FEATURE:
Groovelines
Glen Campbell – Wichita Lineman
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I have neglected an all-time classic…
when it comes to Groovelines. Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman is seen as one of the greatest songs ever written. It was not Campbell who wrote the song. Written by the American songwriter Jimmy Webb in 1968, it was first recorded by Campbell with backing from members of the Wrecking Crew. The legendary version by Campbell (which appeared on the 1968 album, Wichita Lineman) got to number three on the U.S. Pop chart. The song topped the American Country music chart for two weeks. It is no surprise, when you listen to the lyrics and hear Campbell’s emotive performance, that Wichita Lineman has been so regarded. Magazines and polls have placed the song high. I think that is because one cannot compare Wichita Lineman to anything else. It is this song that exists in its own world! I want to bring in a couple of articles about a classic song. I am interested about the story of Wichita Lineman. This is a track that, by all accounts, was a very unlikely hit. American Songwriter took a look inside the track last year:
“Imagine pitching this song idea in 1968: There’s this guy who works on telephone poles in the middle of Kansas. He’s really devoted to his job. Rain or shine, he’s committed to preventing system overloads. It’s really lonely work, and he misses his girlfriend. Does this sound like a hit to you?
When Jimmy Webb wrote the first lines of “Wichita Lineman”…
I am a lineman for the county and I drive the main road
Searchin’ in the sun for another overload
I hear you singin’ in the wire, I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line
… not only did he not think he had a surefire hit, he didn’t even think the song was finished. An inauspicious beginning for a song that sold millions of records for Glen Campbell, has been recorded by everyone from Johnny Cash to James Taylor to R.E.M., and appears on several lists of the greatest songs of all time.
In late 1967 Jimmy was just about the hottest songwriter in L.A., based on two consecutive monster hits: The Fifth Dimension’s “Up, Up And Away,” and Glen Campbell’s “By The Time I Get To Phoenix.” “Phoenix” had been on the charts for six months, although Jimmy and Glen still hadn’t met.
“For all we know, ‘Phoenix’ could have been a one-off thing,” Jimmy told me recently. “Glen might never have recorded another song of mine.” They finally met at a jingle session. Soon after that date, the phone rang. It was Glen, calling from the studio. “He said, ‘Can you write me a song about a town?’” Jimmy recalls. “And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know … let me work on it.’ And he said, ‘Well, just something geographical.’
“He and (producer) Al DeLory were obviously looking for a follow-up to ‘Phoenix.’ And I remember writing ‘Wichita Lineman’ that afternoon. That was a song I absolutely wrote for Glen.”
It was the first time he had written a song expressly for another artist. But had he conceived any part of “Wichita” before that call?
“Not really,” Jimmy says. “I mean I had a lot of ‘prairie gothic’ images in my head. And I was writing about the common man, the blue-collar hero who gets caught up in the tides of war, as in ‘Galveston,’ or the guy who’s driving back to Oklahoma because he can’t afford a plane ticket (‘Phoenix’). So it was a character that I worked with in my head. And I had seen a lot of panoramas of highways and guys up on telephone wires … I didn’t want to write another song about a town, but something that would be in the ballpark for him.”
So even though it was written specifically for Glen, he still wanted it to be a ‘character’ song?
“Well, I didn’t want it to be about a rich guy!” he laughs. “I wanted it to be about an ordinary fellow. Billy Joel came pretty close one time when he said ‘Wichita Lineman’ is ‘a simple song about an ordinary man thinking extraordinary thoughts.’ That got to me; it actually brought tears to my eyes. I had never really told anybody how close to the truth that was.
“What I was really trying to say was, you can see someone working in construction or working in a field, a migrant worker or a truck driver, and you may think you know what’s going on inside him, but you don’t. You can’t assume that just because someone’s in a menial job that they don’t have dreams … or extraordinary concepts going around in their head, like ‘I need you more than want you; and I want you for all time.’ You can’t assume that a man isn’t a poet. And that’s really what the song is about.”
