Jimmy Webb: American Songwriter
Jimmy Webb is one of our great American songwriters. His name is known to everyone in the industry. He’s written so many great American Anthems including platinum songs like MacArthur Park, Up Up and Away, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Highwayman and so any others. The list of great artists he’s recorded with is too long to mention (but you can see some of them here). Jimmy stopped by the SiriusXM studios recently to talk about his career and his new album, “Still Within the Sound of My Voice.” Excerpts of the interview appear below. The interview can be heard in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.
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Ron Bennington: Some great players on this.
Jimmy Webb: The very best. We actually waited…there was a previous album we cut with all the same guys. And a lot of them are from a band called The Time Jumpers. It’s basically Vince Gill’s band. And sometimes, we just had to wait for these guys to get off the road. But we really took extra pains to make sure we had the best players in Nashville.
Ron Bennington: That’s always fun though, isn’t it? When that comes together like that.
Jimmy Webb: Well, for me it was…after a couple of decades of not being too excited about recording or even the record business, dare I say. It was like a renewal. It was like all of a sudden we were having fun again. We cut 14 tracks in 2 days. And we were laughing. We were crying. We were having the emotional experience that we used to have when we were kids in the studio, when things actually happened there. It wasn’t like going to the office. Exciting things happened there. So, these guys are like fine chamber orchestra players – the way they listen to each other and the way they fit the music together mathematically, and still with the most soul and the most passion of probably any musicians. I used to work with the Wrecking Crew in L.A. So I can’t really say – well, they’re the best the band I’ve worked with, but certainly in the last few decades. It’s the best band I’ve ever played with.
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Jimmy Webb Talks About the Art Of Songwriting
Ron Bennington: Everybody who’s a great songwriter will name check you at some point during interviews.
Jimmy Webb: I’m very grateful for that. I really don’t…probably I don’t deserve all of it. But I’ve worked hard to have a good reputation as a songwriter. I really believe that the same things that worked for Johnny Mercer and in a way, Burt Bacharach and Hal David and all the Brill Building cats and gals like Carole King – it was Goffin and King, of course and Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. I think that all of those things still work. The basic techniques will still produce a great song. If you sit down with that plan and you follow it, a great song is usually waiting at the end of all that. But, somewhere along the way and I think that we as mentors have dropped the ball to some degree. Some of the…let’s say “the problem”, in handing down this kind of information is that the whole process of mentoring younger artists has kind of been pre-empted by computers. Computers are now your best friend. They’re where you go for your information. They’re where you go to hear a song. Somewhere along the way, and I’m not casting blame on anybody, but some how or other, the traditional act of handing off one’s craft to a younger person and saying – here’s the way I do it. That’s fallen into disrepair and disuse.
Ron Bennington: Well, craft is the perfect word because craft is something that has to be practiced. And inspiration will still show up all different places. But to have that craft to catch it properly – that’s the thing that I think is always missing.
Jimmy Webb: Well, it’s not even that difficult. A book that I read before I wrote my book on songwriting, mentioned in fact, in a sense, all great writing is an imitation of great writing. I would imitate…this is just gratuitous, I’m just telling anyone who might be listening in – the earliest technique that I used was imitation. I would say – okay, now I’m going to write a Little Anthony and the Imperials song. Before I knew who Teddy Randazzo was, but I knew those were great songs. Now, I’m going to write a Burt Bacharach – Hal David song. Now, I’m going to write a John Lennon – Paul McCartney song. And I would measure my songs against the ones I heard on the radio. And I got to the point where my songs were standing up pretty well and I decided – I’m going to do this. I guess the deciding thing was one time I happened to play one of my songs for Louis Armstrong backstage at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. He was trying to take a nap in a practice room. (laughs) I ended up playing a song for him and he said (in Louis Armstrong voice) – you know what? He said – you stick with it. He said – you stick with it. Many many times, I’ve gone through some really bad moments in my career. And I remember – no, wait a minute. Now, Louis Armstrong said – you stick with it. (laughs)
Ron Bennington: That’s the amazing thing. What is that worth? Just to get that one thing.
Jimmy Webb: Everything. Everything. Because that keeps you going for a lifetime.
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Jimmy Webb Talks About The Great Names Who Have Appeared On His Albums
Ron Bennington: Sure. Well, even on this new record of yours, you’re playing with some great songwriters. You’ve got David Crosby on here and Graham Nash and Lyle Lovett, Carly Simon, Kris Kristofferson – these are amazing songwriters.
