Talk:By the Time I Get to Phoenix

Analysis can sometimes destroy the beauty that covers the truth.
In response to: How "true" is the journey?

A flight from LA to OKC could take about ten hours with layovers in Phoenix and Albuquerque. o_O Gravastar (talk) 03:07, 5 January 2008 (UTC)


 * This article seems to be POV, an originally written work, and does not cite any third party references. Why don't you ask Mr. Webb what he meant, or find some interviews where he talks about the song? Most likely if he was driving, he would drive to Elk City, not Felt. Poorly written. 4.240.201.178 (talk) 06:35, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I removed the whole section. It's entirely speculative. But if people want to speculate, he could have been flying a Cessna or riding a high-end motorcycle at very high speed. Doesn't matter: it doesn't belong in an encyclopedia.Spoonkymonkey (talk) 21:17, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I edited it back in, and some clown named Scott removed it and called it "absurd research." Yeah, well, if the trip described in the song is doable within a day, what the @#!! is so absurd about it? Bruce the Terrible (talk) 05:25, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

LA to Phoenix about 6 hrs so leaving at midnight gets to Phoenix at 6am, Plausible The next leg to Albuquerque takes about 6hrs at 70mph. Could be in Albuquerque by noon. Not there by the time she reaches work at 8 or 9 Another 8 to 10 hrs to Oklahoma, so she'll be sleeping. With a little poetic license it seems to be plausible. ^^^^ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drjimepi (talk • contribs) 02:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Actually he doesn't say that by the time [he] make[s] Albuquerque she'll start working, but she'll be working, probably has been doing so for a few hours. So this may be about noon (or even after her lunch break)…
 * And late in the evening, when he reaches Oklahoma, she'll be sleeping. Again: she may have been sleeping for a few hours already (and turn softly […]).
 * So it's not too unlikely altogether, is it? —Jochen64 (talk) 19:28, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you, my sentiments exactly. Particular if you reach Cimarron County, Oklahoma's westernmost county, by day's end. Bruce the Terrible (talk) 05:27, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

He isn't leaving
The article says "the protagonist in the song left his lover". No he didn't. The title says he hasn't gotten to Phoenix yet. It doesn't even say he has started, and the rest of the song makes it very unlikely that he has started (presumably from somewhere west of Phoenix, because Phoenix to Albuquerque to Oklahoma is eastward.) The protagonist thinks he is leaving, but he also says he has "left" that girl so many times before, and gives no reason why this time will be any different. He will change his mind again. It also says that the woman will laugh when she reads that he is leaving, even after he has taken the trouble to write a note. So if the woman thinks actually leaving isn't just unlikely but laughable, we shouldn't believe it either. His actually leaving is only remotely imaginable, and surely shouldn't be stated as a fact. Art LaPella (talk) 17:35, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It is not up to any person's interpretation of the future. In the song he left and is travelling eastward without any mention of a return or that it never happened. If the protagonist returns (as he has many times before) it is not mentioned in the song. Although Webb himself never went away, it was his dream to do so.-- ☾Loriendrew☽  ☏(ring-ring)  15:35, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
 * If we can't interpret the future, then all we know is "By the time I get to Phoenix ...". We don't know that he left yet, and we don't know that he will leave. We know only what he expects. To say that he left is to interpret his intention and say that he probably did it. That interpretation would only be OK if we could be fairly sure that the prediction will actually happen, as if it were an announcement of tomorrow's football game. In this case, the prediction is far from certain. Art LaPella (talk) 16:54, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Art LaPella (talk) 21:46, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Glen Campbell release date
The current stated release date of October 23, 1967 is too late, since the single was reviewed in the October 7 issue of Billboard, page 12. That issue was published September 30. It was listed as a breakout single in the October 14 issue of Billboard, page 58. So the single was released in September 1967. I don't have a specific cite stating that release month, so I'm not going to bother changing it - I've learned it will just get changed back. PatConolly (talk) 02:00, 1 August 2021 (UTC)