He wasn’t certain they would go for it. “In fact, I thought they hadn’t gone for it,” he says. “They kept calling me back every couple of hours and asking if it was finished. I really didn’t have the last verse written. And finally I said, ‘Well, I’m gonna send it over, and if you want me to finish it, I’ll finish it.’
“A few weeks later I was talking to Glen, and I said, ‘Well I guess Wichita Lineman didn’t make the cut.’ And Glen said, ‘Oh yeah! We recorded that!’ And I said, ‘Listen, I didn’t really think that song was finished …’ And he said, ‘Well it is now!’”
In a recent interview, Glen said that he and DeLory filled in what might have been a third verse with a guitar solo, one now considered iconic. He still can recall playing it on a DanElectro six-string bass guitar belonging to legendary L.A. bass player and Wrecking Crew member Carol Kaye. It remains Glen’s favorite of all his songs.
“Wichita Lineman” can serve as ‘Exhibit A’ in any demonstration for songwriters of the principle of ‘less is more.’ On paper, it’s just two verses, each one composed of two rhymed couplets. The record is a three-minute wonder: Intro. First Verse. Staccato telegraph-like musical device. Second verse. No chorus. Guitar solo. Repeat last two lines of second verse (“and I need you more than want you …”). Fade. There is no B section, much less a C section”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images
There are few tracks as powerful and heartstopping as the Glen Campbell release of 1968. Campbell died in 2017 at the age of eighty-one. Even though he has gone, his most-famous song will live forever. Many people credit Glen Campbell on his performance (rightly), though some overlook the importance of writer Jimmy Webb. It is his words and imagery that makes Wichita Lineman so evocative and timeless. In this BBC article from 2017, we discover more about the creation and simple brilliance of the song:
“Wichita Lineman jump-started Campbell's career, helping the album of the same name go double platinum in the US, and giving the star his first chart hit in the UK.
But over the years, Campbell was always careful to highlight Webb's role.
"He's just an exceptional writer. He pours his heart out," he said. "And I think that's where the music comes from: the heart."
Webb returned the compliment, telling BBC Four: "He made me sound good. He made me sound like a genius. But really, I just did what I did and he had the wherewithal to follow through - and hit some notes that really, honestly, he shouldn't have been able to hit.
"A lot of other singers would have said, 'Hey, listen - take this home and work on this, son. Because I can't sing on that.'"
And what about that "dumb" lyric? Over the years, Webb made his peace with the line - realising his discomfort over the rhyme had blinded him to the words' raw power.
"Had I known what I was doing, I wouldn't have written that line. I would have found a way to make it rhyme," he told NPR in 2010. "It was only years later that I became aware of what a songwriter was even supposed to do. I was really just a kid who was kind of writing from the hip and the heart."
Glen Campbell's bandmate Carol Kaye says he couldn't read music, which he tried to hide
David Crary, a real-life lineman who repairs high voltage power lines across America, says he wouldn't change the words for the world.
"I think Jimmy Webb hit the nail on the head," he told Radio 4. "It describes a lot of linemen, what they go through on the road, away from their family.
"When I hear that song, or when I'm singing it, it brings lots of memories back of storms that I've been on, whether they're ice storms, hurricanes [or] tornadoes.
"The most important part is getting back to your family in one piece."
Campbell - who spent the majority of his life on the road - had an equally personal connection to the lyric.
"'I want you for all time,' I always say that to my wife, because it cheers her up," he said.
"We got some grown kids and they say, 'Oh, you guys. You guys are like lovebirds”.
Over fifty years since it was recorded, radio stations around the world play Wichita Lineman. It is one of the very best songs ever recorded. Although its subject matter might tip to an old tradition and way of life that does not exist – or is very rare at least -, the sense of loneliness, beauty and emotion at the song’s core resonates and connects with people through the generations. If you have not heard Wichita Lineman for a while, go and seek it out today and…
PLAY it loud.