Jimmy Webb

The legendary writer of "Wichita Lineman," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "MacArthur Park" and many more discusses his hits, his history and his tenure on the ASCAP board!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is but one and only Jimmy Webb. Jimmy,
you've been playing live. Someone who comes to your show,
what might they expect?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Well, they shouldn't expect an orchestra, because it's just me
and my you know, trustee piano. But I think they
will get a sort of a lightly polished show, not

(00:44):
not a not a slick show at all. It's anecdotal.
It's quite quite a lot of it is funny, and
then it's interspersed with some hit songs, some that are
not quite so well known, and it's just kind of

(01:08):
a you know, my father was a Baptist preacher. It's
just kind of my version of a revival meeting. And
occasionally I go off on a diatribe about uh, streaming
and all that political stuff, but I'm not going there today.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Well we could go there. When you say streaming and
political stuff if you're talking about music business, are also
political stuff in the naty.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Oh no no no, not not the presidential race. I'm
really talking about the kind of shoddy treatment that I
feel that songwriters are still getting after decades and decades
and decades of sort of being on the bottom of
the totem pole where we I think some of us

(01:55):
had anticipated that the whole digital revolution would end up
being well, let me tell you a small anecdote. Doug
would and I, who sit on the ASCAT board before
this whole thing started, there was a small company here
in New York that claimed that they had a program

(02:17):
that would recognize any song. It would recognize any song
in any record within x seconds. And I said, Doug,
that sounds great. You know, if we had that every
we could really follow every performance out there, so we
would be getting rich. And I said, so this is

(02:38):
a good thing. Let's go tell the board if it
works right. If it works well, the damn thing worked,
it could tell you. It would pop up and say
Evergreen by Andy Williams, and so it could hear the
music and identify it, which I saw as a pretty

(02:59):
good long run, because we as songwriters always felt maybe
the count wasn't right, maybe something was amiss somewhere along
the way in getting paid, and this would cure all.
But when the deals were made, a lot of them

(03:20):
were made without us being at the table, and sadly,
you know, we end up The only statistic I have
that I know, at least once it was accurate, is
that we were making point zero or zero seven to
eight cents per stream. And that's when Adele did her

(03:42):
famous kind of publicisty shot where she came out and
said she had had the largest selling album in history,
and she got a check for twenty thousand make that
single the largest selling single in history. And I think
she got about twenty thousand dollars, so that that is
not even on a par with what I was getting

(04:04):
in nineteen sixty seven when I was a journeyman beginning songwriter.
So in that realm, I'm kind of an activist. I
get a little angry about it sometimes that the song,

(04:24):
which is really the basic building block of all entertainment enterprise,
depends on these songs, and yet we're sort of taken
for granted a lot of times. Specifically, now we're being
sampled a lot without our permission. There's something that we
have to watch every day. I mean, I could tell

(04:49):
that's what I mean. That's where I didn't want to go.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
No no, no, no no. People are definitely interested in this.
So pre internet, post Internet, how has that affected your
songwriting royalties.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Well, they're down a little bit, for sure. They haven't.
It hasn't been the bonanza that you know, Doug and
I were fantasizing about, Oh wow, now all our problems
are solved. You know, it's streaming doesn't pay us, pay
us enough. And I think that you would see most

(05:25):
people in my position, young or old, agreeing with the
fact that we've in terms of the way it's affected us.
The sort of fallout has been that I feel like
I have to play live to augment my income and
make sure that, you know, the big house gets built

(05:45):
and that I can take care of my children. I
have five boys and a girl, and they're spread all
over the world, so I never know when I get
the midnight phone call, you know that. So there's some
dire thing that needs to be addressed. We really are
depending on live performance, and that's one of the reasons

(06:07):
I'm out there and I'm embarking on this. This is
kind of a you know, there's a colorful expression I
could use, but let's just say this is going to
be a really tough tour. I'm seventy seven. I'll be
seventy eight on August fifteenth, and I don't know how

(06:32):
much longer I can tour the way I'm touring, So
I think it's affected us all that way.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Okay, this brings up a lot of issues. Ay, who
owns your songs?

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well, I I own first of all. You know that
the ownership of a copyright is split in two, so
it's the publishing half and it's the songwriter half. So
on a lot of my songs in my company Jimmy
Webb Music, or the newer songs, I own them outright.

(07:09):
A lot of my songs are being returned as a
result of this copyright window that was provided by the
Copyright Office for US. Teenagers basically were then who signed
contracts without a lawyer present, which I was doing all

(07:29):
the time. I was always I'd sign anything to get
into a studio for an hour. I'd sign my life
away because studios. It's hard to explain the zeitgeist of
all of this, really, but the studio used to be
the holy of holies. It was like a temple where

(07:50):
you sort of wanted to have the password to gain entry,
the aberkadab or to get into that room and record,
because they were special rooms and not everybody had one.
So I ended up trading a lot of publishing for
studio time. That sort of an arrangement.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
You have this incredible catalog. I'm sure you've been approached
by the third party company's primary wave hypnosis about purchasing
your catalog. Would you ever do that?

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Do it? I? You know, I'm aware that it looks
like easy money, so why not let's get, you know,
on the money train. On the other hand, I sort
of come from the the the the well the methodist

(08:53):
side of the record business, where holding up onto your
public publishing as a kin to a religion. It's it's
been drummed into me to hold on in my publishing.
And the only publishing I relinquish I was was because

(09:14):
of events beyond my control. But for now I'm happy
to hang on to it. I I don't need the money,
so I yeah, I don't know. I can. You know,

(09:34):
there are some publishers out there who are offering some
very interesting deals where they're coming in and saying, well,
what we'll do is we'll advance X dollars to you
the you know, the this is the bait that's wiggling
on the hook, and maybe we'd do this, and maybe
we'll do that and you know, maybe I'll give you

(09:58):
my rare Southsea shell collection. They're offering a lot of
different things to different people and really trying to appeal
to individuals on that basis. And the deal would be

(10:22):
that you become partners with the publisher and now you're
both owners of the publishing company, and the theory behind
that being that the publishing company has a vested interest
then in promoting your catalog and seeking out sync rights

(10:43):
and what have you, and that their heart is more
in the game, their dog is more in the fight
if they have a partnership with you as opposed to
an administration deal. Now, you know, I can see that,
I can see that in theory that ought of work.

(11:04):
But things are changing so fast I cannot believe. In
the twenty for twenty three years that I've been on
the ASCAT board, we went from Napster to Spotify, and

(11:25):
there was all kinds of there were there were little
there were little conflicts ongoing throughout. Some of them were
pretty strange where we had I know that one of
them was that I'm a major I'm not talking, I'm
talking a giant company was sitting on the board and
taking the position that Napster was illegal, and at the

(11:49):
same time they were investing in Napster, and so that
at one point they ended up in court suing themselves.
So it's been so fused that I'm wary. I'm I'm
standing off. I want to see where this is going
and what's happening. I have an obligation to my family

(12:11):
and uh, I believe in the copyrights. I believe there's
special there's a special catalog, and I would, you know,
want special treatment for that for those songs.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Let's go back to the ASCAP board. In ASCAP, With
the Internet, satellite radio, other means of distribution, there are
more ways for performing rights organizations to collect. Have you
seen your performing rights royalties go up down steady?

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Well, uh, I think that. Uh without revealing information that
I'm just that I'm not permitted to reveal. But uh,
I can say that, I can say that ASCAP's never
been doing any better than they are. So it hasn't effected.

(13:08):
It hasn't effected the gross it's in a negative way.
It's been It's the volume is so tremendous that the
overall effect is positive. If you look at the at
the end of the year, and the money that's left
to distribute. So the overfall all effect is positive, positive,

(13:29):
But for guys like me who had their biggest hits
years ago and are not like, you know, a red
hot Rapper act or something, clearly the the line share
is going to the to the top, uh to the

(13:51):
top artists, the artists of the week. Uh So, And
that's internal stuff that you know, I'm not really at
liberty to discuss, but yeah, it's ironic. Overall, I think
that we're doing better, but it's not trickling down to

(14:12):
the to the what I would call the standards.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Okay, so nineteen ninety eight, nineteen ninety nine, prior to Napster,
your publishing income today, what percent is your published income
to that? Leaving out just we're talking mechanicals. Let's not
talk performing rights, which is its own thing unto itself.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Well, mechanicals are they've been through a particularly critical period
because there are no more or mechanicals. By definition, there
aren't any records, There aren't any CDs. Sheet music is
not a big deal anymore. Folios, things of that nature.

(15:12):
Any physical objects are like out there, they're you know,
if you're holding a CD in your hand, that's the
last physical object you're ever going to have that has
music on it for sale. We're I. I had envisioned
at world where there would be an intermediary between the

(15:34):
CD and the and the cloud. But it looks like
that we skipped over that one, and there's an acceleration
in work here. I don't know that, frankly makes me nervous,
But could we go back to the gist of that question.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
Okay, let let me let me put it a different way.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
In the old days of physical there were acts that
were not hit, acts that were selling product generating royalties.
What many people forget is a lot of those acts
were in upside down positions with their labels in it,
so they never got royalties beyond the advance. And today

(16:22):
anybody can make music and put it up on Spotify.
So we have a number of people on the losing
end of Spotify and the other streaming outlets. We have
people who were propped up by the record industry of
your and now they're competing with all these wannabes that
they didn't used to have to compete with. A lot

(16:44):
of these acts sold x number of physical records, generating income, etc.
Now we are in the streaming world. The streaming world
is one of consumption as opposed to sale.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
What do we know?

Speaker 1 (16:59):
The song writers got screwed on streaming in terms of
the overall percentage they get. If there's one hundred pennies
in let's just you know, there literally is no per
stream rate. It's a division, etc. Changes And of course
there are different rates for on demand as opposed to radio,

(17:19):
but approximately sixty cents on the dollar goes to the recording,
and the song should get more. But the records were
needed by Spotify at all, and they ended up making
deals where the songwriters did not get as much.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
They made their deals with the artists first. It was
a very shrewd tactical move on their part. Is that
the songwriter deals were already in place, and in my
mind I feel that those were And again these aren't figures,

(18:00):
but I believe that the song that the the actual
artists who and by the way, who only recently in
cosmic time recently gained the right of royalty over the
performance on the record, and they slipped in there and

(18:23):
negotiated their deal, their streaming deal with Spotify. Specifically, before
we we were kind of left. We didn't have a
seat at that table. So they're roughly where they were before.
They're in the seven seven to eight territory of the

(18:43):
of the gross and we we ended up I think
a little worse than we were before.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
I agree with that, but let me get to my
ultimate point. Okay, in streaming, it's winners and losers. Yes,
the Taylor swifts the weekends, there's a ton of money
generated there. A lot of people who used to rely
on physical sale income are not doing well on streaming. However,

(19:16):
you are not like many people in that. You know,
there are a lot of people saying, well, I had
an album, there weren't really hits on it. You have
written standards, household name standards. So at this late date,
ten odd years into streaming, do those standards to what

(19:41):
degree do they generate income for you as opposed to
the physical era.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
You know, look, I think we've all taken a hit.
We've all taken a hit, and you know, I feel
a little self conscious about revealing, you know, exact figures,
but I think I may as well say it. And
I'll say I'll say it because regardless of any regardless

(20:14):
of the way it may affect the way people perceive me,
or my or my my standing in the ranks, my
level of success. I'm disregarding that for a moment. I
would say that it's I'm getting about half of what

