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The song that Bob Dylan described as the "greatest ever written"
Far Out Magazine ^ | 6-18-22 | Tom Taylor

Posted on 06/26/2022 4:00:07 PM PDT by FLNittany

Tom Taylor @TomTaylorFO Sat 18th Jun 2022 17.08 BST

Bob Dylan called it the “greatest song ever written” and while it may have been lauded by noble dignitaries of culture ever since it was released, derided at every turn, it is this proclamation that seems most significant. The poignancy of the praise does not reside in the fact that it came from a revered numen of the arts, but rather because during the era in which it was written no other musician was extolling virtues with as much vivacious truth as Dylan himself.

When these profound, poetic and prescient, but nonetheless, humble truths were mistaken for the sagacious rally cries of a firebrand gunning to be a moral arbiter of society, Dylan withdrew.

In his retreat, he produced the rollicking album New Morning. The withdrawal for Dylan was not easy; it was a reclamation of his own individualism, but as he said himself: “All I can be is me, whoever that is.” The song ‘Sign on the Window’ plucks out a verse that elucidated the dichotomy of his condition: “Build me a cabin in Utah / Marry me a wife, catch rainbow trout / Have a bunch of kids who call me pa / That must be what it’s all about…” In many ways, this disavowing of any political connotations and ever-deepening existential introspection upheld an even grander universal truth within the rapidly modernising world – society may underpin freedom, but our lives are not governed by circumstance and even less so politics, but rather how we experience the world.

When surveying the many piles of podcast adjacent playlists or more traditional sonic receptacles, it’s clear there can be no song in history that has made that point quite as perfectly as ‘Wichita Lineman’.

In the very first second that the needle pulls onto the gravel track of the grooves, Carol Kaye’s descending bass notes whisk up the sonic landscape of the song in a spiralling ensemble of strings and a symphony of synchronised instrumentation. Thereafter telephone poles rise from the auditory ether in the dusky hue of the Midwest as the most immediate musical transportation unspools. Far from the nondescript platitude-riddled pastures where most love songs take place, ‘Wichita Lineman’ thrives on specificity, and as a result, it paradoxically clutches the universal by humanising the individual tale therein.

Neither the songwriter Jimmy Webb nor the performer Glen Campbell were ever linemen, but it is on empathetical values that the song hinges and as such it becomes one of the most relatable ever written regardless of your own experiences.

“When I heard it, I cried,” Glen Campbell told BBC Radio 4, “It made me cry because I was homesick. When I was on the way home, I saw all these electrical wires and the telephone poles, it made me cry.” The truth is that without the weight of music behind it, a man weeping at the sight of a telephone pole would never occur unless a telephone engineer suddenly developed an unabating fear of heights. But in ‘Wichita Lineman’ they are not only representative of a singular tale about a lonely workman out on the highways, but the unnoticed struggle of the common man in general.

“Glen gave me a call from the studio and said, ‘Can you write me another song like ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’,” Jimmy Webb explains, “and I said, ‘no’, but he kind of mentioned the geographical genre and I took a swing at it and I called him back that afternoon and I said, ‘I don’t think this song is finished, but I’m going send it to you’. And the next time I heard it; it was on the record.” For Jimmy Webb, the song remained unfinished, or at the very least a first draft, and in a purely nebulous way that could not have been a more befitting paradigm for the job of eternally maintaining the telephone lines that stretch along the great plains of America. And on this rare occasion, I don’t think that transcendental embodiment is too much of a reach.

It is often true that in many cases with music, songs are imbued with depth after the fact that was never really there in the first place. They evoke personal corroborations, and we fill in the blanks and claim they were contained in the masterpiece all along, elevating them, perhaps sometimes falsely, to lofty heights that tower above lesser songs or sometimes just lesser-known songs. However, when it comes to ‘Wichita Lineman’ that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Even Jimmy Webb’s explanation for the origin of the song itself seems to ratify this: “By the Kansas border the terrain absolutely flattens out… It goes on that way for about fifty miles,” he says. “In the heat of summer, the heat rises off the road in this shimmering mirage and the telephone poles gradually materialise out of this far distant perspective and they become large and rush towards you.”

“As it happened,” he continues, “I suddenly looked up at one of these telephone poles and there was a man on top talking on the telephone and he was gone very quickly and I had another 25 miles of solitude to meditate on this apparition. It was a splendidly vivid cinematic image that I lifted out of my memory when I was writing this song about an ordinary guy, a working-class type of dude.”

