is, recording him strained the existing technical envelope and taxed his physio-mental endurance. Between his enthusiastic efforts and a careful utilization of multitrack recorders we were able to isolate favored lines and passages and retain them for editing. At times inexplicably we would find ourselves working on one word. We tried at great length, for instance, to coax Dick into singing the words “MacArthur Park.” It always came out “MacArthur’s Park” as though a fellow named MacArthur owned the park. Our editing was not advanced enough to nip the “s” off of MacArthur’s. We had to be extra sensitive to our inexperienced artist in order not to break his spirit. We finally let it slide. It would be “MacArthur’s Park” forever.
Richard would sit in the studio on a high stool, his pitcher of Pimm’s snug on a nearby table. Between attempts on the material he would regale us in the booth with detailed anecdotes about various famous anatomies he had known along with sound effects. He might, as the evening progressed, launch into Shakespearean soliloquies and versions of his own poetry, both of which were damn good. He was never visibly drunk or incoherent on the job. He seemed to have a workable détente with the Pimm’s and it was, in fact, a reliable clue as to the length of the session. When the Pimm’s was exhausted, the session was over. In the early hours of the morning we would board his Phantom V and drive the Lansdowne Road back to his flat.
One night we were sitting around the fire at Richard’s with Barbara Parkins and Lindsay Anderson and a famous ex-fighter, along with Clement Freud and many other members of Richard’s usual eclectic mix.
The drinking and the discussion came around to The Beatles, an unavoidable topic in London company. A theoretical question arose from Lindsay.
“Who among the four is really most responsible for their great success?”
“Obviously Paul,” I blurted without my social filter engaged.
“Bollocks!” Richard exploded. “I hate people who say that! Every cunt in the world thinks he has some insight into The Beatles.”
“It’s only an opinion,” I dared to say in my youthful timbre.
“Well, take your bloody fucking opinion and piss off!” He caught me by surprise. I hadn’t seen the angry Richard before. He had always handled me with kid gloves. The fact that historical research and certain autobiographers, most prominently Geoff Emerick in Here, There and Everywhere, have verified McCartney’s single-minded obsession with perfection, that Paul at that time was re-recording Harrison’s guitar parts, overdubbing drums in addition to playing bass and piano, buttress my original opinion. Over the years, however, I have come to respect with something akin to reverence the influence George Martin as producer had over the musicianship of The Beatles, not to mention the fact that he and Geoff were the great enablers of experiments like “A Day in the Life” and “Strawberry Fields.” George was the mastermind who made “Yesterday” and “Eleanor Rigby” into realities. I’m confident every member made a valuable contribution and I’m sure that’s what Harris wanted to say.
I walked out of the apartment, not used to being yelled at, and walked back to the Carlton Hotel in a slight drizzle. Miraculously this rift was mended in the sober light of day with a great round of hugging and kissing. There was, I’m sure, the sudden realization on both sides that we had crossed that fabled Roman stream mounted on the same horse and we needed each other to get to the other side.
We almost lost control of it again when we started bringing rough vocals home from the studio for Richard to audit and rehearse. His voice was too loud, he complained, even though improving the vocal was the whole point. He was insistent on meddling with the process. Later, when he had begun to feel cocky about his vocals and was admiring some of the finished composites, he complained just as bitterly that the orchestra was the culprit and we should turn it down a little for God’s sake! He continued to complain about the orchestra and demanded a remix as the record was being mastered later in the year. This was circumvented.
Vocals finished, Harv headed back to California to work on the Dunhill and Universal deals. I moved in with Richard and settled into a small but comfortable room. It featured a gigantic Victorian bathtub with feet and a sunny curtained window looking out on the roofs of Belgravia. We were good mates again for a while. Parties were frequent; Richard never tired of showing off his luxurious flat. One night it was a human circus as usual: Michael Caine was there; Doug Hayward, the tailor to the stars; the former British Middleweight World champion, scarcely understandable after several severe injuries to the cranium; Sammy Davis, Jr.; Samantha Eggar; Oliver Reed; and so on. I remember on this particular night he had invited his freshly divorced wife Elizabeth and her new beau Rex Harrison. He had done this to show his universal tolerance for all living things but secretly despised the slightly fusty, aging actor.
