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| L to R: John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glen Campbell in True Grit (1969) |
By Craig McLean, Telegraph
Six months ago, the one-time Beach
Boys frontman and country singer par excellence was told he had Alzheimer’s.
Now he talks exclusively about his music and his memories.
In November 2003, Glen Campbell
drove his BMW into another car in Phoenix, Arizona. He then left the scene of
the incident and was later picked up at home by Arizona police. Smelling
alcohol on his breath, they arrested him and took him to Maricopa County jail.
There, Campbell kneed a sergeant in the thigh, which led to an additional
charge of aggravated assault on a police officer. He was convicted of extreme
DUI (driving under the influence) and sentenced to 10 days in prison; his
police mugshot was made public and became a widely viewed internet sensation.
It was, unfortunately, one of
Campbell’s most famous moments in the spotlight, one that temporarily
threatened to obliterate the country singer’s many achievements: his classic
hits (Rhinestone Cowboy, Wichita Lineman, Galveston, By the Time I Get to
Phoenix); his work with some of the biggest names in American rock history; or
his acting turn alongside John Wayne in the 1969 version of True Grit.
For a while, the public forgot all
about Campbell’s times fronting the Beach Boys, touring with the Doors and
playing guitar on recordings by Frank Sinatra (Strangers in the Night), Dean
Martin (Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime), the Righteous Brothers (You’ve Lost
That Lovin’ Feelin’) and Elvis Presley (Viva Las Vegas). But they were very
much reminded of the revelations of his addictions to cocaine and alcohol in
the Seventies.
In his mugshot, Campbell, then aged
67, appeared wild haired and slovenly. For a man who had supposedly not touched
drugs or alcohol since finding God, and his fourth wife, a quarter-of-a-century
earlier, the whole episode was hard to fathom. This was not Campbell’s normal
behaviour.
“I first noticed some things maybe
eight years ago,” Campbell’s wife, Kim, tells me. It is June 2011 and we are
sitting in the lounge of the couple’s home in Malibu, California. “But they
could just be normal things ’cause lots of people have their little moments.
[Things like] ‘why’d I come into this room?’ We’ve all done that, right?”
“Yeah!” hoots Campbell, who is
sitting next to her on the sofa. ‘“Hey, where’s my shorts at?’ Hah hah!”
“But they were so abnormal that I
just discounted them,” Kim continues. “When we lived in Phoenix I’d say,
‘something’s in the garage’, and he’d say, ‘where’s the garage?’, I’m like,
‘what do you mean, where’s the garage?’ So that was very abnormal. But it was
also not something that occurred every day.”
Does she think this explains the
arrest? “I think it could very well. Because there were some things going on
that Glen was struggling with. And he was getting anxiety. And anxiety seems to
be a symptom of this disease.”
H/T to Kevin at http://jwayne.com/
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