![]() I think this is my third or fourth time to New Zealand, although only my second concert. I’m crazy too about Australia and New Zealand. But I loved sailing and tales of maritime adventure. I feel very comfortable out there on the plains. It’s a kind of an ocean, a large and relatively flat or gently undulating area that carries the eye off to the horizon. But there are similarities, believe it or not, between the Midwest and the ocean. In my song Highwayman the second verse says “I was a sailor and born upon the tide”. Yeah I do, I definitely have it in my blood somehow or another. You are an Oklahoma boy but you gravitate towards oceans, you spent a lot of time in California for example. I’ve been on the East Coast for about 25 years and on and off I lived in the city, but now I am on Long Island in a kind of beach community I am very happy with. You’ve lived in and around New York for quite some while now. This interview took place before a concert in New Zealand. Not that it matters much, Webb’s place in the pantheon of great 20 th century composers is secure, he is wealthy and respected by his peers, and is currently working on two Broadway projects: stage adaptations of the classic western Shane, and A Bronx Tale with Chazz Palminteri who wrote the original film. ![]() ![]() However unlike much of his classic material from the Sixties it is hard to imagine who might cover expansive songs like the six minutes-plus Paul Gauguin in the South Seas or High Rent Ghetto about coked-up rich people. Yet, as with most of those in his extensive back-catalogue, Webb’s songs are full of small and engagingly specific detail, and many are stories in which he - like fellow songwriters Randy Newman and Paul Simon - speaks through a character. Some of the songs are saturated in sentimentality, others just plodding. However critical opinion of Twilight of the Renegades - despite what he says - has been largely unsympathetic: it is melodically and lyrically overwrought, and it doesn’t help that Webb is no great shakes as a singer. And some, like Nilsson who died in 94, are already been forgotten. This interview took place in July 2005 after the release of his album Twilight of the Renegades - a meditation on the loss of rebels who have changed the way we, and particularly Webb himself, see the world.Īt 58 Webb admits to feeling his mortality and sees the renegade spirits of his time - Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, his friend and fellow-songwriter Harry Nilsson, Richard Harris and George Harrison - have all passed on. ![]() Webb’s catalogue of genius has won him Grammys and membership to various song writing halls of fame Witchita Lineman is regularly voted into lists of the greatest songs of all time (“the greatest ever” according to Blender magazine four years ago) and his ‘98 book Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting was a best seller. Art Garfunkel’s Watermark album contained 10 Webb songs, and the great songwriter Sammy Cahn compared MacArthur Park to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Webb’s songs have been performed by Linda Ronstadt, Tony Bennet and Rosemary Clooney, by folk singers Joan Baez and Judy Collins, by rock bands such as Urge Overkill and REM, and country singers Reba McEntire and The Highwaymen (Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson who had a number one hit with the titular The Highwayman). At the other end of his musical spectrum was the baroque psychedelic suite MacArthur Park which was a huge hit for actor Richard Harris. His heart-aching and almost minimalist ballad The Moon’s A Harsh Mistress (made famous by Joe Cocker) was a personal account of his conflicted emotions when in love with a married woman. Webb’s early songs had the musical sophistication of Burt Bacharach but also a tinge of populist country. ![]() Glenn Campbell became a star on the back of Webb’s classic songs: Witchita Lineman, Galveston, Where’s The Playground Susie? and Phoenix among them. And that is what he is considered to be by his peers and those who have followed his long career.īefore he was 21 Webb had already written some of pop’s most enduring songs, including By The Time I Get To Phoenix (which Frank Sinatra announced “the greatest torch songs ever written” and is the third most performed song of the past half century), and Up, Up and Away which was a hit for The Fifth Dimension. When Jimmy Webb, one of the most sophisticated and successful songwriters of his generation, speaks of making music it is like eavesdropping on genius. ![]()
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