“Misunderstood by my own generation”: Why Jimmy Webb regretted writing ‘MacArthur Park’
When we look back at all musical movements, a large part of each of them has been some form of rebellion or suffering. It’s a sad fact that a lot of the greatest art comes from dark places, as music acts as a form of revolution and remains a beacon of hope for many when things feel hopeless. We look at the blues, punk, hip hop, and rock, and a lot of the greatest hits by acts such as Buddy Guy, Kendrick Lamar and Joni Mitchell are deeply rooted in pain.
This side of music is what makes it so beautiful, though. The fact that people can find light in darkness and use sound as a form of sonic rebellion is what leads to music’s connectivity, as others will latch on to the words and feel passionate about what they hear. Many songwriters get into the business with the intention of writing music that extends beyond the sound it makes, and one of those songwriters was Jimmy Webb.
Webb enjoyed a run of success in the 1960s, winning Grammys and helping artists like Glen Campbell and The 5th Dimension write the songs that would propel them to fame. It seemed like a dream job, but it felt like a betrayal of who Webb was as a person. While he was glad the music was selling, he felt it was too safe and not a true reflection of his values.
“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,” he said. “No disrespect to the artist, but Glen Campbell was a very middle-of-the-road act, The 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.”
However, even though Webb was resisting being pigeonholed as someone who could write for middle-of-the-road artists, the success of his next song, ‘MacArthur Park’, seemed to push him further into that hole. He won another Grammy for the track, which was seven minutes long, had an orchestral arrangement, and featured a reading from the Irish actor Richard Harris. The track was a hit, so much so that Donna Summer covered it in 1978, and it became her first number one.
What songwriter wouldn’t want to be recognised as a great creative? That wasn’t Webb’s problem. His problem was that he felt he was being recognised for music he didn’t believe in. He had strong views about the climate and war, and wanted to get them across in his music more than the industry allowed him. He regretted the success of ‘MacArthur Park’ as it cemented him as a middle-of-the-road writer.
“I was not at all a middle-of-the-road person,” he said. “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.”
Concluding, “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 […] There was a war on, people were dying, there were things wrong with the society, things needed to be corrected.”
