Do you like the original 1968 Richard Harris version of MacArthur Park?

Have to say no I don't like it. Bizarre song and lyrics. And to think it went to #2 on Billboard hot 100. Loved Donna Summers version though. But it mainly due to it being discoed up.

I think I saw him do a duet with that murdereress who was once married to Andy Williams. They had actors playing out the song in the background. Old men playing chess.

No cake

It was a wonderful time to grow up, the '60s and '70s. Things like this only added to the general weirdness and individuality of the era. People now are too goddamned uptight. "Oh, I don't like this. Oh, that's weird. Ew."

Now everything has to conform and everybody has to be NICE. I hate Trump but if this were the late '60s there would be no need for him.

Not sure how Donald Trump is relevant but I agree with the rest. As fast as things move now, they were moving faster then, without the help of social media.

It was kind of a leap, but it seems like Trump's draw is that he represents a more authentic, love-me-or-leave-me brand. You hear that people are sick of politicians following scripts and not standing for anything, being too nice to their opponents.

I violently disagree, but that's what I've heard.

I like anything Richard Harris did.. He was a mensch.

"What I hate about our business today is the elitism the so-called stars have imposed on the public, which I think is obnoxious," says Harris. "It's a joke. Who cares about Madonna going to the opening tonight? "Now you have guys like Tom Cruise, who's a midget, and he has eight bodyguards, all 6ft 10in tall, which makes him even more diminutive. He disappears behind them. It's an absolute joke. Actors are unimportant. They leave nothing behind them. Who will remember Madonna 10 years from now? Who will remember me? We're utterly unimportant."

When later asked about the Tom Cruise remark, Harris said:

Look here, my first movie that I did, was with James Cagney. Now, wasn't he a huge star? Well, he came to Dublin himself. And there weren't fifty-five bodyguards, and there wasn't a private jet. He didn't have his dietician. He didn't have his psychiatrist to motivate him. He didn't have his makeup artist or his hairdresser. He came on his own. On my second picture, Bob Mitchum, the same thing. My third picture, Gary Cooper, all huge stars, same thing.

What goes on now is so stupid. It's like creating importance around themselves. On the other hand, I like a guy that a lot of people don't like here in the States. And that's Russell Crowe. A down to earth guy. When I was finishing up on Gladiator, Russell and I kind of hung around together. He'd come to my pubs, he'd walk in, sit down, no fuss. He took me to his pubs, the Australia pubs in London, no fuss. That's what I like. And I hope he stays like that. And that's why people don't like Russell in Hollywood. He says what he feels, and he doesn't play the game. He's really from my generation, from the O'Toole, Harris and Burton generation. You know, no bull.

.......Do you actually mean to tell me that if somebody wants to kill Tom Cruise, that they would get through fifty bodyguards? That's crap. And let me tell you something else. When Russell Crowe walked into my local pub in London, there was no fuss. If he walked in with eight bodyguards, there'd be a fuss. He would draw attention. He would aggravate people. There'd be a rout. You're inciting it yourself. You're inciting an importance. And now these actors who surround themselves with bodyguards, they're all mini-talented for a start. And now they all have opinions about world politics. Give us a break! Read a script!

Dave Thomas did it best on SCTV,

What goes through your mind when you get in an elevator, and MacArthur Park is playing?

RIchard Harris: I pretend I'm deaf! It was too long. Seven minutes and twenty seconds. We were the first seven minute and twenty second record. We broke the four-minute barrier. Then the Beatles came along after, with Hey Jude. They went on and on repeating 'hey Jude,' just to beat us.

Ugly

R7, love that clip! Crying laughing watching it

SCTV was a fabulous show--it never got its due, in my opinion

LOVED him; loved his rendition of that song; agree with OP about the instrumental. Wonder if Jared Harris will ever do a biography of him?

R6, thank you so much for posting those quotes. Harris was absolutely right about the REAL starts not needing all the bulls--t fuss.

It was a great song at that time. Donna Summer's version was something else entirely. I like it now, but I thought then it was absolute shit what she did to it.

Loved Harris. He did.not.give.a.shit. He did whatever he wanted, said whatever he wanted, drank whatever he wanted and damn the consequences. One saving grace was that he was not a mean drunk. He'd fight you, but only if you started the fight. He wasn't obnoxious like Oliver Reed or Keith Moon. He praised his ex-wives for putting up with him and refused to do an autobiography because they wanted him to name all the women he fucked. "They're grandmothers now," he said. "I wont do that."

