2019 AGS Magazine_V5

of a soundcheck and after the show he would head
back to the Holiday Inn and then out of town. The
beauty was that he got to keep much of the money.”
Jimmy lamented that so many of the venues
that supported the touring singer/songwriter, like
The Bottom Line in New York, are simply gone. It
seems that for some executives in the industry the
music continues to be as much about the money as
it does the art.
The music and lifestyle of Laurel Canyon in the
late 1960s and 1970s changed the world. Jimmy
spent time in Laurel Canyon, but he was never really
a part of the canyon scene. At the time, he was
no longer working for Johnny Rivers Music. He was
living with two college roommates, a small fireplace,
and of course, his grand piano. He recalls
being “only peripherally aware of the scene. I knew
Joni Mitchell lived up the hill, but I did not know
her. I knew there were other similar people living
there, but I never went over and hung out. I was
insulated and my life was always so booked up.”
The peace and love hippie days were fading,
and for Jimmy Webb, that rarified air was also
mixed with judgement. He recalls “I was never
considered to be a proper anti-government force.
The truth is that I was a liberal. I was a pacifist. I was
against the war in Viet Nam, but I was viewed as a
smug little kid who had it made -- hanging out with
really-rich people. I was viewed as someone who
didn’t care about the issues of the day -- I was too
rich to care.” The truth was that Jimmy’s personal
commitment to liberalism, pacificism, and his antiwar
stance came at great personal cost. Jimmy’s
refusal to support the war in Viet Nam shattered his
relationship with his father who was a former member
of the United States Marine Corps and held
deeply religious conservative views.
The judgement that Jimmy experienced would
have weighed heavily on the shoulders of any
feeling person. He specifically recalls playing at
the now-famous Troubadour one night when the
resentment over his success could not have been
more evident. It was a simple snub, but a nonetheless
powerful rejection when an anonymous critic
wrote on the dressing room wall “Jimmy Webb
plays good cash register.” Being rejected as an
outsider by supposedly like-minded people was
difficult for Jimmy. I suppose the reality is that success
quite often breeds resentment.
As we talked, Jimmy contemplated the possibility
that he had developed a complex of sorts from
the rejection of those times. “I spent a good many
years trying to prove I was one of the guys.” The
cultural, social, and political reality of Jimmy’s life
was quite different than what was perceived by
many. “I was at the Monterey Pop Festival. I was on
the stage at the birth of the relationship between
rock and roll and left-wing politics. I was there
when it was born. I was playing. I was in my hippie
garb -- I had my uniform on. So, it’s very hard
for me to have people who don’t know me and
don’t understand that side of me just dismiss me
as a flash-in-the pan, middle-of-the-road songwriter
from the sixties.” It seems that when we judge
another person it reveals more about who we are
than the person being judged.
Discussing that time in music history with Jimmy
is both enlightening and entertaining. I asked if he
thought the 1960s and 1970s time period was being
represented well and accurately by both the
media and in documentaries. He commented “I
know this -- nostalgia is alive and well. People tend
to love that music. I notice that a lot of advertisers
are using that music -- The Beatles and The Rolling
Stones – it would not surprise me to see Joe Cocker
advertising socks.” The reflections and insights
of Jimmy Webb on that time in American history
come from someone who is eminently qualified to
speak on the subject.
It is easy to agree when Jimmy states “Nothing
has come close to that time in music. I am going to
make one of those statements that I am famous for
-- I don’t think there is any music since the 1960s
and 1970s that has been any better.” Jimmy is a
master craftsman, so “melody, chord structure,
construction, the architecture of the way these
things were put together” are all very important to
him. “To me, that all seemed to have peaked with
The Beach Boys and Pet Sounds.” Respected record
producer George Martin, who produced The
Beatles, was like a second father to Jimmy. Martin’s
view of the seminal work created by Brian Wilson in
the Pet Sounds recording supports Jimmy Webb’s
opinion. Jimmy quoted George Martin from a
conversation they shared, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band was only an attempt to equal
Pet Sounds.” The meaning of Martin’s comment
was quite simply that The Beatles had created a
masterpiece that was not the artistic equal to Pet
Sounds. Jimmy believes that those two albums
together “created one of the most fertile and experimental
audio scenes” in history. For those of
us who lived through those musical times, those
moments can only be remembered as magical.
As the years have unfolded, the impact of Jimmy’s
own body of work on musicians has been profound.
It is dangerous to begin listing those with
whom he has worked because of the risk of missing
someone significant. As examples of his collaborative
efforts, his album releases Still Within the
Sound of My Voice (2013) and Just Across the River
(2010) show clearly the appreciation his work commands.
These fine recordings include performance
partnerships with Mark Knopfler, Jackson Browne,
Linda Ronstadt, Keith Urban, David Crosby and
Graham Nash, Brian Wilson, Vince Gill, Billy Joel,
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