Well, who knows what the real story of MacArthur Park, the song, is? I heard the Rolls Royce bet tale. Perhaps, on the radio; perhaps, on the Mike Douglas Show (now, there's a trivia question for you!).
When I spent two days in SF in 1974, I did a short detour to see MacArthur Park. It was pretty. The day was fine and the park seemed particularly green and leafy to me. People were using it and I thought the sight was worth the time . . . and the subsequent chuckle!
Webb certainly had a bombastic style, didn't he? Is he still alive? Does he perform in obscure bars with Tony Orlando ("Knock Three Times;" "Tie a Yellow Ribbon," the latter being a song that demonstrates how shallow certain segments of the population are)? Will he participate in a PBS special devoted to nostalgia? (BTW, in the 19th C., nostalgia was considered a mental illness: too bad the same opinion is no longer extant.)
Lots of Dylan's stuff was long. I think "Sad Eyed Lady of Lowlands" covered a complete side of an album. I remember one of my college classmates, sitting in the day-hop locker room, playing that song over and over. When it ended, she would pick up the needle and replace it at the beginning. At the end of every 5th or 6th repetition, she would sigh, "Bob Dylan's tribute to 20th C. woman."
Of course, there was the Doors, "Light My Fire," which was the number one song for years. I personally saw the Doors twice at Detroit's Cobo Arena.
My 20 y/o son is into classic rock and I found a little book of the top 100 albums of the 60s for his Christmas stocking. You'd be surprised at what is there: Glen Campbell, Bob Newhart (yes, Virginia, comedy was king!), Nat "King" Cole, The Monkees.
Dunno 'bout the Rolls Royce story - both Webb and Harris pretty much corroborate the "this one'll do" version. Webb never really made it as a performer on his own, though he long ago was inducted into The National Academy of Popular Music
Songwriter's Hall of Fame. Last year, 2003, he was recipient of their
Johnny Mercer Lifetime Acheivement Award.
Its a personal thing, I know, but as far as I'm concerned, Webb is to Music about what Bob Villa is to architecture.
The Johnny Mercer Lifetime Achievement Award???!!!
Thank you so much for all your posts....a most enjoyable and interesting thread. Is Richard Harris dead? I get him mixed up with peter O'Toole. One of them spent the last few years of his life as a resident of some famous hotel (me thinks Claridges) in London. On being taken ill and carried through the foyer on a stretcher shouted "don't eat the food"! Can anyone confirm?
Richard's singing may not be everyones cup of T, however he was a fine actor......gave a fantastic performance in This Sporting Life....still one of my all time favourites. He was the archetypal 'Angry Young Man'.....but if anyone begs to differ and offers Tom Courtney....I wouldn't have much of an argument. :wink:
Once again....thanks!
Richard Harris died of cancer in 2003. Also, Time magazine told a different story about how Webb wrote "MacArthur Park". He wrote it in a few hours during a party to show a girl that he could write a catchy song using totally meaningless lyrics.
I always liked the tune (in moderation, like once a year?) and I always assumed in was a satire on bombastic, pathos ladened broadway songs. Thanks for the info Timber.
Panzade, I have asked you a question about guitars on the 'what music lifts you up' thread! If you have the time.
Whatever the song may or may not mean, or how it wound up on Harris's
A Tramp Shining, there is little reason to doubt it was written for The Association, who turned it down, or, speculation - regardless of source - to the contrary, to suspect either a Rolls Royce or a party trick were involved;
Quote:On "MacArthur Park":
After Bones Howe produced the Association's Insight Out, he began producing The Magic Garden for the Fifth Dimension, which was composed by Jimmy Webb.
Bones Howe: "While we were doing that, Jimmy kept saying to me, 'I'm writing a cantata for the Association.' I kept saying, 'Jimmy, we've got to finish this record. You've still got two more songs to write for this album.'...
"Finally, we finished The Magic Garden and I went to Jimmy's house and he played me the songs on the piano and it was wonderful. I said, 'As soon as the Association get back (from their tour), we'll get together.'"
Webb was so excited about his song that he hoped the Association would come to his house so he could play it for them. The Association's manager, Patrick Colecchio, however, according to Bones Howe, suggested they meet on "neutral ground," so Howe rented Studio Three at Western Recorders.
Bones Howe: "Jimmy sits down at the piano and I say, 'You've got to listen to this all the way through, because it's meant to be one whole side of an LP. It's got several movements, and every one of them could be opened up and we could put it out as a single.'" There was also connecting music, and Howe thought they could expand on that vocally, as the Fifth Dimension had done with The Magic Garden.
