Galveston by levipatrick

levipatrick - Galveston

levipatrick

Jun 13, 2025 02:56pm

<img src="https://www.songfacts.com/img-artalbums-145-02cb5d16c3f7d53d6339406ecbf1c446.png"> Album: Galveston (1969) This was written by songwriter Jimmy Webb, who also wrote Campbell's hits "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Wichita Lineman." Webb also wrote "MacArthur Park," which was a hit for both Richard Harris and Donna Summer, and "Up-Up and Away," which was recorded by The 5th Dimension. When we spoke with Jimmy Webb in 2011, he said: "Glen was very, very good at commercializing my songs. He could come up with great intros and great solos, great breaks, and he wrote perfect strings, because he wrote very little. It was a minimalist approach, and it just left Glen out there with the song and the guitar. I tended to write a little bit more as an arranger, and probably too much. So, I could have done better to have stayed out of Glen's way, I think." Galveston is a city on the coast of Texas that attracts lots of hurricanes. Webb was on a beach in Galveston when he wrote the song. He made up the story about a scared soldier heading off to war and the girl he left behind in his hometown. Most songwriters never find themselves in places like Galveston or Wichita, but Webb found inspiration in the people he encountered in these places. The Vietnam War was going on when Campbell released this. It was considered an antiwar song, but Webb wasn't fond of that label. The songwriter told Sound Observations in 2013: "If there was a statement, and obviously I was saying something, I prefer to say it wasn't antiwar – that it was more about an individual getting involved in a war and realizing that he'd rather be somewhere else." The Hawaiian singer Don Ho was the first to record this song, releasing it as the B-side of his single "Has Anybody Lost A Love?" in 1968. Ho recalled that when he appeared on Campbell's show The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour in 1969, he gave Campbell a copy of the single and told him, "I didn't have any luck with this, maybe you will." Little Richard, who speaks his mind and doesn't hand out praise lightly, said of this song: "When Glen Campbell says one word - 'Galveston' - it shakes me up. It takes me, man, that's the whole soul of it right there."