JJ-226

PETE FORNATALE INTRODUCES GUEST:
Pete Fornatale 9:52
Hello again everyone and welcome to another edition of mixed bag radio. This is Pete Fornatale at the Museum of Television and Radio We're in New York City with my special guest today one of the most successful songwriters of all time. Jimmy Webb.

INTERVIEW BEGINS:

Pete Fornatale 14:23
Jimmy Webb and a live version of his own composition Galveston and Jimmy I told you before we started that your version of that song on the 10 Easy Pieces album was a revelation to me. I've always liked the Glen Campbell hit of it, but I never connected it to I guess it's time which was the Vietnam years and yet it doesn't even have to specifically be about that doesn't.

Jimmy Webb 14:51
Well I received an email on my website just a little while ago from somebody asking About this song and and wondering about the anti war or whatever whether it was whether it was an anti war song or and then and this this guy had actually peeled the the onion back another layer and said, was it a civil war song or was it meant to be a take on a civil war song which I'm not above you know, ripping off good folk song every now and then I mean I folk songs are really my favorite songs and I like to write modern folk songs. And it kind of is a more modern folk song. But what I was thinking of was Vietnam, we were right in the middle of Vietnam. And I just remember thinking that I wanted the character in the song to be an ordinary guy, which is one of the reasons he ended up being from Galveston, which is nowhere really I didn't want him to be from New York or LA or I wanted it to be an ordinary guy, you know, one of those nameless guys who died there.

Pete Fornatale 16:18
When that happens when someone hears in one of your songs, something that you did not consciously intend is that a good thing? Are you okay with that when you when you when you finally let go of one and let it out into the world, and it comes back with interpretations entirely foreign to whatever you may have intended? How do you feel about that?

Jimmy Webb 16:46
Well, I feel okay about it. Sometimes I think it's going on. It's going on anyway, I'm looking at the logo on this instrument, and this is three layer s 700. And sometimes I feel that there are the layers are there whether you intend them to be or not, I remember setting off one time to write a song called if these walls could speak for Waylon Jennings, who died just recently. Last year anyway, and all the time I was writing the song I get to hear Waylon Jennings voice and say it started out as a pretty straightforward metaphor about a house. I just lost my piano for some reason,

Pete Fornatale 17:34
Can we get the piano back

Jimmy Webb 17:41
just a song which Nanci Griffith ended up cutting and Amy Grant, everybody except Waylon Jennings. But it started out as a metaphor for a house.

INTERVIEW CONTINUES:

Jimmy Webb 21:15
the walls of the house have now become the walls of the human being the walls of the personality. Now, I wasn't aware of that. I it was a road I sort of took off on and all of a sudden at some point I realized, Oh, there's another layer here. And a lot of that I think occurs on a subconscious level. And sometimes, man you don't hear it until years later you go what was that? Was that you listened to it again. And I've talked to so many other songwriters who've had that experience where all of a sudden they're they're hearing a song in a different way.

Pete Fornatale 22:03
I know from things that you've said and things that you've written that you like that you like that little Oh Henry thing at the end of a song

Jimmy Webb 22:13
I do I believe it's part and parcel if not quintessential to the you know, American song form that there's a little hook and then this is what all the Masters certainly the Rogers and hearts and Oscars and Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rogers and all the great pairings and collaborations that the great American songs always had little hooks and little surprise endings and little double entendres as, as in the Gershwins. What's What's about the marriage not, but there's no not for me, you know?

Pete Fornatale 23:04
But not for me, is it that that's not it,

Jimmy Webb 23:06
but not for me, not for me. And at the end, he makes it he makes it there's a there's a pawn about tying a marriage not k k n o t, but there's no not for me, right. And all the all those guys did that. And it was great, because it was something you look forward to was the ending.

Jimmy Webb 23:29
I don't know why this pops into my head, but let's call the whole thing off. Yeah, it's very much a fun song, you know, Potato, potato with all of that stuff. But then at the end, the the surprise ending is, let's call the calling off off. Which makes it fun.

Jimmy Webb 23:49
And by the time I get to Phoenix, you don't really know what's going on. And by the time we get to Phoenix, you know, you know that he's leaving her. He's left her before is this just another spat? Is it going to turn around and go back? And it's you wait a while before you before in the last verse. He gets to Oklahoma and says that

Jimmy Webb 24:16
she will cry just a thing and relieve the time and time again. You know? I've tried to tell her so she just didn't know. I would Really go

Pete Fornatale 25:00
that one takes it right to the last word. Right to the last word.

