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Home » MacArthur Park and Summer and melting green cakes

MacArthur Park and Summer and melting green cakes

The New Neo Posted on by

I can just hear the cries of exasperation now: first the Bee Gees, and now Donna Summer? What is wrong with you, Neo?

Despite the common disdain I hear about disco music, I love Summer’s voice. It’s a force of nature, like a powerful river flowing to the sea and not letting anyone or anything (like mere notes that are very high or very low) stand in its way. Mock the genre of disco all you want, but this lady could sing better and more powerfully than almost anybody else. Little effort is visible. She just opens her mouth and out it pours, a golden stream of sound with a smoky timbre.

And then there’s the song she’s singing here, “MacArthur Park.” I’ve never cared at all for the song and still don’t. In fact, I rather dislike it. In particular, the image of the green cake melting in the rain seems ludicrous to me, although the composer/lyricist Jimmy Webb said it was based on something that actually happened:

Everything in the song was visible. There’s nothing in it that’s fabricated. The old men playing checkers by the trees, the cake that was left out in the rain, all of the things that are talked about in the song are things I actually saw. And so it’s a kind of musical collage of this whole love affair that kind of went down in MacArthur Park. … Back then, I was kind of like an emotional machine, like whatever was going on inside me would bubble out of the piano and onto paper.

The melody shows off Summer’s glorious voice and in particular her lower register, and that’s why I’m paying attention to it. As a very different singer, Karen Carpenter, once said of her own voice, “The money’s in the basement.” As far as I’m concerned, the same was true of Summer, although she had a powerful upper register as well and that’s evident in the song, too. But it’s the lower register that gets me.

Here is a live rendition of the song by Summer when she was around 50 years old. I chose this later performance because I think her voice actually got better with time, although it was fabulous to begin with:

For comparison, here’s one from twenty-one years earlier, when Summer was close to thirty. I don’t think it’s as good at all, perhaps because she seems more affected and her voice seems lighter in her lower registers (and is the song also pitched a note or so higher than in the other video?). But she’s certainly a beautiful and sexy woman. Compared to the raunchiness of today’s performers, though, she seems positively sedate here:

There’s been a lot of rain here lately, but I’ll try not to leave any cakes out in it.

And speaking of damp green cakes – that is, singing of damp green cakes – this offering from my youth comes to mind. I was taken to see this live in NYC many a time as a child:

And I just learned from reading Cyril Ritchard’s Wiki page that he was Australian. I never would have guessed that.

Comments

MacArthur Park and Summer and melting green cakes — 56 Comments

  3. Ugh … MacArthur is possibly the worst rock song ever written. It is definitely the stupidist song ever written.

  4. MacArthur Park is a favorite of mine, perhaps related to an old love affair. Another favorite is “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” by Ronnie Milsaps, for the same reasons. There is a MacArthur Park scene in a favorite move, “Dead Again,” a movie I was half way through the first time I saw it until I realized Kenneth Branaugh was playing two parts. Another doomed love affair story.

  8. I saw Cyril Ritchard in The Happiest Girl in the World, which he also directed, in 1961. Got his autograph on my Playbill, which my Mom threw away.

  10. Well, I’ll stand by Richard Harris’s 1968 “MacArthur”, which got to the charts first:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRwYQgk05DY

    It’s definitely an emotionally overwrought song dialed up past 11, but I have to say it matches how nutty I got in my twenties when true love failed.

    What do you do with lyrics like the first verse? “Like a striped pair of pants”? I guess there was a brief vogue for striped pants in the Beau Brummel phase of the 60s. At least it’s not moon/June/spoon. It’s one of those “so bad, it’s good” situations.
    ____________________________________

    Spring was never waiting for us, girl
    It ran one step ahead
    As we followed in the dance
    Between the parted pages and were pressed
    In love’s hot, fevered iron
    Like a striped pair of pants

    https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858511832/

  14. Thanks, neo. I went to discos often in the 70s and 80s, so of course heard Donna Summer a lot. Your point is well made. Disco was just the background. Her voice was spectacular, period.

