So, did he leave or didn't he?

He left.

He already left. He’s just describing her likely reactions to finding the note.

How do you explain “the note I left hanging on her door”? It’s not “the note I shall have left hanging …”.

Yes, parts of the song are in the future: by the time the writer gets to various cities that he will pass through. But he left the note hanging on her door. That’s done.

He left.

He’s just imagining the things he’s going to do. He’s imagining that (if) he left the note on her door, and imagining her reaction: ” She’ll laugh when she reads the part that says I’m leavin’, ‘Cause I’ve left that girl so many times before.” I think he’s planning it all out, and anticipating her reactions if he actually follows through this time.

I’d say he’s gone. She can post the ad on Craigslist to sell his stuff, and find a M4W.

You don’t even know, @LuckyGuy!

It does not say IF he left a note. It says the note he left hanging.
I wonder how @luckyguy knows about the Craiglist M4W section?

He’s reflecting on how he’s tried to leave many times before, and she didn’t ever believe he would actually leave her for real. He’s imagining her finding his note and thinking that he would again fail to carry through on his threat. But this time, it’s real and “She just didn’t know I would really go”.

Yeah, he left. She doesn’t know yet, but he left – and this time, for real.

If he was thinking about leaving, I think it should be,

“By the time I’d get to Phoenix she’d be rising
She’d find the note I left hangin’ on her door
She’d laugh when she reads the part that says I’m leavin’
‘Cause I’ve left that girl so many times before
By the time I’d make Albuquerque she’d be working
She’d probably stop at lunch and give me a call
But she’d just hear that phone keep on ringin’
Off the wall, that’s all
By the time I’d make Oklahoma she’d be sleepin’
She’d turn softly and call my name out low
And she’d cry just to think I’d really leave her
Tho’ time and time I try to tell her so
She just didn’t know whether I would really go”

Oh yeah, he left.

How did your parents ever convince you that he hadn’t?

Maybe, because you were sad, your parents were simply trying to make you feel better.

He chose one of the fifty ways to leave your lover.

I agree, he left—he’s in transit right now, presumably driving eastward from somewhere along the west side of the US. As he’s not yet gotten to Phoenix yet, he’s only just begun the drive. He hasn’t gotten far on the journey, but he’s still gone… though if we’re getting technical, perhaps it’s neither. Perhaps he’s leaving?

Like others have said, he already “left” the note. If it was all something he planned to do, I’d phrase it like: “She’ll find the note I leave on her door.”

It’d be more clearly hypothetical if whole song used “would” ... like @longgone has done!

Another thought. Grammatically he’s definitely in transit. But he does say her initial reaction would be to laugh, since he’s “left that girl so many times before” and never meant it/followed through. So I could see how this time is just like many times before; eventually he’s going to turn back around—probably never even reaching Phoenix. He’s just imagining, what it would be like if he actually left this time…

Okay now I’m reading it both ways!

He left her ass. She didn’t know I would really go.” is not future tense, it is past tense speculative. Like “If I were a rich man…” As in she didn’t know that he would do something if she kept up her bullshit. When a person has killed himself, the doubetrs say “He said he would lots of times but I never thought he would go through with it.” It is obviously something that has already happened, and the person is stating about their past tense disbelief.
He left and is kind of having schadenfreude about all the stages she is going to go through until she figures out that he’s totally gone this time. By then he’ll be long gone and talking up some skank in Boston, or wherever. Ok, maybe not all of that, but he is gone.

And we can always ask the guy who wrote the song;
Background and writing[edit]
The inspiration for “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” originated in Webb’s breakup with Susan Horton. They remained friends after her marriage to Bobby Ronstadt, a cousin of singer Linda Ronstadt. The relationship itself, which peaked in mid-1965, was also the primary influence for “MacArthur Park”, another Webb composition.[5]
Webb called the song a “succinct tale” with an “O. Henry-esque twist at the end, which consists merely of the guy saying, ‘She didn’t really think that I would go,’ but he did.”

Although the protagonist in the song left his lover, Webb did not leave Horton.[6]

I isolated the definitive line so no one could miss it. He left

He left, but I disagree with @Jak, I think it was a wrench for him to go, not something that would cause him to feel that heady sense of schadenfreude.

@Adagio, @Jak Yeah, I’m surprised to hear “if she kept up her bullshit”. I always thought of this song as glorifying the wandering, philandering male. The guy who lives for the road, can’t be tied down for too long. Like, he warned her about the type of guy he was, and she thought she could change him. That kind of thing. It was the 60s.

