The Cake and the Rain

A Memoir

By: Jimmy Webb

Narrated by: Jimmy Webb

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

Disjointed story tellin

For all of his talent writing songs, that talent does not transfer to writing a book. Webb flops around with timeliness and there is nothing linear about this biography.

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.

It's not bragging if you cam do it

I read the book with admiration and envy for his life style and musical talent and surviving with both intact. His descriptions of the situations he encountered with his soaring aircraft and debauched nights were entertaining and poignant. Overall one of the best celebrity memoirs I have read.
Sincerely Buck Shot Cheshire
80 year old still aspiring singer songwriter performer

A fantastic dive into the hedde back corridors of music.

The world of creating hits was opened, as well as the drug and alcohol inferno that burns behind it.