- (Glasgow) Herald
10 August 2017
p. M17
Obituaries
Glen CAMPBELL
Singer and guitarist
Born: April 22 1936;
Died: August 8 2017
Glen Campbell, who died aged 81, released more than 70 albums, notching up sales of more than 45 million, during a career which lasted five decades and brought him equal success with country and western and pop music audiences.
Campbell had a fine, distinctive voice with a solid range and dependable pitch and was much more than just a capable guitarist (he featured, for example, as the principal contributing guitarist on the groundbreaking Beach Boys' album Pet Sounds). For a while, too, he was a member of the band in its touring incarnation, playing bass and singing Brian Wilson's parts.
If called upon to play the banjo, or mandolin, alongside virtuoski, he could hold his own there, too. He once estimated, as a session musician in 1963, he had featured on almost 600 recorded tracks.
He also presented a warm and likeable personality that went over well with audiences. His music had a strong appeal to pop audiences in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but he himself remained a fairly conservative, well-mannered, presentably groomed figure during the counter-culture years.
Though British saw less of this side of him, he had also extensive experience as a television host in the US and was no slouch as an actor. In 1969, he was even nominated for a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer for his role in True Grit, where he appeared opposite John Wayne, Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper. He also sang the theme song, for which he received an Oscar nomination.
His principal distinction, however, was to have recorded a dozen or so of the most enduringly popular songs of the post-rock n' roll era. His best known hit was probably Rhinestone Cowboy (1975), which topped the US charts and sold more than two million copies on initial release, but many thought his finest moments were his recordings in the late 1960s of three songs by Jimmy Webb: By the Time I Get to Phoenix (1967); Wichita Lineman (1968); and Galveston (1969).
The first was an account of a drive across the southwestern US states (from Los Angeles to Phoenix), then to Arizona and eventually Oklahoma) by a man who has left his girlfriend and who muses on what she is doing at each point of his journey. Frank Sinatra thought it "the greatest torch song ever written" and it became an instant pop standard, with Campbell's version (the second recording) leading to Webb winning two Grammys. Between the years 1940-1990, it was reckoned to be the third most-performed song worldwide.
Wichita Lineman was, if anything, even better. It depicted a telephone repairman perched atop a pole on a country road, who thinks of his lover "singing in the wire" and imagines he "can hear you in the whine".
The musical architecture of the song was unusual; the first half of the melody is in F, with nods to the relative minor, but the resolution is actually in D major, with a telegraphic morse-code-style suspension (BM7 to C9) later imitated by David Bowe's Starman. There is no middle eight and arguably not even a chorus - Webb planned to write them, but by the time he got to the studio to explain, Campbell and his pianist / Arranger Al De Lory, anxious to follow up on the success of Phoenix, had already recorded the song. What there was between the two verses was an outstanding twangy guitar bridge, for which Campbell tuned his instrument down beyond its normal range.
It topped the US Country and Adult Contemporary charts and peaked at No 7 in the UK. The song regularly features as one of the best pop songs ever written (notably in Rolling Stone and Mojo magazines' lists), while DJ Stuart Maconie rates it as No. 1. Though it has been covered by dozens of artists, Campbell's rendition is regarded as definitive.
Galveston was a nostalgic hymn to that Texan Gulf City, its seagulls and the girl left there by a soldier cleaning his gun in Vietnam. Anyone would have taken it as a protest song, except Campbell, who had previously had a minor hit with Buffy Sainte-Marie's pacifist anthem Universal Soldier (1965) and, when asked about its message, told the Albuquerque Tribune that "people who advocate burning draft cards should be hung".
Rhinestone Cowboy was, however, the song with which Campbell was most identified, and with which he most identified himself. An ode to a small-town boy's bid to be a country star, charting his survival through the grind of small gigs before eventual, gaudy, against-the-odds triumph, it might have been written by, or at least for Campbell.
