Jimmy Webb: The Meaning of MacArthur Park

It's Not Melting in the Dark. From a 1993 Conversation

The songwriter Jimmy Webb was always one of my favorite people to interview. Each session at a restaurant near his office (we met a few times between 1989 and 1993) became a seminar about the art of songwriting and making and arranging records. Most interesting to me, in our conversations, was the way that he struggled against the middle-of-the-road identity that came with his early success as a pop songwriter.

He was 21 when his songs swept the 1967 Grammy Awards. The 5th Dimension's version of Webb's "Up-Up and Away" won Record of the Year and three others Grammy's, including one for Webb as composer of the Song of the Year. And Glen Campbell, who would also become one of Webb's most successful interpreters, won two Best Vocal Performance awards (Best Vocal Performance, Male, and Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Male) for Webb's now-standard "By the Time I Get to Phoenix."

Webb's other hits for Campbell were the sublime "Wichita Lineman" and the heart-breaking yet hopeful "Galveston," (late 1968-1969), both number one on the country and the adult contemporary charts.

But such acceptance by mainstream show business typecast Webb as somehow aloof and distinct from the cultural and political sea-changes of the most divisive period in the 20th century. And Webb hated that, because really, he was a young hippie who had somehow crashed mainstream Hollywood's establishment party.

"It was clear to me that I had to break away or become something I didn't want to become, which was this purveyor of hit material for middle of the road artists," Webb said. "No disrespect to the artist, but Glen Campbell was a very middle of the road act, 5th Dimension were very middle of the road, Sinatra had recorded some of my things, also Streisand by that time. The indications were fairly clear that this was what was going to happen to me, and I resisted that with great fury."

By this time, the typecasting had been underlined by the unexpected success of the single "MacArthur Park," an orchestral piece that ran 7 minutes and 21 seconds, longer than "Like a Rolling Stone." (The edited 45 rpm single for radio lasted almost four minutes.) The lyrics were a dramatic recitation by the Irish actor Richard Harris, whose substantial claim to fame was his portrayal of King Arthur in the stage and movie versions of Camelot. A huge hit almost immediately upon release, it won Webb another Grammy in 1969 for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists, as Webb had written, arranged, and produced it. A disco version in 1978 was Donna Summer's first number one hit. By the way, the rhythm section for Harris' version was recorded by Hollywood's first-call studio musicians, the Wrecking Crew.

This version of “MacArthur Park” featuring Brian Wilson on background vocals may be the best I’ve heard

My favorite back story about "MacArthur Park," has to do with how hard Webb worked to make something mind-blowing and totally different. According to AllMusic, Webb composed a 22-minute cantata which producer-arranger Bones Howe intended for the group The Association. Even though The Association's biggest hits were mainstream pop standards such as "Cherish" and "Never My Love," they had counter-culture cachet with "Windy," which was No. 1 one on the Billboard top 40 in 1967, same week Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released. "Windy" was breezy enough to be a sweet launch to the summer of love. And the Association’s debut hit in 1966, "Along Comes Mary," harmonically beautiful garage rock, was full of the nascent stoner poesy that had my teen friends and I, still a year from my first joint, say, "Who is Mary?" Is “Mary” marijuana? We had not even figured out that the Walrus was Paul, or what was good Norwegian Wood.

Howe played Webb's cantata for the Association, which would have taken up an entire side of the group's next album. They could not dig it. Nor could they dig "MacArthur Park." They wanted to write their own songs, which they did on their 1968 semi-flop album Birthday. A year later they were pretty much done. But “MacArthur Park” by the man from Camelot, became almost one signature tune too many for Webb.

"I was offered a lot of money to play Las Vegas, to do a cameo and play 'MacArthur Park' on a white piano once a night, almost sideshow kind of stuff, really," Webb said. "A tremendous amount of money for it. I could see there was a trap there . . . a trap for my own spirit, my own spiritual development. I was not at all a middle of the road person. I was rabidly anti-war...On my first album, Words and Music (1970), one of the most important songs was called "Sleeping in the Daytime," which was about pollution. I was already involved with these issues, and I felt frankly quite misunderstood by my own generation.

"Ironically, because of this great success, I was in pain, I wasn't enjoying it, and I was regretting it, and I was feeling guilty about it," Webb, the Oklahoma-born son of a Baptist minister, said. "There was a war on, people were dying, there were things wrong with the society, things needed to be corrected. Because of the success I had, with the artists I had, I was perceived  as being middle or to the right of middle politically. I didn't want to be associated with that at all."

There was a certain hypocrisy at the time regarding Webb and his work. I'm sure I smirked at Glen Campbell, whose version of songs like "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston" hit the mid-American sweet spot between pop and country that catapulted the former studio musician and occasional Beach Boys member to a weekly TV show. The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour ran on CBS from 1969-1972.

Webb’s hits for Campbell were about the kinds of guys who did the blue collar jobs that anti-war activists all thought they needed to reach. They went to war when drafted, could not defer their way out of it. These songs touched the heart of America, and now it's no question: do I identify more now with these Jimmy Webb-composed songs, or would I rather listen to Iron Butterly, Vanilla Fudge, Blue Cheer? What has stood the test of time, and what are relics of an era in which the noise of these bands provided a temporary respite from our own pain and ambivalence?

"MacArthur Park" was noteworthy not just for its orchestration and Richard Harris' recitation, but lyrics that should have been accepted as readily for their trippyness as "Strawberry Fields Forever" or "I Am the Walrus," or "White Rabbit." Instead, Webb was treated like a curiosity, a sideshow geek because:

MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it And I'll never have that recipe again

(c) music and words by Jimmy Webb, all rights reserved by copyright owner

To which the young tripster at the time should have said: "Wow, man!"

At one point in an interview, I asked Webb about "MacArthur Park." The conversation doesn't exactly go sideways. I would call the exchange feisty, perhaps. Here's the give-and-take, the shake-and-bake:

WR: WHAT INSPIRED 'MAC ARTHUR PARK'"?

Jimmy Webb: "It was inspired by a love affair, that would seem to be obvious. It was a love song."

WR: I WAS FASCINATED BY THE IMAGERY, DARING FOR A POP SONG AT THE TIME.

Webb: I would take issue with that. I don't think the imagery is any more daring...I know you're itching to ask me, 'what the cake out in the rain means.' I know you are.

WR: I DON'T LIKE TO GET THAT LITERAL. (faked the hand-off, but Webb stopped me at the line of scrimmage)

Jimmy Webb: I know you are. Maybe I'm gonna conduct the interview, ask the questions. Who are the Nights in White Satin'? What is 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'? What is a "chrome-horse diplomat"?You know it was an era of surreal imagery. Believe me, I have come to regret that song, I have paid my dues! It was really the fashion of the time. What is "the cake out in the rain"? I don't know. It seems on a certain level to be very clear to me, even after all these years, what I was trying to say. What I was saying was, something beautiful, something precious, had been left untended and lost, and could never be regained. I don't understand why that's a mystery.

WR: (chastened somewhat). IT IS CLEAR, THAT'S WHY IT WAS A HIT SONG.

Jimmy Webb: But when you think about it, there was a lot of nonsense going out on the airwaves. 'MacArthur Park' wasn't that unique in terms of its ambiguity. It would be very interesting to write a thesis on that. 'The Nonsense of the Late Sixties.' I'll tell you another one. Jefferson Airplane ["White Rabbit"], "go ask Alice." If you want to know what ‘the cake out in the rain’ means, go ask Alice!"