‘OUT OF THE FRYING PAN AND STRAIGHT INTO HELL:’ Glen Campbell’s wild ride from poverty to insanity.

On April 11 1966, Glen Campbell was drafted in as a last minute rhythm guitarist for a recording session with Frank Sinatra. Unable to believe that he was in the presence of his idol, he spent much of his time at the studio on Sunset Boulevard, in Los Angeles, gazing worshipfully at the man laying down the vocal for Strangers In The Night. The attention did not go unnoticed. “Who,” Sinatra hissed, “is that f______ guitar player?”

By the time his anonymous sideman had become a superstar in his own right, just two years later, Old Blue Eyes might well have remarked that Glen Campbell’s talents as a singer, no less, were equal even to his own. Along with an impeccable knack for phrasing and interpretation, the then 30-something Arkansan’s sense of implacable mournfulness – a quality later described by his fourth wife, Kim, as “a special sense of longing that lived in the centre of [his] soul,” – lent gravitas to the most unlikely material. In his telling, even the impossibly camp Rhinestone Cowboy sounded oddly forlorn.

In 2024, this ghostly quality is real. The new album Glen Campbell Duets: Ghost On The Canvas Sessions sees a man who has been dead for knocking on eight years now joined by a bevy of notables on a spirited reimagining of his final studio album, Ghost On The Canvas, from 2011. With contributions from Dolly Parton, Eric Clapton, Carole King, Elton John and Daryl Hall (among others), the cast list is indeed stellar. Inevitably, though, Campbell’s own oak tree of a voice refuses to be cowed into anything approaching shared-billing.

Campbell’s music wasn’t really my favorite genre, but he was a brilliant guitarist and singer who made it all look so easy — while quietly fighting numerous demons inside him. Read the whole thing.