(20:36):
I used to get on my standards.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Okay, that's what I wanted to know before we leave ASCAP. Well,
do let one other thing. You said you're going on
the road to pay your bills. Is that a figure
a speech or economically do you literally have to go
on the road.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Well, you know, if I if I want to retire
right now and button everything up and and and have
no expenses, you know, the road is expensive. Devote myself
to you know, maybe some other musical projects that uh

(21:17):
with with less chance of success. Uh and and sort
of work out of my house. And and I have
a very nice house. Uh, I drive a very nice
automobile in my lifestyle. I'm sure it would be the
envy but a lot of people. So I'm not gonna
I'm not gonna equivocate about that. And I and I

(21:37):
can maintain that. But I can't dream. I can't I
can't dream of of having a ranch in Montana, or
I can't dream of building a recording studio in in Mexico,
and and in other words, I'm the road to advancement

(22:02):
in terms of the money I can make is now
pretty much dictated by what I can make on the road.
That's the money that I would use to invest in
a recording studio, or invest in a label, or or
in a maybe select a young artist and say this
is this kid is going to be tremendous. I'm gonna

(22:23):
invest some money here. So it's about it's about it's
a it's not just about a comfort level. It's it's about, uh,
in a world where you know, I mean, it's silly
how much money there is. And I would like to

(22:47):
have some of that because I think I could use
it in a very positive way. I I'm not know,
I'm not so desperate that I have to go out
on the road and play. I play because I enjoy
the audience. I get a lot of energy. It's making

(23:07):
me live longer, I'm sure of it. Uh I. It's
a very joyful experience for me. Even though I've never really,
you know, quote made it big as a performer. I
have a following. I have people who will show up
every damn time. I you know, every time I go
to that venue, they're there, uh, and I'm doing I'm

(23:31):
doing very very well at it. And so suddenly to
be doing well at performing is really ironic at this
point after cutting ten albums that you know haven't been
well let's see, not top of the pops.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
But.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah, I mean there's a mixed emotions. I uh, it's
it's ready cash and it's tempting to go out there
and get it. You know. I think that the people
that are that have been really hardest hit, sadly enough,
are the are the people who are who are older

(24:12):
or have physical impediments. Sudden, sudden things occur. Let's say,
just for instance, Parkinson's sets in and you lose your
voice and you can't perform anymore. Now you're now you
really have to depend on those royalties. You can't you

(24:33):
can't augment who doesn't want to augment their income? Bob,
you know in some way.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Okay, you say that your live business is on the
upswing without a hit album in the past. What do
you think is driving that upsling?

Speaker 2 (24:57):
I don't know. Maybe there's a bit, maybe there's a
healthy curiosity, or maybe there's a I don't know, maybe
there's there maybe I have achieved that, I don't know,
elevator music status, where you know, it's a name that

(25:18):
people finally, after all these years, they recognize and they
they say, this guy can't be he can't be doing
a very good show. Let's go see. The first time
I went to see Elvis, I was a cynic. I
was like twenty years old, and I went up to
Vegas to see Elvis, and it was like sort of shown.
I was shown for it. I sort of wanted to

(25:41):
see him paul on his butt, and instead I became
like number one Elvis fan in the world. So I
think maybe some people come out of curiosity and they say,
you know what, this guy seems pretty good. He's been improving,
and I give them insight into the workings of the

(26:03):
song and the meaning of the song and the way
the craft of songwriting works, which is something that I'm
really concerned about because I don't think that that's being
passed down, it's not being mentored down sufficiently to this
coming generation or these generations now that are on our heels.

(26:28):
I think that a lot of these young writers don't
pay much attention to, for instance, the Great American Songbook
and the classic methodology of songwriting. So that's why we
have We have like a monotonous, almost dreary like repetition

(26:52):
of the same little melodic phrases over and over again,
and almost everything is the same tempo. Forget dynamics. There's
no loud, there's no soft. It's not you've lost that
loving feeling, which is majestic masterpiece of the sixties Barry Man,
isn't the a while and there doesn't. I don't know.

(27:18):
I think we may have failed in not taking more
of these young people under our wing and saying, you know,
here's here's how to write it, here's how to write
a verse, here's a verse, here's the chorus, here's a bridge,
you know, here's a lead in, here's a you know,
on the fade. You want to work on the fade.

(27:39):
You know. We used to work harder on the fade
than we did on any part of the record. That's
out the window. We don't we don't really have fades anymore.
You just go to the next record like this.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
So it's.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
It's a big it's it's there is going to be
a tremendous change in the next ten years, and I
hope that I'm around just because I want to see
what happens. I really want to see if the digital
promise is fulfilled, which is that it would benefit all

(28:17):
of us, that we would all benefit from this technology,
and I would like to see if that dream comes true.
I'm very, very curious, and in the meantime, I'm sitting
on my standards, and it may be my children that

(28:42):
make the final decision on what happens to the catalog.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
Well, one thing I want to say, you've all progressed
their losses. It used to be prior to the lead
six these little later than that every car didn't come
with air conditioning, had a vent window. Vent windows were great.
Now all cars come with air conditioning, which is even better,
but there are no more vent windows. But you mentioned
a ton of stuff I want to get into. How

(29:15):
do you feel, being on the ASCAP board, that these
other performing rights agencies have changed into for profit models?

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Well, certainly I think that when this idea first sort
of surfaced, you know, like a from the murky depths
of the South. When this being my thing hit the news,

(29:49):
I had a moment of panic because I thought, well,
it's over, this is it. We're going to be taken
it's all going to be like this, But ASCAP is
never going to be that. In fact, I think you're
probably aware of the fact that we've we've we've consolidated,
consolidated our position really on supporting human songwriters, uh and

(30:19):
protecting legacy catalogs and and things of that nature. I
know that a lot of B and my writers are
very very nervous, uh, that that situation is still teetering.
In my opinion, I don't think that that all the
shoes have hit the floor over there, and I don't

(30:42):
think that there's ever been a I might be wrong,
and and you know, I don't mind being called out
if I'm wrong, but I think that this is the
first time that a p r O has been being
has been owned by moneymen, I'll just put it that way,

(31:06):
by hedge funds, by banks, by cartels investors. We know
at ASCAP that we don't want those people sitting on
our board because they don't know anything about music, and
they don't we don't know that they love songs the

(31:28):
way we love songs. You know. This is this is
the part of it that is so hard to express
because it's not in our modern vernacular to talk in
a romantic way or a sentimental way about anything. You know,
we're so hard nosed, but I think that ASCAP we're

(31:54):
still rather sentimental about our songs. They mean a lot
to us. The songs of Harold Arland mean a lot
of Richard Rodgers and Larry Hart. I mean, when I
hear the name David Rason, my head reverberates with Laura.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Now.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
I remember the little story that David told me about
how he wrote it, and I'm not going to tell
the story. But we are much more personally at ASCAP,
which is a fraternal organization, We are much more concerned
with the actual preservation of the music and the dignity

(32:40):
of the music, which just as maybe as a slight digression,
you know. The use of these standards now in these
rap records is something that everybody's watching very keenly, and

(33:01):
I have had unbelievable requests come in to use. Well,
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna name the song because
I don't want to identify any particular individuals. But if
I was approached, let's say, by a rapper who wants

(33:24):
to just play the first verse of Up Up in
a way, just the way it was in nineteen sixty seven,
and then except speed it up a little bit because
it's not in the tempo that he wants it, so
you have to speed it up, and it kind of
makes the fifty minutes mention sound like chipmunks. But you

(33:46):
put a whole verse of that before his record starts.
Now that's a substantial that's a substantial use of a
cop be right. That's that's akin to making it a
closing titles in a film. It's it's really on the

(34:09):
same basis. So the uses we're only beginning to see
how they they And I don't want to say how
we are going to use these standards and what links
we're going to go to to exploit something that is

(34:29):
so much a part of the American psyche that we
automatically respond to it because it's buried so deeply in
us that the advertisers now and it's clear, it's as
clear as the nose on your face, have explored the
idea of not using pop hits from the sixties, seventies

(34:51):
and even before, and they've they've tried doing commercials without
those songs and they don't work. So now they're going
back to the sixties. They're going back and they love
to get their hands on a Jackson Brown song. Uh,
some of them are are just they're out of reach.

(35:12):
Sometimes they don't bother to ask for your permission, by
the way, and the use they they put, they put
let's say, a two or three bar phrase in a
record and put a lot of echo in it, and
it's just an orchestral thing, and it goes on and
on and on and on. So essentially, about three or

(35:36):
four bars of one of my songs is being repeated
in deep echo over and over and over and over again,
and that and and and the gentleman wraps on top
of that. So I'm his, I'm his, I'm his rhythm track,
you know, like piece of something that I've done. Yet

(36:02):
they don't want to list us as creative contributors to that.
We're not eligible for Song of the Year over NARS
because we because in my song do what you Gotta Do,
which Kanye West did called it famous, but musicologists said

(36:22):
sixty percent of it was do what you Gotta Do.
And we came to an agreement because they had already
put it out. It was number one, and when it
went to Nares. It was nominated for Song of the Year,
and they listed thirteen writers as eligible for Grammy Award
for Song of the Year. There were thirteen writers nominated

(36:45):
for Song of the Year, and I was omitted they're
going to use our music. I think they should give
us credit. I mean, that's just to just say, you know, look,
songs aren't like it's not like doing a collage out

(37:05):
of a bunch of old people magazines with a pair
of scissors. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be that way.
And so I think we're waiting. Wait. You know, look,
a lot of people are really depending on sync rights
and sampling rights. That is the hot sector right now

(37:27):
in publishing is to get these old songs rehabilitated somehow.
And one way that you can do that is to
put them in a commercial or put them on a
wrap record. So it's really strange because that's become the
way we promote our music is by sort of allowing

(37:50):
it to be infringed on.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
Now you talk about all these opportunities, you talk about ripoffs.
Who is managing this? Do you have a manager? Do
you have an attorney? Or is your phone ringing off
the hook or is your email coming in? Who's on
top of.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
This for you? Well, I have a guy, uh and
I'll mention him because he's a lovely guy, John Leno,
who's handled all my returns, my returns on my copyrights,
which is a byzantine process. It is so complicated and
you have to be so determined to stay the course

(38:30):
and fill out the forms and make the windows. If
you miss your window too bad, you don't get your
you don't you don't get your publishing back. So you
do need someone at the controls. And we we we
have a good a good guy there. Uh. My wife
Laura is ex officio, you know, manages me because nobody

(38:56):
else could take nobody else can stand me. Uh, but yeah,
I have the phone is ringing. In fact, yesterday we
had two requests for I don't know what it calls
these sampling, sampling or sync because one of the requests

(39:16):
was to use a complete verse of a record, I
mean just cold a verse of another record and then
the rap song starts, so this standard becomes the intro
to this rap. I don't know how I feel about that.
Is that devaluing my copyright or is that promoting my copyright?

Speaker 3 (39:42):
And and.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Do I know? Do I know the answer to the question. No,
I don't, so I'm kind of like standing there with
my sucking on my thumb, going h I wonder you
know is that is it? Will? Will I one day
regret not taking advantage of more of these opportunities to

(40:06):
let these songs be heard, even in sometimes not the
most flattering surroundings, but at least the melodies are getting
out there and a sense of what the record was.
And does that over time inspire some sort of curiosity
about the song that lies deeply buried behind all of
that rapping, And I'm not sure that it does. I

(40:31):
think there's an argument that it could devalue that sync
rites could in the long run, devalue a song, except
when they're used in movies. When they're used in movies,
I see that as a clear when when some of
the sampling stuff, it still worries me. I'm not sure

(40:51):
what role it plays in the future of the copyright.

