The Wichita Lineman

by Dylan Jones

  With the iconic songs of the sixties it was all about immediacy. They were launched, and they landed. ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ had it, as did ‘Satisfaction’, ‘Substitute’, Jimi Hendrix’s version of ‘All Along the Watchtower’. The moment they existed, the moment became theirs. They owned it. ‘Wichita Lineman’, however, was insidious. It was a sleeper. Stealthily, like a Paul Weller ballad, a Donald Fagen key change or a Prefab Sprout harmony, the song crept up on you, snaking around the brow of the hill rather than careering over the top accompanied by five thousand strong men with muskets and spears. Like Woody Allen’s Zelig, one day it was suddenly there, never to disappear. Then it was everywhere, for ever. On the radio, on the television, on the mix tape, on the B-side, cropping up as the unlikely encore. (When you don’t have a dog, they’re invisible; when you get one, you see them everywhere, even in your dreams.)

  That, for me, is ‘Wichita Lineman’, a song I heard as a boy that has stayed with me all my life. I like it now for the same reasons I liked it then. I liked it because it took me to places I hadn’t been; to places nowhere near me, places unknown. It was a complete escape. It may have been a song full of longing, full of anxiety and want, yet to me it seemed to announce a vortex of calm.

  I am not the only one who cannot recall when they first heard it; no one else can either. They may have been aware of it during a formative period of their life, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who can remember precisely where they were when they first heard it, or when it was. The song was just around. ‘That’s the thing about “Wichita Lineman”,’ said a friend of mine, when I told him I was writing a book about it. ‘You don’t know when you first heard it, as it was just one of those songs from your childhood that was sort of always there. It was always there in the background, being there. I suppose I remember it always being there, although it obviously can’t have been. I now play it to my young children, because although they won’t be able to remember when they first heard it, I will.’

  I fell in love with the song for the same reason I fell in love with John Barry soundtracks: because it took me away from reality. In the sixties, Barry’s film themes positively swaggered with purpose, epitomising glamour when glamour wasn’t yet a career option, evoking a sophisticated world full of mystery, travel and sex. And I loved them. He did everything on a grand scale, making music both delirious and maudlin, great orchestral sweeps that made you feel as though you were gliding through space, careering down a ravine or driving at speed along an Italian motorway. A bit like Jimmy Webb, really.

  It was all about movement, moving through space. Take Van Morrison, someone else who made records that evoked escape: in the same way that Van could, in the words of Liam Neeson, ‘take a walk through a meadow and go home and write an album about it’, so Jimmy Webb had the ability to conjure up a prairie at will.

  ‘Wichita Lineman’ is only sixteen lines long, and yet this dustbowl epic paints a whole life as though it were poetry, and it says as much in three minutes as many authors say in a lifetime. As one friend said, without drama or fuss, Webb captures an entire existence – ‘just a man alone on the vast, empty plains, fixing the overhead telephone wires and letting the passage of his life drift through his mind’.

  When you listen to ‘Wichita Lineman’ – in fact, maybe when you just hear it in the background, without actually taking much notice of it – it doesn’t appear to be bound by any borders. It is without a horizon, lyrically, musically and metaphorically. The sweeping strings and lonesome words make this story of obsessive love in a flyover state seem as though it somehow floats above the ground, not bound by time, land or permission – just floating in liminal space.

  At first you’re not sure which bit’s the verse and which bit’s the chorus. This was an example of Webb’s modus operandi at the time, which subverted the very idea of the ‘standard’ and was a calculated assault on the traditional verse/chorus/bridge structure, a structure which he obviously considered tyrannical. And even though the song was unfinished, it resonated. Bob Dylan said in 1965, ‘A song is anything that can walk by itself.’ ‘Wichita Lineman’ is one of those songs, containing a sublime air of desperation. ‘What a mood, what a song,’ said 10cc’s Graham Gouldman. ‘Jimmy Webb’s simple but oh so effective piece of brilliance.’ It is a love song, but there is no moon, and there is no June. There’s just a guy on a pole in the middle of nowhere.