  15. Clearly Donna Summer had an extraordinary voice but for me, not enough emotion in her voice. Reminds me a bit of Ella Fitzgerald.

    Compare them to Aretha Franklin’s voice on Natural Woman. Or listen to Linda Ronstadt on one of her heartbreak songs. Or Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”.

    OK, different strokes does make the world go round. How boring would it be if we all liked only the same things?

    Being of a certain age, I confess to having a few fond memories of dancing during the disco era. That said, I agree with Tuvea. McArthur Park always made me a bit queasy. Just too treacly, no cake, just over sugared frosting. Too draaamahtic. As huxley says, “an emotionally overwrought song dialed up past 11”.

    For real emotion, I recommend Lenny Welch’s “Since I Fell for You” He makes you believe its really happening to him.

    I was also struck by the nearly all white audience but of girls too young for the disco era?

  16. Everybody’s heartbreak happens differently. So, from time to time, a heart break song hits it just right.
    So far, as wrt young love, no hit yet. Other issues, yes.
    But when it’s ON, it’s really ON, other issues such as voice, lyrics, etc. notwithstanding.
    But that would be individual.

  17. Richard, probably so but here’s another one; Marilyn McCoo – One Less Bell To Answer The 5th Dimension https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETNM6x1xfuU

    I defy anyone to watch from the 2:00 mark forward and declare she’s not singing with real emotion. No actress is that good. She’s personally and deeply relating to that song.

  18. Geoffrey Britain:

    I agree that Summer is not the singer to look for if you’re looking for a heartwringing emotional experience. The experience with Summer is more auditory – such a beautiful and powerful voice. But I also think if she upped the emotional ante it would be almost too much, like a dessert that’s too rich. She may be right to pull back a bit. To me, the timbre of her voice is inherently emotional, but her focus is on the song and the rhythm.

    Although she certainly didn’t hold back in “Love To Love You Baby.” The song is almost voyeuristic.

  19. If you are talking Donna Summer and disco the name Giorgio Moroder needs to be brought up. He was the creative force behind most of Summer’s disco hits and many others also.

    He would rank near the top of any list of the most influential people of the disco era.

  20. I agree with Geoffrey about “MacArthur Park”. In fact I’m not much of a Jimmy Webb fan. Yet he also wrote one of my favorite songs, “Wichita Lineman”.

    Good call also GB on Lenny Welch’s “Since I Fell For You”, a great recording.

  21. I found that comment by Carpenter interesting She was my favorite female vocalist of her generation, and that ties into my preference for lower female voices. The older I get, the less I want to hear high female voices. They are in the range that many men lose the ability to hear first. (And I am an example there, having been pushed last year to having my hearing checked, and finding that I have some hearing loss in those frequencies).

    Also, many men find the lower pitched female voices more sultry, and sexy. Or at least that is what my wife, with a moderately pitched voice claims.

  22. Geoffrey;

    Sorry. I meant ON for a listener. It would be a coincidence that the lyrics and the suggestions in the melody trigger–sometimes that word is appropriate–a particularly strong reaction in an individual due to some connection to a past heartbreak. Were that to happen, esthetic judgments become irrelevant..

    I liked the Carpenters, but the how-low-can-you-go thing seemed like showing off and was sometimes distracting.

    I am reminded, when hearing of real emotion in a performance, of a story of Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two–very early in their career–trying to summon up, or fake, emotion in a Legion hall north of (Fargo, iirc, could be some other town) on a gray January afternoon. Better to try to fake it, getting it “real” will make you crazy.