Speaker 1 (40:55):
You talk about younger generations in their ability or lack thereof,
to write songs. When you do live shows, do younger
generations come and to what degree are you approached or
interact with younger generations about songwriting.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
Well, I have an intern wonderful young guy named Pete
Mancini who's one of the best songwriters, young songwriters I've
ever heard. And he's he's he's under my wing. I
can't take care of the whole world, but this kid
is talented, and I take him out with me and
I let him open for me, do his songs, which

(41:39):
are good. He always the audience always laps it up.
He's very good looking, which I'm not. He he's young.
He loves the old music. He loves the old tracks.
You know, did you ever hear you know, like Royal Scam?
You know, you know, we talk about it and it's like, yeah, now, yeah,

(42:04):
I knew Jeff Carroll, Oh you knew Jeff Pi, Carol
oh Man.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
You know.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
So there's a group out there who are all over this.
I mean it's a small it's right now, it's a
small group. But I believe it's growing. I believe the
interest in the sixties and seventies catalogs to some degree

(42:29):
is growing. I think less there's less less growth in
the in the Great American Songbook. I see the Great
American Songbook to me fading from public memory now I've
lived long enough to see these things, which scares me.
It scares me to death that I have actually seen

(42:51):
these things happen. But I know that if I went
outside here and I had a remote unit of some kind,
and I stopped a fifteen year old girl outside and
I said, I'm going to sing this song and tell you,
tell me you have a song, my funny Valentine, sweet

(43:13):
comic Valentine. What does that mean you? I don't know.
You know, it doesn't mean anything to her. And so
we're I think that when the boomers go down, and
we're going down making no mistake and very swiftly, there's

(43:34):
a change of scenery and cast members on the entertainment
stage is taking place. Even as we speak. Each day,
one of our brethren, one of our colleagues, most of
them beloved and irreplaceable in our mind, passes the bar,

(43:57):
and I feel that maybe some of the respect and
love that we have for the Great American Songbook may
go with us. So I don't know what sort of
I would love to have a peek into the future
if I had, like if I could go like Boom

(44:19):
fifty years fifty years in the future. I just want
to listen to the radio. Just take me somewhere and
let me listen to the radio. Well, we don't have
radio anymore. It's all implanted in your skull, and we
sort of play what we play, what we want you
to hear. You know. Sometimes I kind of feel like

(44:40):
that's what they're doing. They're playing what they want us
to hear at, you know. And I think that record
it shook it. It's really shaken up record promotion. I'm very,
very very concerned that this great American art form has

(45:00):
been our number one export for decades, American music. I've
traveled all over the world. They are listening to American
music in Copenhagen and Hamburg. In Santiago and Waynas areas

(45:21):
they're listening to American music. And Moscow right now in
China they're listening. They're watching without paying royalties. Of course,
they're watching American movies and listening to our music. It's
still so profoundly influential that it ranks as one of

(45:43):
our more significant exports, and I think, much more significant
than our missiles and our howitzers and our grenades. I
sort of feel like Billy Joel when he went over
and toured the Union. I think he kind of brought up,
brought last knows, you know, to its full majority there.

(46:10):
And some people say that Levi's won the Cold War
because the Russians wanted Levi's so badly. But American music
is a treasure, that's being that's not being careful, carefully

(46:32):
husband husband did or cultivated right now, right now, in
this particular moment, with the exception of a few major
artists at the very top who have the influence, like
a Taylor Swift, for instance, when she was fourteen years old.

(46:54):
Fifteen years old, I heard her and I heard her songs,
and I said, you know, she's going to be successful.
She knows how to do all the parts. She knows
like the intro, she knows the verses, she knows the
bridge that Nashville training. You know, in Nashville is the
citadel of songwriting. It's the last you know, It's Ford Apache,

(47:19):
It's you know, It's where you make your last stand.
I guess as a songwriter. But it's been disturbing recently
to see people like Don Schlitz, who wrote The Gambler,
which is in my view, a veritable perfect song. People

(47:41):
are always talking about the perfect song. Well, there are
a lot of perfect songs, but certainly the Gambler and
the way that story is told, and that o Henry
has twist at the end, and just the brilliance of
that chorus. You got to know when to hold them, no,
when to fold them, no, when to walk away, no

(48:02):
one to run And the fact that this is happening
on a darkened train. There's such drama in this. And
the man who wrote that, who I Knew is kind
of a good time. You're out there down you know,
I love you, you know, as a guy who had
entirely too much fun all the time. He last time

(48:28):
I met him face to face that I'm done. He said,
I don't see any point in writing anymore.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Let's go back to Taylor Swift, since you seem to
pay attention to the scene. The country albums were co
written with Liz Rose. Then she moved into a pop sphere,
tends to work with the a level town in the
pops sphere. Do you have any thoughts about her modern.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Work, You know only that it's you know, extremely well produced,
and and there's there's a there's there. There are there
are a few songs that I that I that I like, I,

(49:23):
I still haven't heard you've lost that love and feeling.
I you know, I think that might be a forlorn
hope at this point. But I you know, I I
thought I think that Adele, Lady Gaga, Taylor. I think

(49:43):
they're trying. I really think they're trying to write songs,
and that's encouraging. That's encouraging, whether anyone would I I've
actually heard melody creeping back into some of this hip
hop music. H And I remember Paul Simon saying to me.

(50:06):
We were talking one day and I said, you know, Paul,
it's just really disturbing, like chords are disappearing. You know,
there's I don't and I love. I love chords. You know,
chords are anyway, that's that's life to me, that's life,

(50:56):
that's that nurtures my soul. So I said, Paul, I
think we're losing chords. He said, Jimmy, he said, we're
going to lose melody. I said, Paul, I said, you
must be wrong. You can't be right about that. He said,
he says we're going to lose it. We're going to

(51:16):
lose it all. And this is ten, this is ten
or twelve years ago.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Well that way, he was very pressured because a lot
of modern songs don't have melody. Let's go back to
the beginning to Oklahoma. You know, we used to talk
about flyover country in the sixties and seventies. There is
no flyover country. Everybody has the Internet, everybody has mobile phones,
cable TV. What was it like growing up in Oklahoma
in the forties and fifties.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
It was pretty stark. I lived in western Texas and
western Oklahoma, which you know, you don't you don't to
see any difference when you cross that sign it says
welcome to Texas. Texas doesn't look any different than Oklahoma.

(52:07):
It's all the same. It's flat. And they had little
hills out there in the old timers, and say, you know,
if you go out there and stand on top of
that hill, you could see New Mexico from here fifty
miles and I tried it, and by golly, they were
pretty close to the truth. And that's kind of the

(52:29):
landscape that I grew up in. My father was a
Baptist minister. He was also an ex marine. It was
a strict Protestant upbringing that put us as children. That
were five of us. My siblings, my brother Tommy, and
my three sisters, Janice, Susan, and Sylvia, and it put

(52:53):
us constantly in the public eye. So I grew up
knowing that I was being watched, that every action was
going to be reported back to my dad. And my
dad hated rock and roll. He had the crazy idea
somewhere along the way that rock and roll was about sex.
I mean, I don't know who gave him that idea,

(53:16):
but he got his stuck in his head and I
couldn't get it out, and so I was climbing out
the rear window and sneaking out to go to dances,
and dancing is not allowed in the in the Southern
Baptist religion. And I used to look at my sisters

(53:36):
with this deep sense of pity as they would sit
on the front porch and listen to the music coming
from teen Town and imagine what's going through their heads
because they can't go there and fraternize and be with
So I think that that Southern Baptist made a tremendous
mistake when they disallowed when we went to camp, we

(54:00):
had to swim separately from the from the girls. There
was this sort of just non proportional response to the
sexual question that emphasized the difference that sort of I
think titillated the whole idea of maybe being naughty, whereas

(54:27):
the Methodists, who I always envied, could go to dances
and they had a much more relaxed And I think
later in life that it affects relationships. I really do.
I know it for fact, it sets up some psychological
barriers that are never going to be taken down. So anyway,

(54:49):
get off of that subject. But I was church pianist,
and I learned pretty early to improvise on Hymn's one
Suitisan Goddard was a wonderful teacher in Oklahoma City, and
she would teach me well what Leonard Bernstein called transformational elements,

(55:14):
and she just called piano arranging. But it would be
like playing playing amazing grace like this, Let me try
that again, you know something in that vein. So I

(56:05):
learned like a lot of improvisation. Dad played a little guitar,
my mom played a little accordion. We would do our
family thing at church on Sunday, sing parts. I grew
up singing three parts. Dad always wanted me to sing tenor,
and I really ended up being a baritone, but eventually

(56:30):
I made it to church pianist, which my mother thought
was the pinnacle of show business. You couldn't like get
me higher than that. And then alas we lost her
and it was my senior year in high school. I

(56:50):
was sixteen, she was thirty six, and that sort of
dropped a nuclear bomb on us as a family. I
don't think my father ever got over it. It affected
his relationship whatever that was, with God, which is a

(57:11):
very weighty subject. But you have to believe in what
you're preaching. You can't, just like you have to believe
in what you're performing. It has to be coming from
somewhere because people know when it's not. They know they
they can detect that thin nasal wine of the of

(57:36):
the not completely sure of himself performer, just as they
can a Baptist preacher who he told me one night,
he says, Jimmy, I don't believe anything that's coming out
of my mouth. So I put him to work in
the record business and he did very well. Discovered a

(57:58):
group called Five Man Electrical Band and had a hit
record and went to work for Mike Curve for a while.
So it all turned out it all turned out in
the end. But I lived in an agrarian environment. I

(58:18):
got these hands dirty picking cotton, poe and cotton doing
essentially it's you know, look, I don't want to get
into anything cultural here, but my grandfather did not use
migrant labor. There were enough cousins and uncles and aunts

(58:43):
in our family that we could go out like a
swarm of locusts and clear up, you know, forty acres
of cotton in a couple of days, three days. I
remember one day, my father pulled five hundred pounds of
cotton that day. And uh, that's uh, that's a lot

(59:05):
of cotton. Because cotton doesn't weigh very much, so five
hundred pounds of it would probably fill this this room
pretty much. Uh. I always admired him. He was a
he was a magnetic tall, very handsome. As an orator,

(59:28):
he was you know, he was persuasive. Uh, he was difficult.
He believed in corporal punishment. We got whacked around a
lot with good cause. With good cause, you know, I
mean it wasn't nice to turn the heat off in

(59:50):
the babistery so that the back water in the babistery
was ice cold, so that when the When the portly
lady started coming down the steps into the babistry, She's going,
oh my God, oh Jesus, oh oh. Everybody thought she's
having a transcendental experience. But the water in the babbisty

(01:00:11):
is below zero, you know, so fun in games. The
the thing I remember most about growing up was always
feeling as though I was on the outside looking in.

