Country Star Glen Campbell Diagnosed With Alzheimer's

Glen Campbell

Roberta Parkin/Redferns/Getty Images

Country music star Glen Campbell has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. According to the 75-year-old singer's wife Kim, he is "still an awesome guitar player and singer," and will make the most of his time while his memory is largely intact by recording a final album and heading out on a farewell tour.

Campbell's last album, titled Ghost on the Canvas, is in the works now with producer Julian Raymond, who worked with the singer on his 2008 collection Meet Glen Campbell, which included covers of songs by Green Day, Tom Petty, the Velvet Underground and the Replacements. Ghost in the Canvas will include another song penned by the Replacements' Paul Westerberg, as well as original material and tunes by Guided By Voices mastermind Robert Pollard and the Wallflowers' Jakob Dylan. Billy Corgan, Chris Isaak, Dick Dale, Brian Setzer, the Dandy Warhols and Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen will all contribute guest performances to the album.

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Ghost on the Canvas is scheduled to hit stores on August 30th. The final tour, tentatively titled the Glen Campbell Goodbye Tour, will kick off shortly after the album release.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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