Jimmy Webb: Yeah, everyone of them is a gem.
Ron Bennington: To just turn out for you like that is phenomenal.
Jimmy Webb: I’m just lucky I guess. (laughs) But I don’t take it for granted, believe me. I didn’t actually start out to make 2 duets albums because I’m going back now to “Just Across The River” where Billy Joel showed up.
Ron Bennington: Which was amazing.
Jimmy Webb: Lucinda Williams showed up and a lot of great people. But we just sort of started out to make a really good album and think – maybe on certain tracks we’ll have someone come in, if we were lucky enough that somebody wanted to come. I know it sounds kind of cornball, but all of this just happened. It’s just a labor of love. It started falling out of the sky. And people started saying – hey, I’ll do that. I’d love to do that. Jackson Browne really really knows P.F. Sloan – can sit down at the piano and play P.F. Sloan. He actually can. I’ve heard him do it. The first time I heard him do it, I said – what the heck are you playing P.F. Sloan for? (laughs) You’ve got so many great songs. He says – Oh, I love this song. Well, when we did P.F. Sloan, I called him and I said – man, we’re doing P.F. Sloan. He said – I’ll be over there. (laughs) It was an amazing…it just happened. It just happened. And that’s what really makes it good.
Ron Bennington: Part of that is that though, and this works in your business and every other business – when you have the respect of your peers, I don’t know if there’s anything more that could be said about a professional man than you have the respect of your peers. And the people that you’re talking about are the best. These are the best people of the last 40 years.
Jimmy Webb: Well, I think they are. I think they’re also…I’m very proud that I’m friends off stage with these people. I don’t know if you’ve taken a look at this, but I wrote a little story about each person on this record. Not as a bona fide…in terms of I can establish why this person is on this record, not in that way, but just to say I love each one of these people for who they are. So, I felt like I would include that on the record and talk a little bit about the off stage personas of some of these people – I’ve seen do some really courageous and loving things. I’m just proud to…Joe Cocker comes to mind who spent like probably the last 20 years, basically just helping other people. It’s not a big thing where he takes an ad in the paper where it says – “Joe Cocker Helps Other People”. He just quietly helps other people. And it’s that kind of thing that I’m talking about.
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Jimmy Webb Talks About The Amazing Voices Of Glen Campbell, Harry Nilsson And Linda Ronstadt
Ron Bennington: Glen Campbell’s singing voice– and he’s had so many hits with you– there’s a couple of people that you’ve never heard strain at all and he’s one of them. Linda Ronstadt has covered some of your songs, another person – why do they make singing seem like the simplest thing that could ever happen?
Jimmy Webb: Well, I think it’s infuriating. I’m not going to put up with it much longer. (laughs) When I put out my first couple of records, my performances were terrible. But the gap between my performance and his performances was pathetic. Because he really is one of the best singers ever. Ever. Maybe in the last hundred years. I’ve known a few people like that. Another one was Harry Nilsson.
Ron Bennington: Fantastic.
Jimmy Webb: He was a really really close friend of mine – who could do things with his voice that used to drive me up the wall. Because I would never be able to dream of doing some of those vocal, those gymnastics, those things that he did. I didn’t even know how he was doing them or what to call them. John Lennon knew he could do them. He’d say – Harry Nilsson is my favorite group.
Ron Bennington: He would do those over-dubs where he harmonized with himself. It was just insane.
Jimmy Webb: Yeah, absolutely. And I just listened to his whole box set. 14 albums. I was up in Maine. I was doing some writing and just preparing for this tour. And I listened to every record in the box set. He’s awesome. In our generation, he’s a Frank Sinatra. And Glen has a 5 octave range. Linda had a 5 octave range. And this is what I was being compared to. (laughs)
Ron Bennington: Yeah, right. Thanks. (Jimmy laughs)
Jimmy Webb: Thanks a lot.
Ron Bennington: And like I said – you never saw any of those people push it. Like there’s a lot of singers and you can see them force their way out there.
Jimmy Webb: Yeah, you should look at my face when I’m singing. (laughs)
Ron Bennington: But some of this is just flow. It just flows.
Jimmy Webb: He’s effortless. To this day, if you listen to a record like “Wichita Lineman”…
Ron Bennington: Unbelievable.
