With a lot of songs, songs that don't make a good statement, I forget the words.
— Glen Campbell
I don't miss television. It's too much hurry up and sit around, wait till they do this and do that, and get the lighting just right. I'd much rather go out on a stage anywhere and just play and sing for an hour.
I saw my first indoor bathroom when I was 9.
I play guitar, and it's not a prop.
I can think of only two or three songs out of hundreds I've recorded that I performed as originally written. I like to become intimate with the material and change it to suit me.
Roger Miller opened a lot of people's eyes to the possibilities of country music, and it's making more impact now because it's earthy material: stories and things that happen to everyday people. I call it 'people music.'
I'd have to pick cotton for a year to make what I'd make in a week in L.A.
If we grew it, we ate it. If Daddy shot it, Mamma cooked it.
I used to be just a total jazz freak. People used to say, 'Where's the melody? Is there a melody in there anywhere?' Now I let the music follow the song.
What I try to do is live with myself and please me. If I can't do that, I can't please anybody else or live with anybody else.
I can't be alone.
I realize you are going to make mistakes through life. Just don't make any bad ones, you know. Like all of my records are perfect records, but I did make mistakes on them.
Dean Martin. He was incredible.
You don't mess with politics and religion. Leave it alone. People get upset at that sometimes.
I felt my music wasn't aiming at anybody. Everything I was doing was because it was a good song.
I love singing. I just love it.
All my records - 'By the Time I Get to Phoenix,' 'Wichita Lineman,' 'Galveston,' 'Rhinestone Cowboy,' 'Dreams of the Everyday Housewife' - they all had strings on them.
It was Dec. 22, 1981. I figured I had messed up enough, and I decided to have a little faith and let God take over. It definitely straightened my act up in a hurry.
I'm not an actor, really. I can play myself pretty well.
I'm from so far back in the sticks that they had to pump the light in there.
I have been blessed. I really have.
Perhaps I've found the secret for an unhappy private life. Every three years, I go and marry a girl who doesn't love me, and then she proceeds to take all my money.
With the TV shows, you get eight zillion people watching you. I was really surprised at the way everything went. I knew television was powerful, but that was just... wow.
I learned it was crucial to play right on the edge of the beat... It makes you drive the song more. You're ahead of the beat, but you're not.
Picking a guitar was a lot easier than picking cotton.
I'm running my life according to what I know to be true from the Bible and the old scribes.
I'm a take-me-as-l-am person, and all the rest is water under the bridge. You can't change yesterday any more than you can predict what's gonna happen tomorrow.
I just tell you, the Lord's been good to me. Even if I was a rounder, He's been really, really nice to me.
I can read a chord chart, but I couldn't read a note chart.
I don't remember not singing. I started when I was, I don't know how - what, two years old or a year old or something like that.
I am just trying to do a song the best possible way I can.
That's what we grew up with - the good songs, the good lyrics, the good big-band stuff. I miss that era.
The very first big one I had was 'Turn Around and Look At Me.'
To play with a symphony today is just fabulous.
I know it was raw in some places, and I was a jerk in some places, but that's the way I was, and I was stupid.
I've been every way there is to be.
Success is not getting what you want, it's enjoying what you have.
I've always been forgetful.
Frankly, it is very hard to remember things from the 1970s.
Elvis was a great singer. He really was.
'True Grit' was fun to do, but I wasn't cut out to be an actor. I made John Wayne look so good, he won his only Oscar.
They could never put me in a slot. They couldn't say Glen was 'country,' 'pop' or 'rock.' I'm crock, OK? A cross between country and rock. Call me crock.
Hank Williams' music - it just doesn't go away, for some reason.
With the first money I got, I built my parents a house back home, gave them a string of credit cards, and said 'Go.'
I would rather do live than any kind of lip-synching or something like that. I don't like to lip-synch.
Do everything according to God, and be nice, and treat other people the way you would like to be treated.
I don't hold grudges.
Music is music. It doesn't matter if I am trying to aim at country or trying to aim at pop.
I've been singing and playing the guitar ever since I can remember.
If you've got a good melody and a good story married together, that's a good sign for hit-song material.
