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Re: Dennis Lambert & Larry Weiss Talk About Rhinestone Cowboy

Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2022 4:16 pm
by jay
Glenn2Ns

Tremendously interesting conversation. I hope Cowpoke can find that article.

***Campbell's assertion that "Country Boy" wasn't "authentic country music."***
***"We don't understand country music."***

Born in Ft Worth, raised in the Permian Basin and still hanging out around Amarillo...back in my youth, all you had was local country AM, so I cut my teeth and drank a helluva lot to CW music.
IMO, Country Boy is definitely not a country song. It's easy listening if anything. But I am kind of a purist for country... I totally agree w Tom Petty that most of today's country is just bad rock with a fiddle. I didnt really see Glen as CW. He could have been...but he had way more talent and personality than most CW guys in the 60s and 70s.

Roy Orbison is hard to place...yeah...Texan all the way, Twang all the way...but his songs...the ones he wrote...for the most part...could you see Waylon or Buck or Porter or Merle singing them... but you hear the voice...BANG...Country. Maybe it isnt fair because I think Roy wrote for his range...which few could pull off.

Re: Dennis Lambert & Larry Weiss Talk About Rhinestone Cowboy

Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2022 4:54 am
by Cowpoke
Hi Glenn2Ns,
thanks for elaborating on what happened at the time. I have a lot of old newspaper articles on Glen so maybe I can find something more about it. I haven't been able to track down the piece in Billboard Magazine yet, would love it read it in its entirety. Anyway, very interesting stuff and thanks for posting!

Cowpoke

Re: Dennis Lambert & Larry Weiss Talk About Rhinestone Cowboy

Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2022 10:00 am
by Glenn2Ns
Cowpoke wrote: Thu Jul 28, 2022 7:41 am I guess there are versions of the single that do have the right producer credits…

DC94B72A-5099-48D4-9BA6-F7F4F46BC85E.jpeg
yes there are...

Hi Cowpoke!
Thanks for the welcome and hello to everyone on this fine board.
You learn something new every day, and in my case I have learned over and over that my favorite music and my favorite music people always end up connected in ways that I never predicted or expected. It happens all the time. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that my favorite post-Lambert & Potter Glen Campbell cut was produced by... Lambert and Potter! But I was surprised.
And you don't need to go into the far future CD world to prove it, either. In addition to the 45 you found, both the original Swedish and Japanese 1978 LPs had the correct credit on both the covers and the labels. Even more interestingly, the '78 US Record Club editions also had the correct "except *Produced by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter" credit for "Can You Fool"!
Wow, I wish I had known then, but thanks for the exciting info!

Yeah, Glen Campbell was very vocal about not liking "Country Boy (You Got Your Feet In L.A.)", to the point that I don't think he even deemed to name the song - he just called it "the follow-up". "I like 'Rhinestone Cowboy' but I don't like the follow-up because it's not an authentic country song". That's a paraphrase — he said it many times in slightly different ways, and it eventually got around, in fact pretty quickly, to the point where Billboard printed an article about it and contacted producers/writers Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter for their reactions to Campbell's assertion that "Country Boy" wasn't "authentic country music."
Lambert and Potter gave a frank, one sentence response to Billboard, and I guarantee you this is not a paraphrase:
"We don't understand country music."

Through the prism of time and 20/20 hindsight, that may sound surprising and unlikely. But I was there at the time and I just crowed at both the content and the honesty. I was not a country music fan. I was a Lambert and Potter fan. Lambert and Potter had burned up the R&B charts with "It Only Takes A Minute" and others by Tavares, multiple soulful comebacks for Four Tops, and even their uptempo pop-rock had an unmistakable R&B feel: "Don't Pull Your Love" by Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds, "Two Divided By Love" by the Grass Roots, "Rock and Roll Heaven" by the Righteous Brothers, and pretty much the entire Gayle McCormick and Dusty Springfield albums. Aside from that they were known for writing lovely pop ballads like "One Tin Soldier" and "Ashes To Ashes".
When I heard they were doing Glen Campbell, I was surprised, but I figured if they were going to do country you couldn't find a more "pop" country artist than him. What I expected was for them to do their usual keyboard-driven pop-rock with acoustic guitar laid over it and enough touches of steel guitar to have a country feel to it.
Which is exactly what they did.
Indeed, they did not understand country music.
They did understand how to make hits.

Shortly after the article in Billboard, and with "Country Boy" zooming up the charts, Glen Campbell stopped putting down the song and just shut up about it. I feel quite certain it was Capitol Records who put a gag on him. Since he had the mouth, the nerve and the gracelessness to publicly put down the work of the producers who had just given him the biggest hit of his career, I doubt it was his own idea to silence himself.
Now, I'm sure he eventually matured and mellowed.
And don't get me wrong, I liked the guy very much. But that all really happened.
And he clearly mended fences with his producers because more excellent music was to come from the team.

Glenn

Re: Dennis Lambert & Larry Weiss Talk About Rhinestone Cowboy

Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2022 7:41 am
by Cowpoke
I guess there are versions of the single that do have the right producer credits…
DC94B72A-5099-48D4-9BA6-F7F4F46BC85E.jpeg
DC94B72A-5099-48D4-9BA6-F7F4F46BC85E.jpeg (48.15 KiB) Viewed 4416 times

Re: Dennis Lambert & Larry Weiss Talk About Rhinestone Cowboy

Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2022 1:17 am
by Cowpoke
Hi Glenn2Ns, welcome on Glen Campbell Forums and thanks for posting!