  As 1968 is often celebrated as the high-water mark of post-World War II cultural insurrection, it might seem perverse to lionise a middle-of-the-road ballad that in some respects harks back to a more innocent era, but Webb’s heartbreaking song – rightly acknowledged as one of the most perfectly realised in all pop – is as evergreen now as it was then, and still seems to exist in a world of its own.

  And what a world, a world created by two young strangers from dustbowl sharecropper families who travelled west to find fame and fortune in California, and who combined to produce one of America’s greatest, most unlikely songs, a Big Country anthem of hope, and of regret …

  The perfect imperfect song.

  1: BECOMING GLEN CAMPBELL

  It seemed like fate was always leading me to the right door.

  GLEN CAMPBELL

  Valentine’s Day 1966: like every other member of the Wrecking Crew hit squad who were crammed into Studio A in Gold Star Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard that night, Glen Campbell was starting to sweat. Not sweating because of the job he was about to do – having done hundreds of sessions with the Wrecking Crew he didn’t think he would be asked to do anything that night that he hadn’t been asked to do before – but because of the heat. He wasn’t nervous, simply hot. Even though it was only seven weeks since Christmas – in spite of the Watts riots the previous August, which had resulted in thirty-four deaths, during 1965’s festive season LA had been lit up like the Cinderella Castle at Disneyland – the former dental office was so small (twenty by twenty-two feet, with a low ceiling) and there were so many musicians in it, not to mention the excessive amount of instruments requested by the producer (including two pianos, two drum kits, enough percussion to shame a small orchestra, a harpsichord and, for the first time in any studio in LA, an electro-theremin), that it was already more than uncomfortable. There was no air conditioning and, like every session in the studio, everyone seemed to be smoking.

  They were there because Gold Star was one of the best studios in the city, boasting the most highly regarded echo chamber not just on the West Coast, but in the whole industry (apparently so good it would sometimes pick up the flushing from the women’s rest room), one that had been used extensively by Phil Spector for his Wall of Sound records and which used state-of-the-art audio compressors and engineer-specific microphone preamps. Combining David S. Gold’s custom-designed technology with Stan Ross’s groundbreaking approach to recording, Gold Star Studios had pioneered techniques that would go on to become commonplace, such as phasing, flanging and automatic double-tracking. Herb Alpert, who made his first six albums at the studio, said that a song could seem ‘terrible’ but end up sounding extraordinary ‘after it went through the mixing board, the echo chamber and the mysterious X-factor that recording at Gold Star always seemed to add’.

  It was early evening, and Campbell, like everyone else in the room, was waiting for Brian Wilson to tell them what he wanted them to do. They had been working on this new project on and off for over six months (the other Beach Boys mainly singing on their records rather than playing on them), and they were just about to record ‘I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times’, one of the most elegiac songs from what would become the new Beach Boys album, Pet Sounds. With small, deliberate movements, Campbell started fiddling with his machine head as they all waited for Wilson.

  The Wrecking Crew weren’t just responsible for stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song, they were largely responsible for its very success. They were the most sought-after session men (and a few women) in the business, earning over $400 a day eac
h (which, given inflation, would be close to $4,000 today), seven days a week, by playing on some of the biggest hits of the time, with an expertise that completely belied their status. In a town of around forty thousand musicians, the Wrecking Crew (or ‘the Clique’ or ‘the regulars’ or ‘the first call’ group, as they were also known) numbered no more than fifty or sixty, an amorphous gang of studio players who were virtuosos in their respective fields: the Wrecking Crew had deep bench. ‘There was one point in the mid-sixties when I was making more money than the president of the United States,’ said the legendary Wrecking Crew bassist Carol Kaye. She wasn’t the only female session player at the time, but she was easily the most in demand, and consequently the most well known. The other players, mostly men, treated her just the same as they treated each other; the only thing that mattered was your ability to play. They liked to tease her, though. One story sticks in her mind: ‘I was doing a Glen Campbell date about 1974 in a Hollywood studio and we were done recording, walking out the door together when an excited fan rushed up to our group looking for “Carol Kaye” in the front part of the studio. Everyone pointed to me and he looked shocked. “But you’re a woman!” “Yes,” I said. “My ex-husband, my kids, my boyfriend, everyone thinks I’m a woman!” The guys, including Glen, just roared … they loved this kind of stuff. I think that poor guy was still shaken as I signed an autograph for him. Probably took a while to get over that.’

