Glen Campbell 1936 - 2017 RIP

[cloughie]

Sad to hear the death of Glen Campbell. An immensely talented guitarist and singer. Much in demand as a session guitarist and became Brian Wilson's first dep all those years ago, before his solo success and superb interpreter of Jim Webb's songs. RIP Glen

[doversoul1]

Wichita Lineman was one of the last songs in my American pop song days. RIP.

[Stanley Stewart]

A timely tribute to Glen Campbell on tonight's late BBC News. A fine country singer and I recall his Festival Hall concert some years ago so fresh and immediate alongside the impressive range of his vocal prowess. RIP, GC.

[pastoralguy]

Glen Campbell was part of my growing up music. My father used to bring back recordings from the USA and our family often knew the work of these artists before they had exposure in Europe. The wife of a friend of my Dad's worked for an agent who would regularly entertain these artists so I inherited his record collection with many signed albums including a Glen Campbell disc.

A very fine musician who had a real knack of telling a story through his singing that made the listener involved.

RIP, Glen Campbell and thank you for the music.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Quite good in True Grit, too. A rotten end to a a life.

[johncorrigan]

Wichita Lineman was one of the last songs in my American pop song days. RIP.

One of the great American pop songs. Apparently Jim Webb wrote it in the studio in 20 minutes and Glen Campbell made it his own with that very distinctive voice. For all else I think he'll be remembered for those songs with Webb...'Lineman', 'Galveston', 'By the Time I get to Phoenix', but I love his version of 'Gentle on my Mind'. He was open about the Alzheimer's before it took him away and made a farewell album three or four years back.
RIP Glen.

[gradus]

Bravo Glen, many thanks for the music.

[doversoul1]

Glen Campbell: a universal voice who defined American manhood

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/08/glen-campbell-wichita-lineman-by-the-time-i-get-to-phoenix-galveston

[BBMmk2]

I was never a fan of Glenn Campbell but towards the end of his life, he was suffering from Alzheimer's, the poor chap. RIP

[Stanfordian]

Very sad news. RIP Glen

[Lat-Literal]

GLEN CAMPBELL RIP

Such sad news - I cried - and it was difficult for his family in those last years too.

On the radio stations not devoted to classical music or comedy programmes, there was for once a clear cut choice at 5am this morning. First, there was 2017 broadcasting. This is best symbolized by two presenters on two stations who I won't name but for several years rather liked. Not all that long ago, each seemed to have become more depressing. Was it my imagination or had there now been a daily arrangement with the producers that the first should talk about some aspect of illness every quarter of an hour and the second about violence against the person? Well, of course, as soon as I cottoned on it was obvious and wariness immediately sets in. So to the extent that I bother now, I tune into one or the other not for an hour but for just as long as it takes them so-to-speak. Usually it is less than a minute following which the radio is switched off. Hers today was "please call in because I would like your views on the female jogger who was pushed into a bus and also the possibility of it all going nuclear around Guam". What exactly do they expect? Well, thanks for asking. I'd just like to say that there are pluses and minuses in people ending up in hospital through no fault of their own and also in the potential for armageddon. Utterly typical, utterly inane, utterly dire.

The second option was to hear a discussion about the late Glen Campbell interspersed with some of his best records. That is the late 1960s essentially. Contrary to the main cultural interpretation, and as those who were really there will recall, it was not exactly a time of disease free peace and love. But there were elements of balance. Dreams were permitted whether optimistic or wistful and so was a true populist musicality. And there were differences depending on where those stood on the political spectrum. Ultimately they came in many colours. The reason is that it had been decided so for never be in any doubt that the entire cultural and media mix is always chosen for us by propagandists. That the rather good article in The Guardian is so complimentary tells us so much about social change. Campbell was no liberal but the conservatism in his music seemed so fresh because it was imbued with the new liberal sensibility. It was exemplified by Webb who was meticulously orderly in his craftsmanship - the wayward lyric, the experimental chord change and much more. Constructive technically and emotionally, this was no nihilistic free-for-all bashed down by an extreme barely-in-control authoritarianism or the persistent, obsessional lie that opinions have power.

