We all know Glen Campbell: the silken voice behind Rhinestone Cowboy and Wichita Lineman, a mean guitarist and one of the most successful country artists of all time – one who shifted an astonishing 49 million albums. What most people don’t realize is that, before all of that, he was in the Beach Boys.
Campbell initially met the band during his time as a gun-for-hire in the LA session scene. Having moved West from his native Arkansas in 1960, he was already well-established as a key player among the infamous ‘Wrecking Crew’ studio pros when he featured on his first Beach Boys track Dance, Dance, Dance, in 1964.
Campbell must have done something right, because he was called back for sessions on I Get Around, Help Me, Rhonda and Please Let Me Wonder, often playing 12-string acoustic, or electric. Then when Brian Wilson suffered a mental health setback in late ’64, he got a life-changing call.
“Mike Love and Carl Wilson called me on Wednesday, and said “Glen, can you be here tomorrow?” recalled Campbell in an interview with NME [via GlenCampbellForums]. “We’ve got a gig in Dallas, you wanna come play it with us? I said, “What do you mean, open the show, or what? They said, “Brian’s sick and can’t make it. You gotta play bass and do Brian’s parts…”
As a monster musician who’d already played parts in the studio, Campbell had no problem with switching to bass, though he admitted playing low and singing high threw him a curveball at first. “I didn’t know all the words to the songs,” he later admitted. “They’d be singing ‘Pasadena’, and I would sing something else. I didn’t know what I was saying.”
Fortunately for Campbell, no one else did either, as he told NME: “[I] made about two million mistakes, but nobody could hear them over the screamin’ and hollerin’ of 17,000 kids!”
The Dallas show was a learning curve in more ways than one, though. “Right after the concert, The Beach Boys ran for the cars like mad – but I took my time, I figured nobody would pay any attention to me. After all, I wasn’t really a Beach Boy. However, those kids… they jumped on me… started yankin’ my hair, stole my watch, tore off my shirt. From then on, I was always the first in the car!”
Perhaps Campbell’s greatest contribution to the group, though, is his work on Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys' untouchable classic.
Firstly, in the freedom it gave the band’s creative lead, because if the Beach Boys had not so immediately found a comfortable touring sub in Campbell, Wilson may not have had the time and freedom to do the sort of expansive work that made his masterpiece.
As Wilson put it: “I said to the band, ‘If you want me to be able to be creative like I really want to, I’m going to have to stay at home…’ I had no peace of mind, no chance to actually sit down and think or even rest. I was so mixed-up and so overworked.”
That soon changed when he swapped the live shows for full-time studio work, and the result quickly bloomed in 1965.
Campbell made a more direct contribution, too. Looking over the liner notes for the new 60th anniversary reissue of Pet Sounds, which detail all of the Wrecking Crew and Beach Boys musicians to feature on the tracks, it’s clear how much of a contribution Campbell made to the album itself.
Having stepped down from touring with the group in May of 1965, Campbell found time to hit the studio again and is the second most featured guitarist on the record (after Wrecking Crew legend Barney Kessel), performing on five tracks: including You Still Believe In Me, Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder), I Know There’s An Answer, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times, and Caroline, No.
Again, he leaned heavily on a 12-string for the sessions, often using a Mosrite Mark X-II electric.
“[Brian would] tell you all that stuff, where he wanted it, how he put it together. You can listen to the making of the records,” Campbell said previously, in the Pet Sounds reissue liner notes.
“I've sat and listened to that CD, I stick it in my car just so I can recall and it takes everything away… I can listen to what we were doing in the studio. They weren’t your cut-and-dried, three-chord, rock ’n’ roll or surf songs. Brian Wilson’s stuff stood out. Breathtaking work.”
Campbell later went on to a solo career and the rest is history, though one of his early solo tracks, Guess I’m Dumb, was also penned by Wilson, originally for the Beach Boys, then gifted to Campbell in thanks for his contributions.
Throughout his world-conquering solo success, Campbell remained, rightly, proud of his period with the band – as attested by footage of his 1977 London concert, in which he runs through a five-song Beach Boys medley, finishing with a lightning-quick guitar solo on Surfin’ USA (on a 12-string electric, of course).
He remains one of the only players a true Beach Boys fan can stomach ripping a solo over a Wilson composition – and he certainly earned that right.
- The 60th Anniversary reissue of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds is released on May 15 via Capitol/UMe.
