MacArthur Park — Richard Harris rose (just) to the challenge of Jimmy Webb’s epic

Since it was a hit in 1968, many singers — including the big beasts of the larynx — have tackled this daunting song

Richard Harris in 1968
James Ferguson Monday, 3 August 2020

Jimmy Webb learnt his trade as a songwriter while he was a teenage contract-writer at Motown — The Supremes recorded a song of his in 1965 — but he was considered surplus to requirements and left. It didn’t stop him writing songs. Within a few years he had huge success with “Up, Up and Away”, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, “Wichita Lineman”, “Galveston” and many more.

There is a MacArthur Park, in Los Angeles; Wilshire Boulevard bisects it. According to Webb, the splendid, crazy and utterly unforgettable imagery of his song alludes to the torture of witnessing his ex’s wedding in the park; a yellow cotton dress, a striped pair of pants, and of course the cake, melting in the rain, the irrecoverable recipe a metaphor for lost love. Or something like that.

“MacArthur Park” was offered originally to California pop group The Association, but they didn’t fancy being associated with such a peculiar song. Which is where Richard Harris comes in. Decades before he became Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films, Harris was a major film star, with a solid reputation as an off-screen hellraiser. He had recently starred — and sung — in the big-budget movie Camelot when he bumped into Webb in Hollywood. They struck up a friendship; Harris wanted to record a Webb song and took a liking to “MacArthur Park”.

In December 1967, to a backing track performed by members of the Wrecking Crew, LA’s top session musicians, Harris recorded his vocals in a booze-fuelled session at a London studio in the most singularly unsingerly voice until Lee Marvin’s depth-charge rendition of “Wand’rin’ Star” a few years later, making up in chutzpah what he lacked in technical ability. (The orchestral part was added later.) He croaks and he sighs, he emotes and he declaims, but he doesn’t sing. (And he consistently mispronounces “MacArthur” as “MacArthur’s”.) There are high notes he hasn’t a hope of reaching, but, my word, he tries; though wisely, he lets a female chorus take the climactic finale. Harris acts “MacArthur Park”. And it works. Nobody did it better.

Written in four sections, or movements, like a cantata, it was the longest single ever to become a top 10 hit, at seven minutes 21 seconds. The first part involves the cake and the rain and old men playing chequers by the trees. The second, a lovely wistful yearning, about love, and life, and the sun and the sky… the best part of the record, Harris wailing like a wounded elk. Part three is a percussive instrumental section that sounds like an ad break, Pearl & Dean in fact, which leads into the fourth and last section, an overwrought reprise of the opening movement, cake, rain and all.

Classical pretension was already a trend in the late 1960s, and bubbled up in pop music for years afterwards: “Excerpt from a Teenage Opera” by Keith West, Tommy by The Who, “Music” by John Miles, culminating in Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” in 1975. Not to mention prog rock.

Over the years, most of the big beasts of the larynx contributed to making the song a standard: Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr, Dionne Warwick, all treating it as a love-struck ballad. If Harris had been able to sing, he’d probably have sounded like Long John Baldry, whose voice bears a fair resemblance to Harris’s, only it’s massive. With some big-chested mellifluity and a bit of a sob in his throat, he avoids the high notes, and the beaty percussive bit, in his 1969 recording. It seems impossible that The Four Tops could ever make a dull record, but with their version of “MacArthur Park”, they did (1969).

Waylon Jennings did it country-style with a blockbuster drumbeat which drifts off and fizzles out (1969). The Three Degrees’ version starts with a beautiful violin refrain that promises so much more than the mediocrity that follows (1970). Glen Campbell, Webb’s buddy, builds to a monumental Also sprach Zarathustra finish; BOOM! (1970).

Andy Williams shifts startlingly in style from supper club to freak-out — the instrumental part is wild and brassy with choppy wah-wah guitars, and Williams really lets rip at the finale (1972). Elaine Paige’s belto canto puts her heat-resistant tonsils, and my speakers, through a stringent test (1985). The beaty break, ever an opportunity for the creative touch, is this time disco-calliope with what sounds like Thor himself on the drums. Phew!

By far the most successful version beside Harris’s was Donna Summer’s, 10 years after his, in 1978 (it formed part of the entire side of an album; a shortened version was released as a single). Pure, exuberant disco, Giorgio Moroder produced and quite marvellous. Summer never sang better and makes it sound as if the song was written for the dancefloor.

What are your memories of ‘MacArthur Park’? Let us know in the comments section below.

The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.

Music credits: A&r Music; Castle Communications; UMC (Universal Music Catalogue); Old Stars; Rhino; Nashville Catalog; Columbia/Legacy; Island Def Jam

Picture credit: Zachary Freyman/Condé Nast via Getty Images

To participate in this chat, you need to upgrade to a newer web browser. Learn more.