POP MUSIC
Pete Fornatale 59:39
Pete Fornatale back with you on mixed bag radio with my special guests today. Jimmy Webb we are at the Museum of television and radio in New York City. Jimmy unfortunately, a short time ago, we heard the news about the passing of Richard Harris. And I was one Wondering almost immediately from then to this moment, how you heard about it and what went through your mind when you did hear about it?
Jimmy Webb 1:00:10
Well it was it was very anticlimactic, because they have now they have the scrolls at the bottom of all the newscasts. And so more likely than not, you're going to hear about it. While you're watching someone else in the thing is going to roll by it's gonna say Richard Harris, and that will catch your eye and it says Richard Harris dead at done another nada die. I said it went, Oh, well, it was terrible. It was terrible because we had so much unfinished business between us because we had sort of spent a lifetime sparring with each other over various issues. And I'm immediately kind of went into some deep mourning. It took me back to my youth because when I met Richard, I was only about 20 years old, he was 40 or so. And he literally took me out to educate me in the ways of the world, which he wasn't, you know, and he was an expert in the ways of the world. And so, you know, he, he, you know, taught me how to lay siege to pubs and, and capture fair maidens carry them off and despoil them and then, you know, drink all the wine in the house and then go to someone else's house and capture their house and spoil it. But I just, I just loved him. So there's no, there's no way I could ever tell. In words. The love I had for this great big riotously funny, explosive man who believed so much in my music that he would take this outrageous seven minute 21 second long song and insist on recording it insist that it was going to be a hit and by God it was a hit, you know, just just an amazing guy.
Pete Fornatale 1:02:27
How did that unlikely pairing come about?
Jimmy Webb 1:02:35
Well he and I used to it goes back to LA to some charity work, we were doing together some benefits, doing the late 60s and just hanging around the piano and doing some pints. And I have to say that my standard disclaimer is I don't drink anymore okay, but in those days I really used to put it away and there's nothing that goes quite as well with drank as Irish music. And he must have taught me 40 or 50 Irish songs and three four weeks beautiful things like don't give me a little piano here.
Jimmy Webb 1:03:48
the stuff got under my skin in a big way. You know, and a lot of the foci stuff that came later the the highwayman, the Moon is a Harsh Mistress a lot. A lot of this stuff was was really the seeds were planted by Richard and by this by trips that we took to Ireland and just wonderful things that we did together. But to answer your question specifically about how that album happened, is we kept saying, Well, one day we'll make a record together. One. Jimmy Webb, you always call me Jimmy Webb never called me Jimmy never called me Webb. Always call me Jimmy Webb. He said Hi, Jimmy Webb one day we'll have to make a record together. And I'd say yeah, Richard. Sure. We'll do that. You know, and, again, give it no more thought. And then one day, a telegram arrives at my house in Los Angeles and it says, Do Jimmy.Come London? Make record? Love Richard. That would be the telegraph. And the next thing you know, I'm on a plane to London and I've got all my songs with me. We're in his apartment and we're going through song after song after song. No, no, no. Don't like that. Don't care for that. Nope, nope. Nope. Like that one like that one. No, don't like that. Finally, same situation with as with Artie Garfunkel, you get through all the songs and there's no songs left. And he says, well, is that it? Is that all? Well, no, I've got this one song that was written for somebody else. And they turned it down. And every songwriter has one of those way down at the bottom of the trunk. He just kind of hesitate to bring it out. He said, let's see it. So I brought it out. It's huge. It goes put it up on the piano. I think I played I played.
Jimmy Webb 1:06:23
He said, I'll have that. That was that was the end of it. It was done. It was a done deal. And then it was all
Jimmy Webb 1:06:42
everybody thought we were crazy. You know, and they I mean, they absolutely thought we were crazy. When the radio stations got the record. They said what is this? You know, I mean, it would have been some FM stations that had played jams by Bob Dylan and the doors and different things but never this highly structured and you know, almost classical music. And and the most unlikely thing in the world happened I became a huge international success. I mean, absolutely mind blowing. There. There are little ripples around MacArthur Park, we actually could do a show about MacArthur Park,
Pete Fornatale 1:07:26
no question. You use the word big. It was a phenomenon.
