by Jimmy Webb
Considering I sung about her virtually every day, I had done a reasonably good job of living without Rosemarie. Weeks passed and I had become resigned to the fact that she was back at home where she probably belonged.
I was sitting in a window seat at the front of Kings Yard when I saw her come to the guard’s booth and pause to flirt for a moment with the old geezer before he got out of his chair and opened the gate for her. She came into the courtyard walking straight toward me: the hair stood up on the back of my neck. She was wearing a pair of faded jeans and a silk blouse, platform shoes so high it looked as though she might fall off of them. Before she got to the door, I had her in my arms. With a look of sweet surprise she surrendered to me for a moment as a few drops of rain spattered onto the cobblestones. I held her close for a while and then she pushed me away laughing.
“Let’s have a look at you then!” She laughed and scanned my face for any signs of wear.
“Aw, puddin’ face. You’re not looking after yourself,” she chided. Or as Ava had said to Sinatra “Frank, you look like shit.” A scrap of music floated from the wireless in the guard’s station and she took me around the waist and eased me into a little waltz. I turned with her, still intoxicated by the physical effect she had on me. The rain became a steady sprinkle as we danced to the radio.
“Come in,” I invited.
“Can’t. I’ve got my poor husband with me.” She laughed again.
“What, here?”
“Well, in the hotel.”
I stopped dancing.
“You can’t do this. You can’t just come out of the rain and stove me in and then go off to your husband. I won’t have it.”
“It could be so simple,” she countered. She just wanted a willing, uncomplicated lover. There was nothing preventing us from seeing each other now and again, was there?
“You might not believe this,” I replied gravely as the rain began to pour. “But I feel sorry for that poor bastard. Don’t come around to tease me anymore.”
I turned on my heel and walked away from Rosemarie. I looked for her through the window and saw the guard walking away from his post, holding an umbrella over her head.
Harry blew into town to help me beat back the evil spirits. He invited me to move into his flat on Curzon Street and Garth and I jumped at the chance. Robin Cable and I had moved the album project into a mixing room. It was night after night of endless mixing dates that seemed to go nowhere. Robin continued to complain of headaches and difficulty hearing. A certain odd expression would cross his face at times and I could tell he was hurting real bad.
I would take the rough mixes back to the flat and listen with extreme care. The mixes were making me queasy. I was drowning in echo. The singer/songwriter movement was scaling down and drying out while I was adrift in a monsoon of echo cocktails and megalithic effects. We were literally on the wrong track.
I called Richard Perry one night on the transatlantic cable. In his deep, reassuring bass he told me he would be happy to give an opinion. I put a half-dozen roughs and a couple of reels in the mail to California, while guiltily working in earnest with Robin.
A few days later Richard called.
“I think you should get your masters and uh … come back to California.”
It was like a pail in the face. Not just the water, the whole pail.
“I think Robin came back to work a little too soon,” he said uneasily. He thought a lot of Robin. It was a bad position to be in.
“Right. Thanks, Richard.” The circuit hung open for a moment and we listened to each other’s breathing before the line went dead.
I sat there for five minutes doing the math.
“Gar?” Garth was in the bathroom taking a shower.
“Hello?” he said through the door.
“We’re leaving!” I shouted. The water abruptly turned off.
1969
At the end of April, Capitol released “Where’s the Playground, Susie?” to follow “Galveston” from the eponymous album. It made a quick run to number 26 and then slowly fell off. Glen moved on like a juggernaut to other writers and interpreted songs by Larry Weiss (“Rhinestone Cowboy”) and Allen Toussaint (“Southern Nights”) brilliantly.
Nina Simone’s cover of “Do What You Gotta Do,” one of Johnny Rivers’ copyrights, had inspired June’s release of two surprising covers, one by the Four Tops and the other by groundbreaking songwriter and Vegas superstar Paul Anka.
By the beginning of July, Isaac Hayes would release his cover of “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” eighteen minutes and forty-two seconds of drama. The record incorporated a lengthy improvised preamble by Hayes as he sets the scene for the lyric itself. To be fully grasped his concept must be heard, but it became an instant classic.
Later in the same month Waylon Jennings, a seasoned country artist and one-time bass player for Buddy Holly, would cover “Mac Park” for the first time. He would record it three times in all, a record that has never been challenged and is unlikely to be surpassed.
I was rattling around in the big house I had bought. I had not yet discovered soaring or Cobras or mysterious women. I tiptoed around the fact that one day I called the Devil and invited him over for a drink—though he didn’t actually drink. At least not like your usual alcoholic. I asked him about Susan. How was she? His answer was strange. She was living up in the mountains “with some weird people.” He was distancing himself. The remark worried me because I still cared about her. A few piña coladas and half a bottle of Commemorativo later we were talking about taking a trip to Hawaii.
