by Jimmy Webb
“Jesus,” I heard someone whisper under their breath. I pulled my glasses out of my pocket and suddenly the world was clearer. My father was on the island near the top of the cliff. He was freehanding his way down the flat rock wall just beneath the crest. He had no tether rope or even proper clothing. He was in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. He was splayed out like a spider feeling for his next toehold.
“What in fucking hell is he doing?” I asked Harry, who was watching beside me.
“Shhhh!” Harry silenced me. “He’s going after the baby goat, get it?”
I looked farther down the cliff perhaps fifteen or twenty feet and discerned a white ball of fluff, which might have been a house cat, huddled in a niche between two rocks. The animal was wedged in with no way up and a nasty fall in the other direction.
As I watched, my dad’s foot slipped and his bare sole frantically searched for substance on the crumbly wall. Pebbles rained down in a miniature rockslide.
“Oooh!” the Greek chorus chanted in unison.
Dad found a foothold.
“Ahhh!” the spectators reacted with approval.
“Baaaah!” the kid bleated. It was very young and apparently helpless. Other goats were looking down from above. One in particular bleated constantly. The mother, I presumed.
My mouth was open to say, “Be careful, Dad!” but nothing came out. I watched him crab his way down the rock face wondering just what the hell he was going to do when he got down there. He would end up being trapped on a cliff. He worked his way slowly down from the summit at least twenty feet and finally secured himself in a kind of crouch right next to the tiny animal.
The kid made no attempt to escape capture. Dad reached out and scooped him up. Now he would have to climb up the sheer cliff with one arm. Nobody on the deck moved or spoke. I gripped the railing hard.
Dad set out. On the way up he would have to be doubly concerned with his points of purchase as losing his footing would almost certainly result in a fall. If that were to happen I presumed he intended to kick out and try to land in the ocean.
There was something epic in my father’s climb up the rugged cliff with a baby goat in one arm. It was biblical somehow and reminded me of the old Baptist hymn “The Ninety and Nine.” I prayed fervently that he would come to no harm. Notch by notch he groped his way upward using his free hand and feeling for support on the rock face. He shifted the little goat slightly one time but otherwise held it firmly in the crutch of his arm. At last, clinging to the top of the cliff, Dad passed the kid up to its mother. It walked away unsteadily but very much alive.
A great cheer went up on the yacht. I looked at Dad clambering up to safety. His reaction to the applause, if any, was invisible. I was not surprised by what he did. I was surprised that he was physically able to do it. It reminded me again that we do not know each other. None of us know any of us. Art Garfunkel said to me once, in a philosophical mood, “Jim, we are either completely like other human beings to the extent that there is no difference in the way we perceive life, the taste of wine, experience love, et cetera, or we are so essentially different from any other human being as to make a comparison impossible.”
I only know this: To this day I do not know my father and would not claim to. I love him and respect him but I can in no way account for his behavior. All my life he would surprise me, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Never was a son more like a father in appearance and temperament. And yet we do not know each other.
Rev. Webb was brought aboard to hugs and kisses from all the pretty girls. After a day, we upped anchor and Compton backed us away from the rocky, threatening shore. The engines came to life and we made our way south. And so at about ten o’clock that night he steered the great white yacht Magnifico slowly down the channel at Marina del Rey like a ghost ship in the pearlescent ground fog that had suddenly materialized. One of our voyages had come to an end.
Ringo Starr and Jimmy Webb, London. (Courtesy of Garth Sadler)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
For while it’s true that the unexamined life is not worth living,
it’s also the case that the unlived life is not worth examining.
—Robert McKee, 1997
1969
On March 15 I appeared on Playboy After Dark, chatted with Hugh Hefner, and played a couple of songs. We got along well and I found myself invited to “the mansion” in Beverly Hills on several occasions. I usually went with high hopes of coming away with a bunny or two but it quickly became obvious that the bunnies were private stock and they weren’t going anywhere, nor were they about to invite some songwriter for a romp in the high-security area upstairs or the darkened grotto, a popular feature of the pool. It was never intimate. The mansion was always crowded with a few significant stars and a plurality of fringies crowded together like sardines in a can. A federal probe was in progress into alleged drug use at the mansion. We were told politely not to bring any. Often a current movie would be shown and we were actually expected to sit there and watch the damn thing. One night after a screening Hef asked me if I would be interested in scoring a picture and I assured him it was a subject never very far from my mind.