(01:00:32):
I was not sports minded, particularly even though I went out.
I played football because my dad wanted me to the
violence I didn't like. But I played and played hard.
But I was a second stringer. I was in the band,
so I grew, so I got a little bit of

(01:00:55):
experience on other instruments, and I floated on the outside
edge of every party I ever was ever attended. I
would be I would be in a corner somewhere, leaned up,
hopefully where I couldn't be seen, just watching, just watching
and feeling clumsy. And at one point my act and

(01:01:19):
he was out of control, and I just I just
had that awful teenage, teenage angst that you go through
when you're just ugly. You just there's just a time
in your life when you're ugly. You look in the
mirror and you go, I'm ugly, you know, and you

(01:01:42):
get through it. You get through it. And then I
got through it by writing songs, by h doing my
own therapy and exercising my demons, you know, at the piano,
and particularly when I when I finally got the podium
and I was writing, and I I wrote, Uh, I wrote,

(01:02:06):
I wrote a song called good Evening, mister critic. And
it was for some reason I had it in. I
had it in for critics. It turns out that critics
have been my best friends in this life. They have
literally literally been my best friends. Stephen Holden was one
of my best friends.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
But my very first concert at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, I
went out and I sung about the critics, you know,
and it was a very very taunting you know, how
many how many shows did you close all by yourself,
mister critic? Uh? It castigated the critics, it really uh.

(01:02:53):
And this is what I chose to open my first
concert with. So one can only imagine what followed. Leonard Feather,
who was an eloquent writer, music critic for the La
Times and well known in the jazz world, wrote mister

(01:03:19):
Webb's theory that songs are best heard when performed by
the writer. Was definitively unproven. Last night, that's a Dorothy

(01:03:40):
cha in pavilion. And for years, for years, he raked
me over the colds. But the truth is that by
and large, if you look at the critical response to
my albums, my second album all I Know, excuse me.
Second second album.

Speaker 4 (01:03:59):
Was and so on.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
Was selected by Stereo Review magazine, which in those days
was a pretty big deal. Stereo Review that was for
the high fid nuts. They gave me Album of the Year.
You know, I probably sold like for forty five fifty records,
and they gave me their Album of the Year award

(01:04:26):
for outstanding recording achievement, and they printed the full color
cover inside magazine. It was a very prestigious, but could
never It's interesting because now I can look at it
and I can say I spent my whole life pounding

(01:04:48):
my head up against that wall. Maybe it's time to stop.
But I think I'm going to do one more album.
I think I have a few songs that I would
like to leave before I leave the room. I'd like

(01:05:08):
to play a few more songs. And I've had fantastic
luck with other artists covering my songs on my albums.
For instance, Judy Collins picking up the Moon as a
Harsh Mistress in my minor standard recorded by a lot
of people. Highwayman was on one of my albums. It

(01:05:33):
was actually the album that I did with George Martin.
I've done an album with everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
I was on all.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
All the Warner Late I was all the time Warner Labels,
I was on them, I was on Reprise, I was
on Warner Brothers, and then they kicked me over to
Asylum and then I made an album. Linda Ronstat produced
me and we made an album with Jack Holtzman at

(01:06:02):
Elektra and uh I'm at Ergon used to come to
well not every every studio, but every every session. He
would come to sessions quite often. He would come in
with his with his gold tip cane, and he come
in with the dapper little goatee, and he was a

(01:06:24):
wonderful cat. And he walked in and and he listened
to me and he'd go, you know, kid, he said,
it's part. He said, you've got the heart, you know,
and so I that's I don't know when you've got
that kind of backing and you can't somehow pull up,
pull up, you know, some kind of a record out

(01:06:48):
of it. I don't. I don't know what kind of
a curse is on you. But I did pray at
one point when I was young, and I prayed to God,
please let me grow up, and please let me write
a song for Glenn Campbell, because I loved Glenn Campbell.
He had a record because turn around, look at me,

(01:07:22):
turn it around, looking at me. Oh, I've wait, but
I'll wait for uh. And it was a it was
a regional hit, and I heard this beautiful voice, and

(01:07:44):
I just want to write songs for him. So when
I met him, finally I met him in the flesh,
I actually had a bunch of songs that i'd written
form Uh. It's it's like a cinderellative story. Really, a
lot of it is so fantastic that people don't believe
me when I tell them what happened to me. I mean,

(01:08:06):
all my dreams came true.

Speaker 4 (01:08:08):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
You know, Okay, you talk about being in Oklahoma but
being a teenager feeling like you're outside. Did you continue
to feel that in your life to this day that

(01:08:29):
you were outside observing or alienated or did that change?

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
No? I'm exactly the same kid, I'm exactly the same guy,
and I just transferred, you know, the alienation that I
felt in the classroom, I transferred it to Hollywood because
I couldn't. I felt like I was being banished from
rock and roll and put with the old people, old

(01:08:59):
people who were like forty, people like mister Sinatra, Tony Bennett.
You know, I actually wrote a song for Rosemary Clooney.
So in the middle of the road, the middle of

(01:09:19):
the road, which was Glenn in the fifth dimension and
Richard Harris. People could not comprehend Richard Harris at all,
and so there was a lot of confusion about where
the pigeon, where my pigeon hole was. And I already

(01:09:40):
knew that there wasn't a hole for me. I learned
that in school, so I knew there wasn't already made
slot for me to slip into because I know I'm
too egocentric and eccentric and eclectic, if you will, if
you could put all those in one word, that would

(01:10:02):
be me. And I know there's no real home for
me in this business. But I yearn I yearned to be,
you know, to have dinner with Paul Simon, and Ardie
Garfunkland eventually already asked me for a song, which was
all I know and answer, oh oh, anyway, uh. When

(01:10:57):
I after I worked with Artie and we that was
his first record coming back from the split with Paul Simon,
which I'm not going to go into that drama because
I think people know a lot about that, and if
you don't know, you can find out easily. But you know,
they were in the first grade together, and it's been

(01:11:20):
a rough relationship all the way for them. I've seen
a lot of it because I've known already now since
nineteen seventy one, and I've been through several ups and
downs between him and Paul. But I did eventually, you know,

(01:11:40):
sit down and have dinner with him, and then I
was invited to kind of hang out with Crosby, Dave
Crosby and Graham Nash. We got to be pretty good friends.
And then a very good friend of mine was Joni Mitchell,
and she changed the way I write songs. I would

(01:12:00):
say she was one of the she was one of
the epiphanes that I when I When I was I
was cruising along there, I was making pretty good money
and I thought, damn I know everything there is to
know about this. I can write one of these anytime.
And I ran across Joni's work saw actually saw live

(01:12:25):
at the Troubadour one night, sent her a letter and
said I want to take you out for tea and
I said, you were you know, you're a golden child.
And I loved what she did and everything. She found
the letter like fifteen seventeen years later, it was behind

(01:12:47):
her couch. She never opened it. It's true story. But
she and I became pretty really pretty close friends, and
I watched her a lot, and she would I loved
her voicings on the guitar. I love these kind of

(01:13:08):
just kind of to me, that's that's her world. It's

(01:13:43):
kind of a it's a D tuning or you know
these used to call it a lot of times, called
it the Joni Mitchell tooning. And I played on guitar
for a while. I wrote a couple of songs on that,
and but her conversational style all really changed my riding.
There was no more Witch Tall Lineman. There was no

(01:14:04):
more I was riding. You know, I was writing put
it down here right. It's kind of early for vocalizability.

Speaker 5 (01:14:17):
See her how she flopped old and sail across this
guy lose enough to tell about that airful if future,

(01:14:43):
Oh ship looks as warm as go.

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):
Uh it just it became I think deeper and more
uh uh Joan. She was the first to open her
chest up completely and say, okay, look, this is really
what's going on here? I am not happy sometimes and

(01:15:12):
and she would expose things that entertainment has always been.
Yet aren't we all happy? And they we're gonna go
home now? Yeah? And here here, suddenly is is a
voice that is profound up in the sterilized room where

(01:15:33):
they let you be lazy. You know, stories about Freudian
with Freudian overtones, and some of them so inspirational that
I would cry listening to them.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
Like m.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
Just before you, just before our love got lost, you said,
my love is constant.

Speaker 1 (01:16:11):
You told me it was constant. Is I love was constant?
Is a northern star?

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
Yeah? Where's that at?

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
I'll meet you in the bar.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
Yeah, if you want me, I'll be in the bar. Well.
She had me there, She had me. It was like,
I don't know how to write like that. She's I
call it conversational tone. And another guy who does it
and does it in a very humorous ways, randing him.

(01:16:39):
The lines aren't so formalized as Moon, June and Spoon.
You know, there are things that people might actually say.
So I thought, well, this is the wave of the future,
and my songs became more elaborate. I wrote a song
called Paul Gogan in the South Seas that was almost
impossible to form. It was like the Surf's Up. You know,

(01:17:03):
nobody could cover Surfs Up because nobody could play it.

Speaker 1 (01:17:08):
But let's go back. You talk about being feeling separate,
feeling alienated. You talk about opening your concert with the
critic songs of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. To what degree
are you angry? I think he's got a bad connotation,
but you know, a frustration of feeling that you're not

(01:17:29):
a member of the group, You're not part of the center.
There's somewhere you want to be.

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):
Was that an element, Well, it would have been until recently.
But I'm at peace with where I am, who I am,
what I am. When I step back and look at it,
it's an unbelievable story. I mean, in anybody's book, it's

(01:17:55):
a fantastic Horatio Alger story. If you will rags for riches.
On the surface, it's that simple, but in a more
profound sense, it was a journey into into the art

(01:18:16):
of songwriting and to come to be influenced by this
wonderful group of people who eventually really did embrace me.
The rock and roll crowd. You know, Guns and Roses
are playing which tall Lineman every night on the show.
So and I think I got when I got invited

(01:18:41):
to play MacArthur Park at the Rainforest, Well, when James
Taylor cut which tall Linman? He covered which Tall Liman,
and I thought, I think I'm going to put some
of this to bed. I don't think there's a conspiracy.
I don't think they're out to get me anymore. You know,
there may may have been a time when there were

(01:19:02):
when when I was looked on with some degree of suspicion,
But frankly I laugh at that now because I shouldn't
have cared about that. I should have been here on
the piano doing doing what God, exercising the gift that
he gave me, uh and not not being so self conscious.

(01:19:24):
But again I go back to being the bat babbitist,
the Baptist preacher's kid, and being watched all the time,
and having and being rejected a lot, uh, being called
four eyes, being called preach, having four or five kids
just jump on me and beat the crap out of

(01:19:44):
me after school. You know, because I work glasses and
I it has it has. Yes, I have an anger
in me. My anger is is for the bullies of
this world. It's it's it's for the the unfair, the

(01:20:05):
unfairly treated. Uh majority of people in the world who
lived in some abject poverty and terror. Sometimes while another
segment of society lives on Mount Olympus and wear golden
crowns and float around in togas making decisions that affect

(01:20:28):
the lives of that cause cause or do not cause
wars and things of that nature to occur in other
people's country. That kind of stuff makes me angry. I
was incredibly angry about Vietnam. I knew in my gut
that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a false flag.

(01:20:49):
I knew it. I knew we need I knew I
knew that. I just feel it, and I think that
they're gonna have it's going to become harder and harder
for administrations to put through these mil to go on

(01:21:09):
these military adventures after after our generation and after Vietnam. Uh.
Now it hasn't dissuaded them because they've been now wherever
they've been to the Gulf War uh uh they've went,
They've been to they've gone over and erecked Iraq, and

(01:21:30):
they've wrecked Afghanistan. I mean, what, what are what actually
are we doing as a country to make life better
on this world for more people, for our own people
when we don't have elder care for even a half

(01:21:51):
of the of the people who need it in this country. So,
you know, yeah, those things. I'm I'm an activist. I'm
a leftist if you want, you want to all me that.
I've always been aligned politically with with with a liberal society.

