His music was ignored for decades. Now, at 81, he is collaborating with pop stars. He and his wife talk about his extraordinary life – and facing severe illness
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hen Beverly Glenn-Copeland was diagnosed with a form of dementia called Late two years ago, he was advised to stay at home and do crossword puzzles. He tried, but he doesn’t like crosswords, and it didn’t feel right. One day, recalls his wife Elizabeth, he said: “Honey, I know this is meant to be giving me more time, but I just feel like we’re not living a life. I have places I want to see and people I want to meet before I die. Since we have to make money, let’s make money doing what we love to do.”
And so the couple, who live in Hamilton, Ontario, are in London, midway through a tour that is the latest chapter in Glenn’s extraordinary late-in-life journey from unknown musician to revered cult icon. It has only been 10 years since his indefinably radiant music was rediscovered (not that it was ever really discovered in the first place), and he wants to enjoy it.
If you didn’t know that there are things Glenn can no longer do – drive a car, fill in paperwork, transcribe his music – you would take him for an unusually sprightly 81-year-old. Swaddled in a fleece and a giant scarf in the garden of the couple’s rented house, his hair a snowy cloud, he has a sly, twinkling mirth and an explosive, eye-rolling laugh. “Some things go downhill,” Elizabeth tells me before we sit down, “but in some ways he’s more himself than ever.”