It is an instance orchestrated by pure happenstance, and yet it is hard to think of a more perfect metaphor for the vanishing working-class masses the world over, so much so that it seems to have been woven into place by some mystic figures of fate. The fact that on this occasion, the embodying apparition worked in a trade that literally connects society is a pastiche that emboldens the song with something larger than itself. It is one of those rare transcendent pieces of music that doesn’t seem to have been written at all but lassoed from the floating firmament and necessarily transposed to expose values and virtues that colour life with the sanguine hue experiential meaning.

There are moments of pure musical craftsmanship, like the perfect syncopation as Glen Campbell croons out, “And I need you…” just a half-beat before you expect it, as though he needs to get it off his chest. However, these flourishes of purposeful design disappear into the metaphysics of the perfectly realised swirl of sound and wisdom as quickly as the apparition that spawned it. Like the tendrils of wires that weave across the expanse, the hands that wove the tapestry go unnoticed amid the unfurling evocations rising from the void. Like the glistening symphonic soundscape crafted by Campbell, Webb, The Wrecking Crew, Al De Lory and others, the song is so full of depth that you could drop hammer into it and never hear it hit bottom.

In short, the meaning in this case – illuminated in near-unrivalled couplets like “I know I need a small vacation / But it don’t look like rain,” and “I need you more than want you / And I want you for all time” – is that love and grief, longing and belonging, struggle and triumph are all part of the same pact. And fortunately, the exultant soaring melody of ‘Wichita Lineman’ and the tale of love beyond illusion contained therein ensure that these trades do not come out as a draw because even the pains of the Lineman’s loneliness and ceaseless work are transfigured by the reward awaiting at home.


TOPICS: Music/Entertainment
KEYWORDS: bobdylan; dylan; glencampbell; glenncampbell; jimmywebb; music; wichitalineman
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To: FLNittany

This song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgQNeGPJdcQ is little known but certainly give Edmund Fitzgerald a run for its money as one of the best disaster songs ever made.


121 posted on 06/26/2022 6:43:34 PM PDT by yetidog
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To: Clay Moore

I drank a lot of beer to that song.


122 posted on 06/26/2022 6:55:25 PM PDT by dynachrome (“We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the US economy.” Rand Paul)
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To: SES1066

“Searching in the Sun for another overload”

When you’re out west whether its the great plains or the southern deserts—the sun is dominant. Its in the middle of everything. Its in the middle of your mind—especially when you’re looking in the distance. The summer heat makes things waver and shimmer. If you see a line down—you see it peripherally through the sun’s haze—and your mind’s haze.

The line above catches it right.


123 posted on 06/26/2022 6:57:16 PM PDT by ckilmer (qui)
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To: Clutch Martin

that was really different. Thanks.


124 posted on 06/26/2022 6:58:35 PM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: Clay Moore

my favorite David Allen Coe is
Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1L-QbkZ44k


125 posted on 06/26/2022 7:03:21 PM PDT by SisterK (recognize and resist tyranny)
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To: Yardstick

Yeah, Willie Nelson’s cover of City of New Orleans is pure American roots-


126 posted on 06/26/2022 7:03:47 PM PDT by atc23 (The Matriarchal Society we embrace has led to masks and mandates and the cult of "safety")
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To: SisterK; Clay Moore

The rumor is that David Alan Coe wrote and performed “The Rodeo Song”. The bar I drank in finally banned it. Tourists were annoyed when it was blasting on the speakers.


127 posted on 06/26/2022 7:10:54 PM PDT by dynachrome (“We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the US economy.” Rand Paul)
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To: Alberta's Child

agree!
speaking of rodeo
Ian Tyson did the rodeo circuit until he was injured
while recovering, he tried song writing
Four Strong Winds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3m7ckGhnsc
Gordon Lightfoot recorded a lot of Ian Tyson tunes.


128 posted on 06/26/2022 7:13:11 PM PDT by SisterK (recognize and resist tyranny)
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To: yetidog
This song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgQNeGPJdcQ is little known but certainly give Edmund Fitzgerald a run for its money as one of the best disaster songs ever made.

