Glen Campbell: Rhinestone Cowboy 40th Anniversary Edition
It was the great F. Scott Fitzgerald who, probably after one too many gin rickeys at his favorite bar, The Willard, declared that “there are no second acts in American life.” It turned out that Fitzgerald wasn’t much of a fortune teller and his half-assed theory of his has been disproved many times since, but Glen Travis Campbell, beating another bottle of rum into submission in the backseat of his tour. bus as it meandered through the Australian moonlight, those ominous words must have seemed like his own personal prophecy. Campbell was out of luck, she hadn’t had a top forty hit since “Dream Baby” in ’71, her syndicated TV show with CBS had been taken off the air in ’72, and her latest marriage was suddenly on the rocks. He was starting to look like a three-time loser. After all, this was only 1974 and there was still over a year to go before his unlikely reincarnation as the “Rhinestone Cowboy”.
The first act in Campbell’s remarkable life story began when he made a name for himself as an ace guitarist with the now legendary Los Angeles music collective, The Wrecking Crew; an incomparable group of session musicians who played on dozens of landmark recordings in the early 1960s. Among the many milestones are the Righteous Brothers’ maudlin masterpiece, “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” the Monkees’ teen trauma “I’m a Believer,” and Sinatra’s semi-swan song, “Strangers in the Night.” . Campbell also cemented more than a few bricks of Phil Spector’s palatial ‘Wall of Sound’ before the rise of the Beatles toppled it. Undeterred, he jumped on the Beach Boys’ pop bandwagon, as the touring stand-in for a world-weary Brian Wilson. In the Kingdom of Pop, that is equivalent to studying the Son of God. Campbell remained in the fold when Messiah returned, sticking around long enough to play bass at the historic Pet Sounds.
Although he had signed on in 1965, with an unlikely version of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s anti-war melodrama “Universal Soldier” (Campbell supported the war in Vietnam), it wasn’t until he recorded John Hartford’s award-winning “Gentle on my Mind” Grammy. in 1967 that he really crashed the Pop party. He soon forged an unlikely relationship with self-proclaimed hippie Jimmy Webb, who was in the process of penning a succession of gorgeous country-pop ballads that would ultimately launch Campbell on the path to international stardom. . “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Galveston” and, of course, “Wichita Lineman” remain pure examples of pop’s immeasurable power to loosen the tear ducts.
For a while, Campbell was on the easy street: a succession of Grammy-winning and gold records, Oscar-winning TV shows and movies followed in his footsteps, but as the ’70s wore on, the troubadour began to lose his touch. of Midas. Even Jimmy Webb’s personal gold mine of heartbreaking ballads had paid off: Their 1974 collaboration, “Reunion: The Songs of Jimmy Webb,” was emptied in the desperate search for a hit single.
Campbell needed a break and he got it. Jimmy Webb had often commented on Campbell’s uncanny ability to identify a surefire hit on the first audition, and on that three-week tour of Australia he had kept playing one song over and over again. “Rhinestone Cowboy” had been written and recorded by Larry Weiss, a songwriter trying to break out of the minor leagues, and producer Dennis Lambert came to Campbell’s attention after both Elvis and Neil Diamond turned it down. The song reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart in September 1975 and also topped the Country chart that same week, becoming the first single to achieve the ultimate crossover since 1961, when Jimmy Dean doubled with “Big Bad John.” The album also went to the top of the Country chart, another first for Campbell.
“Rhinestone Cowboy” opens, as required by the first unwritten law of song sequencing, with its second best track. Written especially to reflect Campbell’s sorry state of mind, by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, “Country Boy (You Got Your Feet in LA)” may be an all-too-familiar story of a farmer seduced by the big city, but Campbell infuses it. with a real sense of self and his ‘on the money’ voice confirms an unwavering faith in his deeply personal lyrics. “Comeback,” another ballad tailored to Lambert and Potter, allows Campbell to be more philosophical as he finds himself at life’s crossroads, “I wrote the book on self-preservation / I’m a firm believer in my peace of mind.” he sings with a new determination to conquer his demons and resurrect his career.
“Count On Me” finds Lambert and Potter, and by extension Campbell himself, in an indulgent frame of mind, as he vows undying love to the girl who has broken his heart. Buoyed by Sid Sharp’s smooth strings and a full-throated catchy chorus, Campbell somehow musters an air of genuine nobility in defeat.
Lambert and Potter’s fourth and final contribution, “I Miss You Tonight” is a rather solemn ballad that doesn’t quite make it off the runway. The nostalgia feels a bit forced here, and even Campbell’s steady delivery can’t dispel the air of slow melancholy that permeates the song.