Jimmy Webb: It’s still an unbelievable record. It’s still fantastic after all these years. And he had that effortless style, but there was a little bit of a crying, a tone, a little bit…I can’t explain it, but the voice was pleading. It was pleading with us a little bit, Glen’s voice. Not that he’s not still singing because he just had a big album release recently. The other thing is he’s still in fantastic voice. He still pretty much sings that 5 octave range.
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Jimmy Webb Talks Getting Started in the Business
Ron Bennington: But it’s kind of interesting to me that you thought as a young person – I’m going to be a songwriter first, right? Before singer?
Jimmy Webb: Absolutely. Because I was actually playing in a jazz quartet when the Beatles played on the “Ed Sullivan Show”. Some of the guys came to the rehearsal and said – hey, we saw some guys on TV with…man, they had long hair, man. You should have seen these chicks, man. They were going crazy. I said to them – yeah, don’t worry about that.
Ron Bennington: That won’t last. (Jimmy laughs) That comes and goes.
Jimmy Webb: And so, then “Revolver” came out. And when I heard “Revolver”, I knew these guys were going to have to be reckoned with as writers. Eventually, I became a big fan and very good friends with George Martin who did a record with me called “El Mirage”. And hung out with him a little bit. I actually went to one of the sessions on the “White Album” which is a very difficult thing to do. They didn’t want anybody in there on the sessions, but somehow I ended up in there the night they cut one of our favorite songs. There you go. I’m the gadfly of the music business. I’m always buzzing around somewhere where something’s happening. I was at the Monterey Pop Festival. I played piano for Johnny Rivers.
Ron Bennington: But at the time, were you getting it? That all these things were extraordinary or did it take some time?
Jimmy Webb: Kids don’t do that. And I was like 20. I was 19, 20, 21. If you think back to what you were thinking about when you were 19, 20, 21 – mostly, it was probably girls. Sadly enough, I could have appreciated it more. I guess at some point, I just started thinking – well, this is happening to everybody. Everybody who goes out and tries to be successful is successful. Of course, I found out that’s a double-edged sword. And if you’re going to live by the song, you can just as well die by the song. And somewhere during your 20s, you have to start making some really tough decisions about – well, am I going to stay in this for a lifetime? And if I am, what kind of changes am I going to make? What am I prepared to sacrifice? And when am I going to get serious? (laughs) I’ll say first as a disclaimer, that on October 23rd, I’m 13 years sober. But there was a lot of crazy stuff that went down and abuse of different kinds and we all know what it was. I was in there. I was in there pitching with the best of them. And I think that unfortunately, there was a lot of wastage. There was a lot of people who got left beside the road who really could have gone on and done some great things. And I think my output would have been better if I just hadn’t been so crazy for probably for the second half of the ’70s and the first half of the ’80s – they’re like the missing 3 minutes on the Nixon tapes. (laughs)
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Jimmy Webb Talks About His Upcoming Projects
Ron Bennington: This album, of course we’ve brought up some of the great people playing on it. And like you said, you did these back to back. Is this something you hope to stay with? With the duets or are you just planning it one piece at a time?
Jimmy Webb: One piece at a time, but what I would really like to do as a solo album is really go back to the drawing board. I have songs underway and ideas and sketches and things in my notebook that are really taking shape. I would like to do an album of original material. It’s been a long time. And it’s amazing how the time slips by and all of a sudden, you go – gee, I’ve been doing this nostalgia thing now for 15 years. And it goes by like that. And really what I got into this for is missing and that’s the original…the channel between the songwriter and the listener. And I don’t know if it would as successful a record. For me, these are really successful records. But I have my sites set on a solo record. And I think there’s a good chance I would do it in Nashville. When I get ready to cut it, then I would go down and use these guys because it’s such a joyful experience. And it’s captured on tape. When you play it back, you see people get a little smile on their face like sort of vicariously, they’re there. They’re living it. It’s an amazing experience. It’s going to be hard for me to give up Nashville.
Ron Bennington: And it’s amazing to still see you on this journey. One that started when you were 14 years old. And still doing it, man.
Jimmy Webb: Well that’s kind of you. Thank you.
Ron Bennington: As far as the American songbook goes, it’s really hand-in-hand with the Jimmy Webb songbook. It’s a phenomenal list of songs. So great to have you come in here, man. Really really enjoyed it. I’ll see you next time coming through.
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Order “Still Within The Sound Of My Voice”on Amazon.com and get more info on jimmywebb.com.
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You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio. Not yet a subscriber? Click here for a free trial subscription.
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You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews at RonBenningtonInterviews.com.
