Jimmy Webb on Tour

Coral Drouyn is excited about the arrival of one of the world’s greatest songwriters.

There can’t be a music lover in the entire world who doesn’t know the songs of Jimmy Webb, even if they don’t instantly recognise the name. Songs like “Didn’t We”, “All I know”, “Wichita Lineman”, “By the Time I get to Phoenix”, “The Highwayman”, “Galveston”, “Up Up and Away” and the oft maligned “Macarthur Park” have now been around for so long that they are standards. Personally I never understood why anyone couldn’t understand MacArthur Park; it seemed to me a perfect allegorical metaphor for letting a relationship go to ruin, but even if you don’t “get” the lyrics, the music is exquisite.

If it seems impossible that a lot of the songs were written fifty years ago, you have to remember that Jimmy wrote his first song at age 13 and hasn’t stopped since.

The songs made Superstars out of artists like Glen Campbell, Richard Harris, The Fifth Dimension, and stars like Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand covered them. But Jimmy wanted to be a recording artist (what songwriter wouldn’t want to interpret their own songs in the way they conceived them?). The problem was that (in the early days) Jimmy wasn’t a very good singer. A early unauthorised disc of demos, crediting him as Jim Webb has all but disappeared (I’m lucky enough to have a copy) and probably did more harm than good. He was young, and so nervous that his throat constricted. Critics were brutal and no-one would have blamed the young Webb if he’d never sung in public again. But it’s never wise to tell a boy from Oklahoma that there’s something he can’t do.

He kept recording, classic albums like El Mirage and Land’s End, and gradually the voice got better and better. By the time he recorded his eighth album – “Suspending Disbelief”, with such luminaries as Linda Ronstadt doing backing vocals, in 1993, Jimmy Webb the vocalist had well and truly arrived and proved it wasn’t a fluke, with five subsequent studio albums culminating with the 2013 “Still Within The Sound of My Voice.”

So what is it that makes Webb’s own interpretations of his songs so special? It’s the intimacy, the underlying nuances of the emotions that triggered the songs in the first place. To hear Jimmy sing “Galveston” as he intended it - as a poignant slow hymn condemning the tragedy of war, rather than Glen Campbell’s up tempo patriotic anthem - is like hearing the song for the very first time.

Over the past 20 years Webb – now 70 – has found his comfort zone as a stage performer and he takes his audiences to a special place that they can’t explore except through the writer himself. He’s no longer trying to prove anything and that gives him the freedom to tell anecdotes of his musical past, give advice on how to impress a girl by writing her a song, and draw you into his inner circle of music.

He’s won every conceivable music award, has written two books and, though we’ve yet to see them materialise, has at least two musicals in varying stages of development. He’s also one of the best musical arrangers from the 20^th century, particularly with strings (If you love music you really need to hear JW’s arrangement of his own song “5.30 Plane” for The Supremes).

I’m telling you this (in case you didn’t know) because he is back in Australia to present his one man show (when you have that much talent you don’t need anyone on stage with you) in a whistlestop tour. Those lucky enough to be in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth will have the chance to see the man dubbed “America’s Greatest Living Songwriter” live, and realise that they’ve never really heard a Jimmy Webb song until they hear him sing it. You’ll also wonder why we haven’t, at the very least, got a “juke-box musical” out of his astonishing songbook.

I’ll be there on Friday night in Brisbane - it’s an event, and nobody wants to miss an event.

Tour Dates

Brisbane June 24^th – Powerhouse Theatre

Melbourne June 27^th - Melbourne Recital Hall

Sydney June 29^th - City Recital Hall

Perth  July 1^st - State Theatre

Photographer: Bob Barry