ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE CLAIMS ‘RHINESTONE COWBOY’ GLEN CAMPBELL, 81.
WAGED PUBLICIZED BATTLE WITH ALCOHOL AND DRUGS
Glen C a mpbel l , the sweet- voiced, guitar-picking son of a sharecropper who became a recording, television and movie star in the 1960s and ’ 70s, waged a publicized battle with alcohol and drugs and gave his last performances while in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
He died Tuesday in Nashville, Tenn., at the age of 81.
Campbell revealed that he had Alzheimer’s in June 2011, saying it had been diagnosed six months earlier.
His last performance was in Napa, Calif., on Nov. 30, 2012.
His last record was Adios, which came out in June, and features songs he loved to sing, but had never recorded, including tunes made famous by Bob Dylan, Linda Ronstadt and Johnny Cash.
At the height of his career, Campbell was one of the biggest names in show business, his appeal based not just on his music but also on his easygoing manner and his apple-cheeked, all-American good looks.
From 1969 to 1972, he had his own weekly television show.
He sold an estimated 45 million records and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005.
Decades after Campbell recorded his biggest hits — including Wichita Lineman, By the Time I Get to Phoenix and Galveston ( all written by Jimmy Webb, his frequent collaborator for nearly 40 years) and Southern Nights ( 1977), written by Allen Toussaint, which went to No. 1 on both pop and country charts — a resurgence of interest in older country stars brought him back onto many radio stations.
He considered Rhinestone Cowboy his best song. His version of the song about a struggling musician, written and first recorded by the relatively unknown Larry Weiss, was No. 1 on the country, pop and adult contemporary charts in 1975.
Glen Travis Campbell was born on April 22, 1936, about 130 kilometres southwest of Little Rock, Ark., where his father sharecropped 120 acres of cotton.
When he was four, his father ordered him a threequarter- size guitar for $ 5 from Sears Roebuck.
He was performing on local radio stations by the time he was six.
Picking up music from the radio and his church’s gospel hymns, Campbell “got tired of looking a mule in the butt,” as he put it in an interview with The New York Times in 1968. He quit school at 14 and went to Albuquerque, N. M., where his father’s brother- in- law, Dick Bills, had a band and was appearing on both radio and television.
Campbell’s guitar skills eventually took him into the recording studios as a session musician, and for six years he provided accompaniment for a vast number of famous artists, including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Elvis Presley, Rick Nelson and such groups as the Beach Boys and t he Mamas and t he Papas.
Campbell had made his first records under his own name in the early 1960s, but success eluded him until 1967, shortly after he signed with Capitol Records, when his recording of John Hartford’s Gentle on My Mind hit the charts.
Shortly after that, his version of By the Time I Get to Phoenix reached the Top 40. National recognition, four Grammy Awards in 1968 and television appearances quickly followed.
In 1969, Campbell had his most famous movie role, the non- singing part of a Texas Ranger who joins forces with John Wayne and Kim Darby to hunt down the killer of Darby’s father, in the original version of True Grit.
But his life in those years had a dark side.
“Frankly, it is very hard to remember things from the 1970s,” he wrote in his autobiography.
Though his recording and touring career was booming, he began drinking heavily and later started using cocaine.
“The public had no idea how I was living,” he recalled.
Campbell had a wild drugand-alcohol-fuelled romance with country singer Tanya Tucker, who was 22 years younger, that was regularly covered by the tabloids. When it started in 1980, she called Campbell “the horniest man I ever met” and Campbell said, “I gave God a prayer and he gave me Tanya.”
Campbell took up golf in his mid-20s and it became a passion for him.
He was host of the Glen Campbell Open on the PGA Tour f rom 197 1 to 1983. Sometimes he wore cleated cowboy boots rather than standard golf shoes.
In his later years, Campbell crossed genres and age barriers.
His 2008 album, Meet Glen Campbell, featured songs from rock bands U2, the Velvet Underground, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Green Day and Foo Fighters.
The musician was married four times, starting at age 17 with his pregnant 15- year- old girlfriend. He credited his fourth wife, the former Kimberly Woollen, with keeping him alive and straightening him out — although he would continue to have occasional relapses for many years.
His survivors i nclude his wife and eight children. Three of them were in the band that backed him on his farewell tour.
GOT TIRED OF LOOKING A MULE IN THE BUTT.