Webb wrote "Wichita Lineman" in response to Campbell's urgent phone request for a "place"-based or "geographical" song to follow up "By the Time I Get to Phoenix".[8] His lyrical inspiration came while driving through the high plains of the Oklahoma panhandle past a long line of telephone poles, on one of which perched a lineman speaking into his handset. Webb "put himself atop that pole" with the phone in his hand as he imagined the lineman talking to his girlfriend.[9][10] Despite its real-life roots lying elsewhere, Webb set his song in Wichita, Kansas.[11]
Within hours of Campbell's plea from the recording studio, Webb delivered a demo that he regarded and labeled as an unfinished version of the song, warning producer/arranger Al De Lory that he had not completed a third verse or a bridge.[12][13] "When I heard it I cried," Campbell said, "... because I was homesick."[14] De Lory similarly found inspiration in the opening line. His uncle had been a lineman in Kern County, California: "I could visualize my uncle up a pole in the middle of nowhere. I loved the song right away."[15]
Webb's concerns over his song's shortcomings were quickly addressed in the studio by adding a tremolo-infused Dano bass[16] melodic interlude performed by Campbell, who had first made his reputation in the music industry as a session guitarist with the prolific but uncredited group of Los Angeles backing musicians known today as the Wrecking Crew, many of whom played on the recording.[15][3][17] One of them, bassist Carol Kaye, contributed the descending six-note intro.[15] A second six-note bass lick improvised by Kaye was copied for strings by De Lory and used as a fill between the two rhyming couplets of each verse.[18]
All the orchestral arrangements are by De Lory,[19][20] who evokes the phrase "singing in the wire" using high-pitched, ethereal violins to emulate the sonic vibrations commonly induced by wind blowing across small wires and conductors, making them whistle or resonate like an aeolian harp. Similarly, he employs a repeating, monotonic 'Morse code' keyboard/flute motif[a] to mimic the electronic sounds a lineman might hear through a telephone earpiece attached to a long stretch of 'raw' telephone or telegraph line; that is, without typical line equalization and filtering: "I can hear you through the whine."[22][15]
Webb was surprised to learn that Campbell had recorded his song: "A couple of weeks later I ran into [Campbell] somewhere and I said, 'I guess you guys didn't like the song.' 'Oh, we cut that,' he said. 'It wasn't done! I was just humming the last bit!' 'Well, it's done now!'"[8] After listening to the test acetates of the studio recording that Campbell had with him, Webb contributed the overdub of evocative, reverberating electronic notes and open chords heard in the intro and fadeout, respectively, of the finished track, played on his Gulbransen electric organ.[12]
There's a place where the terrain absolutely flattens out. It's almost like you could take a level out of your tool kit and put it on the highway, and that bubble would just sit right there on dead centre. It goes on that way for about 50 miles. In the heat of summer, with the heat rising off the road, the telephone poles gradually materialize out of this far, distant perspective and rush toward you. And then, as it happened, I suddenly looked up at one of these telephone poles and there was a man on top, talking on a telephone. 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 deep memory while I was writing this song. I thought, I wonder if I can write something about that? A blue-collar everyman guy we all see everywhere, working on the railroad or working on the telephone wires or digging holes in the street. I just tried to take an ordinary guy and open him up and say, 'Look, there's this great soul and there's this great aching and this great loneliness inside this person, and we're all like that. We all have this capacity for these huge feelings'.”
The song contains two verses, each divided into two parts. The first part is in the key of F major, while the second is in D major. D represents the relative minor key to F, so a D minor (as opposed to major) section would be expected. The fact that it is nevertheless set in D major is argued to contribute to the unique and appealing character of the song.[15]
The lyrics follow the dichotomy set up by the contrasting musical keys. The first part of each verse (in F major) describes issues related to a lineman's job; for example, "searchin' in the sun for another overload"[b] and "if it snows, that stretch down south won't ever stand the strain." The second part (in D major) details the lineman's romantic thoughts, including his well-known declaration, “And I need you more than want you / And I want you for all time.”[24] Set against the F major brightness of the first part, the D major tonality of the second sounds distinctively mellow, which is consistent with its lyrical content.[15]
Webb's melancholic, jazz-tinged chord progressions, laced with major sevenths and suspended fourths, reinforce the song's indeterminate nature by modulating from F major to D major and back without ever fully resolving. Writer Allen Morrison has noted that, after a broken F-major tonic chord is heard twice during the bass intro,
The song never does get ‘home’ again to the tonic – not in either verse, nor in the fadeout. 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.[25]
Chart success and sales
Glen Campbell's version, which appeared on his 1968 album of the same name, reached number 3 on the US pop chart, remaining in the Top 100 for 15 weeks. It topped the American country music chart for two weeks and the adult contemporary chart for six weeks.[26] It was certified gold by the RIAA in January 1969.[27] In Canada, the single topped both the RPM national and country singles charts.[28][29] In the United Kingdom, it reached number 7.[30]
More information Chart (1968–1969), Peak position ...