  The reason they were called the Wrecking Crew was because they were wrecking the careers of the generation of studio players they were replacing, the blue-blazer-and-chinos guys who did everything by the book, the kind of players who emptied their ashtrays before they left the studio.

  The Crew sprinkled fairy dust on anything and everything, although in the case of Brian Wilson, they felt a little like they were working in a laboratory.* A few blocks along the boulevard, the Hollywood Forever Cemetery had just closed for the night; it was home to some of the city’s most celebrated citizens, including a veritable disaster movie of celebrities (among them Peter Lorre, Rudi Valentino, Cecil B. DeMille and Bugsy Siegel), yet just as many boldface names had been through the tatty doors of Gold Star: Phil Spector, Eddie Cochran, Bobby Darin, Duane Eddy, the Righteous Brothers, Bobby Troup, etc. Along with the likes of Carol Kaye, pianist Leon Russell, guitarist Tommy Tedesco, drummer Hal Blaine, saxophonist Steve Douglas and dozens of other musicians, Glen Campbell had previously played on an extraordinary number of Top 40 songs – everything from ‘He’s a Rebel’ by the Crystals, ‘Surf City’ by Jan and Dean, ‘Mrs Robinson’ by Simon & Garfunkel and ‘California Dreamin’’ by the Mamas & the Papas to ‘Strangers in the Night’ by Frank Sinatra, ‘I’m a Believer’ by the Monkees, ‘A Taste of Honey’ by Herb Alpert, ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’’ by Nancy Sinatra and ‘Bang Bang’ by Sonny and Cher – a hot streak that, had anyone known who they were, would have made the Wrecking Crew the most famous band in LA. In fact, it would have probably made them the most famous band in the country. The LA studios had a spirit when ‘the regulars’ were working, especially Gold Star, where, once through the famous yellow door, the team would assemble underneath Studio A’s giant round clock to make magic. The band were so prolific, so good at their jobs, that it wasn’t unusual for them to complete four finished backing tracks in under three hours.

  ‘Music fans, even ones like myself, who have listened in a lot of depth, don’t always have an appreciation for session musicians,’ said Elvis Costello, who has worked with hundreds of session musicians over the years, including former Wrecking Crew member Larry Knechtel. ‘When you’re in a band – and I’ve been in a band identity for a long time – you tend to assume that session musicians are somehow less connected, because they haven’t got the emotional investment or the ongoing journey with the music. But that’s clearly not the case because individuals like Paul Simon, being the songwriter, even though he had a singing partner, he would obviously have to hire groups of musicians who he developed a kind of band rapport with, even though it would be dropped and picked up and they would do other intervening work, and they might be working with the Association another week or something that might be more of a regular session job.

  ‘There is a little bit of snobbery between band members and session players. Session players think band members can’t play, band members think session players don’t have the same kind of commitment, but that’s a naive point of view on both situations because you’ll find band members who are virtuosi. I’ve had the fortunate experience to work with a number of people who on the face of it are known as session players, but they’ve been no less committed to the music, and the fact that they can do it time and time again and focus on the importance of the music means that their love of music is more important than their love of fame or their love of the guy who’s hiring them even. They’ve got nothing really invested in the relationship with the singer so much. Maybe that only comes with time and experience. But you get it initially through the music.’

  When Costello was first starting out in England in 1976, he saw himself as somewhat at an angle to the music that was made in Los Angeles, but then, as he says himself, a lot of this attitude was based on ignorance. For instance, he had no idea that a lot of Phil Spector’s records were made at Gold Star, assuming they had been made in New York. He didn’t believe the session players in LA had the emotional resources to play with invention, something he learned only through working with them, and something he would never forget. For him, it is a privilege to have worked with players who have worked with Hal Blaine and Carol Kaye.

  And, indeed, Glen Campbell.

