The Wichita Lineman by Dylan Jones

Author:Dylan Jones [Jones, Dylan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571353422
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2019-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

5: THE LINEMAN’S AFTERLIFE

I believe that all roads lead to the same place, and that is wherever all roads lead to.

WILLIE NELSON

There are hundreds of versions of ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’, possibly even thousands, and it has become as much of a classic as ‘My Way’, ‘Yesterday’ or ‘Hallelujah’. One of the most disturbing cover versions is by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, which John Peel once said was the best interpretation, by some considerable distance. The most elaborate version, however, is by Isaac Hayes, who turned the song into something of a Brobdingnagian epic. By deliberately fusing soap opera and ghetto chic, in the late sixties and early seventies Hayes created his own highly rhythmic, symphonic environment, and in this way was as influential as Sly Stone. Both men moved away from R&B and into traditionally white areas: Stone into rock, Hayes into the orchestral world of Burt Bacharach, Carole King and Jimmy Webb.

Of course, one wonders why. Cover versions are often redundant, and rarely remembered. Some can be little more than cheap photocopies, with someone hitherto unknown (or, maybe, far too well known) colouring in the original and trying not to go outside the lines. Some can be transformative, but often they are nothing but corruptions of your favourite memories (I would imagine if you had formative experiences with, or fond memories of, New Order’s ‘True Faith’, you would probably think George Michael’s cover is pointless; ditto Robbie Williams’s live version of Blur’s ‘Song 2’ or Simple Minds’ frankly confusing version of Prince’s ‘Sign o’ the Times’). Others are just plain perverse: does anyone really want to hear William Shatner cover Pulp’s ‘Common People’?

Another son of a sharecropper (this time from Memphis), Isaac Hayes joined Stax Records in 1964, aged twenty-two, eventually writing, arranging and producing dozens of hits for Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas and Johnnie Taylor (‘Hold On, I’m Coming’, ‘Soul Man’, ‘B-A-B-Y’, etc.). It was his 1969 solo LP Hot Buttered Soul, though, which really brought him personal acclaim, and at the time it was cited as the most important black album since James Brown’s Live at the Apollo, seven years earlier. Hot included an eighteen-minute version of ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix’ and an elaborate reworking of Bacharach’s ‘Walk On By’, Hayes draping white-bread orchestral arrangements around his seemingly interminable monologues, almost as though he was experimenting with various convoluted seduction techniques. With his lush raps and funereal beats, Hayes gave you the impression he could turn a thirty-second hairspray commercial into a three-hour symphony, complete with several different movements and at least a dozen costume changes. He had a dark-brown crooner’s voice which perfectly suited this type of rich ballad, and all the others which came in its wake: ‘It’s Too Late’, ‘Windows of the World’, ‘The Look of Love’, ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’, etc. He was a remarkable arranger, and the bulk of his 1971 LP Shaft – in which he reached critical mass while winning two Grammys and an Oscar – is almost worthy of Bernard Herrmann.

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