Aww man! Even though we pretty much saw this one coming, it doesn't make us feel any better about it!
Lost one of the greats today!
Here's a great tribute courtesy of RollingStone.com.
Glen Campbell, the
indelible voice behind 21 Top 40 hits including "Rhinestone Cowboy,"
"Wichita Lineman" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," died
Tuesday. He was 81. A rep for Universal Music Group, Campbell's record label,
confirmed the singer's death to Rolling Stone. During a career
that spanned six decades, Campbell sold over 45 million records. In 1968, one
of his biggest years, he outsold the Beatles.
"It is with the
heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of our beloved husband, father,
grandfather, and legendary singer and guitarist, Glen Travis Campbell, at the
age of 81, following his long and courageous battle with Alzheimer's
disease," the singer's family said in a statement.
Campbell was a rare
breed in the music business, with various careers as a top-level studio
guitarist, chart-topping singer and hit television host. His late-career battle
with Alzheimer's - he allowed a documentary crew to film on his final tour for
the 2014 award-winning I'll Be Me - made him a public face for
the disease, a role President Bill Clinton suggested would one day be
remembered even more than his music.
"He had that
beautiful tenor with a crystal-clear guitar sound, playing lines that were so
inventive," Tom Pettytold Rolling Stone during
a 2011 profile of Campbell. "It moved me."
Campbell was born in
1936 in Billstown, Arkansas, the seventh son in a sharecropping family of 12
kids. "We used to watch TV by candlelight," Campbell told Rolling Stone in 2011.
In his youth, Campbell
started playing guitar and became obsessed with jazz guitarist Django
Reinhardt. He dropped out of school when he was 14 and moved to Wyoming with an
uncle who was a musician, playing gigs together at rural bars. He soon moved to
Los Angeles and by 1962 had solidified a spot in the Wrecking Crew, a group of
session pros. In 1963 alone, he appeared on 586 cuts and countless more
throughout the decade, including the Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man,"
Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas,” Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried"
and the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling."
"I’d have to pick
cotton for a year to make what I'd make in a week in L.A.," he said.
"I learned it was crucial to play right on the edge of the beat ... It
makes you drive the song more. You're ahead of the beat, but you're not."
Fellow Wrecking Crew member Leon Russell called Campbell "the best guitar
player I'd heard before or since. Occasionally we'd play with 50- or 60-piece
orchestras. His deal was he didn't read [music], so they would play it one time
for him, and he had it."
In late 1964, Brian
Wilson had a nervous breakdown on tour with the Beach Boys, and the band called
on Campbell to replace him on bass and high harmonies. "I took Brian's
place and that was just ... I was in heaven then – hog heaven!" Campbell
remarked.
"He fit right
in," said Wilson. "His main forte is he's a great guitar player, but
he's even a better singer than all the rest. He could sing higher than I
could!" Wilson even wrote an early song, "I Guess I'm Dumb," for
Campbell. His first hit was a cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie's antiwar song
"Universal Soldier." But Campbell's own political views tended to be
conservative. "The people who are advocating burning draft cards should be
hung," he said in 1965.
Campbell had his first
major hit in 1967, with "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," written by
Jimmy Webb, an L.A. kid with a knack for intricate ballads. "Glen's vocal
power and technique was the perfect vehicle for these, in a way, very
sentimental and romantic songs. And I think that you know we made some records
that were very nearly perfect. 'Wichita Lineman' is a very near perfect pop
record," Webb said. "I think in the process that Glen was a prime
mover in the whole creation of the country crossover phenomenon that made the
careers of Kenny Rogers and some other... many other artists possible."
The tune kicked off a
working relationship that included the haunting Vietnam War ballad "Galveston," the
tender "Gentle on My Mind" and
"Wichita Lineman," Campbell's first Top 10 hit. With swelling
orchestral arrangements and slick production, the songs weren't exactly
considered hip in the Sixties. "They felt packaged for a
middle-of-the-road, older crowd," said Tom Petty. "At first, you go,
'Oh, I don't know about that.' But it was such pure, good stuff that you had to
put off your prejudices and learn to love it. It taught me not to have those prejudices."
