Meet Glen Campbell: Will He Be Clean, or Mean?

Velvet Underground interpreter?

A A A Comments (0) By Marc Weingarten Wednesday, Sep 3 2008

“Spector could be a little cheap,” Campbell says. “You might go in there for three days and he would only pay you for one. But Brian was fair. He might have you sitting there for days doing nothing while he figured out an arrangement. But he always paid you for your time!”

Asked what music he likes to listen to nowadays, Campbell points to a painting of the great Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt that hangs above his piano. “There was no one better than him,” he says. “Man, that band with [Stephane] Grappelli? I wish I could play that well.”

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Well, he’s not Django, but he’s not bad. With a little prompting, Campbell picks up the Ovation uke and starts ripping some glissandos up and down the little fretboard. “I tuned this thing like a guitar,” he says. “Do you know Ovation made a deal with me when I first started the Good Time Hour? If I played their guitar on the show, they would pay me a royalty for every guitar sold. That worked out for all of us.”

Raymond has visions of Campbell perhaps getting off the casino-and-civic-theater grid, and perhaps playing theaters like the El Rey. But Campbell always goes his own way, and no one is quite sure where that might lead. “Glen doesn’t care about being a star, not now or when he actually was a big star,” Raymond says. “He’s happy being with his family. So who knows?”

GLEN CAMPBELL | Meet Glen Campbell | Capitol