Ok, let me confess that I only listened to/read the last line of the song, so I filled in the blanks as to why he left and made some assumptions based on others statements about having tried to leave before and not following through. He could be a philanderer. And I bow to @Adagio for taking a different view of the writer’s motivations. Schadenfreude was too strong a word, and again, I had based my theory on the idea that he had had a kind of “I just can’t quit you” dynamic going on, like a co dependant in a one sided relationship. I need to go to bed.

I think your parents just didn’t have the heart to break it to you.

I imagine the prequel. They were a great couple for a while, but eventually they both got into their own interests. She was content to just have him at home. She thought that was love. He wanted a little passion (and sex) now and then. He thought that was love. They talked about it many times. It would get better for a time but would inevitably drift off to the old routine. He would go to bed frustrated and sad. Eventually he just gave up and pretended it didn’t matter. He pretended life was fine. He pretended… until he realized this was his only life and he was responsible for his own happiness.
So he left.
Both of them are happier now.

Just started singing it to myself and almost crying. It is a sad song!

Oh God. After 50 years I’m all sad again. :’(. I think you’re right…they just wanted me to feel better. I was just a little kid.

I never really appreciated Glen Campbell the way I do now. All of his songs were very, very good, and he sang them suburbly. But to my way of thinking, back then, they were old fashioned. Odd, considering I can tell you all the words to all of his popular songs, and I’d sing along with such feeling, the feeling that he projected. But…I was a kid. I didn’t know that was a gift of an artist. He was just an old guy, singing “dumb” songs. Gimme The Beatles.

Gentle on my Mind.

@Dutchess_III I thought he sang country songs not “suburbly.” :-)

I prefer the Wichita Lineman, but this is a great Glenn Campbell song.
He probably left, but he is mostly just musing on her reaction to his plan to leave, so there’s no telling. The fact that Jimmie Webb didn’t leave leaves doubt in my mind.

OK, so he left the note, and he DID leave, but for all we know he got 4 blocks away and came back.
So, I can be happy again!

And he continued to pretend he was satisfied and happy, while silently begging for her to touch him.

@LuckyGuy Why do you keep insisting that she was refusing to have sex with him? That’s a weird reading of this song.

^ Exactly, she could have been wanting intimacy and sex more and him withholding. Or there were other issues entirely.

I’ve been meaning to ask why @LuckyGuy was reading this song in this way. I’m glad it’s not just me who’s scratching their head! I was going to go back and listen to it again before commenting. I’ve never read this song as this woman refusing to have sex with him.

I’ve just listened again, and I read this as being a story about how we can take our relationships for granted and be blind to how our partner is really feeling. He says he’d told her he was unhappy, but she wouldn’t accept it. She was in denial about his feelings. She could never believe he would actually leave her.

In my mind he still loves and cares about her. He obviously cares enough to think where she will be and what she is doing throughout the day. He cared enough to leave a note. But, he left anyway. Something in their relationship made him so unhappy he had to leave.
And it was probably not her cooking.

She was ok with the way things were. He was not. “She never thought I’d really go.”

Perhaps she was a nag? Perhaps he’d just fallen out of love with her? Perhaps he felt their relationship was tired and she was more of a friend than a lover? Perhaps the spark had just gone. It could have been a million things. It’s interesting that as a man, your thought is she wasn’t putting out!

To be honest, I’ve never thought of the song as describing a relationship that is having normal, everyday problems (e.g. the sex or the nagging). It sounds to me like he is just a wanderer, and he stayed far longer than he’d meant to with this woman, who thought she could change him into someone who could sit still for a longterm relationship. People who are annoyed at being told to take out the trash don’t drive several states away when they decide to break up. To me, it sounds like the travelling is the main drive for his leaving.

It’s so interesting how differently we all interpret one song. I didn’t get the wanderer either. Like @LuckyGuy, I feel he loves her. I suspect he just isn’t ‘in love’ with her now. I agree on the nagging point. I don’t believe it was that either. I do think he’s just lost that loving feeling, but he’s allowed his desire to not hurt her to keep him there.

There were just so many songs in this category in the 60s and 70s, where a man’s first love is the open road. It’s a familiar refrain.

@LuckyGuy: Perhaps she was earning more money than he was and his ego couldn’t handle it. Perhaps he a had a girlfriend in an Eastern State who was pregnant and demanding he be with her (taking the time frame of the song into consideration). Maybe they had four daughters and he wanted to keep trying for a son.

Maybe she wanted to eat popcorn in the movies. ;-)

There are so many possibilities. But if I had to bet I’m putting my money on the reason I stated.
@canidmajor This song was before the internet and streaming. People either watched TV or went to the movies frequently . Had there been irreconcilable popcorn consumption differences they would not have been living together for so long. They worked through that significant issue during their early years as a couple. :-)

Yes, he left. It’s obvious in the overnight spam version:

She look to morning sun.
I go to resurrection bird.
Note say I leave.
She laugh.
Many time I say to leave.
Long time not good.
I leave.
She cry now.