1973
Back in the United States I moved Land’s End into A&M Studios. After clearing it with Joni I put the mixing in the hands of her producer Henry Lewy and I felt very good about that. She recorded frequently and routinely just across the hall from our little mixing suite. Lewy was widely respected for his soft hands on Joni’s records. He began methodically to sort out some of the excessive production on Land’s End and we did more work on vocals. He was absolutely trustworthy when it came to notes. If you were under you were under. If you were sharp he could hear it and would sound the alarm.
I spent the month of December in relative quiet. In fact I was getting quietly drunk on Christmas Eve when I heard someone knocking on the front door of my house.
I wobbled on my way to the heavy door that faced out on the verdant front yard and the walkway to the swimming pool. I opened it, peering through the crack suspiciously to see what misfortune awaited. The lighthearted lyrics of “Joy to the World” and the trilling of carolers burst like a firework over my work-weary ears.
Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, J. D. Souther, James Taylor, and Peter Asher, among others, stood in the chilly evening and sang three carols in four-part harmony. I stood there more than a little rumpled and probably needing a shave. I was genuinely overjoyed to see those smiling faces. They stayed only a short time, having many stops to make that night, and drove off like the very embodiment of Christmas. It may have been the best present I ever got.
Land’s End really was my best shot ever for a hit album. The songs were at the extreme reach of my ability and nothing if not authentic. And it was in tune. England’s finest musicians backed on every track. Not a penny had been spared. The owner of the label was my rabbi and mentor. It was the second release on Asylum Records and all over the country critics, for many reasons, were sharpening their pencils in anticipation of this high-profile bid. Most of them were supporters of mine and had held my position through three unsuccessful ventures. These critics, whom I had vilified in my first concert at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, were ironically among my most ardent fans. I was a repeat underdog.
I suppose in all fairness I should add there were others who just didn’t give a shit, and didn’t take me seriously anymore, if they ever had. Fair enough.
When I considered an album cover, my thoughts immediately went to sailplanes and the way the hot air balloon had been used to focus public attention on the
5th Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away.”
We all naturally wanted to use photographer Henry Diltz, who had done hit album covers for America, the Eagles, the Doors, and—with partner Gary Burden—literally hundreds of other artists. He was the master of the “big picture,” that perfect shot that captures the essence of the music inside the cover.
“We could go out to the desert with a couple of Panavision 35’s,” Henry said when I came to him with the idea. “We could get up in your plane and do it in one day. Do you think we could have helicopters following us?”
He was off and running with it. This bond between music and flight and the title Land’s End was like a seamless piece of perfect luck.
I made ten flights that day, starting about noon and lasting through the afternoon. It became a deceptively simple routine. Henry and I would go up to ten thousand feet and take a tow all the way over to the mountain. When we reached Blue Ridge, about fifteen miles from the airport, we would release. It was a day of surprisingly strong lift, largely generated by a vigorous wind out of the west as it passed over the mountain. The maxim, oft-repeated among glider pilots, is “Wherever there is strong lift there is somewhere nearby heavy sink.” Though we battled turbulence from time to time in an effort to get a stable shot, the ridge lift was fairly consistent and we routinely exhausted Henry’s supply of film before we had to return to base for fresh rolls, water, and to stretch our legs. As we finished the tenth flight of the day we were looking forward to the most exciting part of the shoot: Helicopters were set to arrive with stabilized mounts to shoot air to air, full shots of the glider against stunning backgrounds. They were late to arrive, and loath to waste a single precious second, but Henry suggested we do one more pass.
My heart was well and truly into this effort but I was experiencing a little fatigue. I brushed it off and clambered back into the Schweizer 2-32’s roomy rear cockpit as Henry struggled into the smaller front cockpit with the awkward and heavy Panavision. We towed out to Blue Ridge and a couple of times got slammed up against the canopy by some very impertinent turbulence. No big deal. Just part of the game. A low cloud was forming just over the crest and I deliberately let the glider become partially engulfed. It was a stunning shot for the camera. I flew the ridge until Baden-Powell loomed over us to the left. I put her up on one wing and made a tight 180-degree turn to port.
“Whoa!” Henry said from the front, and we both laughed as I rolled the big wing straight and level.
“Let’s do it again,” he said. “Only this time let’s go in and out of the cloud.”
Yes, but I didn’t want to lose visibility completely within a few feet of the top of the ridge. I flew south again, checking my variometer, and discovered we were maintaining altitude at about 200-plus feet per minute. Close to minimums, but I began planning another run.
In the blackness above us, beyond the atmosphere, planetary clocks rang in alarm as the Brobdingnagian machines of the gods began to adjust the future. A black hole in time swept nearer to us in the invisible world. I was trembling on the edge of a razor blade and didn’t know it. I laid the stick to the right in a medium bank as the sailplane swung its nose around the compass.
“This time let’s try to get into something really hairy!” Hank exhorted. As I stopped the turn on a northerly heading I stared in horror at my instruments.
“We’re already into something really hairy,” I said.
“What?”