Bones Howe: "Jimmy sits down and he plays them this whole thing from beginning to end, and the last movement is 'MacArthur Park'. He finishes, the guys kind of look at each other, and Pat (Colecchio) goes, 'Maybe Jimmy could go outside for a second and we could talk about this among the guys.'
"Jimmy goes outside, closes the door, and either Terry Kirkman or Russ Giguere says, 'Any two guys in this group can write a better piece of music.'
"I was devastated. It's the old cartoon thing; I see the Grammy on wings, flying away. It's like, here's an opportunity to do something really different that nobody else has done. I thought it was a brilliant idea....
"Then they all began talking about the songs of theirs that they wanted to do on the album. I had to go tell Jimmy Webb that they weren't going to cut his song."
P.S. Howe did get his Grammy, a year later, for the Fifth Dimension's "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In".
Source
Quote: ... "MacArthur Park" has a strange history that pre-dates the Harris version. It begins in the summer of 1967, when Webb wrote a 22-minute cantata that ended with a seven-minute coda called "MacArthur Park."
Bones Howe became friendly with Webb when they worked together on the Fifth Dimension's Up, Up and Away album. After that, Howe went to work producing the Association and Webb was hired by Johnny Rivers to produce the Fifth Dimension's concept LP, The Magic Garden. When problems arose between Webb and Rivers, Howe was asked to come in and produce the vocal tracks ...
... [Howe] set up a meeting with Jimmy and the Association. We were in studio three at Western, and he came in and... played on the piano through these pieces that he hand worked and sang them and went back and played countermelodies, and showed them various things he had in mind for this cantata. It was just a wonderful piece of music. They listened and said, 'Because it's gonna take up the whole side of an album, we'd like to talk about it.' So Jimmy excused himself and walked out of the studio. They closed the door and somebody in the group -- I don't remember who -- said, 'Any two guys in this group could write a better piece of music than that.' I said, 'You guys are crazy. This is a wonderful concept'... they said, 'Yeah, but we'd have to give up the whole side of an album.' I said, 'This is a great possibility to go forward creatively and do something which nobody's done before.'"
"It was left to Bones to break the news to Jimmy. "He was really crushed by it," Howe remembers. The Association wrote all their own songs for their Birthday album. "I kept saying to their manager, 'There's not one song here that's as good as the cantata that Jimmy brought in. We ought to go back to him.'" The answer was no. Webb took the last movement of the cantata -- the seven-minute coda -- and produced it for Richard Harris.
Source, Also
Here
Quote:In the summer of 1967, songwriter Jimmy Webb ("Up Up and Away") composed a 22-minute cantata that ended with a seven-minute coda called "MacArthur Park." He offered it to Bones Howe, who produced The Association, for possible inclusion on the group's fourth LP. Howe loved it, but the group did not want to give up half the album for Webb's project, so they rejected it.
Source
Quote: ... I chatted with Jimmy about The Association's passing up of MacArthur Park and then recording P.F. Sloan and other obscure minutia of the dim past...
Source
Quote: ... When The Association (of Windy renown) collectively blanched at the idea of recording Jim Webb's newly penned opus MacArthur Park. the offer was taken up by Webb's Irish actor friend Richard Harris, who'd recently starred in the movie musical Camelot ...
Source
Quote: ... (Who can forget "MacArthur Park" and its central image of a cake dissolving in a rainstorm as a sign of a failed relationship?) Richard Harris not being a singer by trade, he apparently had no ego to fight against Webb's more outrageous ideas -- unlike the Association, who famously turned down "MacArthur Park" only to see it become one of the top-selling singles of the '60s
Source
Quote:[Webb] originally offered the song to the Association, who rejected it. Undaunted, Webb decided to record the piece on his own, and persuaded his friend, the actor Richard Harris, to sing "MacArthur Park"
Source
Quote: ... And though they weren't immune from letting their folkie earnestness get the best of them, The Association were often at their best when they pushed the limits of psychedelic pop, as they did on
Pandora's Heebie Jeebies from 1966's Renaissance and the Gregorian-flavored
Requiem for the Masses and the sitar funk groove of
Wantin' Ain't Gettin' (the latter two from Insight Out). It all leaves one wondering what a planned recording of Jimmy Webb's
MacArthur Park suite during the Birthday sessions might have yielded (according to Webb, Howe was so certain the band was making a mistake passing up
MacArthur Park, he promised his resignation the day the song went to number one which it did when actor Richard Harris recorded the song later that year, ending Howe's tenure with the group ...
