Country Music

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Country Music

Ben Haggard “If I Could Only Fly”

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Introducti0n

Listening to If I Could Only Fly feels like being wrapped in a bittersweet hug—comforting, yet achingly wistful. Written by Blaze Foley, this song is a masterpiece of vulnerability and longing, a ballad that captures the deep yearning for connection and freedom. It’s not just a song; it’s a conversation with the heart.

The lyrics are raw and beautifully poetic, as if Foley poured his soul into each line. It’s a story of someone aching to bridge a distance—whether it’s a physical separation, an emotional void, or the barriers life often puts in the way. There’s a universality in that yearning; we’ve all had moments when we wished we could rise above life’s struggles, fly to someone we love, or simply escape the heaviness of it all.

Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard’s later duet brought new life to the song, showcasing their unmatched ability to channel emotion. Haggard’s weathered voice, in particular, makes every word feel like a tear-stained letter written late at night. The song resonates deeply because it’s not just about longing—it’s about hope. Despite the sadness in its tone, it carries a glimmer of possibility, a belief that someday, the barriers will disappear, and love will bring us home.

What makes If I Could Only Fly so special is its simplicity. There’s no overproduction or unnecessary frills—just the purity of heartfelt lyrics and tender melodies. It’s the kind of song you play when words fail you, and only music can express what’s in your soul. It’s an anthem for dreamers, lovers, and anyone who’s ever been caught between where they are and where they long to be

Video

Lyrics

[Verse]
I almost felt you touchin’ me just now
I wish I knew which way to turn and go
I feel so good and then I feel so bad
And I wonder what I ought to do

[Chorus]
If I could only fly, if I could only fly
I’d bid this place goodbye to come and be with you
But I can hardly stand and I got nowhere to run
Another sinking sun and one more lonely night

[Verse]
The wind keeps blowin’ somewhere every day
Tell me things get better somewhere up the way
Just dismal thinking on a dismal day
The sad songs for us to bear

[Chorus]
If I could only fly, if I could only fly
I’d bid this place goodbye to come and be with you
But I can hardly stand and I got nowhere to run
Another sinking sun and one more lonely night

[Verse]
You know sometimes I write happy songs
Then some little thing goes wrong
And I wish they all could make you smile
Coming home soon and I want to stay
Maybe we can somehow get away
And I wish you could come with me when I go again

[Outro]
If I could only fly
If we could only fly
If you could only fly
There’d be no more lonely nights

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By the late 1990s, Levon Helm had survived the breakup of The Band, a fire that destroyed most of his home, and throat cancer that left the voice behind “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” barely able to rise above a whisper. Doctors diagnosed the cancer in 1996, and treatment damaged his vocal cords badly enough that singing became uncertain. Helm retreated to the property he had built in Woodstock, New York, where a large wooden barn already served as a recording studio. Instead of walking away from music, he began inviting musicians and small audiences into that room for informal late-night concerts that eventually became known as the Midnight Rambles. The gatherings started as much from necessity as inspiration. Helm needed income to keep the property and studio alive, but the barn also gave him something a large theater could not: a place where he could rebuild his voice slowly, surrounded by musicians who understood when he needed to step back and let the band carry a song. Over time, the whisper strengthened enough for him to sing again. In 2007, more than a decade after the cancer diagnosis, Helm recorded *Dirt Farmer* in the barn, drawing on songs he had learned as a child from his father in Arkansas. The album won a Grammy, followed by two more Grammy-winning projects, including *Ramble at the Ryman*. By then, the building that had once helped Helm survive financially had become a destination of its own, drawing musicians and fans from around the world. Just days before his death in 2012, he left his family a simple instruction about the Rambles he had built there: keep them going. The voice came back, but the larger comeback happened inside the barn itself, where Levon Helm turned the place he was trying to save into the place that saved the final chapter of his career.