Jimmy Webb 1:07:31
It's you know, it's been recorded over 500 times.
Pete Fornatale 1:07:34
And it's had more lives than a cat.
Jimmy Webb 1:07:37
Well, some of the some of the people who have recorded it makes an interesting list, I think just is kind of illuminating in itself. And these just come off the top my head. Maynard Ferguson, Don Ellis, Tony Bennett, Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra did the center section. Don novella did it in character as Father Guido Sarducci, which was really a kick.
Pete Fornatale 1:08:09
I gotta find that one.
Jimmy Webb 1:08:11
It was in the movie airplane to there's a big elevator that comes down. That holds about 50 people and the doors open and there's a stampede of people trying to get out of the elevator because the music is playing MacArthur Park. I gave them I gave them permission to do all this stuff. There's the weird Weird Al Yankovic did Jurassic Park is melting in the dark and he had he had a he had a Tyrannosaurus rex eat Barney. And it i It it it literally there's story after story after story. Artists who just couldn't leave it, they can't leave it alone to this day. They can't leave it alone. Especially comedians comedians loved it. And it was just it was it was it was done in Germany. It's been it's been a hit in Germany like 10 times, to fraudulence. You know, I mean, you know, who knows? Who knows what's going on out there? I mean, we didn't know. We had no idea. And in fact, one of the great you know, God bless him. I mean, he's gone now, one of the great turmoils of our lives and one of the bones of contention that was between us for so many years. Was that one night when we were riding back from the studio at Lansdowne Road. And we were just two fellows on a lark. Does anyone seriously think we thought we were going out to sell platinum albums? I mean, we were drunk. We had a he used to take a picture of PIMS to the studio every night like a Pimm's number one and then was to two benches, two stools in front of the microphone. One was for Richard and one was for the pims. And as soon as the pims was gone, the session was over. This is about how this is how serious we were. So one night we're motoring along in a phantom five Rolls Royce. These things were gorgeous. You know, you saw John Lennon had one that was painted all in rain, psychedelic colors. And we're going along in the Phantom five. And he says, I tell you what, Jimmy Webb.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:31
He said, If this record is a hit, is as if it's a hit. I had to give you this phantom five.
Jimmy Webb 1:10:43
And I said no, no, Richard. Yeah. No, you don't have to do that. No, no, no. I'll give you this phantom five, if this records a hit, if this records number two, if it's number two. Right. You would give me this car? Well, MacArthur Park was number two in the United States for weeks. We never, we never got into number one. I can't remember why. But I think it was, hey, Jude. I think it was hey, Jude kept us out. And it was number one in France. And it was number one in Germany. And it was number one in Australia. And it was number one in New Zealand. And it was was this international phenomenon. So he clearly Oh, owed me this car. I mean, let's let's, let's just put it right out there. Okay, he opened his big mouth, and he clearly owed me this car, right?
Pete Fornatale 1:11:45
Is there a buck coming?
Jimmy Webb 1:11:46
He never gave it.
Pete Fornatale 1:11:48
I'm shocked.
Jimmy Webb 1:11:50
He never gave it to me. He could never bring himself to give it to me. God bless him. Did he tried to give me other cars? He tried to wiggle other cars and say, Well, why don't you take this Bentley? Why don't you take this? Now I've got this nice silver shadow. That's 1917. That's a gorgeous, you know, he would he would run ringers in on me. But he didn't want to give me that car. And I think it had something to do with the royal household. I think he'd gotten it from Princess Margaret or something. And he had any sort of sentimental attachment to it.