Source
Quote: ... Howe's role as the Association's producer involved not only cutting their records, but also selecting their backing musicians, and trawling the repertoires of professional songwriters for the group's material. But Howe abandoned them after two albums, claiming that their lobbying for greater artistic control was destroying their career. The final straw came when the group rejected a song presented to them in 1968 by red-hot songwriter Jimmy Webb, claming that "any two guys in this band can write better songs than that." That song, "MacArthur Park," was within months a worldwide smash for actor Richard Harris, eventually becoming one of the most lucrative songs of all time ...
Source
Quote: ... The Association were the first artistes to be offered Jim Webb's
MacArthur Park. They turned it down believing they could write better themselves. Producer Bones Howe quit working with them after this decision and they never had big success again.
Source
Apart from the foregoing, I myself met Mr. Bones Howe at an industry party years ago. It was from the conversation I had with him there that I gathered the impression Howe had requested Webb write something "grander" for The Association. It may be Howe was hyping, or perhaps merely misremembering, his role when we chatted, but the core facts are pretty well established.
Any more questions?
I hate every version of MacArthur Park that I've heard, except for the soulful and relatively funky version (with a bit of artistic license used on the lyrics) by the band called The Negro Problem.
Thank you Timberlandko, for a difinative reply....I really enjoyed reading you posts, as did Mr Sarah! I thank you for the time you took to research it...and for sharing your memories
Happy Christmas :wink:
Cinnesthesia wrote:I hate every version of MacArthur Park that I've heard, except for the soulful and relatively funky version (with a bit of artistic license used on the lyrics) by the band called The Negro Problem.
Which I have still yet to hear. If there is a version with redeeming value, I would like to hear it.
Thanks, Sarah. Some things I get sorta excercized about ... early rock/pop/blues/folk/contry/bluegrass/jazz music trivia bein' one of 'em. I take gettin' that kinda stuff right pretty seriously
Season's best to you and yours, and to everyone else on this thread.
Tico, if you download music online, you can probably find it somewhere. If not, I could probably be coerced into eventually sending you a copy of it, just to prove my point.
Timberlandko, do you listen to the BBC on line? They have great music documentaries (radio2 link listen again). I've recently listened to The Music Producers - Tony Visconti, at al, The Atlantic Story and a brilliant programme about Little Richard's first rendition of Tutti Frutti. I'd be happy to keep you posted about anything coming up you might get a kick out of! :wink:
Cinnesthesia wrote:Tico, if you download music online, you can probably find it somewhere. If not, I could probably be coerced into eventually sending you a copy of it, just to prove my point.
It's on my to-do list. Thanks for reminding me. You can count on me for an honest critique when I do.
Thanks again, Sarah - I usually have music goin' while I'm at the 'puters - or just about anywhere else, for that matter. The Beeb is there from time to time, and I agree they do great documentaries.
Just fyi - I'm a real vinyl junkie, and a pretty active LP trader - I belong to several related clubs or associations, and personally own several thousand LPs from the '50s through the '80s. I don't really buy or sell 'em much, but I do a buncha swappin' with other goofs like myself. Its a pretty popular hobby.
Timberlandko, I'm not such a purist - but Mr Sarah has HUGE vinyl collection. Allsorts, but a lot of early raggae and ska. He's also into punk (being 'of that age'). He used to be in a band when he was younger (Splendid Isolation) but they split up on the eve of their first gig. The North of England (where I inhabit) is a bit of a vinyl mecca. We still have lots of small vinyl exchange and second hand independants. Mr S is always on the look out for early Northern Soul. My only claim to fame....I was born on Penny Lane (Liverpool)
The Association stuff doesn't necessarily mean that the version I offered was untrue or a contradiction . . . I did hear at least one of the dynamic duo of Webb and Harris talk about the song . . . I'm just not certain whether it was on tv or radio. . . although I tend to think it was on tv and the old Mike Douglas Show . . . which I would sometimes see at my mother's house when I stopped by after work.
It is a silly song, esp. when you consider it wasn't written as a novelty song.
Oh, I don't doubt you heard it, pom - and plausible it mighta been from one of the principals. There are all sortsa stories and rumors out there concernin' this particular bit of musical chewin' gum. Still, a huge number of references - including some verry authoritative ones (such as Webb's own website, Harris's semi-official memorial website, the periodicals
Rolling Stone,
Village Voice,
Billboard and
Variety, and both The Songwriter's Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame), citing varied, multiple "in a position to know" sources, independently and mutually corroborate the Association connection and one another. Generally, that sorta stuff is good enough to take to court
