The Cake and the Rain: A Memoir

by Jimmy Webb

Overview

Jimmy Webb's words have been sung to his music by a rich and deep roster of pop artists, including Glen Campbell, Art Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra, Donna Summer, and Linda Ronstadt. He's the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration, and his chart-topping career has, so far, lasted fifty years, most recently with a Kanye West rap hit and a new classical nocturne.

Now Webb delivers a snapshot of his life from 1955 to 1970, from the proverbial humble beginnings into a moneyed and manic international world of beautiful women, drugs, cars, and planes. That stew almost took him down-but Webb survived, his passion for music among his lifelines.

Webb's talent as a writer and storyteller will captivate listeners. His book is rich with a sense of time and place, and with the voices of characters, vanished and living, famous and not, when life seemed nothing more than a party.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665236027
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	03/01/2021
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Jimmy Webb is a songwriter, composer, singer, and the author of Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting. His songs have been recorded or performed by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Carly Simon. Webb is the only artist ever to have received Grammy Awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration and was the youngest man ever inducted into the National Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. Webb is married to Laura Savini, a PBS host and television producer. He has five sons and a daughter.

Editorial Reviews

"Webb reads his memoirs in an easy, conversational tone that feels as if the author is sharing stories with friends." -Booklist

From the Publisher

"Webb reads his memoirs in an easy, conversational tone that feels as if the author is sharing stories with friends." -Booklist

From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY

Jimmy Webb is the well-known musician who wrote the Richard Harris song “MacArthur Park”—which includes the famous line “Someone left the cake out in the rain.” This is Webb’s rather circuitous and confusing memoir. Webb’s own narration seems unsteady, with pronounced rough edges. While listeners will hear of muses, happiness, and drama, as well as the ordinary aspects of his life, the work is disjointed. As alternating sections place Webb in wildly disparate time sequences and locations, any sense of a continuous life progression is lost. Fans and those with an interest in music will enjoy anecdotes involving John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Glen Campbell, and the Fifth Dimension, among many other artists who represent the crazy quilt of American popular music. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

2017-03-02
All the sweet icing melts down, and some bitterness and tragedy lie exposed in the life of the hit-making songwriter.Webb (b. 1946), famous for "MacArthur Park," "Up, Up and Away," "Wichita Lineman," and many other 1960s- and '70s-era pop classics, has a bit of a bone to pick. He wants readers to know, as if we don't already, that his songs have been transformative; an 11-page double-column appendix listing artists who have recorded them is just one bit of testimonial. But more, he's ticked at the "left-wing folkie exclusivity" that has relegated him, in the pantheon of songwriters, to the establishment-supporting, squaresville corner where has-beens like Marilyn McCoo and Glen Campbell live. Never mind that plenty of people worship both singers and that plenty of hipsters live and breathe by Webb. The chip on the shoulder never quite falls off, but thankfully, it gets less pronounced as the author presses on with this spry, mostly pleasing memoir that has more than its share of rough patches. For instance, he writes, when he came to Los Angeles from Oklahoma, he was a nice Christian boy who didn't smoke or drink. At the height of his fame—and this book mostly dwells on the golden age of the late '60s and early '70s—he hoovered up a line of what was supposed to be good cocaine but turned out to be "a super dose of crude street level PCP, enough to kill an elephant." Along the way, mostly with an affect of not quite believing his luck, Webb recounts brushes with fame and his many high points, from idol Paul McCartney commissioning a song from him to losing a few brain cells during John Lennon's lost weekend—to say nothing of sessions with Richard Harris, prime interpreter of his greatest and perhaps strangest hit. An insider's view of the star-maker machinery and a treat for Webb's many fans.

Kirkus Reviews