I had seized an empty chair on the edge of the crowd. Looking across the densely populated room I caught a glimpse of a fantastic-looking chick sitting in a similar chair on the opposite side. It became a game of peek-a-boo, her venturing a smile, and me waiting for her to be revealed for a second in which to wave slyly. The first thing I thought was that her eyes were impossibly large, not plaintive like the ones in the ubiquitous Keane paintings of the time, but entrancing. She had high, almost primitive cheekbones and a thin proud nose. Her hair was pulled back so I could see her tiny and perfectly formed ears, as her petulant and generous mouth smiled at me in frank curiosity. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I stood up and went straight to her like a puppy dog.
I don’t remember exactly what we said to each other. I do remember asking her if she was alone; she said that she was, for the moment. Haltingly I tried to explain who I was and what I was doing there. She listened, seemingly fascinated. “I am very familiar with your accomplishments,” she said and told me about her husband, Leslie Bricusse. I was impressed. The Bricusse/Newley collaborations for Stop the World—I Want to Get Off were familiar to me. The songs were of an extremely high quality and I studied good things. At one point when she and a girlfriend decided to leave I remember her saying, “And what mischief are you going off to, Mr. Webb?” She was flirting a little. I walked her to her car, a Mercedes 300, a very imposing purpose-built limousine, sitting halfway up the street with a driver lounging inside. He leaped out to open the car door.
I took her hand, as though to help her into the rear of the car, and blurted out, “I want to go with you,” with all the subtlety of a moonstruck calf.
“Don’t be silly.” She laughed, but hesitated, and my picture of the world trembled a little at the edges of the frame.
“Call me tomorrow, Richard has my number. I’m Evie.” The ostentatious Mercedes made a great whooshing noise and she was gone with just a suggestion of her French perfume still floating in the air. English girls were new to me. There was nothing in the world as wonderful as the sound of her voice. It was like wind on the water.
Jimmy Webb, Thelma Houston, and Marc Gordon. (Courtesy of Thelma Houston)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
And all this science I don’t understand,
It’s just my job five days a week
A Rocket Man, I’m a Rocket Man
Burnin’ out my fuse out here alone
And I think it’s gonna be a long, long, time …
—Bernie Taupin, “Rocket Man,” 1972
1968, London
I invited Evie to dinner and she in turn invited me to a show. We ate at a trendy restaurant called Papillon, where the surrounding tables whispered and focused so much energy in our direction that Evie got to her
feet and addressed the crowd.
“I have perfect teeth”—she displayed these—“and ears”—she lifted her raven hair to display her ears like tiny seashells—“and I’m his bird!” She laughed hysterically right in their faces and as I stood she kissed me. I asked her to lose Leslie and marry me numerous times, but she was slow to react.
We were brazen enough to attend Sammy Davis, Jr.’s, show at the Palladium, where he put on his whole classic vaudeville act, including rope tricks and quick-draw displays with loud gunshots. He danced the old soft-shoe as he covered “Mr. Bojangles” and sang the hell out of Tony and Leslie’s “What Kind of Fool Am I?” The table was crowded with friends of the Bricusses. After his show Sammy came out and joined us. He and I had a most spirited conversation about civil rights, which ended with his demanding, “Why doesn’t someone write a song called ‘When Can Brown Begin?’” I wrote the title on the back of a linen napkin and carried it away with me.
Sammy was close with Evie and her husband, but he tried to take me in stride. He recorded some of my songs, “Do What You Gotta Do,” “Wichita Lineman,” “Up, Up and Away,” and some of her husband’s songs, “What Kind of Fool Am I?” “The Candy Man,” (both w. Bricusse and Newley), and I can only squirm at the emotional gyrations Sammy was probably experiencing, seeing me with her. But he was the prototypical mensch, quick to smile and physically demonstrative. He would have been remarkable if only for the inexhaustible energy he stored in such a small and seemingly fragile vessel. I have scarcely seen another grown man with such a childlike, almost emaciated frame. However, on stage, as one of the most riveting of performers, he achieved titanic dimensions. Evie adored him.
My home base in London was the penthouse at the Playboy Club. Some might sneer, but they were among the most spacious and private rooms on Park Lane. My suite sprawled across the whole top floor of the building; the casino and club were tucked in a couple of floors below. An outdoor patio and balcony separated from the living space by glass doors hung precariously on the outside of the building like a breathtaking amusement park ride. From this perch, an immense slice of London’s daily life was on display in the streets below.