The Songwriters is supported in part by The Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation Rusty and Kacie Gaston The Mike Curb Foundation SESAC, BMI and ASCAP Rich and Charlotte Hallworth Kerry O'Neil and Carla Wallace Additional support is provided by ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Welcome to The Songwriters.

I'm Ken Paulson, and this week we're so pleased to continue our conversation with the great Jimmy Webb.

“Up, Up and Away,” “MacArthur Park” “By The Time I Get to Phoenix,” this is one of the most remarkable songwriters in American popular arts history.

He began last week by telling us about how his career began, how he signed to Motown, and how in time, his songs caught on.

And this week, he begins by telling us how he met perhaps his greatest collaborator, Glen Campbell.

Eventually, you get the chance to to cross paths with Glen Campbell.

- Well, we did█ Love at first sight?

No.

I had just been up to Monterey Pop Festival, and I was all outfitted in my hippie uniform, so I came walking into it was Armin Steiner█s Studio, and I came walking in there, and he was sitting there with the Wrecking Crew.

Hal Blaine Carol Kaye was sitting there, and they were all doing what they did.

And I said, Mr.

Campbell.

And he didn't even look at me.

And I said, Mr.

Campbell!

And he turned and he looked at me and he gave me the up and down.

It's a hippie, really.

Somebody let a hippie in here.

- [Ken laughs] Um.

.

.

he said.

.

.

Yeah, just a minute.

And he and he went back to, you know, twisting the knobs on his, you know, guitar.

Because if guitars don't want to, if guitar players don't want to talk to you, they just twist knobs.

They've got, you know, 50 knobs.

And so he's knob twisting.

And finally I said, Mr.

Campbell, I said, I'm, I'm Jimmy Webb.

I wrote “By The Time I Get to Phoenix.” And he looked up at me, with cobalt blue eyes of his.

And he said, when ya gonna to get a haircut.

Very welcoming of the man.

And so it kind of went downhill from there.

But the truth is that he knew I could write songs for him.

- Yeah.

So he put up with a lot of my kind of affectations of of being a left winger and a revolutionary and a and on the opposite side of the political spectrum, if you will.

There's a lot of that going around at the time.

It really was.

It was a polarity.

So the songwriters who watch this show or members of this fine organization will want to hear the answer to this question.

So you've you've written, “By The Time I Get to Phoenix,” a really brilliant pop song and everyone knows it except Paul Peterson.

And and then the story in your memoir, told so well, is that Glen Campbell called and said, I want another one like that.

So first of all, professional songwriters will all tell you, that's really, really, really hard.

Unless it's almost a carbon copy and everyone.

.

.

- Which you don't want to do.

But but Lou Christie did it regularly You know, there are some acts that did it regularly.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

But then you write another really smart.

You know, you write another comparably sophisticated, intelligent song.

If you could.

.

.

I don't even know if you can do this.

I want to understand how you take this one great song.

You're not going to copy it.

You're going to, you're going to replicate something that exists in here.

Some spirit, some tone, some melancholy.

And then you're going to write this song that's an awful lot like it.

How does the brain work to do that?

I'm not an expert on artificial intelligence, but they're saying that that computers can do this now.

But I don't believe that they'll ever do it with the same warmth and intensity that a real live person will.

And so I think that the first thing is I told him, I said, Glen, I don't want to write any more town song.

I already had “Galveston” way in the can.

Actually, Motown gave me, Motown gave me “Galveston” too.

So, but.

.

.

And he said, well, that's that's disappointing.

I think he had his heart set on “Houston” or something.

And he said, but he says, because this is Glen now.

He said.

Could you make us something geographical?

[laughing] You know?

And so I'm thinking geographical.

Geographical.

Yeah.

I can do that.

I could I think I could do that.

And then I think the process begins of lining up the two songs and saying, okay, what can evoke, “By The Time I Get to Phoenix” without sounding like I was trying, trying to evoke, you know, it's legerdemain, isn't it?

It's close magic.

Well, one thing that's common to both of them is that they're road songs.

They're about the highway.

And so.

I think that that's the central, if you're looking for ♪ [plays piano chord] ♪ a connector, that that's a connector, right?

