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Wichita Lineman · Six Degrees of Dylan - Audio Episodes

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Colin McGady and I have a theory.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone changed what a popular song could be and every rock
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: and pop song since can be connected back to it.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is a journey through musical evolution, following the influences,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: shared ideas and unexpected encounters that connect one record to another.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Six songs, five connections, one destination.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Six Degrees of Dylan.
• 0:26
  [music]
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Before we begin, a quick listening note.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: For licensing reasons, the songs themselves aren't included in this episode.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find today's Spotify playlist linked in the postnotes.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'll let you know when to pause and listen,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: and point you towards particular moments in each song.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Take your time, then come back when you're ready to follow the next connection.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy! This morning, we begin with a man at work.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Glen Campbell's Wichita Lineman gives an ordinary occupation an extraordinary interior life.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: The landscape feels enormous, but the feeling inside the voice is private.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Our six songs follow the people who carry a composition from one imagination into another.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Jimmy Webb, The Fifth Dimension, Laura Nairo, and two different versions of Blood,
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sweat and Tears.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Then, one musician opens the door back to Dylan.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is a listening argument, supported by real writing and recording connections.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: It does not make every artist a descendant of one record.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Webb wrote Wichita Lineman, and Aldolori produced Campbell's original 1968 performance.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: We hear that performance in the approved 2001 remaster.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the opening bass figure, the space around the vocal,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: and the guitar interlude where another verse might have been.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Pause here for Wichita Lineman, then come back.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: The first connection is the writer.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Jimmy Webb also wrote Up, Up and Away for the Fifth Dimension.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where Campbell makes distance sound lonely, this record makes departure feel like an invitation.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Five voices seem to lift together.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: The original 1967 single was produced by Johnny Rivers and Mark Gordon,
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: a credit printed in Billboard at the time.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: It reached number seven on the American Hot 100.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to listen past the statistic and into the construction.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Notice how the vocal blend sits above a rhythm section that keeps the flight steady.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: The arrangement is welcoming without being simple.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Comparing its buoyancy with Wichita Lineman's restraint is my interpretation.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Their shared author is a fact.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for the fifth dimension's original Up,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Up and Away and return for a turn from the interpreters towards another writer.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: The fifth dimension made major hits from Laura Nero's songs, including Stone Soul Picnic.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now we hear Nero herself.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is her original studio performance from Eli and the Thirteenth Confession in 1968.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: The song's writer is also the voice and pianist at its centre,
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: with Charlie Colello credited as producer and arranger.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I am not suggesting that Jimmy Webb supplied this song with its sound.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: The documented bridge is the fifth dimensions choice of Nero's material.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Hearing the author changes the vantage point.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Listen for the piano pushing against the vocal and for the small changes of emphasis
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: that make an invitation feel teasing, urgent and communal.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: A popular song can be polished by another group and still contain a different sort
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: of energy in its writer's own performance.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Pause here for Laura Nero's Stone Soul Picnic, then come back.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Nairo also wrote And When I Die.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Blood, Sweat and Tears give us the next interpretation,
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: with David Clayton Thomas singing at the front of their second album line-up.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: James William Guercio produced the recording.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: We are hearing the full studio album performance, rather than a shorter single edit.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Its instrumental spaces are part of the story.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the harmonica-led opening,
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: and the way the arrangement moves between contrasting rhythmic rooms.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Brass, piano and voice can make a large subject feel surprisingly physical.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: I hear an enjoyment of life inside the acknowledgement of death.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: That is a listening interpretation, not a claim about what every listener must feel.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: The single reached number two on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1969.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for And When I Die, keeping the full album version,
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: then return for a deliberate journey backwards inside the band's own history.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: The name stays the same, but the band changes.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: I Can't Quit Her comes from Blood, Sweat & Tears' earlier debut, Child is Father to the Man.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Al Cooper was the lead voice and a central arranger in that original group.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: He had left before the second album, so he is not the singer we have just heard.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Cooper and Irwin Levine wrote this next song.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: John Simon produced the original recording.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: The connection is documented band history, heard in reverse.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the insistence of the piano figure and the way the horns answer the vocal.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Attachment becomes a condition the ensemble seems unable to shake.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I hear a different emotional pressure from the theatrical changes in And When I Die.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Same group name, different people, and a different balance.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Pause here for the original Blood, Sweat & Tears recording of I Can't Quit Her,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: and return for Cooper at another keyboard.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Al Cooper played the organ on Bob Dylan's original Like a Rolling Stone.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is our final bridge.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: A musician on the fifth recording is present on the sixth.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Dylan wrote the song and Tom Wilson produced this 1965 studio performance.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the opening drum strike, then to the organ as the first chorus opens.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: The band's lift sits beside an address that keeps taking familiar protections away.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: We began with a worker trying to maintain a connection.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: We end with someone whose connections are failing.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: My watershed theory asks how much character,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: ambiguity and social observation a popular record can contain.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: It does not erase the independent achievements of Webb, Nairo,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Fifth Dimension or Blood, Sweat and Tears.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: The Root has brought their work into conversation with Dylan's.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Pause for the original Highway 61 revisited recording of Like a Rolling Stone,
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: then come back for a final thought.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: A telephone wire.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: An imagined flight.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: A gathering, a lifetime, an attachment that will not loosen,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: and a person suddenly on their own.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Six songs can hold a remarkable amount of human experience.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: The connections we followed were made by writers, interpreters and working musicians.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: The meanings between them remain open for us to hear.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is why I keep returning to this journey.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: The exact recordings and evidence are in the written edition,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: and the playlist is linked separately in the post notes when it is available.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Colin McGaddy.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to Six Degrees of Dylan.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.
• 7:18
  [music]