I was looking at my variometer, a special instrument that tells the pilot which way he’s headed: up or down and how fast. It was pegged in the negative position. The ship was losing altitude by at least 1,500 feet a minute. I had been sloppy in the turn. I should have snapped it around in a crisp 180. I had turned the wrong fucking way, toward the mountain. I deepened my angle of bank and then flew directly at the ridge, perhaps a mile away. It was going to be close. I fiddled with my MacCready speed ring to find the best speed to fly. In essence the solution was to go like hell. I put the nose down and ran for the ridge at near red line. Turbulence batted at the glider like a kitten stalking a feather on a piece of string.
Making contact with the ridge would be unacceptable and not survivable. I ran right up to it. I could see the pinecones in the trees on the flank of it. With a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach I realized I would miss clearing it by at least the length of one giant tree. I would pile into the top of the ridge at high speed and we would both be killed instantly. At the very last second I turned away to port looking for a low spot or dip in the natural barrier. There was Vincent’s Gap two or three miles to the north. I checked my variometer again and turned west into the canyon.
“We’re going down,” I said to Henry.
“We’re going back?”
“Down there,” I said, pointing toward the ground.
“Oh, really?” He took it in stride.
I looked over the side and saw a thin, snaking riverbed in the depths of the gulch. There was nothing else in sight and coming down in the trees was probably going to kill us.
“I’m going to make an emergency approach on that riverbed.”
“I’m going to keep shooting,” said Henry.
“Okay, good idea.” I didn’t want to scare him with the hopelessness of our predicament.
While I still had altitude, I flew up and looked for the smoothest part of the riverbed. It seemed to me it was more flat and level about halfway through the canyon. It looked almost inviting until I realized that every pebble in that riverbed was the size of a Winnebago and there were more than enough boulders and flood debris scattered about as to make it virtually impassable.
A cold fist gripped at my gut as I realized this was probably the end. I could hear Henry asking for angels to be there with us.
I entered pattern altitude at a thousand feet and began to fly my downwind leg parallel to the trickle of water and stony obstacle course of the river. I could hear Fred Robinson’s voice saying, “Always keep flying the glider, never give up or abandon the controls.”
I turned my base leg. It became more of a sharp steep turn in the narrow confines of the gulch. I straightened out on final. I let the glider settle, keeping it straight and level.
The tops of the pines floated up to meet us. A sense of universal placidity came over me. I thought of love and how it had governed most of my decisions. I could rest with that. The colors became intense. I noticed suddenly that the forest wasn’t just green. It was fifty shades of green, all in a blur beneath the glider. There was a barely perceptible wrench that segued to an inconceivable deceleration, a half second of darkness, and then oblivion.
In a gradual accumulation of sensation, punctuated by the liquid calls of birds against a primeval silence, I began to realize I was not dead.
I slowly opened my eyes; the left one was not operating properly. Through the fuzzy forward view that my vision provided I could just discern what remained of the cockpit and Henry hanging inert in his five-point harness. I could see blood. Lots of it, dripping from his head. My first thought was, God, please don’t let me be the only survivor.
I experimented and found I could move my left leg. I lifted it slightly and was able to touch him gently on the shoulder with my foot. I pushed.
“Nnnnnnngh,” Henry groaned. My heart leaped in my chest. He was bloodied but not bloody dead. My arms felt like a mannequin’s, my fingers stiff and shaking. However, I was able to separate myself from the glider by unfastening the quick release on the harness. I made sure I was still hanging on to it though. After all, we were halfway up a tree. Gingerly I made my way to the ground some ten feet below.
“Hank, you okay? Can you hear me?”
He looked at me and managed a smile.
I half-lifted him out of the cockpit, not easy to do with his fractured leg, and we both sat down on a nearby rock. I took my bandana over to the stream and wetted it. I brought it back so he could clear his vision.
“Your eye,” Henry said with concern.
&nbs
p; “Ah, it’s okay. I can still see you.” I grinned. “We made it Henry. It’s a miracle.”
He reached inside his shirt pocket and took out a ready roll.
“Want a joint?” he asked with a wide smile beaming through a bloody mask. We fired up the splif and inhaled deeply, looking out on a nature study from a weekend artist’s sale. A tranquil little stream gurgled down through the rock-strewn hillside. Firs and pines grew on either side; a red-tailed hawk’s nest loomed in a rough sphere of dead leaves and sticks in the top of a nearby big pine. Far above was the snow-crowned summit of Baden-Powell, the sun plummeting toward the west, the long shadows reaching out for us.
Jimmy Webb and Harry Nilsson on the Magnifico. (Courtesy of the author)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Hope I die before I get old.
—Peter Townshend, 1965
1973
I had temporarily lost track of Harry until it became big news. John Lennon was in L.A. and he and Harry were on the Endless Hang, more widely known as “Lennon’s Lost Weekend.” It was common knowledge that Yoko Ono and John had agreed to a temporary separation with no caveats on behavior. Putting Nilsson and Lennon together without a buffer was one of the great bad ideas of all time. For a while I heard nothing about Harry at all. I continued to work at A&M.
The top hanger in Hollywood called me early on the morning of March 13. Five in the morning to be precise.
“Who the fuck is this?” I growled. “Do you know what time it is?”