Jimmy Webb Quotes (10 Quotes)

You reach a certain point in your life where they things you do and say do make a difference.

I say in my book that a lot of the music our forebears created was written for rich, snotty, snobby people who had enough money to buy theatre tickets. There was a great deal of trivia, a shallow quality to things ... ... You know, that 'I've got rhythm, I've got ...', there's something about it that's not very serious, and at least popular music during our generation began crossing over into an area where it was saying something about the conditions that prevailed.

The creative processes are so mysterious.

We're going to have some dead plants. That dead plant really hurts your yield, and I see a little more than I would like. But we don't have anything to combat it right now.

The only thing that keeps Webb returning to pop music in this creatively fallow era is the communion he experiences with his live audiences. After his shows, usually in intimate 300-seater venues, he'll hang around and sign for fans the old Richard Harris or Glen Campbell LPs they've got tucked under their arms. Each one of them will have something to say to him. 'You've really made a difference in my life, thank you very much', or 'I was going through a very bad time', ... Once you're looking into the eyes of a human being who really cares that you do what you do, that's a very difficult thing to give up. Money's not so important, and the ego stroke of seeing one's name in the newspaper really means less and less as time goes by. But contact with human beings, au contraire, becomes more and more important.

I think the individual writers are out there punching away but the market is not there. The Top 40 as we knew it was a kind of open forum where people could come and sing their songs and that's not there any more.

I started out quite instinctively, mainly imitating songs that I heard on the radio and then the follow-up six or so months later. It was really quite an education to hear another song crafted pretty much in the same vein, to appeal to the same audience, creating hits for that same artist, ... That was an important tool to compare one's work to that. It was a yardstick by which I used to judge my work.

The people who are making money are the ones who are writing and singing their own songs.

I got three other guys to play with me, got on a bus, and started playing folk clubs and dives. A lot of times the reception was semi-hostile, like 'What are you doing here You're rich, and you're probably a Republican as well'

We are trying to describe the indescribable. It's impossible, but I'm going to try it anyway, and take what you can from it.