    Edward Villella, dancer, (is the spelling right, Neo?) was once picked as the nation’s best athlete by some sports writers. A very long time ago. He had to do amazingly difficult physical performances even athletes in other sports could never even approach. And he did it once a day, every day, and twice on Saturday. And the last ten percent of effort, the hardest to achieve, was what made the difference; making it look easy and as if he’d nullified the law of gravity. It took attention to every bone and joint in his body down to the fingers.
    I can’t imagine doing that out of sheer, personal inspiration once a day and twice on Saturday when, say, my old stress fracture is acting up. Have to figure out how to fake it.
    Ditto singers.

    Bruce, At my age, the sopranos aren’t coming in so well any longer. But see, on youtube “Mille regretz” covered by Paula bar Giese. I think she’s called a contralto. And she does a number of other Renaissance pieces. Her range is just right for me.

  23. neo,

    “I also think if she upped the emotional ante it would be almost too much, like a dessert that’s too rich.”

    Interesting point. I suspect you’re right about that. Certainly that would be the case with MacArthur Park.

    “To me, the timbre of her voice is inherently emotional”

    To me it’s not. Though I’m a bit doubtful of it as a factor, perhaps my hearing being limited to 14k and below skews my perception.

    Summer’s “Love To Love You Baby.” is indeed emotional or more precisely, lustful. Which of course is an emotion and not necessarily negative at all. Context is everything.

    BTW, songs that convey heartbreak are not my sine qua non. As just one example, I find Streisand’s rendition of “Evergreen” to be exquisitely beautiful and I’m not a fan of her singing. Music that doesn’t move me is for me, simply organized ‘noise’. That emotional connection can take a variety of forms but for me, music has to get my soul’s attention.

  24. FOAF,

    I too like “Wichita Lineman” but Webb’s “By The Time I Get to Phoenix” absolutely slays me.

    Bruce Hayden,

    I too adore Carpenter’s voice though not her choice in songs, I only have one album of theirs. Funny, I like all of her hits but never felt the urge to buy her records.

    “many men find the lower pitched female voices more sultry, and sexy”

    It’s not quite that cut and dry, as a woman has to have a healthy interest in sex but yes, in general I agree.

    In her rendition of “All I Ask of You” by Canadian jazz singer Chantal Chamberland on her album “The Other Woman” her smoky, slightly raspy voice drips intimacy and connection.

    Richard Aubrey,

    I just listened/watched “Mille regretz” covered by Paula bar Giese and frankly it leaves me unmoved. I’m not a big fan of that genre but there are a few that move me. Russell Watson’s “Nessun dorma” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO1y65gi2TU and The Shawshank Redemption Opera Scene – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzuM2XTnpSA do it for me. I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff with which I’m unfamiliar that I would love as well. Music is the eternally “Undiscovered Country”.

  25. If you’re talking about disco, you should mention Vicky Sue Robinson. She was the one with energy.

  26. I loved Summer’s music and singing. I never cared much for “MacArthur Park”, but her version of it is the best. When I want to listen to Summer, I go check out “Heaven Knows”, “Hot Stuff”, and “Last Dance”.

  27. Though a song I’d largely forgotten about these days, this certainly takes me back to my formative years and for me, one of those “soundtrack of your life” songs.

    I heard the (my) first version by Richard Harris early on, almost certainly on AM radio while driving, and had an instant liking for it. As someone in the throws of puberty, it was (in retrospect) an emotion evoking song.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GhK4X-hMKA</a

    Not too long after, through the course of my high school band days, I came to find the version by the inimitable Maynard Ferguson, and the band director arranged to bring the Ferguson band to our quite small high school for what was a stunning concert.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DWktSv8vec</a

    And finally, not too many years beyond that, the Donna Summer version (though in a much earlier time than the one provided by Neo) was closely intertwined with the courtship and marriage to my (still) bride.

    So, a song that, regardless of what a critic may have to say, was very much a touchstone in my life.

    As to Summer, I have and will consider Last Dance to be her pinnacle.