(01:22:13):
And I don't see anything wrong with national health. They
have it in Australia, they have it in England, and
it takes care of a lot of people who would
normally if they only if they only had to depend
on money, they wouldn't get medical care. And I think
when you keep seriously injured people sitting in the waiting

(01:22:33):
room while people with the money are like going past
them and going to get care. So you know what,
I'm saying I think there's a lot of injustice. I'm
angry about that. I'm angry about people causing other people's deaths, uh,

(01:22:53):
needlessly spending human lives in pursuit of some I don't know,
some reactionary, borderline fascist like dream of a society. Well,
in our case, I'm very nervous because I was raised

(01:23:15):
and rigorous religious framework, where if you got outside across
the laser beam, a buzzer sounded, and you got an
electric shop. I'm afraid of religion being too close to government.

(01:23:39):
I think that the founding fathers knew exactly what they
were doing when they separated church in state, and the
idea that well, no, I was a long time ago,
and now we need to we need to get them
closer together, you know, to get America back on its path.

(01:24:00):
I'm not persuaded that religion ever did anything to help government.

Speaker 1 (01:24:16):
Let's go back to Oklahoma, your Baptist minister's son. How
do you hear rock and roll? How do you hear Elvis?
To what degree does it change you? To what degree
does it affect you?

Speaker 2 (01:24:31):
Well, my father made a critical mistake at one point
because he was also kind of left minded, believe it
or not. And during the Civil rights movement, he would
have black congregations come to our church. And when they came,
they brought their drums and their electric guitars, and they,

(01:24:56):
you know, sang the gospel. And Elvis was up to
his neck in the gospel music.

Speaker 6 (01:25:03):
So he was.

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):
And so my father was really I was proud of
his stand. He let he he was inclusive. He he
knew perfectly well there were two gay guys who came
to service, and they were there every Sunday, and he

(01:25:27):
never said a word about it until his deacons came
in and said, you've got to stop those guys from coming,
because you know that's not in the Bibles. And he said, well,
he said, I'm not going to say anything to them,
but you're no longer my deacons. So he fired the deacons.
His stand was impeccable. And I don't know, I don't know,

(01:25:56):
I honestly, Bob, I don't know where I was leading
with that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:59):
But well, tell me about hearing rock music curing Elvis.

Speaker 2 (01:26:03):
Well, when these when these black congregations would come in
and play service, we the gospel was like a rock
and roll. There was drums, they had drums up there,
you know, in the front of the church. I would
as I as I said, I would sometimes absent myself
from the house to go to various functions where people

(01:26:27):
work dancing. You know. Glenn Campbell said, you know why
Southern Baptists don't make love standing up? And I said, no, Glenn,
why not? He said, because people will think they're dancing.

Speaker 3 (01:26:46):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:26:48):
He used to control the radio, and you know, so
we would like try to get on a station where
we could hear Elvis or you know, Buddy Holly or
somebody else, and he would like slap our hands, you know,
he'd get back on that. All those preachers who used
to preach out of Del Rio, Texas. I don't know.

(01:27:14):
I found my when my mother passed. As I said,
I was a senior in high school, so I was
out from under the family umbrella very early on my
own in Los Angeles, sleeping on an air mattress with
some girls I knew who had like they let me
use their dining room. And I had a little portfolio

(01:27:40):
of songs. And I was an independent human being and
I've never been so happy in my life. And I
had nothing. I had nothing, and I walked around Hollywood
with my songs, and if somebody asked me what I did,
I'd say, I'm a songwriter and I was proud of it.
And I got a couple of everly brother cuts. Everly

(01:28:05):
brothers always worship.

Speaker 1 (01:28:07):
Well, l wait, wait, wait, let's slow down a little bit.
At what point and how and why do you side
I'm going to be a songwriter as a profession.

Speaker 2 (01:28:20):
Well, I'm at sam Bernardino of Ali College, and I'm wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 1 (01:28:24):
Before you go there? How did the family end up
moving from Oklahoma to California?

Speaker 2 (01:28:29):
That was always my father's dream.

Speaker 6 (01:28:31):
He was.

Speaker 2 (01:28:33):
He was always going to go there. It was just
a matter of times. So when he got a call
from this church in Colton, which is famous mostly for Wyatt,
for roy Erp. Wyatt's brother was buried there. So that's
that was one of the That was the tourist attraction.

(01:28:54):
It was roy ERP's gravestone, it was he you know.
So we're in California, which was a complete makeover for
me in terms of one of the first thing I
heard that summer that we moved in u there was
a there was a consciousness, a consciousness changing event, and

(01:29:22):
it was the Beach Boys singing on the radio station
The Look. I came in, k me in and they
were they were singing in my room. And I was
moving into my new bedroom in California, and all the
windows were up, and I hear the same song on

(01:29:44):
all the radios, all two or three different houses. They're
all tuned in to. Came in and they're listening to
the Beach Boys. And all this bogun villa's dripping down
and it's warm and everything is green. And I see
this kid in his backyard abutting our property and he's

(01:30:07):
got on a Volkswagen bus and he's got a surfboard
up on top of it and he's washing it all down.
He's come back, he just got back from the beach.
He's washing his rig down. I looked over there and
I said, what's that? He said, what's what? I said,
That is thing on top of your car. He says,
that's my surfboard. Man, Hey dude, you know. I said, well,

(01:30:31):
what's that music you're playing? You know in my room?
He said, hey, dude, he said, you don't know who
the Beach Boys are. I said, well, I sort of
like I know. I heard Jan and Dean record about
Surf City, but I don't know much about it. He said,
come in here, and I went into his room and

(01:30:52):
he played me everything the beach boys had done up
until then. And I walked that and I felt like
a changed person that I can't explain the vibration of
it was so strong that I was that I was

(01:31:12):
now in a different environment, uh, emotionally. And it was
shortly after that my mother passed. She she uh, she
tripped over a piece of furniture in the living room
one afternoon, and five weeks later she died of a

(01:31:37):
brain tumor.

Speaker 3 (01:31:40):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:31:42):
So I was, I was free, I was I was broken,
and my father was destroyed. So all the rules we
had no rules now. All my whole life had been
about rules, and now all of a sudden, there's no rules.
And walking into the house at one or two in
the morning, drunk as a skunk and stepping over my

(01:32:06):
father who's already passed out on the living room floor.
That's when I found out that Native American blood is
susceptible to alcohol. Because I'm a sixteenth and my father
was an eighth. And once he stopped preaching and started drinking,

(01:32:26):
he he sort of proved that he was you know,
he could, he could, he could, uh, he could drink
with the best of them, and he had a lot
of girlfriends. The whole temperature changed there pretty soon. He

(01:32:49):
was he was he was fed up and wanted to
go back to Oklahoma. So they went and I stayed,
and I was trying to go to sam Rindino Valley
College and I'm not a very good student, and I'm
skipping classes and I'm going. In the den of music
was a guy named Russell C. Baldwin, you know, fantastic,

(01:33:14):
a concert pianist who had damaged one of his hands
in a car wreck and it had cost him his career.
So now he's teaching. He wasn't bitter, but my favorite
parts of the class would be when he would say,
I think today I'm just going to play some Beethoven

(01:33:35):
piano sonatus for your kids. And he would sit there
and he would play Beethoven, just spellbinding, and then he
would say, okay, now for your semester final we're going
to do We're gonna set He said, you each pick
a poem, and you and you write a choral arrangement
and a piano accompaniment. And he said that'll be your

(01:33:58):
final grade. So I went in, and I'd been to
class about three times. I wrote this arrangement for choir,
and I think the text was when I am old
and gray, and when you were old and gray and
full of sleep and sitting by the fire, take down

(01:34:19):
this book, slowly read and dream, John Keats. I think
that's what it was. And he called me into his
office that afternoon and I went, uh, oh, you know Russell,
the dean of music. And I walked in and he said,
sit down, mister Webb, and he said, I see this

(01:34:42):
morning that you were late for class. You were recalcitrant. Again.
I didn't even know what recalcitrant meant, but he said
I was recalcitrant. And he said, you know, he said,
I know that you spend most of your time down
in the practice rooms writing. I don't know how he

(01:35:03):
knew that, but he said, you know something, He said,
we here at the college, we don't enjoy having you
here any more than you enjoy being here. So he said,
if you want to be a songwriter, why don't you
go to Los Angeles and be a goddamn songwriter And

(01:35:27):
kicked me out of his office. And it was like
an epiphody. It was like God spoke to me through
my you know, through my dean of music. And when
I think back on it, that was probably the thing
that propelled me out of that mindset that I had

(01:35:49):
to somehow get this musical education. He said, you know
everything he handed He handed me my my test score,
and I had an A plus on my original composition
and my arranging. And I had an F for the
class because of incomplete assignments and absenteeism. So I had

(01:36:18):
an eight plus in the music, but I failed the
mechanical demands of being a student. So I was out
of there, and I borrowed some money from friends in
Newport Beach who had a little extra, bought a Volkswagen

(01:36:42):
and went up to Hollywood and started walking around with
a battered portfolio of these songs that I've been writing
since age twelve, certainly since I heard that wonderful Jerry
k Parts song around look at Me with Glenn Campbell,

(01:37:03):
And I'm looking at Hollywood, and I'm thinking, somewhere in
Hollywood Glenn Campbell is right now. I could probably see him.
I just knew which building he's in. I could go
to it and I could walk in and I would
see Glenn Campbell and there was a magic to that.

(01:37:25):
And so I went everywhere, and like I said, I
went over to Warner Brothers Music and actually got a
couple of cuts with the Everly Brothers through a guy
named Dick Blasser. And I thought, well, I'm I'm gonna,
I'm gonna, you know, tear this place to pieces. Man,

(01:37:46):
I'm on my way. And then it was weeks and
weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks where nothing happened.
And finally a friend of mine, Jimmy Stotler, who was
a drummer, he said, you know, he said, his label
in America. I said, what he says, it's Motown. He said,
why don't you go over to Motown? I said, well,

(01:38:07):
Motown is it's he says.

Speaker 3 (01:38:11):
I know.

Speaker 2 (01:38:12):
I know, he said, but you've done everything else. He said,
try it. So I went over there. I went over
to Motown, went into the office, these two big doors opened,
very fancy office. I sat down with this kind of
ratty sort of it was almost like a paper bag

(01:38:33):
full of songs, and talked to the receptionist for a while,
and I said, I'd really like to have somebody to
get listen to one of my songs. And she's just
having lunch, and it was Vicky. She and I got
to be really close, and she said, why you poor

(01:38:53):
little sprawling things. She said, We're gonna have to fatten
you up. Said, are you going to fade away? She
talked to me for a while, and then she said listen.
She said, you got a song you really like. I said, yeah,
I had one call this time last summer and I said,
this one right here, and I had it on a cassette.

(01:39:16):
I actually I had it on a rough reel to reel.
We used to have real to reel then. And she
went into the office, this big door. She went the
inner office. She came right back out and closed the door.
A few beats passed, and I hear.

Speaker 3 (01:39:37):
This this time less ceremony you need bet the sky
would events blue.

Speaker 2 (01:39:50):
And I hear my song coming through the door. And
then there's a pause, and then the door opens and
I see this angelic face. It was a guy, Frank Wilson,
and people who are familiar with the town will know
who he is. He had a very soft voice and
he said which I said, what he said, Well, you

(01:40:11):
come in here please, and I said, I said I'm sorry.
He said, would you come in here please? And I
said okay, And that was it. The door opened and
I walked in and life. Life was never the same
after that. I worked there. I was under contract for

(01:40:33):
two years. I got a cut on a Supremes album.
It was a Christmas album called Merry Christmas from the Supremes.
I worked with Brenda Holloway, I worked with Tony Martin.
They had signed they would they would send all the

(01:40:54):
white artists to me, and I have to tell you,
they treated me like a prince. They really gave me
the keys to the kingdom there. They gave me the
education that I really needed. I got it motown. I
learned to work a board, I learned the parts of
the song that were important, the hook, and they were

(01:41:17):
endlessly patient with me. And I wrote a lot of
songs there. I walked out. When I left two years later,
they said, listen, you've tried hard here, but we don't
think we're ever going to be able to use these songs.
And I said, here, take this song up, up and away.
We're not going to use that. They said, take this.