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. ‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
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Legacy and accolades
In 2021, Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" ranked "Wichita Lineman" at number 206.[5]BBC Radio described it as "one of those rare songs that seems somehow to exist in a world of its own – not just timeless but ultimately outside of modern music"[47] and spotlighted it in series 12 of Soul Music, their long-running show documenting the stories behind influential music with a powerful emotional impact.[48]Bob Dylan considered it "the greatest song ever written"[6] and British music journalistStuart Maconie called it "the greatest pop song ever composed."[7] In 2017, Paste placed the song at number two on their list of the 12 greatest Glen Campbell songs;[49] in their version, Billboard ranked it number three.[50]
Journalist and author Dylan Jones published the book The Wichita Lineman: Searching in the Sun for the World's Greatest Unfinished Song in 2019, documenting the song's genesis and enduring legacy.[52]
Jazz pianist Alan Pasqua developed an arrangement of the song for jazz trio that appears on his album My New Old Friend and Peter Erskine's album The Interlochen Concert. Jazz pianist John Harkins played an up-tempo rendition of the song on his 2015 album Cognition.[59] Jazz pianist Laurence Hobgood recorded a version of the song combining a contemporary jazz trio with a string quartet.[60]
Other covers of the song include that of Wade Hayes, who released a version in August 1997[61] that peaked at number 55 on the US country music charts. It was to have been included on an album entitled Tore Up from the Floor Up, but due to its poor chart performance, the album was delayed. That album was finally released in 1998 as When the Wrong One Loves You Right, with the "Wichita Lineman" cover excluded.[62]
In 2016, the country-pop band Restless Heart also recorded a cover of the song.[63]
Guns N' Roses covered the song live during their Not in This Life Time world tour. The first live performance of the song was on August 30, 2017, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.[64][65]Rolling Stone magazine described it as "their most unexpected cover of the tour".[66]
The Brian Setzer Orchestra covered the song live during their Christmas Rocks! 2017 tour[67] and they perform the song on the Christmas Rocks! Live Blu-ray DVD that was released on November 9, 2018.[68]
Former Men at Work frontman Colin Hay recorded and released a version of this song on his 2021 covers album I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself.[69]
Lyrics that are loose translations of, or inspired by, Webb's song have been written in at least two other languages: German and Finnish.
A German language version written by Thomas Fritsch, "Der Draht in der Sonne" (English "The Wire In the Sun"), has also been covered by Katja Ebstein.[71]
Finnish singer Topi Sorsakoski recorded a Finnish version of the song, titled Tie jatkuu äärettömiin ("The Road Goes On Forever"), on his album Yksinäisyys osa 2 in 1995.[72]
In popular culture
The song was used in the opening and closing scenes of the Ozark season 2 episode, "Badger", to emphasize the setting and tone of the beginning and end of Darlene and Jacob Snell's romance.[73]
Based on the Phonograph Recording Contracts for the main recording sessions, with additions and corrections as described in the corresponding edit summaries.
Jones, Dylan (2019). The Wichita Lineman: Searching in the Sun for the World's Greatest Unfinished Song. London: Faber & Faber. p.260. ISBN978-0-571-35340-8.
"Jimmy Webb: Behind the song". maverick-country.com. Hand Media International. May 11, 2022. Archived from the original on May 25, 2022. Retrieved January 16, 2024. I was wondering if I was going to put a bridge into it.
Kaye, Carol. "Carol Kaye FAQ". carolkaye.com. Retrieved June 26, 2022. What a thrill it was to cut "Wichita Lineman" for Glen. And yes, he borrowed my Dano 6-stg. bass guitar to play his famous solo on.
Jones, Dylan (2019). The Wichita Lineman: Searching in the Sun for the World's Greatest Unfinished Song. London: Faber & Faber. p.225. ISBN978-0-571-35340-8.
Webb, Jimmy (songwriter) (July 31, 2023) [Interviewed June 8, 2023 by Rick Beato]. Wichita Lineman: Talking with Tunesmith Jimmy Webb (Videotape). New York City, NY: Beato, Rick. Event occurs at 9:29. Retrieved February 8, 2024– via YouTube. Sid Sharp did all the strings for the Wrecking Crew's records.
BBC Radio 2 - Steve Wright's Glen Campbell Tribute (Radio broadcast). London, UK: British Broadcasting Corporation. December 4, 2018 [Broadcast August 9, 2017]. Event occurs at 0:35. Retrieved August 26, 2022– via YouTube.
Further reading
Jones, Dylan (2019). The Wichita Lineman: Searching in the Sun for the World's Greatest Unfinished Song. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN978-0-571-35340-8. 281 pp.
