Dylan Jones - The Wichita Lineman

Dylan Jones is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling biography David Bowie: A Life and the New York Times bestseller Jim Morrison: Dark Star. He is the multi-award-winning Editor-In-Chief of GQ and a former columnist for the Guardian, the Observer and the Independent. On 1 August Faber publish Dylan Jones’s book, The Wichita Lineman: Searching in the Sun for the World’s Greatest Unfinished Song.

Written in 1968, ‘Wichita Lineman’ is the first existential country song, a heartbreaking torch ballad still celebrated for its mercurial songwriting genius fifty years on.

Part biography, part work of musicological archaeology, The Wichita Lineman opens a window on to America in the late-twentieth century through the prism of a song that has been covered by myriad artists in the intervening decades.

Mixing close-listening, interviews and travelogue, the revered Dylan Jones explores the legacy of a record that has entertained and haunted millions for over half a century.