'And I need you more than want you. And I want you for all time...'
Of course, this is the one. This song dwarfs everything else on the album even though several of its companions are truly great songs in themselves. But Wichita Lineman is a mountain in the Himalayas in pop terms, fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with anything else ever written over the past seventy years. Existential is a good word for it. A small figure working on a vast landscape, thinking incredible poetic, profound thoughts to convey his emotions the way we're all capable of no matter how ordinary and mundane we might appear on external appearances.
I wondered a few days back whether I'd listened to this song too many times over the course of my lifetime for it to have the impact on me it still should have. But then I realised this wasn't possible. It resists all wear and tear. It's also there for interpretation of course. My first important girlfriend, during my university years used to sing, 'Is still borderline...' rather than 'is still on the line...' every time we played it. Which was often. They were the Madonna years. Yesterday, in Rosie's when I chose it and it played, Dekka, the seventy year old wisecracking spliffhead regular, sang 'I am a linesman for Notts. County', (Notts. County are an English football club, curiously the one where I saw my first match). So, a song that captured two moments in my life over thirty years apart. I do think though, regardless of whether you get the words right or not, you can't fail to catch the imperishable longing of the song. It says something incredibly profound about the human spirit and our ability to love and to endure. A # 3 hit in the US Billboard Singles Chart for Campbell when it was released in 1968.
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