Jimmy Webb on the hits that got away and the 'wretched excess' of '70s LA

More than half a century after he won his first Grammy Award — he took song of the year in 1968 for writing the 5th Dimension’s swooning "Up, Up and Away" — singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb is flying as high as the beautiful balloon from that song. He was just in California for a gig at the Catalina Jazz Club and then gets ready to return home to Long Island, where he'll perform at My Father's Place in Roslyn on Nov. 21.

He’s also got a new album, "Yours for the Taking," and earlier this month appeared in a PBS special in which he looked back at some of his best-known songs, including "Wichita" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" (both made famous by Glen Campbell), "MacArthur Park" (a hit for both Richard Harris and Donna Summer) and "Highwayman" (which Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson liked so much they named their supergroup after it).

"Yours for the Taking" collects 11 new recordings of tunes Webb wrote over the years for himself or for others but which never made it onto a record; it features appearances by Michael McDonald, Amy Grant and Graham Nash, the last of whom joins Webb for "Winter Clothes," which the songwriter once pitched to Frank Sinatra.

So the album is basically songs that people said no to. Accurate?

Not inaccurate. But they weren’t all turndowns. Every songwriter has a trunk, and the trunk is full of songs that got tossed out of the show or were passed over when they were submitted or may have just not been finished. Detritus accumulates like a wake behind a songwriter because songwriters are loath to continue to try to promote a piece of material that has any disappointment attached to it.

Which means these are the bad apples.

Problem children, I’d say. I can illustrate it with an anecdote. I went to Mr. Sinatra regularly — every year or two, we might have a meeting.

Where would you meet?

Wherever — in his apartment at the Waldorf hotel, sometimes up on Mulholland Drive [in Los Angeles], where he had a house. The first time, I’d just come back from the Monterey Pop Festival, and I was in my hippie regalia. I showed up on his front porch on Mulholland with a paper sack — I carried my songs around in horrific fashion — and he came to the door in his silk Bergdorf Goodman dressing gown. He said, "What are you doing on my porch? You one of those Charlie Manson guys?" Then a little grin started breaking out at the corners of his mouth. He said, "Come on in, kid — I hope you got some good songs."

Was Sinatra the ultimate get for a songwriter?

It was a rite of passage to play songs for him. He loved songwriters, and he loved to listen to songs — even the bad ones. This one particular time, I had a song I’d been working on called "Winter Clothes." It was an end-of-relationship song, but in his sense I was overlaying the idea that this could be career-related in some way — he could be getting ready to cut his farewell album or something. So I pitched it even though I wished it was a little better.

Better in what way?

Fairly good first verse but then a weak verse that wasn’t quite as strong. It’s hard to explain: Sometimes there’s one word wrong but you don’t realize it until the dust settles 30 years later and you go, "I could have done this and it would’ve been perfect."

What’s a Jimmy Webb classic where something sticks in your craw?

The end of "Wichita Lineman." I didn’t notice it until I was working on my book "Tunesmith," which purports to be a bible of songwriting. ... I’m listening to the song in the car, and I get to the end of the last verse: "And I need you more than want you / And I want you for all time / And the Wichita lineman is still on the line." It’s a false rhyme — a blatant false rhyme. And I just had a whole chapter of preaching about the evils of all these quasi-sinful things one can do when trying to rhyme.

Even your biggest hits have something of an enigmatic quality.

I’m thinking of Billy Joel at the Songwriters Hall of Fame as he was deconstructing "Wichita Lineman" — one of the best nights of my life. He goes, “'Need you more than want you’? Sounds like a diss."

You like Billy Joel?

I love him. ... Him and his motorcycles and his man-of-the-people thing, that’s for real. You walk down the street with him and there’s a bunch of ConEd guys digging a hole in the street — you think, "Uh-oh, these guys are gonna want him to sign their jackhammer." He walks by and it’s just, "Yo, Billy!" He’s one of them.

Who do you consider among your surviving peers?

Well, some of them might not want to be my peers — I can think of one in particular. Tell you the truth, I’ve always been on fairly good terms with Paul Simon. But he’s a monolith: "The Sound of Silence," "The Boxer," "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her." This is a guy who incorporated poetic techniques into the songwriting experience and came up with a new folk music. Also Paul McCartney I find to be an absolute genius. There are times when I take issue with some of the personal aspects of our relationship — I’ll just leave it at that. He’s Paul McCartney, and he knows he’s Paul McCartney, which must be very difficult. I also rate Randy Newman very, very highly.

Best interpreter of your work?

I’d have to say Glen was the guy — there was just a natural fit. I heard my first Glen Campbell song when I was 14 years old. He recorded a song by a guy named Jerry Capehart called "Turn Around, Look at Me." I was a kid driving a tractor, listening to a transistor radio hanging from my umbrella, and I said, "That’s the guy I want to write songs for."

Do you think your connection was due to your similar backgrounds — you in Oklahoma, Glen in Arkansas?

Had to be. But Glen was no country bumpkin. I played a record for him over at my house one day by Allen Toussaint called "Southern Nights" — totally out there, like "Sgt. Pepper." He said, "Can I have it?" He went over and took the needle off, put the vinyl in the sleeve and said, "I gotta go." It was like Wile E. Coyote. And he went and turned that thing into a No. 1 record.

I saw Glen’s farewell tour at the Hollywood Bowl. Pretty tough emotionally.

It was more than tough. I remember we were playing a gig up north for Lexus or somebody — it was a lot of money, and the guy said, "We just want you guys to play those hits that everybody knows and loves." Well, we could do that — nothing hard about that. We went out there and started playing, and about halfway through "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," Glen forgot the lyrics — forgot whether he was in Albuquerque or Flagstaff or wherever. I thought: There’s something wrong. Another time we were playing somewhere in Indiana. They’re giving us a hell of an ovation, and we’re standing between the two fly curtains. I said, "Glen, I think we need to do an encore." He stood there for a second and he looked at me funny — got this thousand-yard stare. He said, "Did you write ‘Wichita Lineman’?" That was the week they said he had Alzheimer’s.

We talked earlier about Sinatra. Where does Barbra Streisand rank for a songwriter looking to get his songs cut?

I think that most of my colleagues living and no longer living would agree that she was the greatest singer that ever came down the pike.

OK.

She had pipes that had pipes. She recorded one of my first songs, "Little Tin Soldier" — early piece of anti-Vietnam music. She did a beautiful job on "Didn’t We." Then we hit a rough patch. She was one of the hardest — well, she’s not gone, so I’ll put it in the present tense — she is one of the hardest artists to pitch a song to. Maybe the hardest.

Streisand’s greatest vocal performance — what springs to mind?

It doesn’t spring to mind, it breaks my heart: "People." I’m getting chills thinking about it. There are people out there who don’t understand that song — I’ve talked to them, and they say, "What’s ‘People’ about?" I’m thinking: If you don’t know what "People" is about, then you’re not one of the luckiest people in the world.