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00:01 The start's slow. I hear one chord on an organ, one note on a bass, an occasional hi hat, and Isaac Hayes talking. It’s about love, he says.
01:05 I hear him introducing the song he’s about to do – it’s By The Time I Get to Phoenix. It’s a deep tune, he declares, there’s a deep meaning about the power of love in this song. He wants to do the song his own way, his own soulful way. He requests my patience and imagination. I tentatively submit, not knowing what to expect. I look at how long the song is – it’s almost 19 minutes. My patience will definitely be tested.
2:29 The story begins. A sad tale of falling in love, and that precious love going all wrong. As he narrates he injects his melodramatic two cents on an otherwise straightforward song. He crafts a story, and lets you in on what it feels like to love a woman so badly, to tolerate all her wrongs. Blood, sweat and tears. Give her every cent and dime. She takes it for granted, living a pampered life. Blind love, he says, it hurts. I imagine what that feels like.
5:00 The wife’s infidelity. The man’s fortitude. I get invested into this plot of man doing everything for a woman who doesn’t care about his efforts at all. He cries as he packs his bag after seeing her in bed with another man. She begs for forgiveness, promises to change. He comes back. Hayes says that after that nothing changes. The man keeps leaving, but the power of love, it pulls him time and time again to her. I’m amazed at the man. I also want to smack him on the head and tell him to leave her.
6:55 The man finally leaves. The last straw is the eighth straw. I am shocked and appalled that the man even got that far. Eighth time. I can only imagine how much blind love it took to stay and bear the seven times.
8:38 He croons this country classic in his deep baritone. The backup band – fellow soulmen The Mar-Keys -- enters slow and bittersweet. The drum beat changes. Strings come in, and the story he told becomes a song. It is about distance, about habit, about pain; about the man going further into the country, traveling from Phoenix to Oklahoma, further from his wife. The wife does not believe that the man is leaving despite finding the man’s note telling her he’s left. Her day goes on. Habits ensue. Going to work. Phoning him at lunch. She realizes late into the night that the man might really have left her. She sobs in disbelief.
11:34 The lyrics end – ad libs begin, intense laments and apologies. The band follows suit, horns blaring, keyboards banging. I hear the organ groan. This is the heartbroken man pleading, struck with grief and crazy with sadness. I can’t help but feel the brotha’s pained heart. He states the reasons why he left. No descriptions here, just feelings, but I could imagine it. Rain on his windshield, tears in his eyes. Corners of his mouth turned down, eyes downcast, inconsolable. An arm resting on the wheel, fingers twisting off a wedding band. Goodbyes, I guess, are always agony.
16:16 The song mellows down. Hayes consoles, and lets go. He drifts off the song. The band is left to tinker around a bit, giving me time to drift off the song as well.
18:40 The song ends. Almost 19 minutes. That’s practically the length of an average band EP nowadays. Another song from the album Hot Buttered Soul, which is where this song came from, is 12 minutes. Another one goes up to almost 10 minutes. But I have no problems with that. Hayes has a power - his voice compels you to listen, to feel, to get you to that place where he is. If that isn’t the essence of soul, then I don’t know what the hell soul is. I guess when short and sweet just don’t cut it, grand and soulful might just be the thing. Or maybe because if you get cheated on eight times, it takes a song 19 minutes to explain how damn masochistic the experience is.
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