Rhinestone Cowboy Lassoed for DUI

By the time he got to Phoenix, Glen Campbell was in some serious trouble.

The Grammy-winning country crooner logged some quality time in a Phoenix jail Monday night after getting busted for "extreme DUI" and hit and run following a car accident. He was also rung up on a charge of assaulting an officer for allegedly kneeing a cop while in custody.

The trouble starged around 5 p.m. Monday when Campbell, behind the wheel of a silver BMW, slammed into a white Toyota Camry at an intersection in central Phoenix, then kept going.

Luckily for the 67-year-old Rhinestone Cowboy, no one was injured in the fender-bender.

A motorist who had witnessed the hit and run tipped off the cops and ended up tailing Campbell to his home in the posh Biltmore Estates, one of the city's more affluent residential communities.

According to Phoenix's finest, the officers confronted Campbell at his home. "Based on his appearance and demeanor, they believed he was intoxicated and took him into custody," a spokesman for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department said Tuesday.

Campbell blew a 0.2 percent on the Breathalyzer--more than twice Arizona's legal limit of 0.08 percent and above the 0.15 percent threshhold for an "extreme" drunken driving charge.

As he was being booked at the station, Campbell was reportedly amiable toward his arresting officers, but then things went south.

Campbell ended up kneeing Sergeant Bill Niles in the thigh. Niles was okay, but the charlie horse didn't go over too well with authorities. Instead of letting Campbell go as planned, the cops re-arrested him and held the combative entertainer on suspicion of assault.

He went from calm and cooperative to becoming very loud, " Niles told the Arizona Republic. "There was a lot of, 'Do you know who I am,' a lot of profanities. He didn't think he should be treated like a common criminal because of who he was."

While cooling his heels in a cell at Madison Street Jail, Campbell could be heard humming "Rhinestone Cowboy," police said.

He eventually got a late-night date with Court Commissioner Steve Kupiszewski. The judge agreed to release Campbell on $2,000 bail, but ordered the singer to submit to drug and alcohol monitoring. Campbell is also barred from leaving the state.

"Yesterday I was arrested and put in jail. Even at my age, I learned a valuable lesson," Campbell said in a statement. "I apologize to my wife, my family, my friends and my fans."

For years a respected sideman backing the likes of Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, the Righteous Brothers and the Monkees on guitar, Cambell hit paydirt as a solo artist with such jukebox standards as "Rhinestone Cowboy," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman," "Galveston" and "Gentle On My Mind." He has scored 27 Top 10 hits and sold more than 40 million records, according to his Website. He also hosted his own television show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, which ran on CBS from 1969 to 1972. Campbell has also acted in a handful of TV movies and films, include the 1968 John Wayne western True Grit.

Campbell recently told the Arizona Republic that he had battled addictions to cocaine and booze for years, until meeting his wife, Kim, two decades ago. Since then, he says he has stayed clean.

His most recent album, the retrospective box set Glen Campbell: The Legacy, was released in October.