This Is The Greatest Song Of All Time, According To Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan on stage with leather jacket beaded necklace and guitar

Larry Hulst/Getty Images

Bob Dylan is an icon of the 20th century. He is perhaps the world's most celebrated songwriter, and the only one to win the Nobel Prize in literature, which he received in 2016. And as well as writing songs himself, he is no slouch when it comes to his knowledge and understanding of popular music and its rich history. This was evident in the 2000s, when he spent three years curating three seasons of "Theme Time Radio Hour." The radio show highlighted his favorite songs from across the decades, focusing on a particular theme in each episode (for example "Telephone" or the word "Hello"). In 2022, he published "The Philosophy of Modern Song," in which he analysed 66 songs to uncover what he believed made the tunes tick.

But neither the radio show nor the book feature what Bob Dylan has claimed is the "best song ever written": "Wichita Lineman." Written by songwriter Jimmy Webb, country star Glen Campbell made it into a No. 3 U.S. Billboard hit in 1968. Though it didn't top the charts, the song has remained a classic down the decades. Such continued interest is demonstrated by the 2019 release of journalist and author Dylan Jones' "The Wichita Lineman: Searching in the Sun for the World's Greatest Unfinished Song," where Bob Dylan's quote first appeared on its cover.

The creation of Glen Campbell's Wichita Lineman

Songwriter Jimmy Webb was at the peak of his powers in the late 1960s. In 1967, at the age of just 21, he was awarded the Grammy Award for song of the year for "Up, Up and Away." It was a huge hit for soul-pop group the 5th Dimension and created another classic in the heart-wrenching break-up song "MacArthur Park." His songs were incredibly striking, memorable, and it seemed he could use his imagination to write a song about anything.

That happened in the case of "Wichita Lineman." The inspiration for the song reportedly came to Webb when he was driving through the state in question on a simmering hot summer's day, heading down a seemingly deserted road. As he told Blender in 2001 (via The Financial Times), he was in an area that was "real flat and remote, almost surreal in its boundless horizons and infinite distances." Eventually, he encountered a man hanging in from a telephone, seemingly the only living person around for miles.

The man was a lineman, whose lonely job was to ascend telephone poles along the side of the road and test if the lines were in order. For Webb, the scene raised questions about human loneliness: How much of the man's mind was consumed by work, and how much by his imagined relationship with a partner far away? When Webb took his first version of "Wichita Lineman" to Glen Campbell's producer, Al De Lory, the writer was convinced the song required more lyrics. But De Lory thought it was perfect, giving us the sparse arrangement that gives the song so much of its power.

The legacy of Wichita Lineman

As well as hitting No. 3 on the Hot 100 chart in the U.S., "Wichita Lineman" went to the top spot in Canada and hit a respectable No. 7 in the United Kingdom. The single also helped propel Glen Campbell's studio album of the same name to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart — a record that eventually went double platinum.

But as Bob Dylan's quote shows, the legacy of "Wichita Lineman" goes far beyond its chart performance. Though Dylan himself has never released an official cover version of "Wichita Lineman" or played it live, the song's popularity among musicians saw it covered numerous times in the decades that followed. Acts as diverse as Sérgio Mendes and Brasil '66, Kool & the Gang, Urge Overkill, and Guns N' Roses all took their shot at recording the song as their own.

"Wichita Lineman" has since been honored with several accolades marking it as one of the defining songs in modern popular music. The song has been inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame alongside another Webb-Campbell collaboration, "By The Time I Get To Phoenix." Campbell's version of "Wichita Lineman," which was backed by the legendary Wrecking Crew band, has also been inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. "I'm humbled and, at the same time for Glen, I am extremely proud," Jimmy Webb said in 2020. "I wish there was someway I could reach him to say, 'Glen, you know they're doing this. They are putting our music [on] a mountain — it will be preserved for all time."

