Glen Campbell was a clean-cut, affable kid who became a music superstar… but fame came at a price as drugs, booze and divorces took their toll on the late singer
The son of a cotton farmer from rural Arkansas went on to sell 45million records
A NEAR-death experience, a cheap guitar and a battery-powered radio set the young Glen Campbell on his road to stardom.
The American country-pop crossover king was just three when his brothers saved him from drowning.
Later that night, in a home without electricity or running water, he experienced the power of music.
Glen, who died on Tuesday aged 81, later recalled: “Back at the house, while keeping time to the radio, I didn’t say anything. I just sang. Something had changed me.”
With a £5 guitar, this son of a cotton farmer from rural Arkansas taught himself to play and went on to sell 45million records — in 1968 he even outsold The Beatles.
Probably best known for his global hit single Rhinestone Cowboy, clean-cut Glen enjoyed a career spanning six decades, during which he released more than 70 albums and amassed nine Grammy awards.
But with fame came three failed marriages and a shocking descent into drink and drugs ... Finding God proved to be his salvation.
Still releasing music to the end, Glen spent his final days in a care home in Nashville, fighting the Alzheimer’s he had for six years.
His family said: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of our beloved husband, father, grandfather and legendary singer and guitarist, Glen Travis Campbell, at the age of 81.”
As news of Glen’s death emerged, music legends lined up to pay tribute to his remarkable talent.
Beach Boy Brian Wilson tweeted: “An incredible musician and an even better person.”
Sheryl Crow called his passing a “huge loss in the world of music”.
And country star Dolly Parton posted: “Glen Campbell was one of the greatest voices of all time. I will always love you.”
Glen’s path through life wasn’t always as smooth as his incredible voice — which Bruce Springsteen once described as: “Beautiful ... simple on the surface but there was a world of emotion underneath.”
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Referring to his turbulent love life Glen told the New York Times: “Perhaps I’ve found the secret for an unhappy private life.
“Every three years I go and marry a girl who doesn’t love me, and then she proceeds to take all my money.”
Glen had left school at 14 and moved to Wyoming to play in a band with his uncle at “fightin’ and dancin’ clubs”, as he described them.
Six years later he headed to Los Angeles, and in 1962 landed the golden ticket — playing with a bunch of seasoned session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew.
He appeared on numerous hits for some of the biggest names around, including The Byrds’ Mr Tambourine Man, Elvis’s Viva Las Vegas, the Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling, The Monkees’ Daydream Believer and Frank Sinatra’s Strangers In The Night.
Glen once quipped: “I’d have to pick cotton for a year to make what I’d make in a week in LA.”
A bigger break came in 1964 when he replaced Beach Boys singer Brian on their five-month tour after the frontman had a breakdown.
Then, in 1967, Glen had his first major hit with the Jimmy Webb song By the Time I Get to Phoenix.
The fruitful Webb/Campbell partnership kept the chart hits coming, including Wichita Lineman and Galveston.
In January 1969 he landed his own primetime TV show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.
It ran for three years, made him a huge star and boasted such legendary guests as Liza Minnelli, Ella Fitzgerald and Stevie Wonder. At its height 50million viewers tuned in.
John Wayne personally asked for Glen to co-star in his 1969 western True Grit — for which he earned a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Male Newcomer. Glen also sang the title song, which was shortlisted for an Oscar.
Whatever he tried he had the Midas touch, but his motivation was always his own enjoyment.
As he told Blurt magazine in 2011: “It’s like a guy going into a whorehouse with THIS little thing and the woman says, ‘Well, who you going to satisfy with THAT?’ And he says, ‘ME’.
“That old joke, that stupid analogy, that’s the best way of describing what I want to do: satisfy me.”
Coming from a poor background as one of 12 children, he must have been astounded, in 1971, to be asked to perform for President Nixon at the White House and also for the Queen in London. Apparently even the Queen Mum was a big fan.
At the peak of his career, in 1975, Glen topped charts around the world with Rhinestone Cowboy, which he later described as “maybe the best song I’ve ever sung”.
But his turbulent private life was mired by divorce, drink and drugs.
His first marriage, to Diane Kirk, with whom he had a daughter Debby, ended in 1959 after four years.
That same year he wed beautician Billie Jean Nunley. They were together for 17 years and had three children, Kelli, Travis and Kane.
But during this time Glen was seduced by booze and cocaine. “I spent some time in hell,” he said. “It was a stupid place, I drowned.”
Cocaine was his drug of choice because “pot made me go to sleep”.
Recalling his first experience with the drug, he said: “It was like your eye was coming out of your head. Oh, God, it was like a dog that gets into your henhouse and steals your eggs.”
His third marriage, to Sarah Barg, lasted four years and produced son Dillon, a singer songwriter.