  28. Steve, well said. I can see how those personal experiences would result in that perspective.

  29. Summer is like Streisand for me: I never get tired of their voices, but their song choice doesn’t usually suit me. They actually did a duet, “No More Tears,” that I listen to with pleasure despite not caring for the song itself.

    I confess to enjoying Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” very much. For packing the emotion in, though, it’s hard to beat Nina Simone. Bonnie Raitt is wonderful.

  31. Thanks for the ear worm, Neo!

    “I don’t think that I can take it
    ‘Cause it took so long to bake it
    And I’ll never have that recipe agaaaaaain
    Oh nooooo!”

  32. I upvote with huxley MacArthur Park by Richard Harris. I think the reference is to the striped pants of a fancy wedding suit, something like this?

    https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1RX96l.UIL1JjSZFrq6z3xFXaU/Mens-Striped-Suit-2016-Fall-Winter-Wedding-Groom-Suit-Black-Grey-Stripe-Busines-Formal-Suit-Costume.jpg_640x640.jpg

    “MacArthur’s (sic) Park is melting in the dark” sounds like tears are making his vision swim.

    Also big upvote for Wichita Lineman. Interesting piece about it by Mark Steyn:

    https://www.steynonline.com/8025/wichita-lineman

  33. Geoffrey. Wrt Mille Regretz. I don’t do much French any longer, and archaic French even less. But I believe the song is one of regret for dumping somebody. Unusual in the love song world.
    I find voices don’t move me, but I’d hate to hear what I recall of Streisand, for example, doing Mille Regretz. Still, she could create the effect she wanted, I suppose, but what would that be?
    My interest is whether the voice suits the song.
    I really wouldn’t like to hear Franky Valli singing “Blood Upon The Risers”, for example.
    I do like youtube for music because they have what I think could be called a “you might like this” function which gets pretty far from that which was requested. So, yeah, you never know where you’ll end up.

    Radney Foster doesn’t have much of a voice, from my point of view, but Angel Flight with tower comms does me in. Can’t think of anybody we may know whose voice wouldn’t get in the way.

    I once worked on a field project in the Sixties which included two women who were exclusive with guys back home. Each would mist up at “Gentle on My Mind”.

  34. wrt WIchita Lineman; If that stretch down south goes out, people have trouble. Since I started some work with the elderly, I was surprised how many have oxygen concentrators,,,,which require juice. For starters.
    So the Wichita Lineman is…noble?…in a way various other occupations may not be.
    I wonder if that line was put in to make the point, or because he was thinking about his next day off.

  35. I rewatched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood a couple nights ago, and that song coming on unexpectedly jarred a laugh out of me. (If you too have forgotten the scene: portable tv, Robert Goulet in shiny tux and ruffled shirtfront.) MacArthur Park (and come to think of it, why isn’t this song about Korea?) is inherently absurd, hopelessly absurd. The striped pants, I think, don’t refer to wedding dress, but to “mods,” the “peacock revolution,” Carnaby Street. The songwriter is tipping us the hipness high-sign. But why is love using a hot iron to press the pants if they’re pressed between the leaves (of an expandable table? like between mattress and box-spring?) . . . The song struggles so hard to say something terribly simple. And poor delusional Richard Harris practically choking himself to wring some emotion into or out of it . . .

    That recording, I recall, was one exhibit in the argument we heard frequently then, that our pop culture was becoming more Serious and Artistic than the frothy stuff older generations used to be content with. Which probably was one jab toward vaccinating me against the belief that standing with My Generation, or indeed any generation, conferred merit.