Remarkably, Webb was with Bacharach part of the sixties' version of Kern and Porter when to have just one in that decade would have seemed highly unlikely. But it was the country tinged voice of Glen Campbell which provided his compositions with clarity. There was in the collaboration a meeting of the rural and the urban and a parallel domesticity - one that might otherwise be defined as localism - with a real sense of expanse. Not quite Copland for the everyman, perhaps, but at the very least a Samuel Jones. Was it Charlie Gillett's book or a long lost paperback of mine - I have forgotten the name of the writer but its title may well have misleadingly been "Rebel Rock" - in which it was claimed the last great pop song was "Midnight Train To Georgia"? Either way, the author was wrong. For trains were of the past and the sixties was the decade of other forms of communication. And as some of the new technology was about greater mobility, the other part of it - principally one-directional - reduced the need for movement as a means of ensuring ongoing control. That was radio and especially television in the days when it hadn't fully been decided how the new expression was to be used. A little regulation on its freedom could then within reason permit the substantially thoughtful or upbeat. Only later did "they" decide on more relaxation of the rules for which we would all pay the price of a relentless, politically oppressive miserabilism.

The telephone was a different matter. Not quite train and yet nor was it the motor car or plane or indeed life as presented by a box in the corner. Technologically old enough to require regular maintenance, it epitomized that moment when communities had not only been pulled apart but were now struggling to maintain two-way dialogue across many miles, that is, beyond almost alien external influence. The telephone man of Webb and Campbell was no Saint Simeon Stylites although the similarities are obvious. Rather than choosing to escape life by living vertically he is forced for survival onto poles in remote places. He feels loneliness while being employed to ease the loneliness of other people. The image is so striking. It was of its time and place and yet even now it has a broad resonance. Brilliantly executed, there is a very strong argument that it was "Wichita Lineman" that was the last great pop song.

To call it pop....well, it doesn't do it full justice....but extraordinarily it is a better term than the previous one which was middle-of-the-road. If there is just one thing that can be said positively about Glen's passing it is that the tide turned back towards him as long ago as the mid 1990s. One has to give the Gallagher brothers (Oasis) of all people some credit for his and Webb's cultural resurrection. It ensures that what had been fashionably disdained and actually ditched will have longevity as recognized standards. Perhaps more to the point, they will always be an antidote to the modern mass media which while they may be taken into our homes because of habit are unlikely ever now to be those who we would choose to phone.

Glen Campbell - Wichita Lineman - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp_Kakkm6U4

[Serial_Apologist]

Glen Campbell: a universal voice who defined American manhood
https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...enix-galveston

Deleted, as might have caused upset.

[johncorrigan]

Of course we knew Glen Campbell for that unmistakeable voice, but he was also a very fine rock guitarist, and it's been interesting to hear today from his former 'Wrecking Crew' colleagues about all the classic pop songs he played on...'Be My Baby' by the Ronettes; 'You've lost that Loving Feeling' by the Righteous Brothers; 'Hello Mary Lou' by Rick Nelson; Beach Boys' 'I Get Around'; 'Sinatra's 'Strangers in the Night'; Merle Harrard's 'Mama Tried', among many, many more. Quite a CV!

[Lat-Literal]

Of course we knew Glen Campbell for that unmistakeable voice, but he was also a very fine rock guitarist, and it's been interesting to hear today from his former 'Wrecking Crew' colleagues about all the classic pop songs he played on...'Be My Baby' by the Ronettes; 'You've lost that Loving Feeling' by the Righteous Brothers; 'Hello Mary Lou' by Rick Nelson; Beach Boys' 'I Get Around'; 'Sinatra's 'Strangers in the Night'; Merle Harrard's 'Mama Tried', among many, many more. Quite a CV!

Wow......yes, that is such a good point. Rick Nelson is, oddly, in my record collection. Always had a soft spot there. It's the vocal tinge. You have countered the tendency to go off on Webb as much as Campbell but with Webb it is the little things. "I know I need a small vacation". No, he doesn't. He's been told that if he is to have a vacation it is to be short though the world "small" is so much better in the absence of generosity. And that vacation is no trek to far off places. It's to home and fulfillment. The need comes back shortly afterwards - "And I need you more than I wan't you and I want you for all time" - but only after the breathtaking contrast of the phrase "But it don't look like rain". No holidays in the sun, here. The weather gets worse and that is the time for any small break. Could analyse it all to the cows come home - and marvel in a way that an Ed Sheeran could only hope to invoke or inspire.

It's "awesome"!

Glen Campbell - Galveston - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBLboy3aXA0

[Conchis]

Jimmy Webb is my favourite songwriter and Glen Campbell was one of his finest interpreters.