Without dealing with a specific town, I could stay in the milieu of that moody travel vibe that, you know, that that the sense, the sense that if you, that you if you would shoot a film to “By The Time I Get To Phoenix,” you know exactly what kind of the film it would be, right?

And there would be shots of long shots of the car, and there'd be the, in my case, Route 66 and the desert, the desert coming out to California, my journey.

And.

.

.

And then it got me to thinking about the Oklahoma Panhandle and the flat country up there where the old timers tell you, you know, you go out there and stand up on top of that hill out there, that red, that red hill out there at the edge of town talking about Boise City.

And you could see 50 miles up that road, you know.

And of course you think that.

You think that they're just, you know, pulling the taffy, you know, but you go out there one day and you climb up on that little red hill, and you look out there and you see, you see Black Butte, you see Black Butte, New Mexico, you know, way out, 50 miles out there.

And they were they were telling you the truth.

That's how flat it was.

And the only thing that you would see would be a telephone pole.

That's all you'd see.

Every once in a while, you see a pig farm.

And you'd see, but a not so much in those days.

It was pretty barren.

And.

.

.

you'd see a man working on the telephone wires and the isolation of that job.

But in the same sense, the grandeur of it.

Because to me, the prairie is like the ocean.

I get the same feeling.

And I love the ocean and I love the prairie, but it's the same feeling because there's no horizon, there's nothing.

It's complete freedom, and there's a starkness to it.

But there's, it's a beautiful starkness.

I see the beauty.

Now, some people go up there and I don't see anything up here.

I don't ever want to come here again.

- Well, the beauty manifests itself in the song, and I wonder if we could hear a little of “Wichita Lineman.” ♪ ♪ That's Carol Kaye, by the way.

That intro.

♪ ♪ Whoops.

♪ [plays the beginning of “Wichita Lineman”] ♪ ♪ ♪ Still two chords.

[sings] ♪ I am a lineman for the county ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ And I drive the main road ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Searching in the sun ♪ ♪ for another overload ♪ ♪ [plays piano] ♪ ♪ ♪ - That's his lick - [laughing] [sings] ♪ I hear you singing in the wire ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I can hear you thru the whine ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ And the Wichita lineman ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Is still on the line ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I know I need a small vacation ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ But it don't look like rain ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ And if it snows that stretch down south ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Won█t ever stand the strain ♪ ♪ ♪ My voice is pretty much shot from last night.

But I begin to describe.

I begin to describe what this guy is thinking about.

You know, it's it's so great because the way you explain it.

Yeah, it's a sequel of sorts, but for the rest of us, the commonality was Jimmy wrote it and Glen sang it.

Well, let me call your attention to one thing.

It starts out.

♪ [plays riff] ♪ - Two chords.

♪ [plays the melody] ♪ ♪ ♪ The whole song is sort of based on that relationship.

And the same, the same thing is true in “By The Time I Get to Phoenix” goes.

.

.

♪ [plays the melody] ♪ ♪ ♪ Different chords, but it's still the same sort of modulation going on.

- That's incredible.

So, so a lot of those decisions, I got to tell you, they're instinctive, they█re unconscious, it's your brain really working overtime in the back saying, you know, you you're task.

You have a task.

You need a song that will sound like “By The Time I Get to Phoenix.” But but it isn't and it doesn't.

And it's only a secret part of your brain that can do that.

Well, that's a really good part to have.

- I don't think you do that on a conscious level, I really don't.

Let me ask you, on those days in the ‘60s when you had your haircut, people, older people would say, we love Jimmy Webb.

He's just like those, the old guys we loved.

He's just he's he's like the classic golden age of songwriting.

But I have a. .

.

- They would say things like.

Yeah, they would say things.

I have a question for you.

So, three guys go into a bar in in the late ‘60s, Cole Porter, who's come back, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, they sit at the bar and somebody pops a dime in the jukebox, and it's “MacArthur Park.” What would those three guys, those golden agers think of “MacArthur Park”?

Would they say he's just like us?

Or that young man's out of his mind.

Oh, that's a really good question.

You know, I think that that they they would.

.

.

there are parts of it that they wouldn't understand.

For instance, they didn't get this.

