Wichita Lineman

Glen Campbell passed away last week. I really hadn’t listened to him for years. As a memoirist and someone interested in memories I was drawn to his heartbreaking song “I’m Not Going to Miss You”: the obvious reason being that he will no longer remember the people who once populated his memories. Campbell was about to enter the last stages of Alzheimer’s.

As I read the numerous tributes to him I came across a piece about one of his signature songs, “Wichita Lineman” and how it came to be. Jimmy Webb wrote the lyrics. He’d delivered on “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Galveston” for Campbell. He was called upon at the last minute for a song to complete an album. Campbell was in the studio and needed something ASAP. And, could it be another town song.

From the BBC Culure:

"They called me and said, 'Can you write us a song about a town?'" he recalled in a Radio 2 documentary about Campbell's career.

"And I said, 'I'm not sure I want to write a song about a town right now. I think I've overdone that'.

"He said, 'well, can you do something geographical?'

Webb was in the midst of another project and wanted to pass. The song almost didn’t happen, but Webb had a flash. An image of a lonely telephone repairman all by himself at the top of a pole.

He had called up the image of a lineman from a childhood journey across the panhandle of Oklahoma.

"There's a place where the terrain absolutely flattens out," he told the BBC. "It's almost like you could take a [spirit] level out of your tool kit and put in 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 materialise out of this far, distant perspective and rush towards 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."

He acted upon this image and quickly wrote “Wichita Lineman” which went on to win Campbell a Grammy.

So the point being—when the pressure to write bears down, we sometimes produce our best work. We need to act on those flashes, those unbidden images that pop up out of seemingly nowhere. There really was no point, no resolution to the song—just an idea, that went on to resonate with listeners. It was said the song was a hit with soldiers fighting faraway in Vietnam. My guess is they understood that loneliness, missing loved ones, the feeling of being on a mission and all they had to do was get the job done and get home.

It’s surprising what can be communicated in a 3-minute song.