Thursday, April 3, 2014

By The Time I Get to Phoenix





By the time I get to Phoenix, she'll be rising
And she'll find the note I left hangin' on her door
And she'll laugh when she reads the parts that says "I'm leavin'"
'Cause I've left that girl so many times before
And by the time I make Albuquerque, she'll be working
And she'll probably stop at lunch and give me a call
But she'll just hear that phone keep right on and ringin'
Off the wall and that's all
And by the time I make Oklahoma, she'll be sleepin'
She'll turn softly and call my name loud
Lord and she'll cry just to think I'd really leave her
Though time and time I try to tell her so,
Guess she just didn't know that I would really go
No, she didn't know I'd go
She didn't know I'd go

I love this song and have done ever since Glen Campbell made it popular in 1967. I've got it on my ipod sung by Jimmy Webb. He actually wrote it and does a better version of it in my opinion.
It's evocative of childhood times and memories for me. I reckon "she" would have had a nice mod phone like this one on her wall. "She", wiki informs me, was Susan Ronstadt (cousin of Linda).



It occurred to me recently as I was listening, that no one could write a song like this anymore.
The version written today would have to go something like this:

By the time I get to Phoenix she'll be rising (auto correct would fix this error)
and she'll find my text I sent 11:43pm.
And by the time I make Albuquerque she'll have texted me 16 times from her desk and emailed me,
she'll probably call me again and get message bank "the person is unavailable".
And by the time I make Oklahoma, someone will have tweeted that they saw me in the street, she'll have located me on her smart phone and have snapchatted me several times.
She'll be lying in bed with her laptop, changing her facebook relationship status and blogging about our break up
"I just didn't know, he would really go"




Ahh, simpler times when a man could just walk out on a woman. Wiki also tells me Jimmy and Susan remained friends after this. :)



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