Jimmy Webb 25:04
She didn't know he would really do it. Yeah. Yeah.

Pete Fornatale 25:07
And that's one of your early things. That's early. Jimmy Webb. Big success early in life can make you arrogant. It can make you humble. It can make you crazy. What did it make you Jimmy?

Jimmy Webb 25:25
I think it made me all of those things. Certainly I, the one thing that I that I retained, however, I can't be too sure about anything that was going on at that time, having been under the influence of so many drugs at the same time. But one thing that I am sure of was that I retained my generosity, I I was never selfish about what was coming to me and always wanted to bring my friends along for the ride and always wanted to pass the money out if possible, and, and bought the whole communal lifestyle, peace, love, we're gonna create a different kind of a world where material things are not important. And bought hook, hook, line and sinker. And I wasn't so I was never mean, I may have been guilty of a lot of things and excess was certainly one of them. And, but I I was never mean. And and I had, I must say I had a blast. I mean, I had the time of my life. I don't regret one one misspent moment of the whole thing. But I can see how I have been very lucky not to have ended up lying in the ditch somewhere like so many others, many others. In fact, one of my and even though I don't want to apply that particular analogy to my friend Harry Nielsen, who I did some very hard living with. And he certainly never ended up in the ditch, I think, the most triumph, triumphant and courageous part of his life were the last few years of his life when he knew his health was in terrible trouble and he still lived every day to its fullest and, and tried to take care of his family and tried to do the right thing. But certainly, inherent Nielsen, you have an example of one of our generations. Jim's certainly, you one could say Harry Nielsen was our Frank Sinatra you know by just listening to a little touch of Nielsen in the night so first one to do it it says that all it says it all and and yet a very complicated fellow, you know, couldn't get enough of life just couldn't get enough of it 24 hours a day and really did kind of kind of burnt burn himself out

Pete Fornatale 28:23
a lot of casualties in your line of work. Is it built into the job?

Jimmy Webb 28:32
Well, it's a good question. I, as I mentioned, in my in my book tunesmith that it can be quite distracting. Watching yourself do what you do, and people who perform and write who well people who write music and perform. Singers songwriters particularly watch themselves do what they do. And they study their own sorrow with a magnifying glass. And it can get to be like a circle of behavior, kind of an infinite aid of one heartbreaking affair after another I have been guilty of this in my own life of I believe I'm in a lot of therapy now. Of unconsciously seeking out unsuccessful relationships. Because the songwriter part of me knows that that's where the good stuff is. And and so, you know the other part of me the rational part Part of me that really would like to have a wonderful relationship with a woman, I mean, what a precious thing, you know, to have a friendship and to have a physical relationship and to really interact with another human being and have a friend and have a partner and have all of that is basically antithetic to the reason I'm here to trade it all for the which is to, you know, comment on on the on the on the sorrow and the pain. And it's also interesting to me that there's never there's never, that there's always great demand for it. There's always great demand for even though I must tell you at this time in my life, so there are some songs of that golden era of the James Van Heusen tunes, and the Larry hearts that I can't listen to anymore. They are so poignant that I can't listen to them, they open up, they open up rooms that I just don't want to go into. And it's very hard for me to listen to Sinatra now, because Sinatra was such a good chooser of a Torch Song. And if you're in that place where you're hurting just a little bit, and you're susceptible to being wounded, you probably don't want to listen to a Sinatra album, because he's gonna hit you with six or seven major can openers in a row. And and it makes me wonder about the masochistic nature of what, what I've done with my life and what we do. I mean, I've written up in a ways and ditties and throw aways and, and songs about the environment and songs about all sorts of things. But my gut tells me that song that songwriters are here to write about this relationship between men and women. That that's why we're here.

Pete Fornatale 32:16
It was Sinatra, who raised that to the level of an art form. I mean, the two things I wanted to say to you about what you just said, or that the other side of that coin is, one thing you could do is shut yourself off from it and not expose yourself to the hurt. The other thing is that you can wallow in it, you know? Yeah. Or let someone do the suffering for you. Frank did that on whole albums? Yeah, only the lonely in the wee small hours of the morning. You know, people want to say that Sergeant Pepper was a theme album. Yeah. Go back a few years go back it

Jimmy Webb 32:56
was a song cycle. Yeah, there was three of them foreigners sort of like, for no one was staying staying up for four days with Frank Sinatra while he gets over Eva gardener.

Pete Fornatale 33:09
You know, she is in every one of those recordings.