It was actually scandalous, believe it or not, that he appeared naked in A Man Called Horse. Even though the director obscured his man junk, Harris was A NUDIE (as Neelie O'Hara would have screeched) He didn't care. It was ridiculous that he sang McArthur park. He didn't care. Harris was the first Honey Badger, though not a mean guy. If he threw a brick through your window because he was drunk in your town and needed a bed to collapse into, he'd pay for the window, give you the going hotel rate and buy you a drink. Or two.

Without question, the absolute dumbest song lyrics EVER! God, I hate that fucking song! The only song that’s nearly as stupid is “You’re So Vain.” If the subject of that song is clever enough to discern that the song really is about him, that’s not vain, that’s just knowing the score.

Richard's version was awesome. Absolutely brilliant.

I've heard he had a ghost singer for some of the notes.

Richard Harris always called Jimmy Webb "Jimmywebb." Not Jim, not Jimmy, but Jimmywebb.

Anyway, Jimmywebb said that everything he wrote in McArthur Park is an image he actually saw in McArthur Park when he was dating Suzy Horton, who worked at an office nearby. They would meet for lunch in McArthur Park every day and the love-smitten young former Okie, Jimmywebb, noticed every image, every moment of those afternoons and romanticized them. When Suzy broke up with him, he was heartbroken and wrote "McArthur Park" as the story of his doomed love affair. Everything -- the yellow dress, the striped pants, the cake with green icing left in the rain -- were all things he saw in the park and gathered up into his little mini-opera of love and rejection.

When you consider that The Who released a rock opera about a boy who witnesses his long lost father (where the hell was his dad from 1918 til 1921, anyway?) murder his mother's lover, become a psychologically traumatized deaf, dumb and blind pinball champion who then becomes a religious cult leader and is overthrown at his own holiday camp by his followers ---only a year after the release of McArthur Park -- the song about the cake doesn't seem so odd after all. The Who were invited to play that opus of theirs in Carnegie Hall. See the difference only a year or so makes?

Consider some of the Beatles lyrics from 1966-1968 (MacArthur Park was released in 68)

Eleanor Rigby wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door.

Friday night arrives without a suitcase. Monday morning creeping like a nun. Thursday's child has learned to tie his bootlace. See how they run.

Semolina pitcher climbing up the Eiffel Tower. Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna, man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe

Goo goo gajoob

No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low. That is you can't you know tune in but it's all right. That is I think it's not too bad Let me take you down, cos I'm going to Strawberry Fields Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.

Seriously? A melting cake wasn't so weird. What was weird was that the song lasted so long and had that seemingly unrelated pop session in the middle of it. But more singers/groups were going to introduce weird musical interludes in their songs in coming years. Webb just did it first. The Who interspersed hallucinatory musical interludes in their Tommy album. Abbey Road took half finished, unrelated songs and made a universally praised medley out of them.

The song became a hit because it was so long and the lyrics were so weird everyone said, "What? What did he say? I want to hear that again. I didn't catch that." I never bought the song but I heard it often and didn't find out the correct lyrics until the internet came about. I thought -- and so did many people -- that Harris was singing, "Spring was always waiting for us girls, we ran one step ahead as we followed in the dance." What? Harris was imagining himself a girl running in a spring dance?

Suzy Horton also inspired Jimmywebb to write By the Time I Get to Phoenix and The Worst that Could Happen (Girl, I Heard You're Getting Married). The latter song was another somewhat overwrought melodramatic End of Romance song, like McArthur Park, but was more grounded, lyrics-wise.

Suzy married a cousin of Linda Ronstadt.

My local Top Twenty station, WABC in NY, would tell preople in advance when they were going to play MacArthur Park. This was due to its length. They wanted to "warn" people that a long musical number was coming up.

Some people utterly despised the song and would turn it off as soon as it came on the radio. Others would turn up the volume and try to discern the lyrics. "What? 'A stripe leg pair of pants? I'm like a stripe leg pair of pants'?....'An old man plying chickens underneath a tree'? What does he mean, passions flowing like a river through the sky? Rivers don't run through skies!'

And though the song is MacArthur Park, and the park is MacArthur Park, Richard Harris sings "MacArthur's Park" throughout the song. So does Donna Summer.

So it's not surprising a lot of people think the song is called "MacArthur's Park."

Kids today are so literal I think they are all "on the spectru"

I don't think it's that it seems odd. It's that the line/metaphor about leaving the cake out in the rain and never having that recipe again is SOOOOoooo cheesy.

The Wrecking Crew were the musicians on that one. Awesome instrumental.

R15 we weren’t talking about that song. Why not make another thread if that’s the song you want to talk about?

Jimmy Webb also wrote Wichita Lineman, a misunderstood and very underrated song.