In 1968, Campbell won Grammys in both the country and pop categories,
including Best Country & Western Solo Vocal Performance, Male, Best
Country & Western Song and Best Vocal Performance, Male.
In the summer of 1968,
Campbell guest hosted the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The successful appearance led to his own
variety show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, which he hosted from 1969 until 1972. Artists like Ray Charles,
Johnny Cash and Linda Ronstadt performed on the show, which also gave a national
platform to rising country stars like Willie Nelson.
"He exposed us to a big part of the world that would have never had the
chance to see us," said Nelson. "He's always been a big help to
me."
A young Steve Martin was
a writer on the show. “He just went along with it," Martin said in I'll
Be Me. "He was completely game, and completely fun, and had kind of a
down-home sense of humor. It was just an incredible treat for us young writers
to be introduced to talent at that level at such a young age.”
Campbell's boyish
charisma led John Wayne to cast him in a co-starring role in 1969's True Grit. He later said that his acting was so
amateurish that he "gave John Wayne that push to win the Academy
Award." But the good times didn't last: His show was canceled; his first
feature film, 1970's Norwood, flopped; and the hits
dried up for a few years. Then, Campbell scored a smash with 1975's
"Rhinestone Cowboy." It began a comeback that included hits
"Country Boy (You Got Your Feet in L.A.") and "Southern
Nights." The hits slowed down again in the Eighties; in the Nineties he
opened up the Glen Campbell Goodtime Theatre in Branson, Missouri.
Campbell was married
four times, and has five sons and three daughters. In the early 1980s, while
battling alcoholism and cocaine addiction, Campbell made tabloid headlines with
a 15-month, high-profile relationship with country singer Tanya Tucker,
who was 22 years his junior. In 1981, he became a born-again Christian and in
1982 he married Kimberly Woollen, a Radio City Music Hall Rockette, who
helped Campbell clean up his life.
In 2003, he was arrested
for a hit-and-run, an incident that ended with him allegedly kneeing a police
officer in the thigh right before he was released. Campbell pleaded guilty to
extreme drunken driving and leaving the scene of an accident, and spent 10 days
in jail.
In 2011, Campbell, then
75, revealed that he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. In June of that
year, he announced he was retiring from music due to the disease. He released
his final album of original music Ghoston the Canvas(with guests Billy Corgan, Paul
Westerberg and Jakob Dylan) and embarked on a farewell tour with three of his
children backing him.
He played 151 shows on
his final tour. "The audience being there somehow triggers his ability to
access that other part of his brain," U2's The Edge said. "It's
incredible."
"This tour of his
just says, 'Here I am, here’s what’s happening to me,'" Clinton said.
"'I'm going out with a smile on my face and a song in my heart so you will
know,' - and that may be more of his enduring legacy than all the music he
made."
He spent his final years
in an assisted living facility. His friends and children would often spend days
with him playing him his old songs."Music utilizes all of the brain, not just
one little section of it," Woollen noted. "Everything's firing all at
once. It's really stimulating and probably helped him plateau and not progress
as quickly as he might have. I could tell from his spirits that it was good for
him. It made him really happy. It was good for the whole family to continue
touring and to just keep living our lives. And we hope it encourages other
people to do the same."
Earlier this year, Campbell
released Adiós, his final studio album, a collection of mainly
cover songs by Bob Dylan, Harry Nilsson and others, recorded after his Goodbye
Tour. "Almost every time he sat down with a guitar, these were his go-to
songs," daughter Ashley Campbell told Rolling Stone Country.
"They were very much engrained in his memory – like, so far back that they
were one of the last things he started losing."
"He had a beautiful
singing voice," Bruce Springsteen said in 2014. "Pure tone. And it
was never fancy. Wasn't singing all over the place. It was simple on the
surface but there was a world of emotion underneath."
Another one bites the dust. Soundgarden/Audioslave/James Bond Theme Singer Chris Cornell died in his hotel room last night after a Soundgarden reunion show in Detroit.
Apparently its being investigated as a suicide by strangulation. You know what that means, friends...
RIP Chris Cornell.
