Born in 1936 in Arkansas, the place seems to differ from bio to obit and it seems like other singers of the period, it was really between the two on a backcountry farm, Glen Campbell started as many singers did, apprenticing as a songwriter for the top stars of the 1960s. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005, and earned a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. Following a public battle with Alzheimer’s disease, the country music legend died on August 8, 2017, at the age of 81.
He was the seventh of twelve children and at fourteen left home starting out as an itinerant musician, wending his way to his Uncle Dick and the Sandia Mountain Boys. Eight years later, Glen formed his own group, the Western Wranglers. From there he went to Los Angeles and joined the American Music Group and was backup singer for many notables including Dean Martin, Edye Gorme and Steve Lawrence, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.
More success and then in 1969 he landed the role of Texas Ranger La Bouef (the Beef or Meat) in John Wayne’s classic True Grit and wrote & sang the title song. By the time Glen died, he had four wives, eight children and was worth approximately 50 million dollars.
The Glen Campbell Map
Glen’s chart is a bucket with a Jupiter (black box) handle. The black vertical line divides the east-west hemisphere in half and while Neptune shimmies over to the Fourth House on the Western Side, eight of ten planets are safely ensconced on the resourceful eastern side of the chart.
He also has an unusual emphasis, a jam packed twelfth house with Aries indicating that he was tireless in trying to establish himself into the larger sphere of music and entertainment. He followed his dreams relentlessly even if it meant heartbreak to those whom he married and his family, capitalizing on every opportunity that came his way.
The break of Neptune at 15 Virgo on the Western side supports oddly enough, his married to his Fourth wife, and the duty he realized to his family and his formal acceptance of Jesus as his personal saviour in 1981 when he went home after many years away, to get baptized. This was no doubt a major turning point for him particularly as his handle planet, Jupiter is square Neptune, making him swallow his pride and forcing him to admit his past errors (Jupiter opposite the Ascendant with a T-Square to the Midheaven) in his monkey grab to the top (Saturn is in the Tenth, typically a sign of career success).
And the Wichita Lineman…….is still on the Line
Glen has no Line of Vitality, Sun to Moon, suggesting that he wasted a lot of talent and time pursuing drugs and women in a reverie of what he believed was success.
Jupiter Square Saturn create the Line of Motivation, that supports the Line of Vitality’s wastrel ways and led for many years bad publicity and a poor family life.
But what he lost in those two areas, he more than made up with the exact conjunction of Mars to Venus in the Twelfth House of self-undoing, large corporations and hidden problems for the Line of Efficiency. This conjunction suggests that Glen had the ability to just pick himself up, adapt to the new issue at hand and move on. He could do that in his music, his work and then eventually in his life. This aspect gives him an rejuvenative ability to restart his life when it seemed bleakest, highlighted of course by his touring around the country in his seventies with Alzheimer’s.
Finally, Glen has no Line of Social Significance, the aspect Uranus to Neptune, suggesting that Glen was never much interested in the world at large or his place within it but in reality his tour with Alzheimer’s was another Neptunian obligation he owed his fans and heightened awareness of the benefits of music in dementia.
RIP Glen, I still like your La Bouef best.
Download Glen Campbell’s chart.
