Jimmy Webb's words have been sung to his music by a rich and deep roster of pop artists, including Glen Campbell, Art Garfunkel, Frank Sinatra, Donna Summer and Linda Ronstadt. He's the only artist ever to win Grammy Awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration, and his chart-topping career has, so far, lasted fifty years, most recently with a Kanye West rap hit and a new classical nocturne.

Now Webb delivers a snapshot of his life from 1955 to 1970, from the proverbial humble beginnings into a moneyed and manic international world of beautiful women, drugs, cars and planes. That stew almost took him down--but Webb survived, his passion for music among his lifelines.

Webb's talent as a writer and storyteller is here on every page. The Cake and the Rain is rich with a sense of time and place, and with the voices of characters, vanished and living, famous and not, when life seemed nothing more than a party.