We never really liked you. But we never really hated you either.
J. Geils Band - "Nightmares... and other tales from the vinyl jungle" (1974) - Atlantic Records
Hello Friends,
Jamming out to the J. Geils Band sixth record (in four years), 1974's "Nightmares... (and other tales from the vinyl jungle)".
We're also lamenting the death of band's founder, namesake & lead guitarist, Mr. J. Geils, who passed away in his Groton, Mass home last month at the ripe old age of 71. RIP J!
The big hit here on this record is the FM radio staple, "Must of Got Lost", but the rest of the record is pretty okay as well.
"Detroit Breakdown" is a solid opener and became a decent live staple. "Givin' It All Up" is our favorite album track. Outstanding. The trippy "Nightmares" and the super-funky "Funky Judge" are just meh. Also, we wonder if the song "Stoop Down # 39" is a dig or a tribute to The James Gang's "Funk # 49"? hmm?
RATING: 3.5 lots of kisses but not like yours honey out of 5
Chuck Berry - "After School Session" (1957) - Chess Records
Editors Note: We were spinning this record on Saturday evening just a couple of hours before we heard the news that Chuck Berry had died! No shit! Hope we had nothing to do with it! Hello Friends,
John Lennon once famously said, "If you tried to give rock n roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry!" Sounds silly, but we really couldn't agree more. Chuck Berry is and always will be the George Washington-Christopher Columbus-Neil Armstrong of rock & roll. Which means that rock & roll pretty much starts with this here record, friends. After School Session is Chuck Berry's first LP, the second release on the fledgling Chess Records, and effectively the shot heard round the world! Produced by the Chess brothers (Leonard & Phil), the album features all original material by rock n roll's original guitar god. Things get kicked off with the epic, "School Days", with Berry triumphantly proclaiming in the song's fifth and final verse, "Hail, hail Rock & Roll / Deliver me from the days of old!" Geez, if that's not a call to arms, we're not sure what is! And that guitar playing!! Can you imagine how many pimply-faced, awkward kids had their collective minds blown hearing this for the first time? How many teenage boys saved up to buy some crappy guitar from their local Woolworth's that summer? Legend has it that a young Keith Richards struck up a conversation with a young Mick Jagger at the Dartford Train Station in East London because the latter was holding two records, one by Muddy Waters and "Rockin' at Hops" by Chuck Berry.
The rest of the album is great as well. Featuring some good ol' fashioned blue-collar rockabilly ("Too Much Monkey Business", "Brown Eyed Handsome Man", "Downbound Train"), some overly-descriptive talking blues ("No Money Down"), some Louis Jordan-inspired R&B ballads ("Wee Wee Hours", "Together", "Drifting Heart"), a sparse calypso-meets-Buddy Holly-sounding tune ("Havana Moon") and some blistering guitar-driven instrumentals ("Deep Feeling", "Roly Poly", "Berry Pickin'").
Not bad for a debut record! RIP Chuck Berry... your career speaks for itself! A legend, an inventor, an explorer, a tortured soul and our very first guitar god. Our favorite Chuck Berry-related quote comes from Jerry Lee Lewis's mother who famously said to her son: "You and Elvis are good, son-- but you're no Chuck Berry. Chuck Berry is rock 'n' roll from his head to his toes!" Amen! RATING: 5 teachers teaching the golden rule out of 5
Happy Friday Friends! We've been really digging stuff released on Brooklyn's Daptone Records record label. We think Charles Bradley is the greatest soul singer since Josh Groban James Brown and Sharon Jones is another marquee name on the label. She's nearly as amazing. Nice job Daptone! "Stranger To My Happiness" is from her 2014 release, Give The People What They Want (not to be confused with the 1981 Kinks album!) She's definitely worth checking out!
Also kids, don't plan on seeing her on tour anytime soon. Sadly, Sharon Jones died last year at the much-too-young age of 60 from pancreatic cancer. RATS! I guess you can say heaven gained another (sassy) angel!*
Man, another one bites the dust in an evergrowing list of dead rock stars in 2016!
