by Randal C. Hill
Kismet… It means fate or destiny. If we’re lucky, kismet – should it enter our lives – will be seen as something positive. Glen Campbell would be given the opportunity later in life to meet his destiny with a little-known song called “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
As one of 12 kids, Glen Campbell was born in 1936 on an Arkansas farm. When he was four, an uncle gave him a $5 Sears guitar and taught him how to play it. Young Campbell took to the instrument easily and proved to be a most passionate prodigy.
At 14, he left school to find gigs wherever he could. In 1960, he moved to California and eventually became an ace Hollywood session guitarist and vocalist. (The GQ-ish Campbell also possessed a solid, warm-as-honey singing voice.)
In time, he became a Capitol Records hitmaker and a TV celebrity with “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.”
But as the years rolled on, he gradually lost his luster. His TV show was canceled, and his name slipped off the Top 40 radio playlists.
One day in 1974, while driving in Los Angeles, Glen tuned into a country-music station and first heard the song that would change his life. “Rhinestone Cowboy” was by a New York singer/songwriter named Larry Weiss, who was striving for stardom with his original tune. While nothing in Weiss’s song was anything Campbell could relate to — he had never been a struggling Big Apple country hopeful — Glen loved Larry’s creation.
To Campbell, “Rhinestone Cowboy” had the potential to herald a comeback, perhaps even become his signature song, if it ever became a hit cover version under his name.
He bought a cassette of Weiss’s album “Black and White Suite” and carried it with him during a three-week Australian tour. He claimed later that he listened to “Rhinestone Cowboy” so often that, by the time he returned to the States, he could whistle the tune backwards.
Related: Music Flashback: “You Are So Beautiful”
Once home, Campbell rushed into the office of Capitol Records executive Al Coury to tell him of the “discovery” he had made. But before he could tell Coury about Weiss’s creation, Al told Glen that he first wanted him to hear a tune that Coury felt had great possibility for the fading superstar.
It was called “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
Random luck? Or kismet?