At the beginning of April one of the most influential records of the era was released by Simon and Garfunkel. The epic song “The Boxer” was a new kind of record that to my ear went beyond Spector’s Wall of Sound. It was just as big but cleaner. The lyric hints at more than it reveals. To hear it is to walk into a movie and sit down somewhere in the middle of the show and then try to piece the plot together. I wanted to make records like that.
Against my better judgment I consented to appear on The Dating Game. Three bachelors sat on one side of a screen and a young girl sat on the other. The young girl proffered inane questions and each of “us guys” gave even sillier responses in hopes of winning the maid’s favor and a free date, usually to Disneyland or SeaWorld. I was the “secret” guest star. I didn’t expect to win nor did I try very hard. Imagine my shock when she picked me. Imagine my distress when the “date” turned out to be a trip to Rome for a week. I swallowed hard and agreed to fly to Rome in the middle of a busy recording and writing routine. The young lady was pleasant to look at and had an outgoing personality. Once in Rome I found that far beyond a mere television promotion she looked on the trip as a kind of honeymoon. I had to be on the lookout for her in the long nights. Her chaperone was useless.
I found to my immense dismay that Dating Game had planned every second of our sojourn. We were on camera each day, visiting the Spanish Steps, Saint Peter’s, the Trevi Fountain, and Alfredo alla Scrofa’s golden spoon. After a couple of days I threw a star fit and started scheduling my own activities. It was a long and awkward week. Since I last saw her at the airport, I have neither seen nor heard from my date.
1973
By midyear if I wasn’t snorting coke I was looking for some. Garth did most of the driving because I was wound up too tight. Far from the sophisticated party scene it was an ongoing cycle of binging on the stuff at night, drinking hard to blot out reality, and finally falling into bed with no real memory of going to sleep. To begin to function the next morning it was necessary to snort a line, and the cycle would begin again.
One morning I decided I wanted to drive. I went out to the garage where the Cobra waited patiently in its customized gold metal flake and light blue. I popped into the cockpit and turned the small key. The mill cranked over energetically at first but didn’t catch. By the third attempt at starting, the battery was dead. I went up to the guesthouse and awakened Garth. He came down half asleep and helped me roll the machine out of the garage and point it down the steep driveway. I got in and he gave me a shove. It rolled off slowly, but by the time I got to the curve at the bottom of the driveway we were doing about thirty. Just before we hit the turn I popped the clutch in first gear and it farted a couple of times and died again.
I was in a rage. Cocaine is renowned for making users feel with an intensity that transcends
the ordinary bounds of human emotion. The unbridled anger that comes with it has gotten a lot of people beaten senseless or killed. It could be said I wasn’t in my right mind when I told Garth to bring his Camaro down the driveway to give me a pushing start. When he got there he took a hard look at the rear end of the Cobra and the front end of the Camaro.
“These bumpers are not a match. No way.”
“Push this motherfucker until it fires up!”
He shrugged and slowly walked back and got into the Camaro. As gently as he could, he began pushing the Cobra along Encino Avenue. The Cobra fussed and backfired trying to start but more than likely the plugs were fouled or the timing was off or both.
We got to the corner and I waved at him and sat in the car seething. He parked and walked up to me.
“Uh, dude, you better have a look at what’s going on back here.” The bumper tubing was bent like a pretzel. There were spiderweb cracks in the gloss coat.
“God-fucking-damn it!” I looked up to heaven and challenged the lightning bolts. I could barely breathe; I was choked with fury.
“We’ll try it once more,” I said through clenched teeth, walking in tight circles, looking for something to attack.
I took my place in the car I loved so much, completely out of control.
“Faster, this time!” I yelled, without turning my head.