We just found out that Greg Lake passed away at the age of 69. We'll always love Greg Lake for his work on that first King Crimson record, as well as most of the stuff he did with prog rock juggernauts, Emerson, Lake & Palmer. (Especially the early stuff... no thank you Love Beach!) Plus, 'tis the season... we've always been suckers for his prog rock lite take on the holidays on this song penned by Lake and Peter Sinfield, whose credits include penning lyrics ELP, as well as for those first four Crimson records! RIP Greg Lake... oh what a lucky man you was!
John Zacherle, aka The Cool Ghoul, radio D.J. and horror host pioneer won't live to see another Halloween (at least in this world) as he died at the ripe old age of 98 yesterday!
Damn... just three days short of his 98th Halloween! We're not too upset though... he lived a really long life, never got married and he'll probably be back at some point anyways!
R.I.P. Zach!
Here's a nice article from the AV Club...
Zacherle at work in 1958. (Photo: Robert W. Kelley / Getty Images)Zacherle at work in 1958. (Photo: Robert W. Kelley / Getty Images)
Halloween just got a little less spooky, as Philly Voice reportsthat John Zacherle, who paved the way for horror hosts from Svengoolie to Elvira with his pioneering character “Zacharley The Cool Ghoul,” has died. He died yesterday at home in Manhattan. He was 98.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Zacherlle attended the University of Pennsylvania enlisting in the Army during World War II. After returning from duty in Europe and North Africa, he started working in local TV, eventually landing a job as host of Philadelphia’s WCAU’s Shock Theater in 1957. There, he created the character of Roland, an undertaker in a long black coat who introduced—and occasionally interrupted— campy low-budget horror movies in equally campy monologues and skits with his “assistant” Igor, a model that later influenced the creators of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
In 1959, Zacherle moved his act to New York’s WBAC, where he changed the name of his character to Zacherly and officially adopted the nickname “the cool ghoul,” which had been bestowed on him by his friend and colleague Dick Clark back in Philadelphia. He would continue to refine the character throughout the ’60s and ’70s on shows like Chiller Theater, even briefly hosting a hybrid horror/music show called Disc-O-Teen that featured acts likeLovin’ Spoonful, The Young Rascals, and The Doors. In a 2012 interview with The New York Times, Zacherle recalled, “Jim Morrison looked at our weird set and mumbled, ‘This is the damnedest TV show I’ve ever seen.’”
Zacherle’s status as a rock ‘n’ roll tastemaker—he was reportedly a regular at the Fillmore East in the late ’60s—was confirmed by his occasional guest-hosting stints on American Bandstand, a notoriety that led to a career as a rock radio DJ in the ‘70s and ‘80s. He also released a handful of horror-themed novelty songs, the most successful of which, “Dinner With Drac,” was a Top 10 hit in 1958. He also acted in a handful of horror movies, including an uncredited role as the evil, disembodied brain Aylmer in Frank Henenlotter’s 1988 film Brain Damage.
Zacherle never married, and lived alone in his rent-controlled Manhattan apartment until his death. He continued to surround himself with friends and admirers, though, and appeared regularly on the convention circuit well into his 90s. He was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame in 2010.
From his early singles like "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers", "The Bottle Let Me Down" and "I'm A Lonesome Fugitive" to his 2015 collaboration with longtime friend Willie Nelson on Django and Jimmie, Haggard will forever be remembered for his hard-livin', grizzly-sung underdog songs and for being a total badass.
They certainly don't make them like this any longer! R.I.P.
Hello Friends, Another sad day in rock & roll. Progressive rock pioneer Keith Emerson left us on Friday.
As founding member of The Nice and the ultimate prog-rock supergroup, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Emerson was the Jimi Hendrix of the synthesizer. Part-virtuoso, part-innovator, part-mad scientist, Emerson will be most remembered for his fusion of classical music styles and hard and heavy 70's rock'n'roll. Fun Fact: Always the showman, Keith Emerson would also engage in knife throwing occasionally onstage. His knife of choice was a Nazi Dagger given to him by none other than Lemmy Kilmister who used to roadie for The Nice back in the 60's. R.I.P. Fingers.
