Jimmy Webb - The Cake And The Rain

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not a great memoir

I respect Jimmy Webb's work enormously and hoped to like this book more than I did.  It's a fairly decent memoir in places but overall it lacks much coherence, I think.

The Cake And The Rain covers Webb's life from childhood in an agaraian environment with a pastor father who insisted on moving the family around very frequently, through his period of colossal wealth and fame to the point in 1973 where he took a drug overdose, almost died and lost the ability to create music for a time.  To his credit Webb is honest and forthright not only about his ability, but also about his mistakes, his young man's hubris and so on, and the book gives a decent picture of the time.

The story is, I'm afraid, told in a fractured timescale, with childhood and adolescent episodes intercut with Webb at the height of his fame in the late 60s and early 70s.  Frankly, it's an annoying structure which does nothing to help the book.  There are some great stories and some very tedious ones, too.  Meeting Elvis and Joni Mitchell? I certainly want to hear about that.  Long tales and descriptions of over-flashy cars?  Not so much.  I also think that Webb is a very fine songwriter, but often pretty over-the-top in his prose.  Writing of the start of 1970, for example, he says "Now, the seventies waited for the swift hand of fate to write what wonders or horrors?"  A little of that goes a very long way with me, and it's often a great deal too rich for my taste.

So…worth a read if you're interested in the times and their music, but it's somewhat heavy going and I can only give this a qualified recommendation.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)