It's a rerun. This is one of the early posts that have been pulled down and are being reinstated.
Author: Glen Campbell with Tom Carter
Date: 1994
Publisher: Villard / Random House
ISBN: 0-679-41999-3
Length: 241 pages of text, with foreword and discography
Quote: "One of the many characteristics of a chronic cocaine user is that he lies about his use, and I was no exception."
"Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven" could be Glen Campbell's slogan for this book. The only "country-western" singer of the 1960s to have a composition ("Less of Me") reprinted in a Seventh-Day Adventist hymnal, Campbell was on his fourth legal marriage when he wrote this memoir, and had chosen to publicize his use of cocaine as an explanation for some of his bizarre behavior--including attempts to preach and evangelize while "high."
Although Campbell had already become infamous in "family values" circles for the song "Gentle On My Mind," whose words celebrate an apparently illegitimate relationship, he was married when he sang it. He even married four of the five women with whom he lived. The emotional connection with "Gentle On My Mind" seems to have been his lifestyle of frequent travel as a soloist. (None of his four legal wives seems to have been a musician; Tanya Tucker had her own solo career to mess up with drugs.) And, after all, he tells us in Rhinestone Cowboy, he didn't write the song.
But he did have that affair with Tanya Tucker. There's quite a bit about her in the book. Campbell does not question her "official" age as being about half his age while they were together. Although Tucker's early performances were publicized as the efforts of a young teenager, she didn't look, sing, or act like one. I become suspicious when Campbell attributes Tucker's performing style to an earnest teenaged fan's attempt to sing like Elvis Presley. There was a resemblance all right...it's just that Elvis fans were more typically born in 1950 rather than 1960. When people who were born in 1960 were choosing our favorite pop singers, Elvis was fat.
The cocaine memories Campbell shares from this quasi-pedophilic relationship might have been chosen to help scare kids into sobriety. Cocaine was not a safe way to get "high"; it was a way to feel "strung-out" and act stupid. Campbell shares lots of memories of his, Tucker's, and their other cokehead friends' stupidity.
To what extent does this confession restore the credibility one automatically loses by preaching under the influence of illegal drugs? Or, how much credibility did the Rhinestone Cowboy have to lose? Readers will have their own answers. However, Campbell's complaints about Christian-phobia do not rest on his own credibility alone. That section cites several published sources, and is worth reading.
What else is in this book? Some celebrity gossip about the singers and actors with whom Campbell worked, including John Wayne, Diana Ross, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley. Some religious rhetoric, heroically frank in view of the anti-Christian bias of the industry in which Campbell was still working. Some memories about growing up in economically depressed Arkansas.
I think it's the current celebrity souvenir status of Rhinestone Cowboy (Campbell has finally retired) that's driven the price of this paperback so high. Maybe the book needs to be reissued.
Memoirs by people who've said no to cocaine certainly need to be in schools and libraries. When I was in high school, word on the street was that this drug was "safe" and non-addictive. Bosh. Although it's a concentrated extract of a natural herb, even in their natural state some herbs are deadly. Last spring, when Dennis Quaid discussed his post-cocaine experience with Newsweek, at a sponsor's request I collected a half-dozen celebrities who can testify that cocaine is harmful...
1. Quaid, in his Newsweek interview, called cocaine his "favorite mistake." "By the time I was doing The Big Easy, in the late 1980s, I was a mess," he said, but "those years in the '90s recovering really chiseled me into a person." Here's the original web link for the story: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/04/10/my-favorite-mistake.html. (The link worked on 2011/10/05.)
2. Although Glen Campbell continued singing after his cocaine years, he never had another hit song comparable with "Southern Nights," "Gentle on My Mind," or "Rhinestone Cowboy." Click here to hear what the drug did to his voice: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1067584.
3. Tanya Tucker still markets her own recordings through a website at which she briefly discusses her trip to the Betty Ford Clinic, in between memories of vintage recordings like "Delta Dawn" and promotion of her new album, "My Turn." Her site seems to be under construction.
4. In the early 1990s, Whitney Houston's drug problems were news. Almost 20 years later, Houston returned to the headlines as her daughter denied allegations that she too is addicted to cocaine. Apparently Bobbi Kristina "Krissi" Brown, daughter of Houston and Bobby Brown, was photographed by a National Enquirer reporter sniffing cocaine at a party.
Does everyone remember the series of Enquirer photos showing Osama Bin Laden sitting in a Las Vegas casino with his arms around sleazy-looking blonds? Does everyone remember how remarkable it was that as the other people in the casino seemed to move around, Bin Laden was in exactly the same position in every picture? Digital photography is a rapidly progressing field of technology; probably that photographer could make his victims appear to move around by now. Nevertheless, Houston apparently took the story seriously enough to order rehabilitation for Brown.
While typing this post, I searched "Bobbi Kristina Brown cocaine" for updates on the March news story about her being sent to rehab. No updates appeared as of October 5, 2011.
5. Trying to impress a connection, President Bill Clinton's brother Roger claimed that the future president had "a nose like a vacuum cleaner." No further evidence that Bill Clinton used cocaine has come forward. Roger served some time in jail for his own drug offenses, but although unfavorable reporters have been watching him, he's not been caught using illegal drugs since his release. What Roger Clinton has to say for himself can be found in his book, Growing Up Clinton.
6. One celebrity who claims to have recognized from the beginning that cocaine was an expensive, dangerous way to lower one's intelligence was Queen Latifah. In Ladies First, the Queen of Rap admits that when someone dipped a finger in cocaine and smeared it across her mouth at a party, she did feel "high"...but she realized that this was dangerous and stayed away from cocaine ever since.
Let's hope that everyone who reads this review, and these books, will be as wise as Latifah. According to Quaid, rehabilitation and recovery after heavy use of cocaine took five years...and feeling confident enough to discuss it took more than 10 years after that.
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