IN CONCERT

I went to see Glen Campbell in concert on Thursday night. The rain fell like spears from the sodden sky as I plunged into Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall. I’m used to it: I’ve ruined two Asda suits already. Good job I’ve got 15 more. I was up in the gods, miles from the stage. ‘Damn!’ I said ‘I’ve forgotten my opera glasses.’ I looked around me. At 61, I was almost the youngest person there. I was amazed that some of them made it up the stairs. There was the lingering smell of TCP all around me and the drink of choice was Sanatogen. Glen’s family and a chap from Norway called Sigersson or something were his backing group. They opened up with half an hour of optimistic but dreary rockabilly songs. His daughter, blonde, slim and beautiful, played a mean banjo but her appearance with said instrument was not feminine. It was like watching Delia Smith in evening dress turning over the sod with a garden fork. She was cheerful, though. “Hully, gee, it’s great to be in Scatland. Ain’t the cab-drivers jest wonderful, the way they talk to you an’ such?’ I hadn’t noticed that – the ones I have met were more sullen than Ataturk and about as irascible as Victor Meldrew. “Yawl never guess whit I had fer breakfast,’ she said – ‘Heggis.’ The audience laughed uproariously. I supposed they didn’t have much else to laugh about in Broken Britain these days. Glen ambled on after another half-hour’s intermission. It is no secret that he is suffering from the early stages of dementia. “It’s good to be here,” he said. “It’s good to be anywhere.” When he opened his mouth to sing, it was the Glen Campbell of old – that rich, mellifluous, soaring voice was just as vivid as it had been in his pomp. His guitar-playing too, was still extraordinary. When he played the opening bars of ‘Galveston’ I was transported back to the summer of ’69, to Wallis’ Holiday Camp in Cayton Bay (slogan: “Walli-days are jolly days”) where I sang that song to myself as I ambled along innumerable country lanes under a permanent hot sun. I well recall that holiday – fighting off the amorous intentions of a plump girl from Shiney Row by the old device of pretending I was ill and getting my mother to open the chalet door when she called round. Glen finished with ‘Wichita Lineman’ which still makes a pulse in my neck throb, and ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ with which the whole audience joined in. Then, after his encore, he stood shyly at the corner of the stage, and bowed his head slightly as those in the audience that could still move rose to their feet of one accord and clapped themselves silly. Then, in a second, he was gone and that would be the last time anyone in the United Kingdom would ever see him perform live. That moment, and that thought, moved me and I took it with me out into the teeming rain and into the taxi. “Whaur are ye wantin’ to go?’ the grumpy cab-driver growled at me as I clambered into his taxi at Queen Street. It’s a pity I’m not slim, blonde or beautiful.