One side effect of flying solo for a month is that – recognising that just because I could quite happily spend every evening at home watching television, that doesn’t mean that I should – I’ve taken to saying yes to any and all invitations. That’s how I found myself this week watching the singer-songwriter Ashley Campbell perform at London’s Brasserie Zedel with my friend Emma, J— and C—, a couple from South Florida, and Stanley Tucci.
Ashley is the daughter of the country-music legend Glen Campbell – you might have heard one or two of his hits: “Rhinestone Cowboy”, “Wichita Lineman”, “Gentle on My Mind”… He died with Alzheimer’s in 2017. “My dad was Glen Campbell,” Ashley told her audience, then corrected herself: is. Unlike her brothers, Ashley, an accomplished guitar and banjo player, didn’t want to be a musician at first – she trained as an actress. When she graduated, she asked Glen if she could join him on tour in Australia and New Zealand for a laugh. He told her: fine, but only if you play banjo. And so Ashley went on the road with her father, and continued to play with him until his retirement. Glen’s final tour was supposed to last two weeks – the family weren’t sure what the reaction to his Alzheimer’s diagnosis would be – but ended up lasting more than a year, so great was the demand. I was surely not the only audience member snivelling into my sleeve as Ashley played the song she wrote for her father, “Remembering”: “Bone for bone we are the same/Bones get tired and they can’t carry all the weight/We can talk until you can’t even remember my name/Daddy don’t you worry, I’ll do the remembering.”
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