  37. Here is a good version on David Letterman, with Jimmy Webb and Paul Shafer on keyboards and the CBS Orchestra
    https://youtu.be/_N1AkdG0PUE

    We played it in high school band, without the vocals. I played the timpani. I remember hearing it on AM radio a lot but never really listened I guess or remembered the lyrics, until decades later when it came up in an online discussion. I thought it was about his breakup with Sally Field, who I saw that he dated before she was a big star, but it was about someone else. As I recall from what I read, he couldn’t get anyone to do it because it was so long, and lyrics were considered odd. He saw British actor Richard Harris at a party and he wanted to. I believe the length broke what was previously considered a barrier for pop radio, by a lot. I read somewhere that the Beatles’ Hey Jude was purposely made just slightly longer, so they could say it was.

    A couple of other Jimmy Webb songs:

    Art Garfunkel, All I Know, recorded at Grace Cathedral in New York
    https://youtu.be/eIUEFUSimmY

    Highwayman, live performance by The Highwaymen (Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson)
    https://youtu.be/bMdeg-WKt1U

  38. I was in a different world then, in the late 70s, but there were a number of great female singers in what was generally thought of as punk or post-punk.

    Patti Smith-Gloria
    the Slits-Instant Hit
    Siouxsie & the Banshees-Cities in the Dust
    Romeo Void-Never Say Never
    Blondie-Heart of Glass
    X-Ray Spex-Oh Bondage! Up Yours!
    Bush Tetras-Can’t Be Funky
    Patti Smith-Because the Night

    I saw both Patti Smith and Blondie live in 1978. Patti Smith put on a very good show but she was still singing “Rock & Roll (N-Word)” which even struck me as profoundly stupid and offensive and just D-U-M-B. She closed the show with a wonderful,, impassioned encore of “You Light Up My Life.” Sure, it was meant to be oh-so-ironic, but she really made that song come alive.

    Deborah Harry in Blondie, however, made a strange impression, as her head was too big for her body — something you’d never guess from seeing her in all the photographs. She looked ungainly dancing around doing go-go dancing moves.

    “Can’t Be Funky” by the Bush Tetras has the wonderful lyric “You can’t be funky if you haven’t got a soul.” It’s still a good song 40 years down the road.

  39. Neo. Thanks for the Wichita Lineman ref. My dad was a lineman for the telephone company for some years, more or less getting over the war.
    He could cut in and call my mom from up on a pole, or anybody else. But it was in the late Forties and things were different. Tried to call home one day and the operator told him Mom had gone to the doctor and was fine.
    I’ve said before that my wife and I like to drive–actively prefer it to flying–when we have time to travel. And out in the country…. Yeah, you can get that vibe.

    As to “noble”. I guess you’d call a couple of guys fixing an elevator in an independent living facility noble, considering what happens if they don’t. Sure, they get paid.

    Sinatra, whom I never liked, cut an album called, iirc, “Songs for Swingin’ Lovers” . I picture a couple of well-dressed people closing a smoky bar. Not at all my scene.

    I may be over thinking this, but Campbell was the characters he sang or sang about and Sinatra was Sinatra singing about other people. You could find Campbell’s characters in footage from Harvey Rescue. Not Sinatra’s.

  40. Geoffrey Britain mentioned the beautiful Marilyn McCoo. According to Wikipedia, both of her parents were physicians, she earned a degree in business administration from UCLA, is a born-again Christian, and, at age 77, has been married to the same man for over 50 years. Who knew she was white?

  41. miklos:

    I like Debbie Harry, but I can’t say I ever noticed the size of her head. 🙂

  42. It wasn’t her head- it was her hair that made the head look big. Now, her movements on stage are kind of robotic, but I think that was by design.

  43. Said it before; some songs get my attention due to their popularity at a time something important in my life was happening. Not that they were particularly interesting to me in themselves.
    But I am reminded of a couple of talented guys in my OC company.

    Buffing floors ’til after dawn
    Then I go and cut the lawn
    Then it’s time to take
    Another PT test
    Now, don’t tell me
    This ain’t OCS.

    My helmet liner’s filled with rags.
    It weighs upon my brain.

    Wish i could recall the rest.