Had the album continued in this soul-searching vein, however, Campbell could have delivered one of pop’s great concept albums, a country-style Astral Weeks or a star-studded Blood on The Tracks. The reflective mood, however, is fatally undermined by the inclusion of Smokey Robinson and Ronald White’s soul standard, ‘My Girl.’ Campbell, unsurprisingly, handles the number in a completely professional manner, but after hearing the irrepressible Otis Redding hit this song out of the park, he wouldn’t have volunteered me to bat next! Despite the accomplished vocals, the end result is nothing more than a pale imitation of Redding’s classic version. Looks like someone put too much water in the whiskey!
“Rhinestone Cowboy” is undoubtedly the album’s emotional magnet. While it may not be the flawless ‘Wichita Lineman,’ there’s no denying that, under the right circumstances, it can bring a tear of self-pity and a lump to the throat as you sing along with Campbell in that super-sized chorus –
“Like a rhinestone cowboy / riding a horse in a star-studded rodeo / like a rhinestone cowboy / getting cards and letters from people I don’t even know / and offers over the phone.”
On paper, “Rhinestone Cowboy” seems like a hackneyed tale: the works of a country boy drawn to bright lights and the big city; however, Campbell has a lot to work with in the form of insightful and evocative lyrics:
“I’ve been walking these streets so long / Singing the same old song / I know every crack in these dirty Broadway sidewalks / Where the name of the game rushes / And the good guys get washed away like snow and rain.”
Campbell plays it to the point and delivers the ‘western’ lyrics with all the poise and purpose of a Shakespearean actor.
Time can be merciless to a certain type of song, only to this type of song, in fact. The kind of song sung by a man sporting an ultra-white beaded suit, the kind of suit not even Jay Gatsby in his Cotton Club pomp would have ever dreamed of wearing. Yet “Rhinestone Cowboy” transcends time and place, transcends our sick obsession with image, transcends its source material, transcends even the supposed wisdom of F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s a star-studded song and I guess it will continue to orbit the rock ‘n’ roll sky forever.
As soon as we reach the climax of the album, we’re brought back to earth with a bang, courtesy of a couple of worldly ballads. “I’d Build a Bridge” is a clichéd love song that left me a little giddy before its sad ending, while “Pencils For Sale” is plowing from the start and not even a burst of hiss at the end of the song. song (usually a sign of despair) can save this disappointing maudlin ballad.
Fortunately, Randy Newman rides like the cavalry to Glen’s rescue. Campbell’s rendition of “Marie” not only reminds us how truly wonderful a songwriter Newman is, it also serves to remind us how good a singer Campbell can be when he puts his heart and soul into it. Recalling the making of the album for The Guardian in 2013, Dennis Lambert summed it up this way: “If we could bring something special to the table, he had the art and the name to make it really cool.” “Marie” is testament to that, as is the album’s close, a cover of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s “We’re Over,” a scathingly realistic breakup song. Tom Sellers’ arrangement is just the right side of grand and this allows Campbell to give a measured and understated interpretation of some very fine lyrics.
Since this is the 40th Anniversary Edition, the folks at Capitol have added five bonus tracks for good measure. These include remixes of “Country Boy” and “Rhinestone Cowboy” and, most interestingly, the quirky “Record Collectors Dream” and, best of all, “Coming Home”, a rather nice track that I hadn’t seen before. Released as a single in Japan in 1975, it has a naively infectious “Shiny Happy People” sentiment from which Campbell squeezes every last drop:
“I’m coming home to meet my brother / we’re coming home to each other / we have to meet now.”
Forty years later, it’s hard not to see “Rhinestone Cowboy” as a missed opportunity. The album’s producers, Lambert and Potter, had a keen sense of the aesthetic vibe that would inspire Campbell, which would strike a chord with him and force him to buckle down. However, the quartet of custom songs from him only served to set a standard that the rest of the album failed to meet. Although the album ends strongly, with a couple of perfectly executed covers, it is in the central part, despite the gigantic presence of “Rhinestone Cowboy” himself, where the album loses its way. With a Mickey Newbury cover here or there, say the heartbreaking “San Francisco Mabel Joy” or the melancholic “Frisco Depot,” “Rhinestone Cowboy” could have been an imaginatively thought out, Urban Cowboy concept album (and there aren’t too many of them!). those in anyone’s record collection!) Ultimately, however, Lambert and Potter did not have the courage of their convictions.