(01:41:37):
By the time we get to Phoenix. I'd written for
Paul Peterson, who's like a kid who appeared on the
Donner Egio, but apparently he didn't like it, so they
gave me Up, Up and Away. By the time I
get to Phoenix Galveston, didn't we all the early songs,

(01:42:00):
not Wichita because I wrote that for Glant. So I
walked out of there with four or five hit records
in my knapsack, didn't know it at the time, and
went to work for Johnny Rivers Music.

Speaker 1 (01:42:22):
How'd you meet Johnny Rivers.

Speaker 2 (01:42:25):
Through Mark Gordon who was the president of Motown at
that time, and he knew I was looking for a
gig and he bought out my contract. You know, it's
crazy they he bought those songs. I was just telling

(01:42:47):
you about all those hits. He bought those songs. There
were about ten of them, and he bought my contract
for fifteen thousand dollars. And the fifteenth thousand dollars I
had to pay back out of my royalties, and the first,
the first hit I ever had, was Up, Up and Away,

(01:43:10):
and my royalties paid back. I paid back my fifteen
thousand dollars and I bought a grand piano and that
was my furniture. I had a little house in Laurel Canyon.
Now there's a lot of to do about Laurel Canyon,
and this one was there, and this one lived there,
and I lived there too. I mean quietly. I'm not

(01:43:31):
in the documentary, I'm not in the book. I'm not
the thing. But I used to walk down to the
country store, get my groceries and walk back up there,
wrote things like I wrote MacArthur Park there and the
only furniture I had was a bunch of mind you
we were hippies. But I had a bunch of cushions,
different sized cushions pushed up underneath the piano, and I

(01:43:55):
slept under there. So I was sleeping under my piano.
And I just roll out in the morning, sometimes take
a shower, and sit down and start writing music.

Speaker 1 (01:44:05):
And I was.

Speaker 2 (01:44:07):
I was probably writing at least I'm gonna say I
would say three songs a week, but I'll say two
to three. At least two or three songs a week
I would write. And they weren't written for anybody. They
had no destination. They were just it was just pouring
out my feelings for this girl or that girl. I

(01:44:30):
had all these tragic romances, that whole row of them.
And it was a very very you know, like a
difficult relationship or a disappointing relationship is a gold mine
for a songwriter. They'll all tell you, you know, you
don't you're not gonna make it until some chick really

(01:44:52):
busts you up, man, and then then you're gonna then
you're gonna be fine, you know. But you know, you
got some you gotta do some living. So Johnny and
I I moved into his house and stayed in the
back room, and we used to get on his motorcycle
and go down to the Whiskey of Go Go and, uh,

(01:45:17):
listen to John Lee Hooker listened to Smoky Smokey Robinson
and the Miracles. Can you imagine that in the Whiskey
of Go Go, it's probably about as big as this studio.
And uh, there they were, you know, and with all
the moves and the you know, all the motown stuff
and the and the outfits and and uh the go

(01:45:41):
go go girls in the Cages, which were really originated
at Whisky at the Whiskey, That's where that came from.
The Girls in the Cages and psychedelic light shows all
over the wall and stuff, and uh, we we've got
we've got to be good friends. And uh he had

(01:46:04):
me working with this group, Fifth Dimension, And Johnny Rivers
remembered a relationship he had with Glenn Campbell. They had
done an album called The Long Black Veil for Mercury Records,
and he remembered that Glenn was such a great guy,
such beautiful person, and such an accomplished musician. He said,

(01:46:26):
you should have a hit record, and Glenn said, I
just can't find the right song. And Johnny, after he
signed me, one of the first things he did is
cut by the time I get to Phoenix. And he
called Glenn, and Glenn and Al Delorie came over to
his house and heard his that they used to call it.

(01:46:53):
It was a it was a rough master, is what
it was.

Speaker 1 (01:46:55):
It was.

Speaker 2 (01:46:56):
It was a it was a record. It was a record.
You know, you put it. So he put it on there, Uh,
test pressing, and he put it on the thing and
he and third song image like by the time we
get to Phoenix. He lined it up and played it
and that both of them just sat there with their
mouths open. And this is the way the story was

(01:47:17):
told me that Al de Laurie said, I don't get it.
He says, you know you've got a hit. You know,
Johnny had this. Can you tell me how much you
missed me? Beautiful, beautiful thing, poor side of Town? And
I think it was number one? And Ali said, I

(01:47:39):
don't get it. He said, you know this is a hit.
He said, this is a hit, isn't it?

Speaker 4 (01:47:45):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:47:46):
And Glenn said yeah. He said, it feels pretty good.
But why are you giving it to us? And he said, guys,
He said, you can only have one number one record
at a time. He said, but what he was really
doing was doing something for me. He was doing doing

(01:48:10):
it well. Of course he's helping himself as well, but
he did care about me, and he put me in
charge of the fifth dimension. He put me in charge
of kind of their day to day rehearsing. And it
turned out that they recorded up up in a week.

(01:48:31):
Glenn recorded by the time we get to Phoenix, all
of this happened really fast. And so in nineteen sixty seven,
that's all you heard. And we went to the Monterey
Pop Festival and we played up there. I played up
there with a wrecking crew. Hal Blaine, Larry Necktel Joe Osborne,

(01:48:54):
and there was very little. It's not you know, Johnny
wasn't even in the film, and he put up twenty
five percent of the money and he kind of got
screwed on that deal. But I was I was just
coming back from the Monterey Pop Festival and hearing two

(01:49:16):
of my songs on the radio at you know, in
constant rotation all the time. They were both nominated for
Song of the Year by the NARIS Board, and I thought, well,
that's unbelievable. First of all, is heart stopping. I mean,
I was moving so fast that I was, I was

(01:49:39):
out in front of my airstream. I felt I was
like lightheaded, like I could couldn't breathe because I was moving.
My career was moving faster than I was, and so
I didn't fully grasp what was going on. But I thought,
if I'm nominated twice the same category for Song of

(01:50:01):
the Year, I'm gonna lose because the competition was general
on my mind by Glenn Campbell that John Hartford song,
which is a poem, which is an absolute masterpiece. I
would have stole that song a second so and owed

(01:50:24):
to Billy Joe, which was the Jimmy Haskell Spooky String
Arrangement and what did Billy Joe McAllister throw off the
Tallahassee Bridge, Remember that? And so Bobby was pretty hot.
I thought she was that that was a very original record,

(01:50:46):
and I think he got a Grammy for that arrangement.
He should have. So I figured one of those songs
will win. Half of my people are going to vote
for a up in a way, half of my people
are going to vote for Glenn. It's clearly two different
groups of people, and so I won't win, but I'm

(01:51:11):
going to go to the ceremony anyway because all my
friends are going. And I put on my blue Knahru
jacket with a silk with a Irish lace shirt underneath
and went down there like I was gonna win a
Grammy Award, but really didn't think I was. And I

(01:51:31):
kind of leaned up on the back of the auditorium
that's where you'll usually find me, like on the fringe,
leaned up on the back wall, and just watch things
going around, watch what people were doing, and all of
a sudden, the Fifth Dimension starts winning Grammy Awards. They

(01:51:54):
won a Grammy Award for Best New Artist Record of
the Year Album of the Year, Best Album Cover, Best
Choral Arrangement for a Group, on and on and on,
and I thought, well, God, bless them, you know, I

(01:52:17):
mean we worked there, I mean we worked hard together
to get that, to get that album done. And then
also Glenn won a Grammy for Best Male Vocal Performance
for By the time we get to Phoenix and I'm going, wow,
this is shit going to be a pretty good night,

(01:52:40):
even if. But now I'm starting to feel a little
left out because everybody has a Grammy except me. And
the woman lady stepped up to the microphone and said,
and now she said for Song of the Year, which
was one of the big awards. She said, Jimmy Webb

(01:53:01):
for Up, Up and Away, And the place just went
crazy and I was drunk and Larry nectl hal Blaine
both had a hold of me and they escorted me
up to the stage, thank god. And I got up
there and I got worded, I'm looking around and the

(01:53:23):
flash bulbs are popping it. I mean, I finally got
off and on my way back to my ideo, I
passed Glenn's table quite by accident. He reached up and

(01:53:47):
grabbed my hand. That was the first time that i'd
ever seen him face to face. It was like the
Panhandle of Oklahoma, like like just passed before my eyes,
you know, the tractor I was driving that day when

(01:54:07):
I heard that Glenn Campbell's song, and it was like,
how could this be happening? How could this actually be happening,
because it's something that I only imagined could. I thought
maybe I would get a couple of songs recorded, you know,

(01:54:27):
I thought some of them were pretty good, But all
of a sudden they were They were giving me the
keys to Hollywood, and it was it was heady, overpowering experience,
and and I lost over the fun. In the following

(01:54:48):
months and years for a while, I think I may
have lost some of my equilibrium. I I remember being
just outraged that I wasn't sort of recognized as a

(01:55:09):
California songwriter like Jerry Beckley and Dewy Ban all in America,
like the Eagles, like like all those guys who you
know live we all lived in the same place. That's
that's that's that's where the anger came from that I

(01:55:30):
was talking about earlier. But I certainly wasn't ashamed of
my association with Glenn or the Fifth Dimension still hold
him in the highest regard of probably the top one
percent performers that I ever worked with. But I almost
immediately had access to mister Satra, and you know, country

(01:56:00):
boy makes good. I moved into the Philippine Embassy, which
was temporarily vacant. It was on a street called Comino
Paul Merrow, and it's a huge mansion. I never even
seen a mansion like this, but it was for rent
and I rented it, and I had a bunch of people,

(01:56:20):
a bunch of friends, and so there were a lot
of rooms in there, and I think I had about
twenty twenty five people living with me because I embraced
the whole hippie the whole ideology of love is all
we need. All we need is love, as proposed by

(01:56:43):
mister Lennan McCartney. It turned out that we didn't need
a few other things besides love. But at that time
I was spreading the wealth and I had a lot
of friends. I've gone to college, I'd been to choir
and inquire with and some resolved set in that I

(01:57:09):
was gonna and I wasn't going to leave any of
these people behind. I was going to bring them along.
I didn't know where I was going, but wherever I
was going, I was going to bring them with me.
So I had them all in this big mansion and
I'm doing my best to get them record deals, get

(01:57:30):
them signed. I signed some of them to my own label.
I actually put out a Christmas record with the choir,
but the San Bernino Valley College Choir, and I just
had this feeling that I should bring everyone else along,
like the closest thing to it is we all live

(01:57:53):
in the yellow submarine and yellows submarine submarine, all my
friend friends will be aboard. And it didn't work. I couldn't.
I couldn't do it. I was able to do get

(01:58:16):
some records out for people. I got a couple of
people signed, and I maintained some of the friendships that
that I made there.

Speaker 1 (01:58:26):
I was.