In fact, it was the work of Larry Weiss, a native of Queens, New York City, otherwise best known for Hi Ho Silver Lining and the theme tune for the sitcom Who's the Boss? Campbell re-recorded it within months of Weiss's original, though, and his version went Gold (one million sales) almost at once, reaching No 1 in the US, Canada, Ireland and Yugoslavia, and No 4 in the UK. It is estimated to be the fourth most popular karaoke song.
Glen Travis Campbell was born on April 22, 1936 at Billstown, a hamlet in Pike County, Arkansas, the seventh son of 12 children. His father John was a sharecropper tending 120 acres and young Glen learned the guitar at the age of six from his Uncle Boo, who played with a band known as the Sandia Mountain Boys.
By 14, he decided the prospects in music were better than in the fields, and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, playing in dives and bars, and then, having paid his dues, to Los Angeles in his early 20s.
He had a stint with The Champs (who had had a hit with Tequila!) and almost anyone else who would take time, before becoming a sought after session guitarist. His recording work with the Beach Boys led to his taking over from Wilson when the song-writer decided he no longer wanted to tour; it was a steady gif, and Campbell's own recordings had proved less successful.
That began to change in the late 1960s when, on the strength of some minor hits, he signed to Capitol and did well with Gentle on M Mind. The Jimmy Webb records followed, as did some TV presenting, and by the start of 1969, Campbell found himself presenting the Goodtime Hour on CBS, a sort of Val Doonican Show with cowboy string ties rather than cardigans (though the network was keen to dial down the country and western content).
Campbell had played a cameo part in The Cool Ones (1968) as a musician, but True Grit suggested he could act; he was the title character in Norwood (1970), based on a novel by Charles Portis, who wrote True Grit. The tale of a Vietnam Marine Corps vet who wants to make it as a musician, Campbell is perfectly plausible and the film no worse than many others of the period. But like many other worthwhile pictures from that era, bar a few late-night television showings in the early 1980s, it has never had a subsequent release or been issued on DVD and remains largely unknown.
That rather stalled Campbell's potential as a film star (though he later had a cameo in the Clint Eastwood "comedy" Any Which Way You Can, a sequel to the equally unfunny Any Which Way But Loose). The other impediment during the 1970s was Campbell's heavy drinking; his decision to add cocaine to the mix did not improve matters.
Though he was not, by the late 1970s, fashionable, he was a fixture of American light entertainment and a dependable draw worldwide. He performed for presidents from Nixon to Clinton and kept churning out records and tours. He was also still never off the TV - among other things, as the anchorman for American golf coverage.
By 1980, he had divorced for the third time. His first marriage had been to Diane Kirk (1955-59), with whom he had a daughter, Debby. He then married a beautician called Billie Jean, by whom he had three children, Kelli, Travis and Kane. They divorced by 1976 and he then married Sarah Barg, by whom he had a child called Dillon. "I've discovered the secret to marriage," he said after their divorce. "Every three years I marry a girl who doesn't love me, and she then proceeds to take all of my money."
Campbell then had a much-publicised and turbulent affair with the country singer Tanya Tucker (then in her mid-twenties) before settling down with his fourth wife, Kim Woollen, a former Radio City Rockette, in 1982. But she was not only a showgirl but a devout evangelical Christian, and Campbell renounced drink and drugs for gospel music, charismatic services and, in due course, TV presenting of religious programmes.
They had three children, Cal, Shannon and Ashley, all of whom eventually became members of Campbell's band.
His reformation had blips; he was convicted for drink driving and served 10 day sin jail in 2004.
His later records included a survey of Webb's work and an LP covering modern acts such as U2, Green Day and Foo Fighters. In 2011, he revealed he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease and began a tour, intended to be five months but, in the end, lasting 15. At its close he retired to Nashville and recorded an album, Adios, intended to preserve his last work before his illness occluded it.
It was released in April this year, to wide critical acclaim.
ANDREW MCKIE
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1936 - 2017 (81 years)
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