Remembering Glen Campbell: Too nice for cuss words

By the time he got to Auckland in 1987, Glen Campbell had ridden stardom to the heights of two million sales of Rhinestone Cowboy and hosting his own syndicated NBC TV show.

But to mangle a show business term, he'd well and truly jumped the pony and was dustily uncool.

As a 22-year-old sometime music writer, it fell to me to talk to Campbell for a national newspaper and to be honest, I wasn't keen on the songs or the man.

But meet we did, and his self-deprecating humour, humility and praise for others who he credited for his success won me over. In fact, I was pretty happy to sit and chat from the moment he shook my hand and shared his impossibly handsome smile.

He declared himself Jimmy Webb's number one fan. I admitted to being unfamiliar with Webb and he took real pleasure in talking me through a potted history of the man who wrote By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Witchita Lineman and Galveston.

In a roundabout way, it was Webb who also brought Campbell down from his perch, his label refusing to allow him to release The Highwayman due to the line "the bastards hung me".

After 30 albums for Capitol, Campbell walked out and slipped from the mainstream.

He stuck with the song to the point of introducing it to Johnny Cash, who built a supergroup of country stars around it, called The Highwaymen.

By the time I got to my desk to write the story. I found I had a notebook full of Jimmy Webb anecdotes, and little about the session guitarist from the famed Wrecking Crew who became one of the biggest stars in the world.

There goes a real nice guy.