  Tonight in Gold Star, though, was all about Brian Wilson. As Campbell sat with his guitar on one of the folding metal chairs, keen to get started again, he could see Wilson fretting over in the corner, on the other side of the glass, mumbling to himself and making everyone else in the booth nervous. It wasn’t getting any cooler, either. A few of the players had already stepped out onto the sidewalk, thinking their cigarettes might taste better under the floodlights and banana trees, while watching the racoons and the bobcats rummaging around in the garbage.

  Tonight, with his bushy pudding-bowl haircut and denim shirt, Campbell was going to be making history. As the players joked with each other, fiddled with their instruments, tuned up, passed around Mad magazine or lit another cigarette, Wilson could be seen behind the double-thick glass of the studio, staring intently at the soundboard. A few minutes after ten, he pressed the intercom and finally addressed them. ‘OK, roll tape. From the top, guys.’ It would be a tortuous session, with the theremin proving particularly difficult to manage. ‘We sat there for hours and hours when [it] came in,’ said Campbell. ‘It sounded terrible when it first started, but three and a half hours later they had a couple of lines they could work on. Brian knew what he wanted.’

  ‘I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times’ was almost complete.

  Glen Campbell had already played various cameos in the somewhat turbulent career of Brian Wilson, first as a session man, having played guitar on the Beach Boys’ songs ‘Be True to Your School’, ‘I Get Around’ and ‘Dance, Dance, Dance’, among many others. Then, in 1964, Wilson found himself crying on a plane, unable to fly, and quit touring with the Beach Boys. ‘We were going to Houston to kick-off a tour,’ said Wilson. ‘I said goodbye to [my girlfriend] Marilyn and boarded the plane. Minutes after we were airborne, I turned to [fellow Beach Boy] Al [Jardine]. Tears were streaming out of my eyes. My face was red. Al asked, “What’s wrong?” I said, “I’m going to crack up any minute!” It was impossible. I was already over the edge. I buried my face in a pillow and let myself go, hurtling over the brink of sanity. I cried. I screamed. I pounded my fists in the back of the chair.’

  Wilson was replaced on the five-month tour by the golden-haired, honey-voiced Campbell, playing bass and singing falsetto leads, allowing Wilson to indulge himself back in the studio in LA. ‘He fit right in,’ said Wilson. ‘His main forte wa
s that he was a great guitar player, but he was a better singer than all the rest [of the band]. He could sing higher than I could.’ This afforded Wilson the opportunity to dig deep, and dig long, which he did by conjuring up first The Beach Boys Today!, and then, in 1966, the colossal Pet Sounds. ‘It was an exciting time, with screaming girls, and good-looking Glen bore the brunt of it, losing a watch and getting his shirt ripped by more than enthusiastic fans,’ said fellow Beach Boy Mike Love. ‘The only problem was, I didn’t know all the words to the songs,’ said Campbell. ‘They’d be singing “[The Little Old Lady from] Pasadena”, and I’d be singing something else. I didn’t know what I was saying. But the screams were so loud from the girls, you’d walk on stage and you couldn’t hear a thing anyway.’

  Almost as a thank you to Campbell, in late 1964 Wilson produced the single ‘Guess I’m Dumb’ for him, which, recorded just before Pet Sounds (the backing track, on which Campbell actually played, was recorded at United Western Recorders during sessions for The Beach Boys Today!), is as good as anything on the album, with Campbell singing it in the style of Roy Orbison, and Wilson layering it with surging Bacharach-style strings. Wilson had written it a few years earlier with Russ Titelman, but the track had been turned down by the band, who thought it too strange. Both in terms of its melody – filled with odd little dissonances – and the Wall of Sound production, ‘Guess I’m Dumb’ presages the kind of Californian dreamscapes that both Wilson and Campbell would be recording on Pet Sounds a year later, with songs like ‘I Know There’s an Answer’ or ‘You Still Believe in Me’, and then ‘Good Vibrations’ (during the session for which Campbell’s inner hillbilly reared its head, when he said, ‘Whew, Brian, what were you smoking when you wrote that?’). In recent years the song has become much revered, and is, in the words of former Melody Maker editor Richard Williams, ‘A carefully wrought song of tortured self-examination set to an imaginative adaptation of the techniques originated by Phil Spector …’