All my base are belong to me again.

Maybe the song is really a Rorschach test? What a fun question @Dutchess_III !

@Espiritus_Corvus Sounds like someone was spamming the Bob Marley version of the song.

@janbb “Maybe the song is really a Rorschach test?”

It certainly has turned out that way!

I had a feeling it would be, @janbb!

I felt like @LuckyGuy was being tongue in cheek with his answers. I was laughing, anyway. I also thought, “Leave it to a guy to think that lack of sex was at the bottom of such heartbreak.”

To me, it was just an on-going unhappiness. I attribute emotional reasons, rather than physical reasons.

The line that says, “She’ll laugh when she reads the part that says I’m leavin’...” to me implies a rather heartless, perhaps cold person. I could understand shaking your head, rolling your eyes…but to laugh?

There was something really wrong in the relationship, but she just wouldn’t listen.

What would our take on it be if it was a woman leaving her man?

@Dutchess_III “What would our take on it be if it was a woman leaving her man?”

I don’t know, but then it might depend who was performing.

@dappled_leaves And to take things in a slightly different direction, for Downton Abbey fans, the video after the one you posted is a young Maggie Smith singing with Carol. Funny to see Lady Violet as a young woman again.

@janbb I was just listening to a podcast interview with Maggie Smith the other day – I think it was on Fresh Air – and they played clips from some of her earlier work. Everyone always plays something from The Prime of Miss Jane Brodie, but they also included a scene from California Suite, which I haven’t seen in YEARS. She was so great in that.

She was something, wasn’t she? My kids loved her in Harry Potter, but were stunned and wowed by her in the 60s.

I saw The Lady in the Van last week. She was just wonderful.

Obviously I am making it all up. There is not enough info in the song. That is the image that comes to my mind though. Everyone will have a different one . I happen to think all Rorschach pictures look like labia. Is that wrong?
Please note there is a big difference between “Putting out” and “making love”. Also note in my scenario he never asked, coerced, or forced her. He was a perfect gentleman all the time. He loved her but missed and wanted the affection she was happy to live without. They discussed it “so many times before” to no avail.
That night, after yet another cold shower, he decided enough was enough. That was the day he took responsibility for his own happiness. He cashed out his 401k, got in his Chevy Malibu and headed out.

@Earthbound_Misfit Going to it tomorrow.

@LuckyGuy Well, you are not alone. We all have back stories for this song that are based on very little evidence. I think none of us make as big a stretch as this guy, though.

@LuckyGuy What a wonderful imagination you have! And you maka me laugh! Ok….let’s turn it around. Let’s say it’s the woman leaving. I’ll rewrite the song for you. It will help put you in the proper frame of mind:

By the time I get to Phoenix he’ll be rising
He’ll find the note I left hangin’ on his door
He’ll laugh when he reads the part that says I’m leavin’
‘Cause I’ve left that man so many times before

By the time I make Albuquerque he’ll be working
He’ll probably stop at lunch and give me a call
But he’ll just hear that phone keep on ringin’
Off the wall, that’s all

By the time I make Oklahoma he’ll be sleepin’
He’ll turn softly and call my name out low
And he’ll cry just to think I’d really leave him
Tho’ time and time I try to tell him so
He just didn’t know I would really go

So, WHY did SHE leave?

He left his towel on the bathroom floor just one too many times.

@Earthbound_Misfit Nope – it was the seat up with pee on the rim.

“He’ll probably stop at lunch and give me a call”

Oh, right. That’s so true to life.

@CWOTUS
See? He covered his disappointment and dissatisfaction so well she still expected a call.
And that was before cell phones, and Bluetooth, hands-free head sets when a call during lunch actually meant something.

Have men ever called their girlfriends during lunch hour? That can’t be a thing that actually happens.

not after the first flush of lus…love is past.

My son still calls his wife during lunch. She’s pregnant now so maybe those days are numbered.

Exceptional, once again.

Hmmm. I just asked my husband why he doesn’t call me at lunchtime. He said “because you never have your phone turned on and if I do call you, you’re usually in “the zone” and you get cranky because I’ve disturbed you for a chat”. Fair cop!

@Earthbound_Misfit Ha, I’d be the same. At the very least, let’s be glad that this 60s girlfriend was calling him from work herself.

@dappled_leaves, well that was his response too. He said he just waits for me to call him because then I have the time and am in the right headspace to talk to him! It’s totally true.