"Cold Missouri Waters" by Cry, Cry, Cry is a true story as I later found out. Wagner Dodge is the real life hero of the song. It's fun learning about true stories behind songs. "Lord Franklin" by The Pentangle was about Sir John Franklin who headed the ill-fated attempt to find a Northwest Passage. It was featured in the first season of "The Terror." Imagine my surprise to find when touring Westminster Abbey a plaque dedicated to him.
129 posted on 06/26/2022 7:14:37 PM PDT by klgator
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To: FLNittany

Maybe it’s just me but the song Sucks as does Bob Dylan!
I’m sorry but I grew up with that generation and even stumbled into Woodstock in 69.
(Drove from south Florida to NY to go to a girl’s prom, a girl I met on Lauderdale beach. She insisted that we go to this “concert” that I hadn’t heard of but wanted me to take her to before I headed back south.)🙃

It just seems to me that everyone that grew up in the era feel that they have to agree that Dylan was a god of some sort!

To me, the only one that rivals him as a music god and sucks as much was Hank Williams Sr!
(Horrible whiney, tinny voice.)😬

I know I’m gonna catch it now but after almost 70 years of listening to the Bob Dylan, Hank Williams Sr idol worship .. it is time to tell the truth!🤬
(I like the song “I’m so lonesome I could die” but it’s a great example of a whiney vocal sound that did little for the lyrics!)

Hank Willam’s son is a hell of a better singer than dad ever was!


130 posted on 06/26/2022 7:15:10 PM PDT by justme4now (Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it)
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To: SisterK

My favorite David Allen Coe song

Pledging My Love

A tribute to Johnny Ace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXynQeWXcfU

Johnny Ace’s version is one of my favorite songs.


131 posted on 06/26/2022 7:18:29 PM PDT by Clay Moore (Make Jan. 6 Ashli Babbitt Remembrance Day )
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To: Will88

fun thread
A Thousand Miles from Nowhere
Dwight Yoakam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu3ypuKq8WE

not taking away from Glen Campbell
rest in peace
I love Glen and look forward to meeting him on the other side.


132 posted on 06/26/2022 7:22:27 PM PDT by SisterK (recognize and resist tyranny)
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To: Southside_Chicago_Republican
“soul music for white people.”

Yes!

133 posted on 06/26/2022 7:25:28 PM PDT by SisterK (recognize and resist tyranny)
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To: SisterK
XERF had a great lineup of old country music. Paul and Linda Kallinger were HS classmates of me and their Father was one of the main DJ’s there. The station had hired the Carter Family back in the 1930’s for a year and they broadcast the Carter Family music for a year. The Carter Family lived near Star Park in Del Rio. Robert Smith was a later DJ and stayed at the Roswell near the old Del Rio HS and it wasn't that odd to run into him before his DJ stint at the “X”. As far as a great song there are too many to name but Dylan has the credentials to make a valid statement.
134 posted on 06/26/2022 7:34:06 PM PDT by vetvetdoug
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To: Lurkinanloomin

Don’t Fear the Reaper
perfect amount of cowbell
another classic
Dire Straits
Sultan of Swing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pa9x9fZBtY


135 posted on 06/26/2022 7:34:14 PM PDT by SisterK (recognize and resist tyranny)
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To: Scrambler Bob

you left out Bell Bottom Blues


136 posted on 06/26/2022 7:36:39 PM PDT by SisterK (recognize and resist tyranny)
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To: klgator

That’s a fascinating story - he seems to have lit his escape fire without really knowing anything about the technique.


137 posted on 06/26/2022 7:37:22 PM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: FLNittany

‘Wichita Lineman’ came out when I was 17 and is definitely one of my all time favorite songs. The lyrics, the opening bass line, and Glen’s vocals and guitar work are perfect.


138 posted on 06/26/2022 7:39:21 PM PDT by Inyo-Mono
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To: metmom

>I have to go with The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

This is definitely a timeless and unforgettable song. I go back to it several times a year when I can’t decide if I want Motörhead, Slayer, Suffocation, Reverend Horton Heat, Black Sabbath, or Charlie Daniels, etc., or just want to listen to some old Dragnet or Richard Diamond Private Detective radio shows, and just can’t decide what I’m in the mood for.

This song is always one that’s easy to go back to and enjoy.


139 posted on 06/26/2022 7:47:28 PM PDT by lefty-lie-spy (Stay Metal)
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To: Clay Moore

Wow
that is tragic and beautiful at the same time


140 posted on 06/26/2022 7:51:50 PM PDT by SisterK (recognize and resist tyranny)
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