♪ [plays bridge of “MacArthur Park”] ♪ ♪ ♪ Suddenly they would get that because that's classical.

♪ ♪ - That█s the interlude.

♪ ♪ So they would start recognizing.

.

.

The Rock and Roll, the straight eight field, I think, would bewildered them momentarily.

But overall I think that they would admire the chord structure.

They would say, this is a song, compared to all these other songs, this one seems to have a more sophisticated underpinning.

And so ambitious in a way that “Rhapsody In Blue” was ambitious - And then, you know, when it got to the end.

♪ [playing the end of “MacArthur Park”] ♪ ♪ ♪ That's that that to me is Tchaikovsky.

[laughing] It█s pretty recognizable.

- They would have recognized that.

You know, in your book, in your performances, you are so respectful of songwriters.

You always tell us who wrote what not just of course, the album credits are typically, you wrote them, but when you cite other songs, you mention other songwriters and, and you clearly have respect for the art form, if that's what, how what you envision it as.

What do you admire in other songwriters that you may not have in your own repertoire?

- I have a very wide palette.

Maybe, broad is the correct word in terms of, the genres of songwriting, that where I have my heroes ensconced.

And I love, for instance, Larry Hart and Richard Rodgers.

I think.

I think that was unusually successful pairing.

And Larry Hart is just a heartbreaking lyricist.

I mean, you know, I, I'm sorry that I did I couldn't like he wasn't alive so I could throw my arms around him and, and cry all over him.

Right.

Which, you know, “My Funny Valentine,” things like that.

So, so classically speaking, there are some great songwriters that I, Harold, Harold Arlen, I respect immensely.

And not to leave anyone out, Johnny Mercer, probably the greatest American lyricist, if you consider of that, certainly of that era and maybe of any era.

When I started writing and being influenced by other writers, and this may come as a little bit of a surprise.

Lennon and McCartney had a terrific impact on me.

- Of course.

Because of the scope of what they did.

Because they would go from one of Paul's kind of music hall, you know what, John Lennon called silly songs.

But I love the fact that that you could listen to a Beatles album and they would take you through these different worlds and even worlds of music.

I really think that John Lennon was more of a Wagnerian.

- There you go.

You know, I think about things like “A Day In The Life” and, and then, of course, none of that would have happened without George Martin because he had the technical ability to realize those dreams.

If.

.

.

if John said, I want this to sound like a man singing on a mountain 30 miles away, that was dumped in George's lap, you know, he had to figure that one out.

So doesn't that make him part of the songwriting process?

Oh.

Isn't he?

There's no question.

- Isn't he the fifth Beatle?

Really?

- Oh, I I'm so glad to hear you say that.

- In search of the fifth Beatle.

Right?

So I think so.

You had George Martin produce at least one of your albums?

Yeah.

And how is it different with George Martin than with others?

I think there was too much respect between us.

There was the album came off a little stiff, and largely it was because I worshiped the ground he walked on, and he was somewhat in awe of me as a writer.

And would.

.

.

I remember one story that it kind of.

.

.

codifies what I'm trying to describe.

He came in one day and he said, we had finished basic tracks and we were working on vocals, and he came in one day and he said, Jim, he said, I've just been wondering, you know, I, I rather hate to ask, but I was wondering if, if you'd mind terribly if, if I did some of the arrangements.

[laughing] Okay.

So that's, that's sort of describes, you know, the there's such a thing as too much respect.

Right.

Because you, you get lost in the ritual of admiring each other, and you don't get down to the brass tacks of, like, really cutting them.

Yeah.

- Deference can.

.

.

Cutting a funky record, you know, So this this interview is all about songwriting, but for the audience, I just need to share with them this that at the peak of your fame.

- Yeah.

.

.

It's, it's you.

Lennon-McCartney.

Carole King is emerging.

- Big time.

- Big time.

But these are the only people really known for being songwriters.

- That's true.

And and you're everywhere.

You're well known.

Magazine covers.

No one could have more clout or influence or respect in the industry.

And then you also at the same time, befriend Richard Harris and Harry Nilsson.

And the fact that you're here to talk to me today is a is a miracle.

[Jimmy laughs] A young man with that much fame and those really bad companions, you know.

Harry Nilsson broke John Lennon.