    Then there’s Primary Server

    I am a server on the chow line.
    And I serve up the bread.
    And if you don’t like rye or white
    I hope that you drop dead.

    I see your fingers in the Jello
    I see you fill your cup with brine
    And the Primary Server
    Is still on the line.

    Wish I could…. Good days, from this vantage point if I don’t think too closely.,

  44. Re: Striped pants….

    Wesson:

    Thanks for the Groom’s picture.

    I guess I didn’t catch the reference. I thought striped pants were what old-time British diplomats wore.

    Hmm…looks like we’re both right:
    ______________________________________

    Nevertheless, the etiquette of diplomacy is easily satirized and often sardonically disparaged. Diplomats have been derided as the “striped pants” set, allegedly more concerned with style than substance, conducting negotiations behind closed doors, preoccupied with not giving offense and encapsulated in a mannered refl exive world that is too often isolated from the ugly realities of political maneuvering and coercive, even deadly, facts on the ground.

    The image comes from the European tradition of wearing morning coats with striped pants for formal occasions, a form of dress that has been largely, but not entirely, supplanted by business suits.

    http://www.diplomaticconnections.com/r5/showkiosk.asp?listing_id=5139064

  45. Pingback:Updated Green Cake Notes: “MacArthur Park” Everyone Knows the Refrain. Everyone Wishes They Didn’t. [UPDATED w/ fresh Donna Summer]

  47. I was too young back then, probably not totally comfortable in my own skin to appreciate “disco” music at the time. Too bad, I suppose. But I sure did like what was referred to as “new wave” back in the day. Yup, Ms. Summer is a remarkable singer. I rather like “I Feel Love” as it was released at or near the start of disco. Groundbreaking, really.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm-ISatLDG0

  48. miklos000rosza:

    I was a big Patti Smith fan in my street poet days. So much so that I sent her my one and only fan letter.

    To my astonishment I received a reply from Patti’s mother. It started:
    ___________________________________

    Patti and the boys are on tour right now…
    ___________________________________

    It was handwritten in beautiful, old-timey, Palmer cursive style. I loved Patti all the more for putting her mother on the payroll.

  49. I was too young back then, probably not totally comfortable in my own skin to appreciate “disco” music at the time.

    T-Rex:

    But I must ask if you appreciated:
    ____________________________________

    get it on, bang a gong, get it on
    get it on, bang a gong, get it on

    –T. Rex, “Bang a Gong (Get It On) (Official Audio)”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyzWDl0nz00

  50. Few people know David Geffen asked Bruce Springsteen to write a song for Donna Summer, as she was transitioning out of disco. It was a minor early 80s hit and was nominated for a Grammy.

    It was produced by Quincy Jones. Springsteen did his wailing guitar solo/fade-out plus backup vocals. Roy Bittan on the keys. Ernie Watts provided an acceptable Clarence Clemons sax.

    A great meld of Summer and Springsteen. If you ask me.

    –Donna Summer, “Protection” (1982)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4VL75UOeSM

  51. @huxley
    Re striped pants:
    I got that idea from a review of the song, maybe in Time magazine? Also that the cake was a wedding cake.

    As a (male) teenager around that time I owned a pair of bright yellow and green, vertical striped bell bottoms that I was rather proud of….

  52. Thinking of this song set me to rummaging through my collection of underused words. Ah, here it is! “Mawkish”

  55. Here’s a good article on Mac Park:

    “MacArthur Park” Jimmy Webb 1968
    https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-socal10jun10-story.html

    The interesting bit is that the woman who dumped young Jimmy Webb was Susan Ronstadt — cousin of Linda Ronstadt.

    From Webb’s wiki entry one discovers he was locked in solid with the LA rock music scene. He knew everyone and worked with many. He spent decades trying to make it as a singer/songwriter but never broke through.

  56. Thanks for the link, huxley, interesting.

    Webb was touring a couple years ago with Johnny Rivers, a show I would have liked to have seen.

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