Glen Campbell

The most heartfelt comment came from Jimmy Webb on his Facebook page. Webb is a towering songwriter, little known in Italy but capable, in terms of classics penned, of standing alongside a figure like Bacharach. Campbell sang Webb's songs throughout his career, in a relationship of mutual enrichment. For the songwriter, Campbell's versions are unsurpassable, and indeed they surpass the very idea he himself had of those songs. Campbell in fact wrote few songs of his own (although some of them are gems, think of "Less Of Me" or "If This Is Love"), but as an interpreter he was hard to beat. And although it's less well known, he was also a remarkable musician. Glen Campbell was one of the greatest guitarists of his era. In the Sixties and Seventies, few could match him. He was in constant demand as a session player, and you can find his guitar on records by the Monkees, Frank and Nancy Sinatra, Jan & Dean, Merle Haggard, Elvis Presley, Beach Boys ("Pet Sounds" included), and so on. The supersonic solos he unleashed during live shows became legendary, but in the studio he preferred a more restrained approach, which led many to overlook his real abilities. No great loss, though, since in the YouTube era all it takes is typing "Glen Campbell guitar solo" into the search engine to get a long list of results, all more or less jaw-dropping.

OndaRock had already written about Glen Campbell back at the time of the "Country For Dummies" feature, where we recommended the formidable double compilation of forty-six tracks, "The Capitol Years 65/77". We refer you back to that piece. In the meantime, a final studio album has also come out, a couple of months ago, titled "Adiós". It's mostly made up of covers of songs Campbell loved but had never had the chance to record. The sound is fairly traditional and conventional, but very pleasant, and Campbell's voice is, as always, a guarantee of quality - the kind of voice that, as the saying goes, could make even a phone book worth listening to. The album stalled at number 40 in the US, where, despite plenty of past hits, it's always tough for country music's old glories to reach the upper ranks of the charts, but it debuted, for example, at number 3 in the UK, where Campbell has always been particularly beloved, and it hasn't dropped as quickly as one might have expected. Riding the wave of emotion, it's safe to bet we'll find it in the charts for several more weeks.