Ashley Campbell Says Glen Campbell ‘Doesn’t Use Language Much Anymore’
Glen Campbell's daughter Ashley Campbell has offered fans an update on her ailing father's health condition.
The legendary country singer has been in a longtime battle with Alzheimer's, and Ashley reveals that he's now living in a memory care facility and has asphia, making it difficulty for him to process and communicate information. While the disease is frustrating for the legendary country singer, his daughter says their spirits are still high.
"He doesn't really use language much anymore, but we look on the bright side [because] in these late stages of Alzheimer's, it could be very bad," Ashley tells Rolling Stone Country. "It could be confusion and anger a lot of the time, which is the case for a lot of people I've seen. But for him he's just happy every day, smiles, he enjoys life and he enjoys being around people — and he loves a good piece of cake."
Glen Campbell's Career in Pictures
While Alzheimer's can have a debilitating effect on an individual, including loss of memory and speech, Ashley says her father's spark still lives on, offering a recent example of how her father playfully pretended to stab her with a fork at the dinner table, just like he used to do when she was a kid.
"He knocked a piece of food off his plate and I reached to put it back, and he turns on me with the fork and goes, 'Haha!' It was so funny. Little glimpses of him will come back every now and then, and it just makes me so happy," she says.
Campbell's final studio album, Adios, is set to be released on June 9. It features collaborations with Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Roger Nelson and Jimmy Webb and includes 12 songs from Campbell's career that he always hoped to record.