Pete Fornatale 1:12:28
What did he make the offer under the influence? That might be the only out I'd give him?
Jimmy Webb 1:12:33
No, especially especially under the influence he got. He pays up. All right now, especially if he's drunk, he's got to pay and my passion in the whole situation. And he got angry at me for telling this story. And I, I stopped telling it. Because I knew that there were reverberating reverberations, from me telling the story. So I'm bummed up and stop telling. But my passion was, came straight from the heart. It was out of love of that man that I wanted his car. And for no other reason. Not because it was a Rolls Royce. Not because it was worth X dollars. But because of MacArthur Park and because of his promise, and because he was my friend and because I loved him like a father and a brother and God all rolled into one. That's why I wanted that car. That's why I wanted it. And that's why I never really completely fully accepted that he didn't give it to me.
Pete Fornatale 1:13:55
Jimmy, tell me true. Did he ever walk in to the studio or your house and say, Jimmy Webb, what the hell does this mean?
Jimmy Webb 1:14:10
No. He knew exactly what it meant. We were the only two people in the world who knew what it meant. And now he's dead.
Pete Fornatale 1:14:22
I once asked you this question, I will ask it exactly the same way again, is MacArthur Park your rosebud?
Jimmy Webb 1:14:31
It it's? Well, you know what? It's interesting. It's a surreal piece, sort of written in the style of a lot of psychedelia. A lot of psychedelic lyrics that go unchallenged. They marched right across the drawbridge nights in white satin, that what's that about? And what were Strawberry Fields in I mean, a lot of these psychedelic songs just marched right across the drawbridge. But when MacArthur Park marches up to the drawbridge, hold there. Hold hold. Is that MacArthur Park? I hear down there. We'll have to see your papers, please. You know, I mean, so much trash was written that was just a bunch more psychedelic trash. I mean, let's be honest, party, there's a not very nice love song in the middle of it called after all the loves in my life. It's the natrual loved and recorded as a separate song. And then there's MacArthur Park. And there's the fast bit and there's the classical bit. And it's seven minutes 21 seconds long. And, and a bit of a monster, because it did become that sort of rosebud. Like, question that follows you around for the rest of your life, whether you like it or not, that will probably be somewhere there in your epitaph after your, you know, that's that will be the last crack that someone will make about you after you you know, died a horrible death is an anyway, what did the cake out in the rain mean? You know, and that will be the last thing said about you. You know, and you just, you know, I don't know, you just create certain things. I mean, we have all created monster Frankenstein created a monster walked about the countryside, you know, disturbing the neighbors. I mean, this is MacArthur Park, it's this big thing that got loose. And no one, no one knows how it got loose, and it wasn't supposed to get loose. And people were saying and who said it loose. They wanted to, to blame someone and was just there
Pete Fornatale 1:16:54
in your mind who opened the door to that kind of songwriting, songwriting that was imagistic songwriting that was surreal, as you say,
Jimmy Webb 1:17:05
Oh, it was the Beatles. Yeah, it was the Beatles. It was the Beatles using drugs and, and slamming. Well, Bob Dylan was really doing some incredible things lyrically, so I can't, I can't say I wasn't influenced by Bob Dylan. But clearly, I mean, the Beatles took the gloves off and just said, Alright, we're gonna write this song, and good luck, because we're the only ones in the world and have a clue as to what this is all about. Because it's all about inside conversations that we've had in the studio while we've been making the record. So you will never figure it out. And we'll probably never tell you. And, you know, so I mean, know that they were they were the culprits. I mean, they were the ones. And, you know, many, many, many people followed suit. It was a style. I mean, it's not like I went down in history as a guy who wrote nonsensical, you know, sort of Lewis Lewis Carroll ish, kind of lyrics, I would have, I know that if I had another shot at it, I could, I could do a decent job of rewriting MacArthur Park. And, you know, I wouldn't have been so quick to throw it together, less surreal. I wrote it as a kind of a demonstration piece for bones house because he said, what could you do if you wanted to combine classical music and rock in a long piece that had movements? And I said, for the radio, he said, Yeah, you'd want to play it on the radio? I said, Well, I don't know. It's but it's a fascinating idea. And there's George Martin. And certainly, once one has heard yesterday, one knows that the musical world that the world has been tilted on its ear, and now anything is possible. I certainly did. I knew that once I heard what George Martin was doing with the Beatles, that all bets were off. That it that you could try anything. And so I so in a way, it was kind of a prototype. So I mean, in a way it was kind of an unfinished airplane. You know. I mean, I'm really being honest. It was sort of like an unfinished plane, but Richard grabbed it, and he said, I'll have that. And he was the type of man who wasn't going to wait for you to finish the plane. It was just going to be done now and recorded, done, sent out
Pete Fornatale 1:20:04
unfinished or not it took off on its own.