With a sickening grinding noise Garth eased into the Cobra again and I turned the corner.
“Faster, goddamn it!” I yelled, and with an occasional unavoidable bump he pushed me up to near fifty miles an hour on the long straight. The Cobra, as though in shock, had given up on trying to start, the proud motor just going through the motions. I coasted to a stop and pulled over to a grassy shoulder and parked her well off the street under some trees. I walked back to Garth’s car without even looking at the obscene point of contact. I was no less incensed, but my fury had frozen into an icy wall.
He drove us home and I went to the stairs. I closed the heavy soundproof door at the bottom and went up to my room. I lay down on the bed and wept. The Cobra went back to Mike Fennel’s.
Soon after, Garth and I shipped out for England and the new album. We moved into a mews house with a gated courtyard in Mayfair called Three Kings Yard. The flat was expansive for London with a living room and a roomy kitchen downstairs, a full bath and two bedrooms upstairs. I wouldn’t have minded living there for the rest of my life.
Aside from California oranges and some albums, almost everything we brought remained in our suitcases. Within a few hours we had the telephone number of a lady nicknamed Chalita, who lived in Soho. Jesse Ed Davis and Harry Nilsson had agreed that this was the best connection in London. With the help of Chalita, my self-abuse continued unabated.
I met with Robin Cable for curry at a local Indian restaurant to talk about logistics. He mentioned almost straight off the bat that after Son of Schmilsson he had been involved in a very serious motorcycle accident. He still looked a little spaced out; he was forgetful and clumsy with his cutlery. He confessed his hearing had been affected for a little while but that he was now “back in fine fettle” and raring to get in the studio. I went back to the mews house seriously concerned.
We started cutting tracks with some of Elton John’s favorite players: Nigel Olsson, drummer; Davey Johnstone, guitar; Dee Murray on bass; and Brian “Badger” Hodges, acoustic. Most of the rhythm dates took place at Trident. It so happened that Harry and Ringo Starr came by the sessions on occasion and the idea was floated that maybe Ringo would play on a couple of songs. This sounded good but I didn’t take it too seriously. One afternoon I walked into the Trident control room and a very famous drum kit was sitting front and center. On the bass drum was the famous logo: THE BEATLES.
Ringo had come by to play, after getting his kit down from the rafters of the garage, by his account. He sat down and Robin asked him to hit his snare. Usually a half-dozen solid smacks on the snare would be enough to satisfy the most persnickety engineer and a few adjustments would be made. In a rare case perhaps a piece of tape would be laid across the drum or sometimes an object (Hal Blaine used his wallet) to achieve a muting effect. Instead, Robin rushed out and relocated all the microphones on the snare. Ringo whacked on that snare for two hours. Every drum was subject to the same rigorous testing standards. It took hours to tune the bass drum and adjust the mikes. Ringo sat patiently, thumping away with his foot. Sometimes he would come into the booth and look at me forlornly. When Robin bustled out to adjust yet another microphone he would lodge a gentle protest.
“Jim, why am I just whackin’ me drums?” he asked with a little smile.
“I’m embarrassed, man. I will see if I can hurry him along.” I blushed deeply.
“You know he’s had a mash-up on his motorcycle?” Ringo asked, tapping his temple.
“Yeah, I’ve heard.”
At last we were able to finish a basic track on “Walk Your Feet in the Sunshine” with Ringo playing a brilliant part, but in the process we lost him. He walked out of the studio amiably but determined not to do any more drum whacking. I went home that night grinding my teeth. If we could have just gotten our foot out, there was a slim chance he would have done the whole record with me.
We struggled along, and tackled the title piece and most ambitious track on the album, “Asleep on the Wind.” We booked the Music Centre in Wembley, known then as DeLean Ley, a room that could easily hold a hundred musicians. Robin and I envisioned the largest recording session of modern times. It would be a kind of Berlioz super-orchestra with three pianos, three drummers, eight guitars, forty strings, twenty brass and woodwinds just to start. I checked with David Geffen personally before setting off and he okayed it. He believed there was a reason for me to make that record. He expected a return.