There then followed a stormy year-long fling with country singer Tanya Tucker — who was 21 to his 44.
Glen later admitted: “Tanya and I were terrible for each other. We were drowning in a sea of white powder.”
A turning point came when he woke up in a confused state in a Las Vegas hotel room.
Glen said: “I didn’t know who I was. It was really, really strange.
“Nobody else was there but somebody was talking — it was if God had sent an angel to rescue me.
“I didn’t want any whisky, any drugs, anything. That was the end of it.”
With the help of his fourth wife, dancer Kim Woollen — with whom he had three children Ashley, Cal and Shannon — he beat his demons and became a born-again Christian.
There was just one relapse, in 2003, when depression led him back to the bottle and he was involved in a drink-drive collision.
When the arresting officer asked for his name, he replied: “Glen Campbell, the Rhinestone Cowboy.”
He also reportedly insisted that he “had never been drunk a day in his life, only over-served”, and allegedly kneed an officer in the thigh.
Glen pleaded guilty to extreme drink driving, spent ten days in jail and was put on supervised release.
Even then he made the best of a bad situation.
He said: “I took my guitar, my drummer and bass player and played for the other inmates of this holding pen they had.
“I think I got two days off for good measure. And I haven’t had a drink since.”
In 2008 Glen was handed a Legend award by Q magazine and released his first album in 13 years, Meet Glen Campbell, a set of covers of songs by U2, Green Day and Foo Fighters.
Three years later he revealed he had Alzheimer’s.
When he went on a farewell tour of his album Ghost on the Canvas, his wife Kim appealed to fans to understand if he seemed lost and disorientated on stage.
Backstage he would repeatedly ask her: “Do we have a show tonight?” and she feared he would not be able to perform.
But Kim, 58, said: “The minute the lights went up and he heard the applause, it was like automatic pilot and he knew what to do.”
That five-week tour turned into 51 dates over 15 months, finishing in November 2012.
He let a crew film the tour and in 2014 their award-winning documentary, I’ll Be Me, made Glen a public face for Alzheimer’s.
Bill Clinton said: “His tour says, ‘Here I am, here’s what’s happening to me. I’m going out with a smile on my face and a song in my heart so you will know’. And that may be more of his enduring legacy than all the music he made.”
Two months ago Glen’s musician daughter Ashley revealed her father could no longer speak and only recognised her as someone familiar.
Ashley, 30, said: “Sometimes as I sit playing and singing to him, he will close his eyes and kind of smile.
“It takes him a while but he will even start tapping his toe.
“Occasionally, he starts singing too. We don’t know what he’s singing as it’s gibberish and not even what I’ve been playing.
“But there’s still a beautiful melody.”
HE WAS ELVIS OF COUNTRY
By Simon Cosyns
THE Marlboro Man was the rugged, square-jawed cowboy who made smoking look cool in the Sixties.
If he’d been a good singer, he would have sounded like Glen Campbell.
With smooth, auburn hair combed into a neat side-parting and manly sideburns to match, Campbell was the antithesis of the flower power generation.
His impossibly romantic songs have a cinematic quality that summon big skies, the open road and aching hearts.
His breakthrough was the John Hartford-penned Gentle On My Mind, inspired by the heart-wrenching movie about doomed love, Doctor Zhivago.
Like so many American artists, his other hits read like a geography lesson... By The Time I Get To Phoenix, Galveston and Wichita Lineman.
But why he really stood out from the crowd were the natural, clear and honeyed vocals that made him country music’s Elvis Presley.
When I met Alison Krauss recently (remember her Raising Sand collaboration with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant?), she raved about Campbell’s voice.
She showed me a stunning YouTube clip from a 1969 edition of The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour TV show during which he duets with Stevie Wonder on Bob Dylan’s anthem Blowin’ In The Wind.
“When I first saw it, I thought, ‘No, Glen, don’t do this. You’ll never match up to Stevie!’ but he absolutely nailed it,” enthused Krauss.
Campbell, a fine guitarist, started out as a session musician and featured on records by, among many, Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.
He even toured as a member of The Beach Boys, playing bass and singing those sublime harmonies.
But he’s best remembered for the song that revived his career in the mid-Seventies, Rhinestone Cowboy. Barely a karaoke singalong goes by without “riding out on a horse in a star-spangled rodeo”.
Decades on, it comes across as a novelty song, the familiar one by which a singer is often defined yet doesn’t really do them justice.
Even in his twilight years, Campbell continued to make decent records, his voice maturing like fine claret on 2011’s Ghost On The Canvas and 2013’s See You There And before his Alzheimer’s finally took a firm grip, he recorded the aptly-titled Adios album to preserve “what magic was left”.
It’s a touching swansong, still graced with the great singer’s perfect pitch and a fitting way for an old cowboy to ride off into the sunset.