Glen Campbell, "Rhinestone Cowboy" singer dead

[Rev. Rye]

Also, fun fact: before Glen Campbell hit it big, he was actually briefly a member of The Beach Boys. Shortly after Brian's big freakout in December 1964, they decided they needed to have a replacement for Brian. In the brief time before they discovered Bruce Johnston, they had Glen Campbell replace Brian for about eight weeks.

Of course, this didn't last, and, while the Beach Boys recently released a live album from that part of 1965 (for copyright reasons), it seems Brian was actually back in the live act for that brief period of time. Of course, he also played on five songs from Pet Sounds (though none of the huge hits from that album), and possibly some songs from other albums (but I don't have the time to look through the band's whole discography to see which tracks Glen Campbell might appear on.

Also, Brian Wilson wrote and produced one of his early hits:






And remarkably, he was known to play a medley of the band's hits:





Of course, given that, by this point, he was a country superstar and not a surf musician, it's kind of inevitable that his versions of these songs might be a bit lackluster (particularly "Good Vibrations", where he can't even find anyone to sound vaguely theremin-like) but it's incredible hearing him play those Chuck Berry-style licks, especially on that 12-string guitar. Those bends have to be murder to pull off. To be fair, it's been donkeys since I've played an electric 12-string (though I do own an acoustic 12-string I bought at a flea market when I was just old enough to know who Leadbelly was), but I still don't think it can be that easy, and yet it sounds like he's not even trying that hard.