Glen Campbell, country’s Rhinestone Cowboy dies aged 81

One of the biggest country stars of the ‘60s and ‘70s, Glen Campbell, died at the age of 81 at an Alzheimer’s facility in Nashville yesterday.

He sold over 45 million albums in America, where he racked up 75 hits. He had his own Glen Campbell’s Goodtime Hour TV show and appeared in movies as True Grit alongside John Wayne.

In Australia, Campbell had 25 entries in the Top 100.

The first was in 1965 with Universal Soldier which reached #16. He followed that up with Gentle On My Mind which peaked at #88.

His biggest hits here were 1968’s Wichita Linesman (#18) and Galveston (#7), and 1969’s Try A Little Kindness (#13).

In 1970 came Honey Come Back (#7), a duet with Bobbie Gentry on All I Have To Do is Dream (#3) and It’s Only Make Believe (#2).

He was to re-enter the Australian Top 5 twice more, with Bonaparte’s Retreat (#4) and Rhinestone Cowboy (#5) although he continued to tour Australia constantly.

However, he simultaneously appeared on the Australian charts on other peoples’ records.

In the ‘60s, he was part of the famed Wrecking Crew of L.A. session musicians that included Hal Blaine, Leon Russell, Larry Knechtel and Carol Kaye.

His guitar work could also be heard on, among hundreds of recordings, The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations and Help Me Rhonda, The Monkees’ I’m A Believer and Last Train To Clarksville, Elvis Presley’s Viva Las Vegas and Frank Sinatra’s Strangers In the Night.

Hal Blaine, the legendary drummer said, “Glen Campbell didn’t really read music. He could look at charts and get a sense of what was going on, but everything he did was by ear.”

Glen Travis Campbell was born April 22, 1936, in a small town in Arkansas into a sharecropper family. He was the seventh son of a seventh son.

He learned to play guitar on a $5 Seats guitar. The family moved around, and Campbell began playing in bands, first in his uncle’s, and then his own.

It was when he made it to Los Angeles that his career took off, first as a session player and then as a solo superstar.

Campbell’s full realised track was Wichita Linesman, written by Jimmy Webb who had also written his breakthrough By the Time I Get to Phoenix.

Campbell rang Webb and asked, “Can you write me a song about a town?” Webb wasn’t sure. “We;; something geographical then,” the singer responded.

Webb remembered a journey he’d done on the Kansas-Oklahoma border of flat roads and endless telephone poles. He remembered a telephone linesman working on the phone: for Webb, it captured the isolation of the song and the everyman character of the songs he wrote for Campbell.

In the studio, Webb wasn’t sure how to finish Wichita Linesman.

Campbell later recalled, “I knew it was a hit, and I kept at him to finish it. I even offered to help him finish it, but he told me to go away and play my guitar and leave the writing to him.”