- You could have.

- Well, and vice versa.

- Yeah.

Because I, I can remember, like you said, I don't want to I don't I don't want this to turn into anecdotal Hollywood.

But I remember the night that Harry came into my kitchen in Encino after a session with John on that album they made.

Oh my goodness.

- It█s Pussycats ?

Pussycats, which is a very ironic title.

And he had come into my kitchen and he went over to the kitchen sink and put his head down, turned on the faucet and coughed about a half a cup of blood into the into the sink and washed it down.

And he said, the rest of it's on the microphone.

And I said, oh, man.

I said, what are you doing?

- And that angelic voice.

What are you doing?

You know, nobody could sing like that.

I mean, what a gift.

- So sad.

And I think a lot of people watched and and it was like it was hipness run amuck.

You know.

And it just got out of hand.

And unfortunately, it ate him up.

There are two songs in particular I just wanted to talk to you a bit about, both because of and part of who recorded them.

And the one that I find particularly daunting is that here's Art Garfunkel, who is part of the, you know, part of a duo that rewrote pop music history in their way.

But he also was the voice on an astounding record, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” And he's got to believe he's never going to get near that again.

He's lost Paul Simon.

He█s never going to make a record with that grandeur again.

He may never have a hit again.

And he calls on Jimmy.

.

.

- It█s possible.

And he calls on Jimmy Webb and says, can you write me.

.

.

can you give me something?

And you nail it.

“All I Know”.

.

.

huge hit.

But also, I wouldn't say it rivals the grandeur of “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” for a variety of reasons, but it's close.

It's in that ballpark, and I can't imagine that pressure.

You didn't want to let him down?

No.

And I went through every song I had ever written.

It was in San Francisco in a small studio, and I was just playing everything, just playing.

I even I was playing hymns like “Come, Thou Fount” and and actually just because I was nervous and I was going to.

♪ [playing “Come, Thou Fount”] ♪ ♪ ♪ He said, what's that?

What's that?

I said, and nothing, nothing.

He said, let's do that one.

Let's do that one.

[laughing] Did you have lyrics?

- No, no, no.

Did you have lyrics for it?

- I gave you one of Jesus's songs.

[laughing] Almost, almost went for it, you know, like, yeah, well, I can write some more lyrics and count, you know, but some I'd sure surely get busted.

Right?

Somebody would know.

Too many Baptists in the world.

But I played everything.

And then I had a song that I had written for this very special woman in my life, and she wasn't really worth the song.

She was kind of a big liar, and ♪ ♪ maybe she wasn't.

Maybe she was just too honest.

It's an interesting dichotomy, but.

.

.

maybe I didn't want to believe what she had to tell me.

Okay, so so then it becomes a lie.

But she lived her own life.

Think Ava Gardner.

And also she was Miss World.

I mean, her physical appearance was out of this, out of this world.

And I was very much in love with her.

And I'd written this song called “All I Know,” and it was it's one of my English songs.

I wrote it in England, ♪ ♪ quite probably a third of my songs I've written there.

I wrote it, I've written a lot of music in England.

So.

.

.

it's inspiring to me.

I'm half English, I'm half Irish.

I had I was down on the song because I was down on her, so it was hidden way down at the bottom of the pile and he said, you know, I love that.

I said, you know, Arty, that's “Come, Thou Fount” That's a hymn.

He said, well, I like that hymn sound.

He says, if you got anything like a hymn sound.

♪ [plays the intro to “All I Know”] ♪ ♪ ♪ - I'm going to cut the intro short just for this.

♪ ♪ [sings] ♪ I bruise you, ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ you bruise me ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We both bruise so ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ easily ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Too easily ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ to let it show ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I love you and that█s ♪ ♪ all I know ♪ ♪ ♪ Jimmy Webb, thank you for the conversation.

Thank you.

- And thank you for the music.

- Thank you sir.

Thank you.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ For more information on The Songwriters, visit SongwritersShow.org ♪ ♪ The Songwriters is supported in part by The Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation Rusty and Kacie Gaston The Mike Curb Foundation SESAC, BMI and ASCAP Rich and Charlotte Hallworth Kerry O'Neil and Carla Wallace Additional support is provided by ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