One Step Closer to Genius: Jimmy Webb
Jimmy Webb set me homework during an interview. It’s usual for an artist to ask if you’ve seen the movie/read the book/listened to the album, but it is unusual for them to prescribe homework. That said, as homework goes. It was a pretty pleasurable kind. I scoured my local JB Hi-Fi for Just across the River(or as I described it to the sales assistant after an unsuccessful search, ‘Something about a river, maybe?’). On the black and white cover is a blissfully content looking Webb, quite appropriately on the bank of a river, with a bridge in the background, it’s an unusually literal interpretation for this nuanced storyteller.
You might know Webb’s famous song Up up and away. While you may not know his name, you’d be familiar with many of the people he’s written songs for. The album includes duets and collaborations with Glen Campbell, Vince Gill, Billy Joel, Linda Ronstadt and Lucinda Williams.
There’s no ego about Webb, in fact you get a distinct impression that, although he has achieved much in his life, he’s pulling at the bridle wanting to gallop to the next stage (a Broadway musical, which he’s tight lipped about, in his polite way). He’s achieved great success in songwriting, and achieved his dream of recording success in his own voice. There’s much to learn from Webb, about life as well as music.
“As you get older you realise that most of the worrying that you do – 90% of the things that you worry about don’t ever happen and the other 10% they can be handled, unless it’s life threatening and then we’re in another category. Sometimes the things that we’re most worried about, it happens and it turns out to be the best thing that ever happens – ‘God I’m glad I got away from that job’. It’s a good idea to try and stay as loose as you can in this life – if you’re wound up too tight you’re not going to last.”
It’s spot-on advice, gathered over an incredible life, which reads like a movie, “So Johnny Mercer would call and say, ‘You know kid if you ever want to write a song…’ and I’d say, ‘Yeah yeah, that’d be great John, that’d be great thanks,’ and I didn’t follow up on it because I was a dumb kid. I look back on that now and say, ‘Man I could have written a song with Johnny Mercer, that was a stupid stupid thing to do – but there was a lot going on there, was the British invasion. Record companies were becoming huge multinational corporations. There was a lot of demand for music. I was very busy all the time. I went straight from high school into recording studios and started working for Motown. My very first record was a Supremes record. I always thought, ‘maybe I’ll go back and get some real college and get some real education,’ and that never happened. I’ve been pretty much on stage or in the studio or involved in writing Broadway shows (which hasn’t been the most successful part of my career but something that I’m determined to make as a successful endeavour). There was never any option but to be a full time musician and arranger – I worked on television. I was Olivia Newton John’s musical director on TV, I was Ringo’s director on television. I did that for a while, I did movies, I probably did all in about ten movies – I got bored with that and moved along. In the back of my mind I guess I always wanted to be a recording star but it’s taken me years to really develop my voice to the point where it sounds half way decent, to tell you the truth.”
Webb is heading to Australia touring, Just Across the River, the first of his albums to achieve chart success. In a chart full of pop music which for the most part, doesn’t come close to the quality of Webb’s lyrics and arrangements, I wonder if chart rankings mean anything to him.
“Well you know, it’s not been very important to me because I’ve never had it before. I’ve been touring steadily for probably 12 years I’ve toured without a record. Basically 10 years ago I had a record called 10 easy pieces which did well. My following is more of a cult following – I hate that word – makes me sound like I’m some terrorist. Really, it’s just a fun show. People love to come back because I tell a lot of stories about early days of rock and roll and Hollywood and being a kid and hanging out with the Beatles and the Highway Men – Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. I knew people like Mr Sinatra and Louis Armstrong and a whole generation of performers who are really ancient history now, but who were very much alive and were walking around and who were very touchable and a lot of them were really very genuine nice people. I had a chance to establish relationships with a lot of them because they liked my writing, my songwriting was more traditional and accessible to them.”
There’s something special about excellent lyrics being sung by the person who wrote them and there’s a loyal Australian fan base looking forward to Webb’s tour (he’s in Melbourne this week). “I have some terrific loyal fans who always show up so it’s revisiting some old friends who have always been very loyal, over the top really, when it comes to supporting me in different venues. Even in places like Byron Bay, I played the festival one year with mud up to my knees. My wife and I have snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef and I’ve been as far west as Perth and Fremantle several times. I wasn’t an American, certainly my first choice would be Australia.”
Just across the River could just as easily be a book, or a film, for all the storytelling and imagery which is portrayed through Webb’s songs. Webb says for the most part, the structure of the album is out of his hands. “The theme for the record was kind of going down south, taking a trip. The first line is: ‘Put the top down on this old Mustang and I’ll buy you a bottle of wine; and we’ll head down south to see the old gang.’ Then the record sort of took off from there, like a trip into the past and hence we dug up some of the older songs and we did them and I revisited old friends, literally, on the album. So it was kind of a journey in that sense and it went together pretty nicely. Many many times I’ve made a record not knowing what the name of the record was. Sooner or later the record says, ‘oh yeah my name is blah’ – the record tells you everything it tells you what it’s about, it tells you what its name is and it’s just wonderful. I have to say working in Nashville is just the most wonderfully creative experience I’ve ever had in a long life of making music everywhere. I’ve recorded shows in Hollywood and New York and England and everywhere you can imagine really – I haven’t recorded in Australia yet, but why not you know?”
Listening to the album (which of course I am, it’s my homework) the depth of emotion and experience portrayed in the lyrics sits in stark contrast to much popular music. “There is definitely something missing in the craftsmanship [of contemporary popular music]. Most of the songs are just kind of one track – this is about sex. This is about hitting on another person. This is basically about getting into your pants – it’s one dimensional, it’s cheap, it’s not very rewarding and it’s not very romantic and that’s too bad,” says Webb. “I don’t know what to say about that. It just happens to be true. I don’t think people who are making this music would deny it, I think they would say that’s what we do and it sells.”
Webb considers his role in the current state of affairs. “Our generation, we haven’t made a tremendous effort to pass along song writing skills the way other generations did,” he admits. Although he was offered some amazing opportunities to collaborate in his twenties and was of the view that he probably already knew everything. “Songwriters by nature, they’re reclusive, they’re kind of loners,” he explains. “They stay in their ivory towers, write their songs and they’re not just holding classes everywhere.” Webb does believe song writing is a skill that can be taught though. “A lot of it can be taught – genius can’t be taught but talented people can be taught how to write better songs. In a certain sense, this is a generation of writers who don’t want to write betters songs, because better songs are old hat so it’s a combination of things. I like to think that a good song will still sell. Our target is the human heart. so if you write a good enough song you hit the target, you have something that’s commercially viable. If you write something that everybody else identifies with, you have something that you can market, so I don’t think its too late by any means for good music to make a comeback.”
For the moment, we can go and listen to Jimmy Webb sing his songs.
Jimmy Webb is at the Melbourne Recital Centre, Friday July 1st then Meeniyan, Hepburn Springs, Canberra, Sutherland Shire (Sydney) and Byron Bay. Details and tickets are available here.