I began laying the arrangement out in the living room at Three Kings Yard. The prelude to the song was as long as a main title for a major motion picture. Thirty full orchestra pages were spread out on the living room floor in order to create a rough plan. I wrote a classically influenced tone poem depicting a sinking ship in a tumultuous sea, sending out a last desperate S.O.S., and this was merely the intro. A couple of weeks and several grams of coke later, the pages started going off to the copyist.
The day of the super session finally dawned. The little bar in the lobby of the studio was overflowing with string players long before start time. The rhythm section had been called early and I was already rehearsing them as Robin frantically fiddled with the control desk attempting to create a cohesive rhythm sound out of a score of rockers. The booth at the Music Centre is suspended above the hangar-like studio and looks down on the entire orchestra. On this day the view was awe inspiring from above as a forest of double basses took their places, and were joined by fifty-odd violins and violas. A host of cello players were seated with a special dignity. The French horn players uncased their shiny instruments along with the other brass in a field of open bells. A copse of woodwinds grew near the podium on my right. Directly beneath the booth were three concert grand pianos and expansive drum kits surrounded by a music store full of amplifiers for the eight guitarists. I mounted the podium with a strange calm. I thought about Rosemarie and how she would laugh if she could see me in this situation. How she would tease me and ask, “Don’t you think you’re overdoing the maestro bit?” I was not partial to batons and usually conducted with my hands but with this great host in front of me I opted for a modest baton. I raised it. I carved the first beat.
A “clam” is a composing or copying mistake that causes a discordant blot in a music passage. There were few of these if any as we embarked on the dramatic voyage of “Asleep on the Wind,” the title derived from a line of dialogue by Tennessee Williams. I was immaculately prepared and the orchestra treated me with a gratifying courtesy. There were no snarky asides about fingering or voicing. I had made no mistakes in transposition, so the much-feared unplayable note did not materialize. I didn’t hear one virtuoso crossly mutt
ering under his breath about the dubious location of the downbeat. It went so quickly and so well it was almost over before I knew it. I stepped off the podium sweating and emptied out. All of the Rosemarie music was recorded. There were other exertions ahead, but the great labors of orchestration and tracking were behind me.
I invited Joni over to sing on a track and remarkably she came and brought her D-18 with her. She sat in the living room at King’s Yard and played songs that were works in progress. I watched her hands, her eyes, her fingers, and listened with unrelenting absorption. She allowed me to glance at some of her notebooks where lyrics were written and copied and recopied. Her method was, to put it simply, extensive and concentrated rewriting. Version after version of the same lyric would be tried, verses sometimes crossed out completely and then re-created. These songs were to became the lovely Court and Spark album. As she played, I realized she was trying the songs out on us, subtly watching our reactions as we were completely entranced by her.
Joni, my sister Susan, and I went to Trident one afternoon to lay down vocals on “Walk Your Feet in the Sunshine.” Our parts were simple at first but by the time we reached the repeated fade we were multitracking interlaced contrapuntal doo-wop parts and having a ball. That night the studio crew and the Kings Yard Kids stormed a Portuguese restaurant. Joni was staying at the Dorchester and joined us. After a few vodkas, a chant went up for Joni to sing. She smiled politely and declined, citing her lack of any form of stringed instrument. Hanging above her head on the wall was a cutaway Portuguese guitar. I took it down and to my immense surprise found it playable. I handed it to her. She gracefully submitted and began tuning the antique. Its voice was deep and melodious. She sang, “I remember that time you told me ‘Love is touching souls.’ Well surely you’ve touched mine, ’cause part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time.” Every fork in the joint froze in midair at the sound of her voice. When she finished, there was raucous applause. She examined the guitar and toyed with the bridge and the tuning pegs. I went to the maître d’hôtel and privately asked him if I could buy the instrument. After some tense negotiations (it seemed it was a family heirloom) he agreed to sell it to me for a couple hundred pounds. As we were exiting the tightly packed booth after dinner I said to Joni, “Don’t forget your guitar.” Her eyes widened. I put it in her hands.