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By the fall of 1982, Marty Robbins had already spent more than a decade living on borrowed time, and almost nobody around him could convince him to behave like a man with a damaged heart. His first major heart attack came in August 1969, followed five months later by bypass surgery at a time when the procedure was still considered experimental. The operation worked well enough that Robbins returned not only to recording and the Grand Ole Opry, but to stock-car racing, where he continued driving at speeds that would have frightened men with perfectly healthy hearts. He was back in NASCAR competition by October 1970 and, after briefly stepping away following several wrecks, returned again in 1977. The contradiction became part of his life. Doctors had repaired blocked arteries, yet Robbins kept filling his calendar with concerts, recording sessions and race weekends, treating recovery less like a warning than permission to keep moving. One of his physicians later remembered that before agreeing to the first bypass operation, Marty wanted reassurance that he would still be allowed to race, and within weeks of leaving the hospital he was already back doing physical work around home. By 1982, the gamble seemed to be paying off in ways few aging country singers experienced. “Some Memories Just Won’t Die” became a Top Ten hit in May, Billboard honored him with its Artist Resurgence Award in October, and that same month Robbins was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Nearly thirty years after his first national success, the man behind “El Paso” was not being treated as a relic; he was enjoying one of the strongest late-career stretches of his life. He was still racing as late as November. Then, on December 2, after performing in Cincinnati the previous night, Robbins woke at home with severe chest pain and walked into St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville. Tests showed that a massive heart attack had cut off blood flow to a major section of his heart, forcing surgeons into an emergency operation to repair earlier bypasses and add another. He survived the surgery, briefly smiled and squeezed a nurse’s hand, but the damage was too severe for his body to recover. For six days, his wife Marizona and their children remained at the hospital while doctors used a respirator, medications, dialysis and a balloon pump to keep his failing heart working. Robbins died on December 8, 1982, only eight weeks after entering the Country Music Hall of Fame and one month after his final NASCAR race. At his funeral in Nashville, roughly 1,500 people filled the chapel, adjoining rooms and hallways while Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, Charley Pride, Porter Wagoner, Brenda Lee and other friends gathered with ordinary fans who had traveled through the night to be there. Marty Robbins had spent thirteen years after his first heart attack doing nearly everything doctors might have expected him to surrender. He kept singing, kept racing, returned to the charts, and lived long enough to watch country music place his name in its Hall of Fame before the heart he had repeatedly pushed back into service finally stopped.

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When Townes Van Zandt divorced Jeanene Munsell in 1994, he walked away without the most valuable thing he had spent his life building: the rights to his own songs. Townes and Jeanene had met in Austin in December 1980 while he was still legally married to his second wife. They eventually married on March 14, 1983, only ten days before the birth of their son, William Vincent, and later had a daughter, Katie Belle. Their marriage lasted eleven years, through the same period when songs such as “Pancho and Lefty” and “If I Needed You” were becoming increasingly valuable in the hands of other artists. The divorce settlement went far beyond a house or a bank account. According to the decree reproduced in a major Van Zandt biography, Jeanene received Townes’s interest in 126 compositions, including the copyrights, renewals and the writer’s share of future royalties. The transfer covered songs spread across several publishing catalogs and left Townes relying largely on the money he could still earn by performing on the road. Friends found the arrangement difficult to understand because Townes had never treated money with much urgency. Susanna Clark later remembered that even after the separation he would return from touring and hand Jeanene whatever cash he had in his pockets, while others close to him believed he had surrendered far more than most songwriters ever would. Townes and Jeanene remained close after the divorce, and she was still part of the family circle near the end of his life. By then, the songs he had signed away were continuing to travel far beyond him through recordings by Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris and others. Townes Van Zandt spent much of his life with little interest in possessions, but the divorce made that indifference permanent on paper. He could still stand onstage and sing “Pancho and Lefty,” yet much of the financial value created by the song no longer belonged to him.

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By the late 1990s, Levon Helm had survived the breakup of The Band, a fire that destroyed most of his home, and throat cancer that left the voice behind “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” barely able to rise above a whisper. Doctors diagnosed the cancer in 1996, and treatment damaged his vocal cords badly enough that singing became uncertain. Helm retreated to the property he had built in Woodstock, New York, where a large wooden barn already served as a recording studio. Instead of walking away from music, he began inviting musicians and small audiences into that room for informal late-night concerts that eventually became known as the Midnight Rambles. The gatherings started as much from necessity as inspiration. Helm needed income to keep the property and studio alive, but the barn also gave him something a large theater could not: a place where he could rebuild his voice slowly, surrounded by musicians who understood when he needed to step back and let the band carry a song. Over time, the whisper strengthened enough for him to sing again. In 2007, more than a decade after the cancer diagnosis, Helm recorded *Dirt Farmer* in the barn, drawing on songs he had learned as a child from his father in Arkansas. The album won a Grammy, followed by two more Grammy-winning projects, including *Ramble at the Ryman*. By then, the building that had once helped Helm survive financially had become a destination of its own, drawing musicians and fans from around the world. Just days before his death in 2012, he left his family a simple instruction about the Rambles he had built there: keep them going. The voice came back, but the larger comeback happened inside the barn itself, where Levon Helm turned the place he was trying to save into the place that saved the final chapter of his career.

