By Peter Pavarini
One benefit of being exposed to several decades of music history is the joy of rediscovering a nearly forgotten song. I was in high school when Glen Campbell released “Wichita Lineman”, a #3 country pop hit penned by virtuoso songwriter Jimmy Webb. Quite honestly, had I been interviewed by Dick Clark on American Bandstand back then, I would have said the song was way too saccharine for my teenage tastes.
But time has a way of refining one’s musical sensibility. Once I began writing some of my own songs, I quickly appreciated the creative genius of songwriters like Jimmy Webb. Over the years, I’ve attended various workshops and read dozens of books in search of the secret of great songwriting. Among those books is Jimmy Webb’s Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting.[i]
My Chance Meeting with an Old Song
Over the holidays, I inadvertently came across a podcast for musicians and people who love music entitled “Strong Songs”.[ii] The twice monthly show is hosted and produced by Kirk Hamilton, a talented young musician out of Portland, Oregon. Based upon the episodes I’ve already listened to, I must confess to being hooked on Mr. Hamilton’s thoughtful and entertaining analysis of hit songs, many of which pre-date his musical career. In each show, he explains why each record deserved the acclaim it received. In every instance, a song’s success began with exceptionally good music and lyrics. But as his podcast demonstrates, a well-written song won’t sell many copies unless it’s also masterfully arranged and produced. “Wichita Lineman” undoubtedly fits that description.
Even if you’re not familiar with “Wichita Lineman”, Glen Campbell or Jimmy Webb, it’s hard to ignore a song that the legendary Bob Dylan called one the greatest songs ever written.[iii] Over its fifty plus years on the airwaves, the song has been covered by a long and varied list of artists and has been the subject of its own book.[iv]
The Power of a Song’s Structure
In an earlier blog, I discussed the psychology of music, specifically what makes a song memorable.[v] Like melodies and lyrics, a song’s harmonic structure[vi] has the power to convey meaning to the listener that often defies explanation. For example, the sound of a minor chord (a chord that contains the 1st, flattened 3rd and 5th degrees of a major scale) is most often associated with a sad or melancholic feeling.[vii] Likewise, a particular progression of chords[viii]can also convey emotions readily recognized by most listeners. Musical tradition and culture have something to do with this; however, the response of the listener to a unique musical sound seems nothing short of magical.
Kirk Hamilton’s 2022 podcast devoted to Campbell’s original version of “Wichita Lineman” describes his record an “ethereal working song – an ode to the profound poetry within all of us”. What makes Hamilton’s discussion of “Wichita Lineman” so compelling is the serendipity of the song’s creation. To this day, Jimmy Webb insists his song remained unfinished when he sent a scratch demo to Glen Campbell for possible inclusion in a new album. The song still lacked a proper chorus, much less a bridge, and was only meant as a concept Webb would later complete. That didn’t matter to a professional singer/guitarist like Campbell. Backed by a legendary group of studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew and supported by the tasteful arrangements of Al DeLory, Campbell quickly transformed Webb’s 12 lines of words and music into what truly is a masterpiece.
An Unlikely Hit
“Wichita Lineman’s” instant success is especially impressive considering the popular music it had to compete with in 1968. Sitting at the intersection of country and pop music, the song was nothing like the Beatles’ “Revolution” or Cream’s “White Room” which were in the Top 40 when “Wichita Lineman” was released. Today a recording like “Wichita Lineman” is typically categorized as Easy Listening – not Pop – which may explain why a Millennial like Kirk Hamilton didn’t know the song when it was suggested by his listeners.
Jimmy Webb has been quite open about the song’s genesis and how it got recorded at Gold Star Studios in Hollywood. He says the song emerged from a childhood memory of seeing a telephone lineman working alone atop a pole in the Oklahoma panhandle. Walking beneath those lines with his father on a hot summer day, he remembered the sound the wires made. Based on those impressions, he imagined what the lineman was thinking or perhaps saying into the handheld phone he was using to test the lines.
Webb’s sparse lyrics wouldn’t have had the necessary poetic punch make the song a hit had they not included three lines some say are “the most romantic in the history of song”:[ix]
And I need you more than want you
And I want you for all time
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line.
Webb wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by those words; he claims he was only trying to say something inexpressible about the nature of love and longing.
The Song’s Universal Message
Complemented by the song’s unusual chord progression[x], the story told by the lyrics ascends into an ethereal realm where less is more. We know nothing about the woman the lineman is longing for nor where they are in their relationship. Webb leaves it up to the listener to fill in the gaps. And that’s what makes the song universal.
Jimmy Webb and Glen Campbell teamed up again to produce other hit songs over the course of their long professional and personal relationship. Some of their other recordings, like “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Galveston’ may have exceeded “Wichita Lineman” in sales; however, nothing topped it in terms of its emotional and cultural impact on Americana.
When “Wichita Lineman” was recently named to BBC’s Top 100 Songs of All Time, British musician/educator Neil Crossley said this:
“[Wichita Lineman is] one of those rare songs that seem to exist in a world of their own – not just timeless but altogether outside of modern music.”[xi]
Because of that, I believe somewhere out on the Oklahoma prairie the song’s protagonist is still on the line.
[i] Hyperion Books (1998). I also recommend reading Jimmy Webb’s interview in Paul Zollo’s Songwriters on Songwriting, Da Capo Pres (2003).
[ii] Available through Apple iTunes, Spotify and Patreon. See also strongsongspodcast.com.
[iii] Alex Hopper, “4 of Bob Dylan’s Favorite Songs”, American Songwriter, January 18, 2024.
[iv] Dylan Jones, The Wichita Lineman: Searching in the Sun for the World’s Greatest Unfinished Song, Faber & Faber (2019).
[v] https://alessandrocamp.com/2023/10/05/easy-to-remember/
[vi] A song’s harmonic structure is the arrangement of chords and harmonies that shape and support the song’s melody. Each chord is a combination of three or more notes which typically follow patterns that are pleasing – or at least evocative – to the human ear. There are around 1200 commonly recognized chords – even more if you consider inversions where the lowest note is not the root note of the chord.
[vii] “How Chords and Key Impact Emotion in Music”, The Music Studio, October 11, 2023.
[viii] Such as a series of major, minor, diminished, augmented and extended chords within a particular key.
[ix] Dylan Jones, “Why Wichita Lineman Contains the Greatest Musical Couplet Ever Written”, Literary Hub, September 6, 2019.
x Tony Conniff, “The Chords of ‘Wichita Lineman’ Blew Me Away”, https://tonyconniff.com.
xi musicradar.com, December 24, 2025.
Be First to Comment