Jimmy Webb 33:14
But I'm certainly I've I've been influenced by those by those songs.

Pete Fornatale 33:21
I didn't expect to get into this this early. But you're you're on that level. Jimmy, you are. People like Sinatra gave you some of the highest accolades that can be given about your songwriting. So you're on a playing field with giants.

Jimmy Webb 33:40
He was very kind to me. I had had I, let's say, come from a different background, been educated a little bit differently, and have had been able to step into some of the roles that were assigned to me, like I used to read in the newspaper, they would say, Well, you know, Jimmy Webb and this really used to embarrass me terribly. But they would say Jimmy Webb is the Cole Porter of this generation, and I would be mortified, the blood would rush to my face. And I because I had such a tremendous immense respect for Cole Porter, and his rhyming technique and the fact that very rarely was there a false rhyme and, and very rarely was there anything illogical or out of place? It was such careful writing. Early in my career, I was quite slapdash about lyrics, wrote them on the back of envelopes, wrote, you know, wrote I remember sending Wichita lineman over to Glen Campbell and saying, you know, they had asked me for a song and I remember sending out saying, you know, this is all I've got, it's not quite finished but I don't know. Do what you like with it, which is why it came back with guitar solo because there were no lyrics they don't want to do that was the part I couldn't write. So, so I do not put myself on that ground at all. But he, but in my, as I as I've matured and as I've grown older, I have certainly tried to put myself on that ground and I've certainly tried to understand what it means to stand on that ground. And what an accomplishment that is to be a Johnny Mercer what an extraordinary thing that really is, at least I'm an appreciator of it I understand what it means. And I've I've certainly well, I've laid down some some new rules and parameters and and modes of writing for myself in later life. To make my work better, to make it better,

Pete Fornatale 36:15
you are in a unique position by the sheer fact of your survival and your success survivals good. You were the Young Turk the new kid on the block knocking him dead

Jimmy Webb 36:30
I'm still the kid.

Pete Fornatale 36:31
Now you're the now you're the eminence greys, you know, generations of writers who have followed in your path and look to you in some way. And so I guess what I'm asking is, you've already given some of this answer. You can look at it from three points of view. You can look at those that went before you now and really appreciate the Giants. And I'm sure that Cole Porter is on that list.

Jimmy Webb 37:00
Larry Hart is one of my favorites, right? Not to not to diss Richard Rodgers but I personally prefer Rodgers and Hart to Rodgers and Hammerstein even though I love Oscar Hammerstein second, who seemed to be one of the most decent fellows who ever lived and certainly had more sympathy for young struggling songwriters than probably any of his contemporaries.

Pete Fornatale 37:26
The next group would be your peers who among your peers, are you awed by for example?

Jimmy Webb 37:34
Oh, well, that's really pretty easy. I, I was in thrall to Joni Mitchell from the very first album I ever heard. And realized immediately Here is someone who can teach me something and was drawn to her and in fact, went to her and, and got myself physically in proximity to her to find out what this was what is going on here. And she played songs for me and I saw her notebooks and I was in the studio with her when she was recording for the roses. And I knew I would never be that there was something ineffable something there that I would never be and would never, wouldn't possibly would not even aspire to. But she, she defined and brought into being a style of music, or a style that I would call conversational tone, that that had its own validity, in opposition to the formality of the great masters of the golden and platinum eras of songwriting, who wrote these formal almost sonnet like constructions that made such perfect logical sense. And Joanie came along and wrote, look at those suckers, betting on that damn hockey game, you know, and other people picked up on it and Randy Newman, you know, there she is out with the smokehouse, you don't say nothing, she don't do nothing. You know? Maybe she's crazy. I don't know. Maybe that's why I love her. So tomorrow, you know that whole bit about all of a sudden, you're just talking. It's just some character talking. came into being in this most this lovely way. You know,

Pete Fornatale 39:58
you showed up for a tree Brian Wilson here are yours. So, go. Where is Brian in that pantheon?

