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Tanya Tucker on former flame Glen Campbell: ‘It was a love that will never be again’

In the ’70s, Tanya Tucker was a teen sensation, famous for hits like “Delta Dawn.” In the mid-’80s, she was reborn as a country-pop star. Throughout, she was a tabloid bad girl with a reputation for raising hell, locked in an infamous on-again, off-again relationship with Glen Campbell.

Tucker and Campbell were the Blake and Miranda of their day, only more famous, and more screwed up: He was a 40-something country superstar, several times divorced, his career just beginning its downward swing. She was half his age, and in between hits. They drank and brawled, broke up and got back together. They performed for President Ronald Reagan together, had hits together, courted and feuded in full public view (Campbell was “the horniest man I ever met,” Tucker once told People magazine fondly). There were suicide attempts (her, according to Campbell), a freebasing OD (him), then the inevitable breakup.

“I regret a lot of things,” Tucker, 57, says in a phone interview. “I broke up with him and he came back and wanted to fix things up, but I was too cocky. I wanted him to try a little harder. One more time would’ve worked, you know?” Before they could reconcile, Tucker says, one of Campbell’s band members set him up with the woman to whom he is still married. “I think he was just on the rebound, in my opinion,” Tucker says. “She don’t like me, but I have nothing against her. I appreciate her taking care of him all these years, because I know he’s a handful.”

These days, Tucker is attempting to launch a comeback, while Campbell, 79, has Alzheimer’s. According to Tucker, Campbell’s children are allowed limited access to him, and aren’t allowed to bring in phones or take photos. “They can’t just go see their dad, which I think is horrible.”

Tucker isn’t allowed to see him, either, she says, though Campbell’s oldest daughter once set up a FaceTime call between the former lovers. “I was talking to him, going, ‘Remember me? I’m Tanya, we used to love each other.’ Trying to think of anything that would trigger his memory. When I was done, he kissed the phone. So I got that, at least. … It may be all I ever get, but that was wonderful.”

While Campbell is a revered legacy artist, Tucker, one of the most successful female singers in country music history, is less celebrated. Many of her hits came during the genre’s low point in the ’80s, when glittery, rhinestone country ruled the charts. She has yet to be embraced by a cool kid like Jack White or Rick Rubin, and has lately struggled to find her place.

Tucker’s current tour (which hits the Arcada Theatre on Sunday night) is her first in years, and she hasn’t released a studio album since 2009. “I was off for about four years, just going through some times. I lost both my parents, and kind of lost my mojo.” The Country Music Hall of Fame put up an exhibit dedicated to Tucker last year. “I sort of had to show up for that,” she says. “I guess the wheels started turning real fast, and all of a sudden I got new management, new band, new everything.”

Tucker had been managed by her father, Beau, who died in 2006. When she was 9 years old, Tucker remembers, her father asked her if she would rather be a normal person or a country singer. The Tuckers were poor and living in Arizona; for Tanya, it wasn’t much of a choice.

“I probably didn’t know the particulars of what I was getting into, but I was all for it,” she says. “It seemed to make him happy when I would sing. He said, ‘You’re gonna have to sing twice as good, with twice as much feeling as the person who sang (this song) originally, because you’re 9 years old, and they’re not going to believe you. … Put it in there like Hank Williams would.’ He was my teacher. I could use a little bit of that right now.”

Post-Campbell, when Tucker ran into trouble with substance abuse, her father helped her clean up (so did Betty Ford). “He moved me back to Nashville (from Los Angeles), and I had to stay with him until I got myself straightened out,” Tucker says. “I didn’t have a record deal, and my dad said, ‘Well, I don’t think anybody wants you right now.’ That put a fire under me. I said, ‘Get me an appointment. Let me show them what I can do.’ By the end of the meeting, I had a record deal.”

Tucker’s post-rehab career upswing began in 1986 and lasted more than 10 years. Then came the usual: an autobiography, a covers album, a reality show. Navigating the modern day music industry was difficult enough when her father was alive; after his death, it seemed impossible. “I left everything to him,” Tucker says. “I did the creative part and he did the management. I didn’t have to worry about my money, I didn’t have to worry about anything. My dad had me covered. Now I’m finding out a lot more about the business than I ever knew. It’s just a learning process.”

Tucker is working on an album of new material, and the tour has exceeded expectations. Yet she occupies a strange cultural space: Despite four decades of hitmaking, she may be best known as Campbell’s grieving ex in exile (though maybe not everywhere — Tucker’s presence has been almost entirely scrubbed from Campbell’s Wikipedia page). “It was a love that will never be again,” says Tucker. “That was it for me. I’ve never been married or anything, I guess because I always did love him, and that’s never gonna change.”

Allison Stewart is a freelance reporter.

onthetown@tribpub.com

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When: 5 p.m. Sunday

Where: Arcada Theatre, 105 E. Main St., St. Charles

Tickets: $39-$99; 630-962-7000 or www.oshows.com