![]() I'm not someone who thinks that way or creates that way.īut I'm a young songwriter, and I think I've got the chops to do it, and I sit down, and I spent maybe an hour and 45 minutes or two hours working on a song. WEBB: No, it wasn't so much my doing as it was deliberate manipulation on the part of A&R and the labels in their attempts to engineer what we called in those days a follow-up record.īut I remember particularly the day that they called me about "Wichita" and said: Glen's looking for a follow-up for "By The Time I Get To Phoenix," but it's got to be a place. GROSS: "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" started a short series of place-songs, you know, "Galveston," "Wichita Lineman." Did you start to think that if you put a place name in the song, it would hit? But she'll just hear that phone keep on ringing off the wall, that's all.īy the time I make Oklahoma, she'll be sleeping. She'll probably stop at lunch and give me a call. She'll laugh when she reads the part that says I'm leaving 'cause I've left that girl so many times before.īy the time I make Albuquerque, she'll be working. She'll find the note I left hanging on her door. GLEN CAMPBELL (Singer): (Singing) By the time I get to Phoenix, she'll be rising. (Soundbite of song, "By the Time I Get To Phoenix") GROSS: Well, I think this would be a good time to hear the Glen Campbell of "By the Time I Get To Phoenix," written by my guest, Jimmy Webb. And I just do believe that once that fire is kindled, it lasts forever. I believe that all torches are inextinguishable to some degree, no matter human beings say about that subject. GROSS: It sounds like this torch is still dimly burning. I was wearing the worst sort of plaid sports jacket you have ever seen in your life. ![]() And that picture still exists, unfortunately. We actually went to Disneyland together on graduation night. High school, she was a high school sweetheart. ![]() And there were many, many songs that were inspired by her and came about as a result of our, well, very young relationship. And she and I are very, very close friends. WEBB: Oh, yes, she does, and she's still thankfully, she's very much alive, and she's actually married into the Ronstadt clan. GROSS: Does the woman, or girl I don't know how old you were that you wrote this for know that it was about her? Henry-esque twist at the end, which consists merely of the guy saying: She didn't really think that I would go. May I hasten to add that I think that the appeal of the song lies in its sort of succinct tale, its beginning, middle and end, and the fact that it sort of has an O. It's a kind of fantasy about something I wish I would have done, and it sort of takes place in a twilight zone of reality. to Phoenix and then how far it was to Albuquerque and then - in short, he told me: This song is impossible.Īnd so it is. In fact, a guy approached me one night after a concert, and he had a map, and he had all the times, and he had a stopwatch, and he showed me how it was impossible for me to drive from L.A. WEBB: Well, it's more of a song about something I wish I had done than something I really did in that I did not get in my car and drive back to Oklahoma to punish this young woman for not reciprocating my love and affection. Let's talk about one of your best-known songs, and that is "By The Time I Get To Phoenix." I was reading this is the third-most-performed song in the last 50 years, according to BMI, who should know. They say in the darkest night, there's a light beyond.ĭAVIES: Jimmy Webb and Linda Ronstadt from Webb's new album, called "Just Across The River." Terry spoke to Jimmy Webb in 2004. It's a fine line between the darkness and the dawn. When the singer's gone let the song go on. All my plans, they depend on you, depend on you to help them grow. I love you, and it's all I know.Īll my plans keep falling through. We both bruise so easily, too easily to let it show. LINDA RONSTADT (Singer): (Singing) I bruise you, you bruise me. Jimmy Webb has a new album of duets he recorded with some of the artists he's written for over the years. Glen Campbell had big hits with his songs "By the Time I Get To Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston." Webb's other hits include "Didn't We," "Up, Up and Away," "The "Worst That Could Happen" And "MacArthur Park," which was recorded by Richard Harris, The Four Tops and Donna Summer to name just a few of the hundreds of recordings of that tune. Jimmy Webb was one of the most prolific and successful songwriters of the 1960s and '70s.
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