Jimmy Webb 40:07
Well, I see Brian Wilson as a great melodist. And I'm I mentioned him in the same breath is McCartney and Billy Joel as and Stevie Wonder, as you know, like in our tops, five, six melody riders tune riders, a guy who could hold his own against against the back racks certainly wrote, as well as Barry Mann and Cynthia. And that whole sort of Brill Building generation of riders, and maybe even had a little bit more flair. So, because of a very oblique, very personal view of the way a chord structure should go the way a melody should go. So I see him primarily as a composer. Sure, I mean, there's no to me there is I, my imagination is not even slightly stretched at the, at the idea of Maurice Ravel sitting and listen to listening to don't talk, for instance, and saying, Oh, my, that's lovely. And, and perhaps even borrowing on that theme for some Fantasia of some sort. So I see Brian as a composer, who, who, who ran into some interesting guys who wrote great, you know, some great, memorable lyrics that were admirably suited for their for their time. In fact, at his at his memorial enough, so I'm not going to say Memorial, I got, let's go. Let's try a tribute. At Brian's tribute at Radio City Music Hall. I was privileged to be there with a host of people. But one of the most interesting things that I that I, I was involved in that night, I did get to sing a trio of in my room with David Crosby and Carly Simon, which was just best fun. And the other thing, the second most interesting thing that I got to do was to do Surf's up with Vince Gill and David Crosby. And I think that that's the first time that that had been done in in public, perhaps in a long, long time.

Pete Fornatale 43:01
I became a Vince Gill fan. In that moment. I had no idea.

Jimmy Webb 43:07
Oh, he's outraged. I had no he's lovely. Yeah, he's loved. And. And Brian, Brian hadn't done Surf's up in decades, because he didn't like it. And he didn't think he liked it, liked it. And he heard us doing it. And he decided that maybe he'd start doing it again. But yeah, well, Brian is a composer.

Pete Fornatale 43:33
I just want to finish the ARC of this question, Jimmy. We've talked about those before you we've talked about your peers. The industry has changed. The world has changed. The century has changed. I'm guessing that songwriting has changed and is changing to looking ahead. Do you see anybody out there? Are you? Are you optimistic about your chosen profession?

Jimmy Webb 44:03
Well, I have no choice but to be optimistic because my three oldest sons are recording artists. actually signed to Warner Warner UK. That's the web brothers out there. I think that a few years ago, young writers went through a kind of anarchistic period and probably rightfully so. I'm thinking about Kurt Cobain now and sort of Nirvana and that sort of Seattle grunge late 80s. Mid to late 80s, early 90s kind of very anarchistic approach to songwriting and a sort of nullification of form. Which did not surprise me I felt I felt but I felt that it was inevitable. And I, then I thought, but it's, it's, it's so amusing that it's really all for nothing, because what will happen is that they will destroy the form. And then they will slowly begin to rebuild it. And eventually, they will do Sergeant Pepper again. they'll do, they'll just go through the old but that's okay, because that seems to happen cycle cyclically in art. And I believe that, you know, I heard it, I love some of Sheryl Crow's tunes. I've heard odds in the last I mean, I have to really date myself to say that, to me, Mark Cohen is a young songwriter. And that when I heard him, I was really, really excited. And I occasionally I hear someone come along, and they're, they're writing some, some one song will pop out, and it will, it will sound great. So I believe that we are now getting reorganized. What's the young lady's name? You just won the Grammy, Norah Jones, Norah Jones, Please edit that out. Because I don't want her to know that I didn't know exactly who she was. But Norah Jones is, is a kind of a self made artist, which I think we all were. Who recorded who recorded a song or an album in a garage, recorded a song written by a songwriter, and won a Grammy. Which sounds a little bit more like 1968 than it does 2003. The idea of I'll put forth put forth one of my grand theories here, which is that in general, the synthesis of singer and songwriter has not been a terrific thing for music. And there have been good things that have been happening that have happened. Jackson Browne was great and Joni Mitchell was great. Randy Newman was irreplaceable. He was he Steven Foster, he's our Steven Foster. So certain wonderful things happened. But when the singer songwriting idea fell into the hands of the multitude of unsophisticated, uneducated on a disrespectful majority of people who had no idea what this tradition of songwriting means, and what it's about what it's capable of what his capabilities are, it suffered singer songwriting, in the many cases you had, as a singer, songwriter, you had two people who didn't know what they were doing. And I I'm, I'm quoting Joni Mitchell on that. So that's, that's not an original quote, it's very clever thing to say,

Pete Fornatale 48:31
well, it's like when baseball opens up to expansion teams, you suddenly have guys who would normally be minor league level playing in the bigs and it dilutes the quality of the whole. I think that what you're saying yes.

