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34 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com October, 2017

TRIBUTE

R&R

G

len campbell was 75 years old, and he

couldn’t wait to get on the road. It was August 2011,

and he had just announced his Goodbye Tour, soon

after a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. The best

part, he said, was that his three twentysomething

children would join him onstage. “My kids play better than my

old band,” he told Rolling Stone in one of his final interviews,

adding with a smile, “and I don’t have to pay them!”

He had to use a teleprompter for lyrics, and his voice wasn’t

what it once was, but his guitar work was still astonishing. Camp-

bell made it through a year and a half on that tour – 151 deep-

ly moving performances. It was a fittingly singular farewell for

Campbell, who died of Alzheimer’s complications in Nashville

on August 8th. His career had always been one of a kind: He

had been a Sixties session guitar pro, a temporary Beach Boy,

a country crossover superstar with 21 Top 40 hits and 50 mil-

lion albums sold – and a TV variety-show host, too. “He had that

beautiful tenor,” said Tom Petty, who called Campbell a key in-

fluence. “It moved me.”

Growing up in Depression-struck Billstown, Arkansas, Camp-

bell was one of 12 kids, picking cotton with the rest of the family

while taking in the sounds of gypsy-jazz guitarist Django Rein- GETTY IMAGES

hardt at night. His family was musically inclined, and Campbell

was a guitar prodigy. At 14 he dropped out of school and embarked

on a tour with an uncle’s band. Next, he moved to Albuquerque,

New Mexico, joining another uncle’s group, Dick Bills and the

Sandia Mountain Boys, playing at rowdy bars and on a recurring

radio show. He moved to L.A. in 1960, where he quickly made a

name for himself: Around that time, he joined the Champs (best

known for the instrumental “Tequila”), and soon signed to Capi-

tol Records as a solo act while also linking up with a loose collec-

tive of L.A. studio musicians. That legendary assemblage of play-

ers – with a lineup including bassist Carol Kaye and drummer

Hal Blaine – would eventually be known as the Wrecking Crew.

Campbell played on 586 cuts with that band in 1963 alone,

and countless more that decade, in every conceivable style – from

the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Elvis Presley’s “Viva Las

Vegas” to Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” and the Righteous

Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”. A seemingly effort-

less virtuoso, he could play nearly anything, but was more than

happy to lay back and drive songs with subtle rhythm guitar or

simple signature riffs like the one on the Monkees’ “I’m a Be-

liever”. “He was the best guitar player I’d heard,” said fellow ses-

sion great Leon Russell. “Occasionally we’d play with 50- or 60-

POW

Benni

onsta

1936-2017

Glen Campbell

Country-pop hitmaker, Beach Boy, TV star, session

king: The singular career of Glen Campbell

BY PATRICK DOYLE

TRUE GRIT

Campbell in 1975