Rhinestone Cowboy rides into the sunset
Glen Campbell has died at the age of 81 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. Grant Smithies remembers a spirited conversation he had with the singer in 2009.
Glen Campbell crammed more action into his 81 years on God’s green Earth than just about anyone else you could name.
Before disappearing into a fog of cocaine and strong drink in the late 70s, he played guitar on a host of pop classics, declined an offer to join the Beach Boys when they were one of the biggest bands in the world, and hosted his own globally syndicated variety show on TV, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, watched by more than 50 million people every week.
Fresh-faced and square-jawed, he even starred as John Wayne’s sidekick in the 1969 western classic True Grit.
But whatever else Campbell may have done, he could never shake off his biggest pop hit. For some people, he will eternally be stuck in 1975, ‘‘riding out on a horse in some star-spangled rodeo’’.
‘‘I still love to sing that song,’’ he told me in a dry, reedy voice from his home in Malibu. ‘‘It’s cool. I first heard somebody else singin’ Rhinestone Cowboy when I was drivin’ one day and I almost wrecked my car! Yes, sir. I knew right then I had to have a shot at it myself’’.
When we spoke, Campbell was living among millionaires on the California coast, but his unreconstructed aw-shucks accent told tales of his dirt-poor upbringing in a shack with no electricity or running water in rural Arkansas.
‘‘We were poor, that’s for sure. I’m the seventh son of eight boys and four girls, born and raised in the river bottoms of Arkansas. If my Daddy hadn’t bought me a guitar when I was 4years old, I might be there still.’’
The way Campbell told it, he emerged from the womb itching to play music. His sharecropper father saved up and bought him a guitar from a mail-order Sears catalogue. The price? Five dollars. ‘‘I was so little that I couldn’t press the strings down, so my daddy made me a capo out of a corn cob and a rubber band. It worked great! I just taught myself to play by listening to a little battery radio, then played in my uncle’s band for a time before I headed for LA to become a session guy.’’
Back then, Campbell was a truly dangerous guitarist. He spent most of the 60s as part of an elite studio band who called themselves The Wrecking Crew, playing on some of the defining records of the era.
Campbell’s guitar can be heard on Strangers In The Night by Frank Sinatra, You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling by The Righteous Brothers, I’m A Believer by The Monkees. He plays on the Beach Boys’ extraordinary Pet Sounds album and most of producer Phil Spector’s peerless 1960s ’Wall Of Sound’ records.
Somewhere along the way, Campbell discovered he could sing as well as play guitar. And while he sang some corny shockers at all stages of his career, his early solo career in particular is studded with gems. Those who would dismiss Campbell as just another cheeseball country singer would do well to listen to By The Time I Get To Phoenix, Wichita Lineman, Galveston, MacArthur Park, Where’s the Playground Susie.
Written by Oklahoma songwriter Jimmy Webb, these are some of the greatest pop songs ever written, and nobody sings them as well as Campbell. Over a sophisticated blend of strings and mellow country-folk fingerpicking, Campbell wrings every ounce of yearning from the lyrics. It’s no wonder these songs conquered both the pop and country charts.
His music became less interesting with time, but his tumultuous life story, however – well, that was fascinating. The Rhinestone Cowboy did not have an easy ride. There was a load of compromisin’ on the road to his horizon.
Campbell was married four times, fathered eight kids, spent years whacked on whisky and cocaine. He had a string of highprofile affairs, most famously with 21-year-old country star Tanya Tucker when he was in his mid40s. Tucker later memorably described their relationship as a ‘‘flat tire’’ on her road through life, saying that all they ever did was take drugs, have sex and fight. She claims Campbell once knocked out several of her teeth.
And Campbell readily admitted that he’d spent much of his life being selfish, unfaithful, wasted and mean. His 1994 autobiography (called, you guessed it, Rhinestone Cowboy) is a hoot.
Toward the end of the book there’s a lot of right-wing ranting about the evils of abortion, the effrontery of the gay rights movement, the sorry absence of prayer in schools, but in the earlier chapters it’s all fighting, shagging, drinking and cocaine snorting, interspersed with episodes of deep remorse where Campbell digs out his Bible and pledges to the Big Guy that he’ll try to be a better man.
After a few what he calls ‘‘near death experiences’’, Campbell eventually got sober with the help of his fourth wife, Kim, whom he married in 1982.
Campbell exchanged booze and drugs for God and golf, though he fell spectacularly off the wagon in 2003 when he was arrested for drink driving, leaving the scene of an accident and assaulting a police officer.
‘‘Well, we all run off the track occasionally,’’ he told me when I asked him about it. ‘‘My faith got me through. That, and the love of a good woman. My wife Kim brought me out of the bad times. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me..’’
Campbell was proud of the fact that he’d clawed his way up from humble beginnings to become a huge star.
He made sure to remind me that in 1969, he was selling more records than The Beatles. He spent 50-odd years in show business, released more than 70 albums and sold 45 million records. Before his Alzheimer’s took too strong a hold, he made a lucrative living on the nostalgia circuit in Vegas and around the world, and built up a parallel career recording Christian music.
Regrets? He told me he’d had a few.
‘‘Yeah, I’ve had a few ins and outs, you know, and done some things I shouldn’t, but I’m content right now. My life is wonderful.‘‘