Very surprising to hear that Glen at the time said he didn't like Country Boy (You Got Your Feet in LA) because it wasn't an authentic country song, like Rhinestone Cowboy. I mean, I don't think Rhinestone Cowboy was an authentic country song either. And then, he made a whole career out of turning pop songs into country hits and vice versa. And he sure came to love Country Boy later on (after it had become a hit?). He still sang it in 2008 when I saw him in The Royal Festival Hall in London (and he added an amazing extended guitar solo to it too).

I would sure love to know more about what happened during Lambert and Potter's Glen Campbell years. So how did they react in Billboard Magazine?

As for your question about who produced "Can you fool"... I believe it actually was Lambert and Potter.
As you know in the early 2000s Raven Records release a few of Glen's albums on CD that weren't available otherwise: Reunited, Rhinestone Cowboy/Bloodline and Southern Nights/Basic. They came with a nice booklet.
Southern Nights / Basic (Raven, 2003)
Southern Nights / Basic (Raven, 2003)
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Southern Nights / Basic (Raven, 2003)
Southern Nights / Basic (Raven, 2003)
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So that is where I doublechecked it two years ago. Reading the booklet again I was reminded that Can You Fool actually was first released as the b-side to Another Fine Mess (Capitol 4584). Flipped over by country radio it became a minor country hit. Later it was released as an A-side (with Let's All Sing A Song About It as B-side). Only then did it became Glen's last US Top40 hit. And another hit produced by Lambert and Potter.

Re: Dennis Lambert & Larry Weiss Talk About Rhinestone Cowboy

Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2022 2:41 am
by Glenn2Ns
Cowpoke wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 1:31 am
Btw, I checked and yep Can You Fool from the Basic album was produced by Lambert and Potter as well! Love that song btw.
As a big Lambert and Potter fan, I was totally unaware of this. But also very excited to learn it, as "Can You Fool" was my absolute favorite Glen Campbell cut after the Lambert and Potter years!
Problem is, it's absolutely untrue. I don't know what your source is but it certainly isn't the credits of either the Basic album nor the "Can You Fool" single. Both were produced by Glen Campbell and Tom Thacker. If you have some source that contradicts this, please share it.
Because of my very big admiration for and faithful following of Lambert and Potter, I remember a lot of interesting things that happened during their Glen Campbell years that I doubt anyone else remembers.
As an example, when "Country Boy (You Got Your Feet In L.A,)" was released as a single, Glen Campbell went around telling every TV station, radio station and print publication that would listen that he didn't like it because, unlike the previous single "Rhinestone Cowboy", "Country Boy" was not an "authentic" country record. This got around pretty fast, and within a few days Lambert and Potter were contacted by Billboard magazine and asked if they had any response. Which they did...

Re: Dennis Lambert & Larry Weiss Talk About Rhinestone Cowboy

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2020 10:57 am
by Mike Joyce
Well said cowpoke. I am listening to Re-united today and it is a go to album when I want to just listen to a good solid set of songs. I guess it is harder to find great songs because of the way the industry has changed. The Jimmy Webb's of the world are not able to produce songs for other artists like they used to because a lot of artists tend to be almost self sufficient writers and performers, which is what record labels want now a days. Of course it is also more difficult for artists as listeners tend to download their favourite tracks and not bother with the whole album. This I think is a great shame as some tunes take longer to sink in. I have said before that I have listened to an album which I had neglected for several years, only to find a track which previously had passed me by, but is now a favourite track. This has happened on some of my Nanci Griffiths and Mary Chapin Carpenter CD's. Of course if you don't buy the album that opportunity to re-discover a new favourite old song is lost.
Perhaps we are lucky to have been born at a time when we could explore and enjoy the latest offerings from our favourite artists at a much more leisurely pace and allow songs to grow on us over time.
I am beginning to sound old.
Mike

Re: Dennis Lambert & Larry Weiss Talk About Rhinestone Cowboy

Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2020 1:30 pm
by Cowpoke
In fact come to think of it, I once read an article about Tanya Tucker in which a reviewer noted that every first album that Tanya made for a new record label was a killer.
The same happened with Glen after he left Capitol. Glens first album for Atlantic (Old home town), MCA (Still within the sound of my voice), Capitol Nashville (Walkin’ in the sun) and New Haven (Show me your way) was a great one. I think signing with a new label created a certain energy for both Glen and the label which resulted in some of his best work.

Re: Dennis Lambert & Larry Weiss Talk About Rhinestone Cowboy

Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2020 1:08 pm
by Cowpoke
Hi Mike I get what you’re saying. I didn’t mean to suggest that all the albums that came between Basic and MGC weren’t any good. There are some very good albums in there. Old Home Town and It’s Just a Matter of Time are two favorites of mine. Still within the sound of my voice is a strong album as well as is Walkin’ in the Sun. But do they reach the heights of Reunion, Rhinestone Cowboy or Basic? To me they don’t. That level of artistry I am glad to say, Glen reached again with MGC and Ghost.

Re: Dennis Lambert & Larry Weiss Talk About Rhinestone Cowboy

Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2020 11:58 am
by Mike Joyce
Not sure I would agree you there Cowpoke. I thought "Light years" and "still within the sound of my voice" were pretty good. Other albums like "Old home town" and "letter to home" has a number of good tracks but some weak one also. I guess it depends on the taste of the listener. They obviously didn't have the wider appeal of the pop world at the time, but they did have some gems on them. I have been listening to some of the early albums recently and I really love glen's voice and the arrangements on these tracks. Such as "your young and you'll forget" and "love is a lonesome river" etc. I realised it's easier to play these songs at the folk club as I know the lyrics well and I just need to organise the chord progressions. They seem to go down well as most people aren't familiar with them but they still stand up as good songs.
Mike