Glen Campbell makes last stand at former Hilton after disclosing he has Alzheimer’s

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Glen Campbell didn’t write "Rhinestone Cowboy" any more than Barry Manilow wrote "I Write the Songs."

But seldom has a signature song so summed up the Las Vegas career of a star who walked the line between country and pop music, and a nice guy who got washed away by the temptations of success, to paraphrase Larry Weiss’ lyric.

The 76-year-old singer-guitarist returns today and Saturday for one last stand at the Las Vegas Hotel, the place he knew as the Las Vegas Hilton. The farewell tour comes after the announcement of Campbell’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Campbell was a Las Vegas star during the 1970s and ’80s, years that marked career highs and personal lows for a headliner in the years when the Strip was starting to lose its Rat Pack luster.

"He was good for Las Vegas. He really was," says Lonnie Shorr, the comedian who was Campbell’s close friend and opening act for most of his years on the Strip.

When Campbell headlined the Hilton, Riviera and other Las Vegas showrooms of the day, he was one of the rare Las Vegas stars of the era who wasn’t years separated from his hits on the radio. He already was entrenched in the showrooms when "Rhinestone Cowboy" hit No. 1 in 1975, followed by another No. 1 with "Southern Nights" in 1977.

And just as he did with his records, Campbell transcended the "country" label that might have confined him to a niche on the Strip.

"He did a little Sinatra, he did instrumentals (such as) ‘The William Tell Overture’ and ‘Classical Gas,’ big symphonic arrangements," Shorr notes. "Because of his television show, he wasn’t perceived as much as country."

The farewell tour – kicked off by a February performance on the Grammy Awards – covers all the milestones of Campbell’s storied career, with musical support onstage from daughter Ashley and sons Shannon and Cal.

"I’m still waiting to get maybe one millionth of the talent of Glen and Brian Wilson," longtime Beach Boy Bruce Johnston noted recently. The two have known each other since Campbell’s brief period as a Beach Boys pinch-hitter in 1965.

Campbell’s ’60s hits, "Wichita Lineman," "Gentle On My Mind" are now regarded as modern standards. But the set lists include a song from last year’s "Ghost on the Canvas," which wrapped up the singer’s recording career.

It’s one of those lovingly crafted, tasteful and critically lauded last-hurrah albums that no one seems to actually buy. Complete with songs written for Campbell by Paul Westerberg of The Replacements and Jakob Dylan, the album begins with "A Better Place," the final song in most of the live shows.

"Some days I’m confused, Lord, my past gets in the way," Campbell sings in the song he co-wrote. But he agrees, "The world’s been good to me."

In Campbell’s autobiography, also called (guess what?) "Rhinestone Cowboy," he remembers his first visit to Las Vegas was with his first wife, Billie, on their honeymoon in 1959.

"As a (cowboy bar) musician I was used to being ignored by the dancing and drinking crowd. In Las Vegas, customers actually listened to the music," he wrote. Watching Bobby Darin’s guitarist, Campbell remembered thinking "that I could play as well as he could. I returned to Albuquerque with renewed determination to make it as a guitarist."

During his star years, the book reduces Las Vegas to a backdrop for the dramas of Campbell’s personal life, both his drinking and cocaine addiction and his headline-generating romances: a marriage to Sarah Davis, the wife of his friend Mac Davis, followed by wild, codependent days with singer Tanya Tucker when she was 21 and he was 44.

"He was just a nice and sweet and all-American as a guy can be," says jazz saxophonist Jimmy Mulidore, who played in the Hilton’s resident orchestra and later became its conductor. "But he got so far into drugs he disappeared mentally."

"I’d go out onstage higher than a kite or drunk, because I didn’t appreciate what I had been given," Campbell told the Review-Journal in 1985, when he was performing at the Desert Inn. "I was too much into the ‘poor little me’ syndrome, and ‘Oh, how could you leave me and how could you do this to me’ and ‘I’m so lonely,’ and so you turn to something else."

Campbell shed his demons and lived to tell, and by 1997 was still an occasional Las Vegas performer for weekend engagements at the Golden Nugget or the suburban Sunset Station.

"Two shows a day, man, that’s too much. It doesn’t become an art form then. It becomes going out and picking cotton," he said of having left a standing gig in Branson, Mo.

"I still like to get out and play guitar," he added. "I’m an old guitar player and that’s what I like to do."

Shorr says he went to one of his old friend’s concerts a few weeks ago and was "pleasantly surprised" by both the performance and by Campbell recognizing him after the show.

"He used his teleprompter to remember the lyrics, which is what he has a problem with. Musically he’s fine. He plays as well as anybody in the world. The part of the brain that has to do with music ability, you can retain that longer."

"A lot of people don’t know how good he was," Shorr says. "How good he is."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.