Speaker 2 (01:58:26):
I was instrumental in getting Freddie Tackett started in LA
who eventually joined Little Feet, still still in a little fat.
I was able to do some things, but at some
point I began to feel I suppose, well, I don't suppose,

(01:58:46):
I know, I know that I felt guilty about my success.
I felt there's a lot of people out there who,
you know, really did go ahead and get their degrees
and music, and there's people who can play piano better
than me and can sing better than me, and there's

(01:59:09):
people who write songs better than me. And it was
just my turn. It was just somehow or other money.
My number came up, and I think I'm I think
I'm all. I had enough adversity in my life that
I think I'm over the feeling guilty about it part.

Speaker 1 (01:59:39):
Okay, you have this incredible success.

Speaker 2 (01:59:43):
What about writing thereafter? You inhibited? Well, not particularly. I
wrote to MacArthur Park afterwards, and I wrote it at
the behest of Bones, how who was a legend and

(02:00:08):
as the best tape cutter in Hollywood. That's why they
call him Bones. He's a really good producer as well,
and he was producing the Association. They were on my
list of favorite bands because of they were they they
like chords. I have this thing about chords, he said,

(02:00:34):
Do you think called me? He said, do you think
that you could do like something like with a classical bent?

Speaker 6 (02:00:42):
You know?

Speaker 2 (02:00:42):
He said, I want it to be rock and roll.
I want it to be contemporary, but I wanted to
have movements like a symphony, you know, like slow fast, slow,
He says, and I really wanted to build like a
like a symphony again. And I just laughed and I said, doctor,

(02:01:06):
you came to the right place. I said, I'm the
guy who can do this. And I wrote it on
that on that piano that I bought with with the
up up and away royalties, and I still have it,
by the way. It's in storage right now, but I
have that act and I uh. I sat there for

(02:01:31):
about two or three days working on MacArthur Park.

Speaker 6 (02:01:35):
I was.

Speaker 2 (02:01:35):
I was really kind of proud of it.

Speaker 6 (02:01:38):
Mm hm.

Speaker 2 (02:01:40):
And I took it down at the studio to play
it for the association and I go and I spread
it out and it looks like it's it looks like
an albatross. This music is like all over this big
sheet with wings and they're going, oh who and I

(02:02:01):
and I sat down to start playing this thing. When
I did, my clothes were wretched, the clothes I had.
When I sat down, I ripped the bottom out of
my jeans and you could hear it. It was like
Douglas Fairbanks sticking a dagger into a sail and then

(02:02:22):
sliding down the sail. It was this long, ripping, embarrassing sound.
And they all cracked it up and laughed and then
I started playing it and I sang, I recall the

(02:02:48):
yellow cotton dress. It was phoning like a way on
the ground round and they turned me down. They turned
it down. One reason they turned me down is I

(02:03:12):
think it was just too much for them to grasp
as to learn it in one bite, that it was
going to take. They were at the end of an album,
not the beginning. They were at the end. They just
needed a song to nail down the end of this album.
And Boone's house said that you guys ought to cut it.
He said, well, you don't think so, and they did

(02:03:36):
something else. And the story, which this is a true story,
he told them. He said, the day that MacArthur Park
goes into the top ten, he said, I'm resigning as
your producer. Now, this is not a made up story.
This is what he told the band. And months went

(02:04:01):
by and somehow there's you know, stories endless. But I
hooked up with this crazy Irish actor and Richard Eiris
who taught me Olympic class professional drinking, and invited me
over to London and said.

Speaker 6 (02:04:22):
Oh, I'll make a record. We'll make a record and
it'll be a hit and I'll be a rock star, you.

Speaker 2 (02:04:30):
Know, And I'm going, yeah, right, But I don't care.
I love the guy. He's a he's a blast to
be around. We're always in a Phantom five that he
bought from Princess Margaret. And he's still got the emblems
on the Royal of the Royal Household on the radiator.
So every gate opens everywhere we go. They just opened

(02:04:53):
the gate, you know, it's and so it was hysterical
fun for a long time. We went to Ireland to
kill Key Limerick, which is his own hometown, and meanwhile,
as a hobby, were working on this record. And I remember.

(02:05:17):
The interesting thing about Richard was that when we first
started out, we'd bring Roughs in from the studio and
we'd be listening and he'd say, haw.

Speaker 6 (02:05:27):
Tom, see, I think the voice is too loud. It's
too loud. We need to turn up the orchestra.

Speaker 2 (02:05:36):
And this was because he was insecure about his voice. Obviously,
even though you just start in Camelot, that Alan J.
Lerner score, he got through that pretty well, I thought.
And then as the record progressed, his personality became to change,

(02:06:02):
and finally towards the end he was saying.

Speaker 4 (02:06:04):
Ah, Jimmy Webb, he said, you've done it again. You've
got the orchestra too loud. He said, you're covering up
my voice. He said, why are you covering up my voice? Said,
I'm not I'm not covering up your voice. I'm just
mixing the record. He said, well, my voice, you know,
my mighty voice. It needs to be louder, you know,

(02:06:25):
if I'm going to be a pop star.

Speaker 2 (02:06:28):
So he went from no confidence to way too much confidence.
And I'm doing the record kind of tongue in cheek
and thinking, well, this is going to be a fun
thing to do, and then I'll get back to Hollywood
and I'll get back to the real, to the real

(02:06:50):
thing that I do. And I'm telling you, when that
thing came out, it was like a UFO, nobody doing
what to think about it. But we back in those days,
we had and I'm sure you'll remember what we called
underground radio or FM radio sometimes and they would play anything.

(02:07:14):
They didn't care. I mean they the disc jockeys actually
could play what they wanted. This was before the playlist
became iron bound, you know, law that you couldn't break,
you couldn't put any you couldn't you know how it
came to be that disc jockeys could no longer play

(02:07:36):
the records they wanted to play. They had to play
the list. Well, that's what they were doing. They were
playing the list and they weren't going to play MacArthur Park.
But underground they were playing it because they were playing
the Long Doors version of Light My Fire, and they
were playing the long Bob Dylan version of All Along

(02:07:56):
the watch Tower. And there were several records out there
that were six and it's sixties touching seven, and so
they decide they'll play MacArthur Park. And some somewhere up
somewhere in heaven, somebody punched a button and a station

(02:08:16):
in the Midwest went on it in the in the
afternoon and played a played the whole record in the
switchboard lit up. People said, what was that? Play that again?
And the next thing, you know, you have you know
we used to call a breakout where you have it

(02:08:36):
goes viral, like stations are picking it up. They're beginning
to pick it up. It's fine, it's not it's not
a sure thing, but it's like, well this is interesting.
We've got like five top forty stations in the Midwest
on MacArthur park the whole version, and they're altering their

(02:08:58):
commercial schedule and they're changing all kinds of stuff that
these stations don't do this. They don't they don't change
their whole way of playing records. But it was seven
minutes twenty one seconds long the original. Now you could

(02:09:20):
not predict what was going to happen next because I'll
just jump to the day that Ron Jacobs, who used
to be a director, came in in sam Rendino, where
I went to college. When Ron Jacobs called me at
home instead, Hey, Jimmy, he said, we've got this MacArthur
Parker record over here, and he said we'd like to

(02:09:42):
go on it. And I said, well, have you got
cag J was the hottest top forty radio station in
the country, and the real Don Steele was their top
jock over there. And they said, the only thing is

(02:10:08):
we want you to edit it because we can't play
seven minutes twenty We can't play seven minutes and twenty
one seconds on cage J. We can't do it. You know,
they won't let us do it. Bill Drake won't let
us do it. Bill Drake was like doing all the
playlist and Bill Drake was was programming fifteen hundred radio stations.

(02:10:35):
The fifteen hundred radio stations were playing his list, and
so I said, well, I'll have to think about it. Ron,
and I talked to my partner in crime, his fellow
name William F. Williams, and I said, what do you
think I ought to do? And he said a four

(02:10:58):
letter expletive. Expedit them. They can like play it like
it is or piss off. Right. So when Ron called back,
I said, Ron, I've thought about it, and for artistic reasons,

(02:11:18):
and I said, it would be nice to have the
record on cag J, but I can't. I'm not going
to edit it. I said, I don't think it makes
any sense when you edit it. It doesn't. It only
sounds like something when it's all put together the way
it's supposed to be put together. Otherwise it's just it's
fragmentary and you don't know what you're listening. He said, okay, okay, okay,

(02:11:40):
he said all right, He said, I'll get back to you.
The next day. Case J went on MacArthur Park the
full length version, and from then on d it was
it was a stone cold hit. It went to number
two in America, went to number one in the United
Kingdom twice. In other words, it went up to number one,

(02:12:01):
came down, then went back up to number one, and
roughly ten years later was number one in the United
States with Donna Summers disco version, and so the the
you know, this little, this unlikely project with this eye,

(02:12:26):
and he had a big career off of that. He
played everywhere, He made several albums, he he did Okay
behind it.

Speaker 1 (02:12:37):
Tell us the story of wichital alignment.

Speaker 2 (02:12:43):
Well, which till i'mann came fairly fairly in close proximity
to the other events that I've been describing. But like
I said, it was all happening so fast. Glenn called

(02:13:04):
me one day at home and said, you know, I
need to follow up for by the time I get
to Phoenix. Now, I don't know, there may be people
out there who don't know what a follow up is,
but I think you know what one is, and uh,
just in case there are there are those out there

(02:13:24):
who don't realize the way the record business used to
be is if you had a hit record, you would
put out another one that had a similar orchestration, similar characteristics,
same artist, and it wasn't supposed to be the same song,
but it was supposed to evoke the first song, so

(02:13:47):
that you were borrowing from the popularity of the first record,
and some of it was supposed to rub off on
the second record, but it had to be a different thing. Uh,
but similarities built in, and that's what a follow up was.

Speaker 3 (02:14:06):
And uh.

Speaker 2 (02:14:07):
In fact, when I was learning to write songs, so
that's all I listened to was follow ups because I
was comparing my follow ups to theirs, And at one
point I decided my follow ups were as good as
theirs are better, and so I really, they don't do
that anymore. I don't think. I don't think it per
se that they do that anymore. But then they they did.

