The Cake and the Rain

A Memoir

By: Jimmy Webb

Narrated by: Jimmy Webb

Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

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 50 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.

©2017 Jimmy Webb (P)2018 Tantor

If you like music you will like this book

Mr. Webb uses is advanced vocabulary to share stories of living the High Life at a young age in the late 60s and early 70s. brought about by the ability to Wtite such three minute miracles as "Up Up and away " "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston" just to name a few.
He tells of encounters with Elvis and working with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Johnny Rivers and Glen Campbell. If you follow music you will like this book. One thing he leaves hanging However. Who is the Devil?

I loved this memoir

I really loved this memoir. Webb’s honesty and descriptions of that time in his life really held my interest. I will listen to it again, which tells you how much I liked it.

This Book is Hard to Listen to

I was around for much of the time covered in this book. I am younger than the talented Jimmy Webb, so all of it took place during my teenage years. I say that because I found so much of the musical and artist references to be familiar and entertaining just by virtue of the adolescent memories they evoked. That said, the structure of this story is absolutely painful to endure. If I were reading the actual novel, I am certain that within a few chapters, I would have raced ahead through the book, marking the section headings in chronological order, backed up, and then read the story chronologially. You know, like real life. But, as it is written and narrated, Mr. Webb zigs and zags incessantly between years and scenes, making the arc of the story nearly impossible to follow. I'm sure it was done as a creative device, and I'm also sure that the incredibly articulate and intelligent author had no difficulty bounding to and fro through his own memories. But, as a listener/observer, it was erratic to the point of distraction. Especially for a book of this length.

Webb has an amazingly wide range of personal contacts with people of renoun, from Sinatra to the Beatles, Harry Nilsson to Joni Mitchell, Sammy Davis Jr., Dudley Moore, Glen Campbell, Johnny Rivers, Richard Harris and countless others. On top of that he has several female love interests weaving in and out of his life with some strange recurring regularity. The net result is a tie-died rendering of people, places and encounters which are, again, hard to follow or relate to.

The final matter of difficulty in listening to the book is Webb's own voice. He is not a great reader. He sounds continually disgruntled and surly. It was the opposite of engaging. I was continually impressed with his vocabulary and creative imagry, which stands to reason for someone so imbued with artistic flair. But the tone of his voice and his inflections were offputting to say the least.

I came away with great respect for Jimmy Webb's skills, disappointed in his perpetually bad judgment vis-a-vis drug (ab)use and at a loss to relate to his materialism and arrogance. The man is a genius, I'm convinced. But, he's not likeable or, unfortunately, respectable. I guess that is testimony to the truth he was bold enough to grumble about for all those hours.

My piece of cake!

What a wonderful read!
Being a freelance musician who matured in and survived the same era as Mr. Webb, this read is especially poignant.
I've read a lot of negative reviews in this book but I cannot hold store by them.

Review of the times

Coming of age in the 60’s this book was valuable as a reminder of what the music/drug scene was like. I’ve been a Jimmy Webb fan since 1971 and I appreciated the peek into his perspective of what we were doing back then. It is a genuine rendering. I didn’t love the numerous jumps back and forth in the time sequences. It was just a bit much. But, other than that, a pleasant read.
Thanks for your music Jimmy. That is what matters most.

One of the Best

As Jimmy Webb said in interviews after publication, this was a painful story to write, so much so that he may never do a sequel. Read by Webb himself, it's genuine, heartfelt and true to the point of being raw exposure at times. Not only does Webb bring his large literary gifts to the work, but his honesty in introspection and personal discovery is stunning.

In many ways, this book reminds me of what made me want to write books, the suggestion by Henry Miller in the forward to Tropic of Cancer that true personal stories, full of experience and insight, were the seeds of great novels.

This book, including its many surprising stories of other celebrities engaged in the late 60s and early 70s, will stick with me. What I missed reading about was what was probably most intimate, his love for his mother who died while Jimmy was a teen, and how she's stuck with him since, inspiring at least one great song. That might have gotten just a little too personal.

First book written by Jimmy Webb

This book was great. However, I did not like the bad words in the fact that he did drugs. I felt that he was pressuring his sister or friend parentheses can’t think of what it is to do drugs even though he said she didn’t have to. I liked it because I love his music and I love the way he narrated the story I would recommend this book to a person I know who likes Jimmy Webb’s music😂

Great story told by Author

It amazes me how good this story is. Told with deep insight by Jimmy Webb himself. I also liked the way he attributed every song to the songwriters. His back stories on musical legends and events is spell-binding. His honesty matched only by his beautiful music.

mediocre.

The book kept skipping back and forth to the past. It got really distracting at times...too much. Story was ok. Can't say I'd recommend it.

Circuitous enjoyment

Not what I expected but that’s a good thing. Jimmy has a way with the written and spoken word. Glad I listened.