Jimmy Webb 1:20:07
And it just, you know, I had this weird life. I asked you earlier about goes on when you even as we speak,
Pete Fornatale 1:20:16
even right here today, when you fling something like that out there and people get their hooks into it. Over the years have there been interpretations? I'm not talking about the Yankovic thing now, have there been interpretations that amused you or angered you? of that particular song?
Jimmy Webb 1:20:37
No, I feel you know, there's no, there's no rules, that that's kind of what we were doing is saying, you know, and I felt, I feel that to not have a sense of humor about that song is to make would have been to make a grave error on my part, and to have protected it, like some sort of national treasure. You know, when it was really when it really did have flaws, and some of them we're kind of funny, somewhat, we're kind of comic in loves hot, fevered iron, like a stripe ID pair of pants, which I use in my in my book on songwriting as an example of mixing metaphors. And how does that whole line goes? Oh, it doesn't matter. I refuse to repeat it. I refuse to ever, you know, you can hear it if you want to. But I, I mean, I put it on a page with with some other absolutely horrific mixed metaphors as a classic example of what not to do. And, and I wasn't thinking about that. We were just kids. I think that and that's no excuse because Mozart was just a kid too. You don't tell me you're just a kid. You know, Mozart was just a kid. But we were just kids on drugs. We were just kids in California on drugs, having fun. And somehow or other some of these things got done. And they got out of hand they, you know, they took on epic proportions that were far beyond what they were ever intended to be.
Pete Fornatale 1:22:44
And just to post scripts to the story. It did win a country Grammy,
Jimmy Webb 1:22:50
Waylon Jennings recorded three times.
Pete Fornatale 1:22:54
And one of those received those
Jimmy Webb 1:22:58
And it was the song of the year,
Pete Fornatale 1:22:59
and that elusive number one spot in the states happened with Donna Summer
Jimmy Webb 1:23:04
Donna Summer cut a disco version. And we went number one. That was my only number one record ever in my career.
Pete Fornatale 1:23:12
Is that right? Yeah. Wow.
Jimmy Webb 1:23:15
And it made a great disco. Song too
Pete Fornatale 1:23:18
how did you celebrate? I mean, something like that has to be truly a gift out of the sky.
Jimmy Webb 1:23:24
It was pretty cool. i i Actually, I'll tell you what I did. I call it this friend of mine, Don G at Starlight limousine. And I said, Don, I said, I want you to come over and I want you to drive me today because I've got the number one record in the country. And he's any came over with a limo. And I just drove around all day in my limo. And I in my limo. I drove over to Harry Nielsen's house and said, I've got the number one record in the United States. I visited all my friends. gloated, I told him I had the number one record. You know, it's very funny, not number two.
Pete Fornatale 1:24:11
You had mentioned earlier that there was a song that you had tailor made in your head for Waylon that he didn't Oh, that was If These Walls, right. You mentioned a number that were tailor made for Linda. Which one's specific?
Jimmy Webb 1:24:29
Well the one the one that she that she got on first