“By the time I get to Phoenix, she’ll be rising.” Glen Campbell’s lyrics were challenged by those who knew the geography of the United States and knew the distances involved, but who cared for the prosaic realities? Glen Campbell made a journey from an unhappy relationship into a poetic progress, “By the time I get to Albuquerque she’ll be working . . . By the time I make Oklahoma she’ll be sleeping.”

Glen Campbell helped shape a picture of America that was formed in childhood days, American cities always had a poetry of their own. They were the places from the series on our black and white television; thousands of miles apart, they became an amalgam called “America” in our minds. In fact, America had no television existence outside of the cities. Rural life was an undiscovered country; the only time anything not urban appeared was in cowboy films, and they were very predictable. Rural life could have been presented in any way that anyone wanted and, we would have been none the wiser.

The television images were reinforced by the songs. Americans sang about where they lived; these were not just folk songs, not just pub songs, these were major hits. Massachusetts, California, New York, West Virginia – place after place took on a romantic hue.

Perhaps a journey from Arizona, across New Mexico, to Oklahoma, had something romantic about it, the big skies, the open roads, but what about electric cables? Where else in the world would anyone sing about electric cables? Glen Campbell made the most mundane of work into something lyrical:

I am a lineman for the county and I drive the main road
Searchin’ in the sun for another overload
I hear you singin’ in the wire, I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line.

I know I need a small vacation but it don’t look like rain
And if it snows that stretch down south won’t ever stand the strain
And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line.

What chance would there be of someone in Europe singing about driving around checking power lines having a hit?

Glenn Campbell’s voice and lyrics had the power to imbue places and experienced with a quality that captured the imagination of listeners around the world.

May he find himself once more on the open road with the sun shining, country music playing on the radio in his truck – and a loved one waiting at the end of the journey.