After the rigours of Metal Month II, I need a rest. I need to sit back and take it easy, and what better place to do that than in
Perhaps ironic that this was also the last section posted in this journal before Metal Month II opened, so basically I guess it’s a month of hard-hitting, loud and angry heavy metal bookended by music for old farts. But, you know, sometimes you just need to kick back with a nice warm cup of tea and just drift off. Having established, i hope, my metal credentials over the previous month, I am now free to turn down the volume and loosen my leather studded belt, open the windows and play some music that won’t have the neighbours dialling for the Guards.
By the time I get to Phoenix --- Glen Campbell --- “By the time I get to Phoenix” ---1967
The first time I heard this song it was sung incorrectly, giving me a totally false impression of what the song is meant to convey.My boss of twenty-some years had a tendency to learn only the first two lines or so of a song, and often misinterpret it totally. He would sing “Give me the moonlight”, but instead of the correct lines to follow being “Give me the girl, and leave the rest to me” he would fill in “Give me the starshine, give me your love, I'll give you mine.” It was a sometimes annoying and sometimes endearing trait of his personality, and it led to as I say my complete misunderstanding of the song in question above, for he would sing, convinced he was right: “By the time I get to Phoenix she'll be waiting.” This of course completely changes the thrust of the song, as I'll explain below.
Anyway, the first time I encountered the song proper was as an instrumental, on one of those “Mantovani plays classics” albums, or maybe a love songs album that was played by an orchestra. It was a long, long time before I got to hear the song actually sung, and what I heard took me a little by surprise. Rather than being, as Gerry had convinced me it was, a song about a man driving to see his lover in Phoenix Arizona, it's something quite bleaker and sadder in its way. At its heart, the song is about a man who has, after years of trying to make it work, left his girlfriend, or possibly wife, and as he drives, eager to be as far away from her as possible, he thinks about what she'll be doing as he passes through various states and the day winds on.
It's written by Jimmy Webb, he of “MacArthur Park” and “Wichita lineman” fame, and though it's been covered many times, the definitive version is pretty much seen as that by Glen Campbell, a song which gave him a hit on the Billboard Charts, a number two single in the Country Charts, and which earned him two Grammy Awards. Webb has said that it's written as a fantasy; the man never actually leaves his woman, but dreams about what would happen if he did. Nevertheless, like many song lyrics, it's a little open to interpretation, and I see it in two ways.
First, you have the guy leaving his girl and exulting as he passes through cities and states that he is getting further and further away from her. He sings of what the unnamed woman will be doing as he disappears across America, how she will feel and how much she will disbelieve it, thinking he will just return soon. So in that version there's both a sense of freedom and relief, but also a certain tinge of dark satisfaction, the idea of twisting the knife: I've gone and she thinks I'll be back ---
”She'll laugh when she reads the part/ That says I'm leavin'/ 'Cause I've left that girl so many times before” --- but I really won't.
Then there's the other way you can look at it, that the guy has left but he has to admit to himself that he loves the girl, as she's still on his mind as he passes out of her life. Each state he gets to he imagines what she'll be doing ---
”By the time I make Albuquerque she'll be working” --- and you can almost hear the wish in his voice that he could just turn around and drive back before it's too late, but it is: he's come this far and there's really no going back at this point.
It's interesting too that though it's a song of either abandonment or freedom, whichever way you choose to look at it, it's not a “Hit the road Jack” or “50 ways to leave your lover” or even “Ruby's Arms” (if you know Waits) sort of song. There's a sadness about it, an inevitability and a definite sense of breaking the chains, also a feeling that the man has been pushed too far and has finally taken the initiative. Of course, there's also a somewhat immature idea of “Hah! You never thought I'd do it, did you? Well look at me now, leaving you!”
There's time for a little sympathy for the deserted girl though, in the final verse as he sings
”By the time I make Oklahoma she'll be sleepin'/ She'll turn softly and call my name out loud/ And she'll cry just to think I'd really leave her.” But reality has asserted itself; in actuality the man is lying in bed with the woman, thinking about his flight but never really having the guts to leave her, or too in love despite himself to abandon her. But in his dreams, he's already headed for Oklahoma...
”By the time I get to Phoenix she'll be rising:
She'll find the note I left hangin' on her door.
She'll laugh when she reads the part that says I'm leavin'
'Cause I've left that girl so many times before.
By the time I make Albuquerque she'll be working:
She'll prob'ly stop at lunch and give me a call
But she'll just hear that phone keep on ringin';
Off the wall that's all.
By the time I make Oklahoma she'll be sleepin'.
She'll turn softly and call my name out low.
And she'll cry just to think I'd really leave her
Though time and time I tried to tell her so:
She just didn't know I would really go.“