(02:14:30):
And Glenn said, I really need this follow up. He said,
can you write me something about a town? And I'm thinking, oh, Lord,
and I and I and I said, Glenn, I said,
I think I think I'm just about finishing with my
rand McNally phase. I'm you know, drowning in towns over here.
And I he said, oh, well, that's too bad. He said, well,

(02:14:56):
he said, how about could you make it geographical? And
I said, well, I guess yeah. Let me think about
that for a minute, hung up the phone, sat there,
and all of a sudden, I know you'll think I'm
making this up, But West Texas and Oklahoma, Panana drifts

(02:15:17):
in front of my eyes, that big flat slab of prairie,
and the fact that you could drive for fifty miles
over into Mexico, New Mexico and not see anything. Maybe
a pig farm here, pig farm there, but nothing, not

(02:15:40):
a business. Some old, maybe ramshackle farmhouses that were already
laying down, very in a way desolate. But I loved it.
I loved it. I love it still, especially the at
night the stars. But I'm driving along in my mind

(02:16:03):
and I see the man up on the telephone pole
on the phone, and I thought that guy there was
always a guy up there talking on the phone. Who
was he talking to? And I remember our dad. You
stopped the car and say now, because it was real
quiet out there, there was nobody else out there. And
Dad would say, okay, now, but he still he says,

(02:16:24):
we're going to walk up on these telephone wires and
I want you to listen. And we'd walk up close
to the to the pole and just being really quiet
and listening and you could hear the wire, you could
hear the wires. You could hear them like you could

(02:16:47):
hear them doing that. Hence the line, I hear you
singing in the wires. So I thought, I'm going to
write it about the man on the pole because I

(02:17:08):
wanted to write her out blue collar heroes. They were
my heroes, like in Galveston. He's why is he from Galveston? Well,
he's from Galveston because it's a damn hard town to
grow up in. It was no Riviera, and I wanted
an ordinary guy. And so here's an ordinary guy up

(02:17:32):
on a telephone pole and what is he thinking. He's
thinking that he's in love with this girl, and it
just began to unroll. I got the melody and a

(02:18:06):
few chords. I start off on this, you know, journey.
Every song is a journey. It's taking you somewhere. Sometimes
it takes you to the end of the road where
all the burnout cars aren't. You got a bummer. But

(02:18:30):
this one wanted to be written. So when a song
wants to be written, it will help you. It will
help you. It will write with you and not against you.
And that's that's what I call being connected. And for
those unbelievers out there, you know, who feel sorry for me,

(02:18:53):
I feel just as sorry for you. But I know
that there is this connection. I know it because I've
used it in many, many, many times in my life
when I was in trouble, when I needed help, when
I was unhappy. When I was writing a song and
I said, please God, you know, give me a give
me an idea, he give me a line, give me

(02:19:15):
something I gotta So I wrote these two verses, and
he was calling me like every five minutes from western
three and saying is it done yet? Is it done yet?
And what I wanted to say was that go on,
you know, if you guys would stop calling me up here,

(02:19:36):
you know I got this thing done, you know. So
from like eleven in the morning to like about five
five point thirty took me to like bang out a
couple of verses pretty much what you know when you
when you think of the song. But I was wondering

(02:19:56):
at the time, is this enough? See where getting to
the it's the first verse, I'm gonta do it again. Okay,

(02:21:02):
so two verses. Now I'm as a songwriter and a
professional songwriter, I'm sitting I'm going to Okay, now do
I need to now do? And I need to go?
You know I need to go. Why don't you come

(02:21:25):
along with me? So I'm gonna bridge and go back

(02:21:53):
into that melody or or do I And then I'm
gonna have to write a last verse, you know. I exhausted.
I put it in a Manila envelope and I put
my cassette in there, and I wrote a note, dear Glenn,
this song isn't finished. But I thought I would run

(02:22:16):
it past you guys, and if you want me to
keep right and all right, if you don't want it,
let me know, and put a smiley face on it,
and called a messenger and sent it down to Western Three.
Didn't hear anything about it for a long time. It
was probably three weeks later. I'd say that I walked

(02:22:38):
into Armnsteiner's sound recorders and Glenn was there with the
boys with the with the gang and working. Apparently he
was because he was still sitting in with the recon crew,
even though he was becoming a star. He was sitting
in with the record group. And I walked in and

(02:23:02):
I said, so, how you doing. Go ahead, I'm doing fine,
said well, I said, you know, listen, I don't want
you to feel bad about that tune I wrote. I said,
you know, I wrote it in kind of a hurry,
and I realized it's it's kind of outside and I said,
you know, don't worry about it, because I'm really used
to rejection, you know, because writing songs is ninety percent rejection.

(02:23:31):
So we get unless unless if you don't, if you
can't digest rejection and judgment, sometimes a false judgment, but
a harsh judgment from somebody else, you should get in
another line of work because you're going to have a

(02:23:52):
steady diet of disappointment and rejection. So I was hardened
by then. I'd been to my town, I'd done my thing,
and I said, you know, I'll write another one. He says,
you're talking about which to lineman and I said yeah,
and he said we cut that And I said, well,

(02:24:17):
didn't you see the note. Didn't you see where it
said this is not finished. Call me in let me
know what you think. He said. I said, because Glenn,
it really wasn't finished. And he said it is now,

(02:24:39):
and they played it for me and it was beautiful.
It was beautiful, and I ended up overdubbing an Oregon
on it. I had a church organ in my house,
gul Branson Series seven hundred, and we didn't have synthesizers,

(02:25:01):
but church organs had a lot of bells and whistles
on them. They had a lot of different kind of
sounds ethereal angelic kind of things on them. And if
you listen to the very beginning of the records, you
can hear it clearly. I'm playing these little forests and
fist going, but it's in heavy sustain and the organ's going.

(02:25:27):
It's tremologus and it sounds like a satellite. You sort
of hear it on the beginning, then you hear it
prominently on the fade. So that was my contribution to
the record.

Speaker 1 (02:25:42):
So how did you feel when the hits dried up?

Speaker 2 (02:25:47):
Well, I don't know. I knew that it was inevitable
in a sense, but there was I was always being covered,
even when, even when I didn't have hit songs per
se on the charts. Was I was getting covers off

(02:26:10):
my own albums of different things. And like I said,
in seventy eight, Donna Summer had a number one with
MacArthur Park again, and in eighty six ten years later
I had Highwaymen with Willie Neilson Whale and Jenny's christ Consasson,

(02:26:35):
Chris Christofferson Johnny Cash, which went to number one, which
was a country music video of the Year, and then
they named the group The Highwayman, the Highwayman, and they
went on the road, and that song is still being covered.
The last time it was covered was with Amanda McBride
and her the ladies that call themselves the high Women,

(02:27:00):
who I told them just to go write their own
words for it. But in that sense, I never I
never felt that I wasn't getting things done or that
good things weren't happening for me. And I don't know.

(02:27:22):
I I think that you look at everybody in this business,
and not only that, but the business that I'm in,
and in the business that Cole Porter was in, and
then before him, the business that Jerome Kern was in,

(02:27:43):
and you realize that it happens to everybody. It happens
to everybody. There's a there's an arc, it goes up,
it levels off for a while, and inevitably it begins
to client. Unless you do something about that, Unless you

(02:28:04):
do something to change that trajectory. The only thing I
could think of doing was cutting a hit album as
a singer songwriter. I thought that would change. I thought
that would that would be back on the charts, back
back at the very center of things. And uh and
and that's when I began butting my head against that

(02:28:27):
brick wall. And I made an album. The first one
I produced by myself. The second one I cut at
my home studio, which is out Ensino. And I stress
that I I didn't stop making money because I didn't

(02:28:48):
have records on the charts. I was still you know,
my my annual income was pretty much the same, you
know it was. It was steady, so there. So there
was still a lot of play in those tunes, and
there were a lot of sync riots and different things
going on. Tried my hand at scoring a couple of films.

(02:29:10):
I didn't really feel like, I I don't know, it
didn't click. I made an album with George Martin. I
thought that might cure me. We made a lovely album.
Not much happened. The album, probably the best album that

(02:29:36):
I ever cut a solo artist, was Suspending Disbelief that
I did with Linda Ronstatt and George Messenberg. And another
little album called ten Easy Pieces, which is a cult
hit that I cut in a basement up in Toronto.
Was the first time I ever sung any of those
hit songs. And people can call me right now. As

(02:30:02):
soon as and when I get home, there'll be messages
for people call me and saying can I get that album?
And the fact is that it's not being manufactured anymore,
so I'm gonna have to It's a different world. I'm
gonna have to trade. I'm gonna have to find that
those masters and either get permission from those people to

(02:30:25):
get them to press some records for me to sell.
Because we make a lot of money on merchandise as well.
I mean, that's where we are today, recording all recording artists, everybody.
It's merchandise and live gigs and that's real money that

(02:30:46):
you can and it's substantial if you. I mean this
tour I'm doing just to give you, give you some idea.
This isn't all of it that I'm I'm starting in
except September through December. I'm doing what twenty shows. I'm

(02:31:07):
doing Paramount Hudson Valley. I'm doing the Old Town School
of Folk in Chicago. I'm doing the Coach House in
San Juan Capistrano, which I said last time I was there,
I sold it out. They wanted to do two nights.
I'm doing Yoshi's in Oakland. I think I sold that
place out. The Vogel many An Apple, Minneapolis. My concerts

(02:31:32):
are always full of there, Kansas City, Saint Louis, same thing, Austin.
Austin's a little bit more difficult for me, but that's
a few of the places that I'm going to be playing.
Just at the end of this year. And before COVID,
I was doing like fifty a year, and I was

(02:31:54):
making some decent money, and I thought, well, this is
real money, and I'm making the money by doing something
that I love to do, and I'm exposing my music
to the public. And that's an avenue that's been close

(02:32:14):
to me. By this digital machine thing that they've set
up here. They don't, you know, I'm not going to
be I don't think breaking a record on Spotify, so
you know, I I wish some things could have gone

(02:32:39):
better for me, But by and large, it's just been
a great life surrounded by wonderful friends, helpers all along
the way, and great personalities and friends for life everywhere

(02:33:00):
and I don't think that my life has been too
different from that of the average songwriter. I think that
most songwriters will have a red hot moment like a
Paul Anka, and then styles change, and and and and
the spotlight the spotlight, the spotlight goes, some focuses somewhere else.

(02:33:27):
I watched the same thing happen to film stars, and
I see like one of my old favorite actors like
doing some cheap movie that I mean really cheap. You
can tell that it's it's it's being shot you know
on it's you know, it's it's being shot with with
the home home cameras and mh. I realized that it

(02:33:52):
must be very disappointing for them not to be commanding
the kind of salaries that commanded the kind of respect
when they walk into a room. I understand all that,
but I cling to the idea that I am one

(02:34:13):
of the best people that do what I do, that
I could be better, that all I need is a
Broadway show. All I need that anything can happen, and
it always has happened for me, and I expect it.

Speaker 1 (02:34:34):
Well again, Okay, you know, I don't mean to cut
you short, but we've been going on a long time.
Maybe we'll come back and visit again. But I think
you've been a good case for people to go to
see you live. There's a lot of stuff I want
to know more like the Linda Ronstad easy for you
to say and the lyrics. But I think for now

(02:34:57):
this is a good stopping point.

Speaker 2 (02:35:00):
Okay. I mean, I hope I've given you something. Oh
you're giving me. You're giving me a lot.

Speaker 1 (02:35:05):
I mean there's a lot. You know. Listen, when you
start telling about your personality and when you start telling
about the tales of your I eat that stuff up.

Speaker 2 (02:35:13):
Well, you know, listen, Robert, it's tough. It's not a
life that I would recommend to anybody, but but it's mine,
and I would if I had to do it again,
I would do it again. Would I not work with

(02:35:33):
Frank Sinatra because he wasn't because he was a Republican
and because you know, the hippies didn't like him, you know,
would I?

Speaker 4 (02:35:46):
No?

Speaker 2 (02:35:46):
I don't think.

Speaker 1 (02:35:47):
So.

Speaker 2 (02:35:47):
I was privileged to walk with them, to know Lewis Armstrong,
to to know rosem Rosemy. It gives me a perspective.
It's very unique because I so new intimately, well, I
don't want to say antimately, because that that's an inference
that I don't want to put on that. But I

(02:36:08):
had fantastic relationship with Share and with with the Supremes
and with Linda Ronstadt and and uh Graham Nash and
David h who were always like good, good pals of mine.

(02:36:30):
It's enough already, well I could always get more.

Speaker 1 (02:36:33):
But Jimmy, I want to thank you for taking this
time with my audience.

Speaker 2 (02:36:38):
Well, thank you. It's an honor to be on this show.
It's it's well known hot spot on the internet, and
I congratulate you on that. And I haven't I hope
I haven't misled anyone. And if I've made an error,
h please the public is invited to point out my

(02:37:05):
shortcomings and honor respond on jimmyweb dot com.

Speaker 1 (02:37:10):
Okay, you can reach out to Jimmy there. Until next time.
This is Bob left Sis