Here's Who Inherited Dan Broderick's Fortune After His Murder

Ilina93/Shutterstock

In the 1980s, Elisabeth "Betty" Broderick and her husband Dan Broderick had been going through the divorce from hell (via The New York Times). After more than a decade of marriage, the California couple began having marital problems around 1982 (via Oprah Daily).

Dan Broderick owned a legal firm, and he began having an affair with his legal assistant, Linda Kolkena. Suspecting he was cheating, Betty tried to get revenge for years — constantly. She vandalized Broderick's home with spray paint and ruined his bedding with a Boston cream pie. When Broderick took custody of their kids, Betty retaliated by driving her car into his residence. She left him scathing voice mails, shattered a mirror, and hurled a bottle of wine into a window.

The dramatic end to their 16-year marriage finally came in September 1985, when Broderick filed for divorce from Betty (via Oprah Daily). After being jailed three times and spending time in a mental hospital for her repeated attacks on Broderick, Betty's rage got the best of her on November 5, 1989 (via The New York Times). She woke up that morning and started reading newspaper articles that aired out her private divorce proceedings. Panicked and furious, she drove to Broderick's house.

He took one of his daughter's out of his will

On November 5, 1989, Betty Broderick entered her former husband's home (per The San Diego Union-Tribune). She claimed she only wanted to talk to him. But she was carrying a .38 caliber gun, and within minutes, she murdered Dan Broderick and his new wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, as they slept in bed. The Los Angeles Times reports that Betty called her daughter Lee around 7:20 a.m. to confess that she'd shot her ex five times. She apparently wanted to end her own life too, but ran out of bullets and began to panic. Per The San Diego Union-Tribune, she turned herself in to police by the end of the day.

So what did Dan Broderick leave behind for his next of kin? According to Distractify, in 1986, the year after he filed for divorce from Betty, Dan Broderick created a will and testament to specify where his possessions should go after his death. He made one intriguing change in August 1988 — he completely omitted one of his children from the will. He added the sentence (via Distractify), "I specifically make no provision in this will for my daughter, Lee Gordon Broderick." When questioned about it, Lee said her dad told her in previous years that he would remove her from the will, but she didn't think he would actually go through with it.

His three other children were named in the will

Leonardo da/Shutterstock

No one is quite sure why Dan Broderick decided to remove his daughter from the will, but some people speculate that it was a power move to try and get back at Betty, since Lee Gordon Broderick was supportive of her during the divorce proceedings (via Distractify). However, Broderick's three other children — Kimberly, Daniel IV, and Rhett Broderick — were named in the will, according to Distractify.

Dan Broderick was quite wealthy — he took his family on numerous vacations every year, and he had bought a brand new mansion to live in with Linda. At his home in Coral Reef, California, he had owned multiple cars. Per the Los Angeles Times, Dan paid Betty $16,000 per month, or nearly $200,000 per year, when he was making a seven-figure salary. According to Heavy, Betty was not happy with her alimony payments — she requested $30,000 per month, while Broderick insisted she should receive just $7,316 monthly.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Betty was very focused on money during the divorce proceedings. Although she wanted custody of the four kids, she focused on the money issues first and foremost. She was reportedly a "compulsive shopper" and once bought a $40,000 coat.

Dan's net worth grew after he died

Chatham172/Shutterstock

Rhett and Daniel IV Broderick were both minors when their father died, while Kimberly and Lee were legal adults (via Heavy). Dan Broderick's will specified that when each child turned 25 (save for Lee), they would be entitled to half of their inheritance. When they turned 30, they would receive the second half.

Dan Broderick's net worth has actually grown significantly since his death (per Distractify). According to the outlet, it was estimated at around $60,000 in 1989 when he died, but as his assets were sold, his net worth increased to $1.6 million. The Los Angeles Times reports that one month before Broderick's murder, he took out a $2 million life insurance policy, so his children would receive an additional $250,000 each. Linda would have received a $1 million payout if she had survived the tragic attack.

Betty Broderick is now in prison for 32 years to life, per Us Weekly. She can request parole again in 2032, but she has been denied three times before.