Country Music

By the fall of 1982, Marty Robbins had already spent more than a decade living on borrowed time, and almost nobody around him could convince him to behave like a man with a damaged heart. His first major heart attack came in August 1969, followed five months later by bypass surgery at a time when the procedure was still considered experimental. The operation worked well enough that Robbins returned not only to recording and the Grand Ole Opry, but to stock-car racing, where he continued driving at speeds that would have frightened men with perfectly healthy hearts. He was back in NASCAR competition by October 1970 and, after briefly stepping away following several wrecks, returned again in 1977. The contradiction became part of his life. Doctors had repaired blocked arteries, yet Robbins kept filling his calendar with concerts, recording sessions and race weekends, treating recovery less like a warning than permission to keep moving. One of his physicians later remembered that before agreeing to the first bypass operation, Marty wanted reassurance that he would still be allowed to race, and within weeks of leaving the hospital he was already back doing physical work around home. By 1982, the gamble seemed to be paying off in ways few aging country singers experienced. “Some Memories Just Won’t Die” became a Top Ten hit in May, Billboard honored him with its Artist Resurgence Award in October, and that same month Robbins was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Nearly thirty years after his first national success, the man behind “El Paso” was not being treated as a relic; he was enjoying one of the strongest late-career stretches of his life. He was still racing as late as November. Then, on December 2, after performing in Cincinnati the previous night, Robbins woke at home with severe chest pain and walked into St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville. Tests showed that a massive heart attack had cut off blood flow to a major section of his heart, forcing surgeons into an emergency operation to repair earlier bypasses and add another. He survived the surgery, briefly smiled and squeezed a nurse’s hand, but the damage was too severe for his body to recover. For six days, his wife Marizona and their children remained at the hospital while doctors used a respirator, medications, dialysis and a balloon pump to keep his failing heart working. Robbins died on December 8, 1982, only eight weeks after entering the Country Music Hall of Fame and one month after his final NASCAR race. At his funeral in Nashville, roughly 1,500 people filled the chapel, adjoining rooms and hallways while Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, Charley Pride, Porter Wagoner, Brenda Lee and other friends gathered with ordinary fans who had traveled through the night to be there. Marty Robbins had spent thirteen years after his first heart attack doing nearly everything doctors might have expected him to surrender. He kept singing, kept racing, returned to the charts, and lived long enough to watch country music place his name in its Hall of Fame before the heart he had repeatedly pushed back into service finally stopped.

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When Townes Van Zandt divorced Jeanene Munsell in 1994, he walked away without the most valuable thing he had spent his life building: the rights to his own songs. Townes and Jeanene had met in Austin in December 1980 while he was still legally married to his second wife. They eventually married on March 14, 1983, only ten days before the birth of their son, William Vincent, and later had a daughter, Katie Belle. Their marriage lasted eleven years, through the same period when songs such as “Pancho and Lefty” and “If I Needed You” were becoming increasingly valuable in the hands of other artists. The divorce settlement went far beyond a house or a bank account. According to the decree reproduced in a major Van Zandt biography, Jeanene received Townes’s interest in 126 compositions, including the copyrights, renewals and the writer’s share of future royalties. The transfer covered songs spread across several publishing catalogs and left Townes relying largely on the money he could still earn by performing on the road. Friends found the arrangement difficult to understand because Townes had never treated money with much urgency. Susanna Clark later remembered that even after the separation he would return from touring and hand Jeanene whatever cash he had in his pockets, while others close to him believed he had surrendered far more than most songwriters ever would. Townes and Jeanene remained close after the divorce, and she was still part of the family circle near the end of his life. By then, the songs he had signed away were continuing to travel far beyond him through recordings by Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris and others. Townes Van Zandt spent much of his life with little interest in possessions, but the divorce made that indifference permanent on paper. He could still stand onstage and sing “Pancho and Lefty,” yet much of the financial value created by the song no longer belonged to him.

Country Music

Before Townes Van Zandt became one of the most revered songwriters in American music, doctors put him through months of insulin shock and electroshock treatment that reportedly erased large parts of his long-term memory. In 1964, his family brought the twenty-year-old college student back to Texas after a period of severe depression, heavy drinking and increasingly erratic behavior. At a psychiatric clinic in Galveston, Townes was diagnosed under the terminology of the time and subjected to roughly three months of treatments that induced comas and seizures. His mother later said allowing it was the greatest regret of her life. The damage did not disappear when he left the hospital. Accounts from friends and biographers describe Townes returning home unable to recognize parts of his own childhood, while his mother used family photographs to help reconstruct memories that no longer felt familiar to him. He briefly tried to resume the future his family had imagined for him, including pre-law studies and an attempt to join the Air Force, but neither lasted. After his father died in 1966, Townes abandoned the path toward law and business and began moving through Texas clubs, absorbing Lightnin’ Hopkins, Hank Williams and Bob Dylan while learning to write songs of his own. Within a few years, he was writing “If I Needed You,” “Pancho and Lefty,” and “To Live Is to Fly,” songs that would eventually be recorded by Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris and generations of other artists. Townes Van Zandt spent the rest of his life writing with extraordinary precision about memory, loneliness and disappearance, even though part of his own past had been taken from him before his songwriting life had truly begun.