Wildfire - Michael Murphey (cover-live by Bill Sharkey)

Wildfire (Michael Murphey, 1975). Live performance by Bill Sharkey, Home Studio, Hawaii Kaii, HI. 2024-11-13. "Keeping the Oldies Alive"

"Wildfire," written by Larry Caster and Michael Murphey, was Murphey's only top ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart climbing to no. 3 in 1975 (Whitburn, 2013). Murphey stated that the song was inspired by one of the stories his grandfather would tell on the front porch and a subsequent dream he had; he said "when I was a little boy there, this ghost story that was told about a horse that can never be captured. But there was no girl in it. It wasn't exactly the dream that I had, but it was about the ghost horse. I guess what I dreamed was just kind of fleshing out the old legend . . . this legend is that this horse can never be captured. He's out there on the range and the mustangers are trying to capture him, bring him down. Rather than be killed or captured, he leaps over a chasm into the darkness and then comes back as a ghost. He does this over and over and over. When he comes back as a ghost, what he's doing is to take people away from hard times. They can get on this horse's back, sort of like Pegasus ... and they can take you right away from all their troubles. Kind of indicating also that maybe the only way they're ever going to get out of their hard times is for their spirit to be carried away" (D. Paulson, tennessean, Jun. 28, 2019).

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Lyrics:

She comes down from yellow mountain
On a dark flat land she rides
On a pony she named Wildfire
With a whirlwind by her side
On a cold Nebraska night

They say she died one winter
When there came a killing frost
And the pony she named Wildfire
Busted down his stall
In a blizzard he was lost

Ran calling Wildfire
She ran calling Wildfire
Calling Wildfire

So, by the dark of the moon I planted
But there came an early snow
There's been an old hoot owl howling
Outside my window now, six nights in a row
She's coming for me I know
And on Wildfire we're both gonna go

We'll be riding Wildfire
We'll be riding Wildfire
We'll be riding Wildfire

On Wildfire we're going to ride her
We're gonna leave busting behind
Get the hard times right on out of our mind
Riding Wildfire