Jimmy Webb 48:45
And I think that we may be reaching the end of a kind of a, of an era of about 20 years, let's say, when we might begin to see those two roles begin to diverge again, which would be a wonderful thing for the singers and a wonderful thing for the songwriters. Because it's great to be a songwriter and concentrate on being a songwriter. When I was a kid, I used to get down beside the bed on my knees and say God please please please let me be a songwriter just let me be a songwriter I forgot to say and a recording artists who knew Oh no. So but I was one of those kids and and I believe that there was that you saw something demonstrate if you want to just go back to Sinatra for a minute and say, during the whole Sinatra era, you came to the to the peak of what songwriters could do boy, what James Van Heusen could do what Sam mekon could do what Yip Harburg could do what these guys could do, man, when they were just left alone to do what they did couldn't be equalled by anybody. And when these great singers like Sinatra and Clooney, and people like that came along and got a hold of these songs, then you had something then you had something you had something incredible, insurmountable, unmatchable?

Pete Fornatale 50:30
backtrack. David and Dionne Warwick.

Jimmy Webb 50:32
Absolutely. Well, when Jimmy Webb met Glen Campbell, it was a nice little marriage was a nice little blending of, I don't know, tastes

Pete Fornatale 50:43
That is in fact, my next question to you collaboration as a songwriter you tend not to but your collaborations are with the artists in the same way that Sinatra formed partnerships with Khan and venues and, and with Nelson Riddle. As an arranger, you really seem at times to get in some total involvement.

Jimmy Webb 51:09
Elson really grouses about that message? All the songwriters got all the glory, He says, but it was the arrangers who were really making those songs, wrote, the arrangers were really putting those songs together and making them sound good. You know he felt that way. Right? Sure. Sure, everybody, I'm sorry. I just had to throw that out there

Pete Fornatale 51:32
I love it. I love it. Talking about partnerships, Linda Ronstadt with both Nelson and yourself, but that's just one of them. I'm thinking, of course of Glen Campbell, whom we already mentioned, but there was a period,

Jimmy Webb 51:43
there was some there was some of my songs that had Linda Ronstadt stamped on them, you know, when when, when they were written, they just had her name on them. And you just, you know, I'm very unabashed about my belief in God. And there are times in my life when I just believed that God was in control of those, some of those just indefinable perfections that occurred in the matching and material with people.

Pete Fornatale 52:21
I went to a concert at Town Hall a short time ago, featuring Art Garfunkel. And at a certain point in the show, he stopped and said that his five favorite contemporary songwriters, I hope I get the list, right? Five favorites were Stephen Sondheim. Paul Simon. Randy Newman, James Taylor. And in no particular order, by the way,

Jimmy Webb 52:47
I'm sure I was number five. Jimmy Webb

Pete Fornatale 52:51
alphabetically. I think you would be that way. Anyway. There was a party should list.

Jimmy Webb 52:54
It's a pretty good list. Yeah. I, I remember when they broke up. And I was I was in London and I had written a song for my for, as usual for an unrequited love of mine. And excuse me, and already had asked me to come to San Francisco where I think he was kind of, I don't know, licking his wounds a little bit. I'm not sure how happy he was about the separation with Paul. Not not overjoyed, I would think, and a little insecure about his future as a recording artist, certainly. And he was there with Roy Howell, and he had me come into the studio. And he said, Well, play me some songs. And I said, Well, look what and he said everything that you know. So I played him everything I know. At the end of I'm playing amazing grace. I played him everything I knew. But I had this little song that I'd written in London. And I remember when I played it for my girlfriend in London, and I poured my heart and soul into it and I said, So darling. What do you think she's Oh, she said, that's silly. That's exactly what she said.

INTERVIEW CONTINUES:
Pete Fornatale 58:10
Jimmy Webb and a live version of his beautiful all I know. This is Pete Fornatale on mixbag radio. I'll have more with Jimmy after this.

Pete Fornatale 58:21
I just needed a break after that. Oh, that was great. Oh, thank you. That was great.
Jimmy Webb 58:26
I feel I just I have just I feel a terrible voice I haven't sung in a long time. So I feel very vulnerable. And I hear these little shaky things going on. I'm just
Pete Fornatale 58:38
sounding good over here. How's it sounding over there? How's it sounding back there?
Jimmy Webb 58:45
I guess it depends on whether vulnerability is selling you know at the moment.
Pete Fornatale 58:54
Wow, we got into a lot of play. I think I'm only on my second question.
Jimmy Webb 59:00
Well, you know, run me to the curb.

JIMMY WEBB PERFORMS "THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRES." WRITTEN FOR LINDA RONSTADT.

JIMMY WEBB PERFORMS "THE HIGHWAYMAN"

JIMMY WEBB PERFORMS "TIME FLIES"