Jimmy Webb was born and raised in Oklahoma, where, brought up in a religious household by a church minister, he exhibited prodigious musical abilities. By his mid-teens, he had gone beyond playing standard church hymns and had begun to experiment went new arrangements and improvisations and to write his own songs in the style of his musical hero, Glen Campell.
By the mid-1960s, Webb had relocated to Los Angeles where he carved out a career as a songwriter of note, writing for several prominent acts including Johnny Rivers and Glen Campbell himself. But while on paper he was living the dream, Webb was experiencing some turbulence in his personal life. In 1965, Webb began a relationship with Susan Ronstadt, a woman he recalls he was completely infatuated with. The relationship, however, came to an abrupt end, which hurt the young songwriter deeply.
Webb's emotional state at the time was the major inspiration for "MacArthur Park," which is named after the park the young lovers would meet in — to picnic, walk, and talk. The most notable lyric in the song revolves around the image of a wet cake falling to pieces, a metaphor for the end of the romanticized relationship: "MacArthur Park is melting in the dark / All the sweet green icing flowing down / Someone left the cake out in the rain / I don't think that I can take it / 'Cause it took so long to bake it / And I'll never have that recipe again." Webb told the Los Angeles Times that the image of the cake came from birthday parties that he saw families holding in MacArthur Park.
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