There have already been a great many tributes to Glen Campbell following his death in Nashville on August 8th after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, but, considering the name of this blog is adapted from one of his songs (1968 single 'Dreams of the Everyday Housewife'), and that's his photo at the top of the page (cover of that single), I feel justified in adding a few more words to the deluge of praise.
Glen Campbell was born in 1936 in Billstown, Arkansas, the seventh son of 12 children, living on a farm, where the family struggled to survive by growing cotton, corn, watermelon and potatoes. He started playing guitar at age four, after his uncle Boo give him a five-dollar guitar as a gift. By age six he was performing on local radio stations, and continued to practise throughout his youth when he wasn't working in the cotton fields, with Django Rheinhardt as his key earliest influence.
Despite his success (over 45 million records sold; a career stretching from 1958, with his final album, Adiós, released in June this year), Glen Campbell is no doubt widely viewed as simply a MOR country/ pop singer (he basically invented the country/ pop crossover), due to enormous hits like 'Rhinestone Cowboy' - though even slightly more serious fans will recognise that, between 1967 to 1969 he recorded 3 of the greatest pop records ever released: 'By The Time I Get To Phoenix', 'Wichita Lineman' (cited by some as the greatest pop song ever written) and 'Galveston'. All written by Jimmy Webb, who became his lifelong friend and collaborator - despite the clash between Campbell's southern conservatism ("people who are advocating burning draft cards should be hung") and Webb's liberalism.
Since it's referred to in many of the recent tributes, his less recognised role as one of the most significant contributors to the history of pop music should also now become more universally celebrated. In an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this year, Jimmy Webb makes a case for Campbell's impact and significance to 20th century pop music as having been equivalent to an American Beatles. In July, just weeks before Campbell's death, journalist Matthew Walther, writing in The Week, hailed him as "...the most underappreciated musician in America".
As a member of the famed group of L.A. session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew, Campbell played guitar on countless classic records throughout the 1960's (according to Wikipedia, by 1963 his playing and singing were heard on 586 recorded songs), often uncredited, but including songs by Nat King Cole, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Phil Spector, Sam Cooke, Dean Martin, Simon and Garfunkel, Jan and Dean, The Byrds, The Monkees, and The Righteous Brothers' 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin''. These were times when it was common for bands not to play on their own records, the record companies opting to bring the professionals in to get the job done quickly and efficiently, rather than deal with unreliable, drug-addled hippy band members. Leave the bands to do the things they were good at: buying kaftans and hanging out with Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper.
I like to think of Glen Campbell playing on records by everyone from Conway Twitty to The Mothers of Invention, and doing an equally fantastic job on all of them. Tributes are filled with comments like Brian Wilson's "An incredible musician and an even better person", so if they actually had worked together, perhaps even Frank Zappa would have been charmed by him too.
Unlike most of the actual Beach Boys, he played on 'Pet Sounds' (and many of their other records too), and between 1964 to 1965 he was a touring member of the band, as a replacement for Brian Wilson, following the latter's nervous breakdown and withdrawal from live performances.
In an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this year, Jimmy Webb lists The Velvet Underground and Jefferson Airplane as artists on whose records Campbell played - though I can't find anything else which confirms that. Perhaps some confusion over the fact Campbell recorded The Velvet's 'Jesus' (from their 3rd album, 'The Velvet Underground') on his 2008 album (his 60th album) 'Meet Glen Campbell' - an album of covers of songs by rock artists, such as U2, Foo Fighters, Green Day, The Replacements, and Travis. Though Jimmy Webb may be right, and Campbell is also key to the early growth of alternative rock too; Webb is certainly in a position to know more about it than most.
Other achievements:-
From January 1969 to June 1972 he hosted The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, a music and comedy variety show on CBS. A young Steve Martin (in his first writing job) was a writer on the show, and has commented as follows: "He just went along with it. He was completely game, and completely fun, and had kind of a down-home sense of humor. It was just an incredible treat for us young writers to be introduced to talent at that level at such a young age."
There was some acting too, most notably co-starring with John Wayne in True Grit. No clash in political ideologies there then.
It's a mighty legacy. I think I made a good choice when borrowing his song title and photo for this blog.
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