Searching for Susie: The songs of Jimmy Webb

‘Searching for Susie’ brings to life the wonderful music, stellar career and colourful companions of songwriting legend Jimmy Webb. With stories of his spectacular rise, including the unrequited love for the elusive Susie which infuses so many of his songs, Tim explores how a poor mid-west preacher’s son achieved pop royalty status as the most successful mainstream songwriter of his day.

Featuring songs spanning five decades, from those big hits of the sixties and seventies to more recent classics from the nineties and noughties, ‘Searching for Susie’ offers a fabulous mix of beautiful melodies and “some of the finest boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl stories of all time.”

 

 

SETTLIST

Depending on the format and mood of the evening (or afternoon), the set list for ‘Searching for Susie’ could include:

• Up, Up and Away
• Wichita Lineman
• By the Time I Get to Phoenix
• MacArthur Park
• Galveston
• Where’s the Playground, Suzie?
• The Highwayman (made famous by The Highwaymen – Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson)
• Didn’t We?
• Do What You Gotta Do
• The Moon’s a Hard Mistress (Joe Cocker)
• All I Know (Art Garfunkel)
• The Worst That Could Happen
• Adios Amor (Glen Campbell’s poignant farewell song)

“A simple tale of a lonely telephone repairman in the vast open plains of the American Midwest, letting the passage of his life drift through his mind, Wichita Lineman is one of the most perfectly realised pop songs of all time.”

“By the Time I Get to Phoenix” is staggering achievement. A song about a man whose actions are poor to the point of awfulness. He’s left his lover in the worst possible way: pinned up a note then walked out  and driven east along the freeways to Phoenix, Albuquerque Oklahoma. He knows she’ll be calling until the phone rings off the wall and he just doesn’t care. Despite all this, Jimmy Webb manages to make you empathise with the jilter.”

“Contrary to popular misconception, MacArthur Park is not the worst song ever written. It is, however, one of the most baffling hits in the history of pop music.”

“Jimmy Webb is the poet laureate of unrequited love, the master-builder of pedestals to doomed romantic yearning.”