One Buddy Wings It; the Other Plays Along
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By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: June 16, 2005
The composer Jimmy Webb and his greatest interpreter, Glen Campbell, have been intermittent collaborators for nearly 40 years. As they cavorted on the stage of Feinstein's at the Regency on Tuesday evening, they suggested two good ol' boys goofing off with the easy familiarity of childhood buddies and former hell-raisers looking back with sheepish amusement. (Mr. Campbell, in fact, grew up in Arkansas, and Mr. Webb in Oklahoma, and Mr. Campbell is several years older).
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Richard Termine for The New York Times
Glen Campbell on the first night of a five-evening engagement.
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Forum: Popular Music
Mr. Campbell, whose career was catapulted by hit singles of three of Mr. Webb's songs in the late 1960's, is by far the wilder. At Tuesday's opening-night show of a five-evening engagement, he winged it, reading the lyrics (and even then, sometimes losing track of them) from a music stand, picking out wrong notes on his guitar and in general treating the performance as an audience-friendly open rehearsal. Mr. Webb, manning the keyboard, had no choice but to be a good sport and play along.
It is a measure of Mr. Campbell's incandescent talent that he still triumphed. His sloppiness detracted only minimally from the power of his voice; at 69, he still conveys the manic optimism of a garrulous rhinestone cowboy crowing under the open skies. When he pushes his voice into a fervent upper register, the sun bursts from behind the clouds and blazes with an intensity that heats up the room.
The program, devoted entirely to Mr. Webb's songs, blends Mr. Campbell's early hits ("By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman," and "Galveston,") with more obscure numbers like "Asleep on the Wind," a beautiful pop-country ballad that imagines a bird tucking its head under a wing to fly in its sleep. If anything, Mr. Webb's romantic mysticism is more pronounced today than ever. In his songs, love is always now or never, all or nothing. When Mr. Webb sings them, you feel their anguish. Mr. Campbell's voice transmutes the pain, doubt and introspection into confidence and faith; miracles are not just possible, they're likely.
Through Saturday at Feinstein's at the Regency, 540 Park Avenue, at 61st Street; (212) 339-4095.
