Posted on 06/12/2015 3:28:16 PM PDT by FlJoePa
I visited my friend Glen Campbell Wednesday in Nashville. Laura and Kim Campbell were there as well.
You may be aware that Glen has bravely been living with Alzheimer's Disease. Along with his strong and courageous wife, they have changed the face of Alzheimer's forever. The world watched as Glen traveled from city to city, to continue doing what he loves to do: perform and share his music. Doctors were amazed at how the music and activity appeared to slow the pace of the disease for awhile. With his family, they showed the world that you don't have to hide when you become ill. They raised awareness, and in turn, funds for Alzheimer's research.
Glen is currently residing in a memory support community—it reminded me of one of the nice hotels he would stay at while on tour. Kim has found this place for Glen that is safe, where he is cared for 24 hours a day. The ratio of caregivers to residents astounded me--he is never alone. And there are only 17 other residents; his neighbors are former lawyers, doctors, teachers and others who are living with the same challenges that dementia brings. Glen has been my friend for a long time and I love him like a brother. I am sure that Kim has made the right choices for and with my friend of 50 years.
Glen has his private room and bathroom, all decorated by Kim with custom paint, lots of photos murals and framed memorabilia. The place is bright and clean. He loves color and still wears his blue suede shoes from time to time!
The memory center has elaborate arrangements for activities. There are many different rooms and spaces for him to experience each day, each furnished tastefully and safely.
There is an airy screened-in porch where Glen likes to sit and where we visited with him. He has a full time care-er, Brody. Brody is in his early twenties with long blond hair--he looks like a surfer! Brody is patient and kind. He plays the guitar with and for Glen. They sing, they walk around the grounds and converse almost constantly. We instantly fell for Brody and thanked him for the care he gives to Glen and the important breaks he gives Kim so she can rest and work.
Glen has always been a happy guy and a jokester. He still is. For longer than I'd like to remember, he has imitated Donald Duck and during the visit, he did his Donald voice for us. He sings in a low register all the way to high clear notes that are reminiscent of the performances we are all familiar with. He seems almost to go from song to song, under his breath at times. He looked at me after singing one song and said, "that was a good song wasn't it?" Music is still at the very center of who he is. It is almost as though he is giving a never-ending performance.
The last thing he said to me when it was time for us to go was, "Was it a good one?" like he used to say to me at the end of a concert. That phrase made me think that he recognized me, that and the fact that he said my name to Kim and Laura when I left the room briefly.
He sees his family all of the time; Kim and two of his younger children live just a few minutes away. And his oldest daughter Debby was visiting just the day before.
He is loved. He is cared for. He is respected. And most of all, he has his dignity. We can all be comforted by that.
Yours very truly,
Jimmy L. Webb
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
I know I need a small vacation
But it don’t look like rain
And if it snows that stretch down south won’t ever stand the strain
And I need you more than want you,
And I want you for all time
And the Wichita lineman is still on the line
He played on over 3,000 recordings. Including Frank Sinatra. I saw an interview where he was asked if he thought he was the greatest guitar player of all time. He said “I’d say the most versatile guitar player.”
Thanks.
Maybe I can find it on you tube.
Love that song!
I saw an interview where he said when he first heard GALVESTON it was a slow version and, in his words, was God awful. He called Webb and told him he was going to speed it up a little.
I was a teen when it came out and it was years before I realized the character in the song is in Viet Nam and dreaming of home and his girl.
Behind The Song: “Wichita Lineman”
http://www.americansongwriter.com/2012/01/behind-the-song-wichita-lineman/
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.
Why did such an unlikely song become a standard? There are many reasons, but here’s one: the loneliness of that solitary prairie figure is not just present in the lyric, it’s built into the musical structure. Although the song is nominally in the key of F, after the tonic chord is stated in the intro it is never heard again in its pure form, with the root in the bass. The melody travels through a series of haunting changes that are considerably more sophisticated than the Top 40 radio norms of that era. The song never does get “home” again to the tonic – not in either verse, nor in the fade-out. This gorgeous musical setting suggests subliminally what the lyric suggests poetically: the lonely journeyman, who remains suspended atop that telephone pole, against that desolate prairie landscape, yearning for home.
good news. thanks for the post.
A terrible disease. I saw him live at Moorhead State College, must have been 1968. He was the opening act for the Rightous Brothers! What I remeber most about his performance ws his incredible guitar playing. He did rhinestone cowboy which was his most recognizable record at the time, I think...
Thanks to Jimmy Webb for that uplifting update on Gen Campbell’s condition. So glad to hear he’s doing good.
A friend of mine is a highly acclaimed mastering engineer based in LA who has remastered the great albums from Sinatra to Nat king Cole to Peggy Lee to McCartney and all of the great Jazz albums from the 50’s and 60’s.
In years past, he would have a weekly breakfast with Hal Blaine (founder of the Wrecking Crew) and others in the industry. The stories at those breakfasts had to be amazing.
Side note on “Wichita Lineman” - Glen’s solo is played on a 6-string bass guitar that belonged to the great Carol Kaye of the Wrecking Crew.
Canteen DJ ping.
“Wichita Lineman” - Jools Holland show
Those excellent lyrics and the song were written by John Hartford— whose career was launched because Glen Campbell took a chance and recorded “Gentle on My Mind”.
From that hit forward, John Hartford went wherever his artistic mind took him, supported by the nearly 300K a year in royalties from that one tune.... thanks to Glen, and then many many other recording artists rendition.
We would not have had the legendary “Aereoplain” album and band of the same name (with Norman Blake, Vassar Clemens, Tut Taylor- who just passed at 91, and Randy Scruggs on bass among others) and the entire revival in New Bluegrass and string music— timeless great spontaneous music.
All... thanks to you Brother Glen Campbell. The “lineman” is “still on the line”. Many thanks for posting this from the great writer Jimmy Webb.
Thanks.....the education I get from this site is priceless.
I saw Glen at the Houston Rodeo in about ‘75. He came out on a rhinestone swathed horse and sang “Rhinestone Cowboy,” among others. Saw him again around 2004 at 9:30 am at the Moon River Theater in Branson. He was the warm-up for Andy Williams. Didn’t really know why he was a warm-up but it may have been the start of his decline.
thanks for posting that! That’s how I remember him.
Thanks! Great show, huh?
Interestingly, Jimmy Webb was the opening act for Johnny Rivers at a show I saw somewhere in Hollywood back in the late 1970s. Great show!
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