‘What I do with my body is none of your business’: Musician Beverly Glenn Copeland talks transgender rights, stardom and living with dementia | music

WWhen Beverly Glenn Copeland was diagnosed with a form of dementia called late-onset dementia at two years old, she was advised to stay home and do crossword puzzles. He tried, but he didn’t like crossword puzzles, and it wasn’t going well. His wife Elizabeth remembers him saying one day: “Dear, I know this is meant to give me more time, but I 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, Ont., are in London, in the middle of a tour that is the latest chapter in Glenn’s extraordinary late-life journey from little-known musician to revered worship icon. It’s only been 10 years since his radiant, indefinable 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 out paperwork, record his music — you would consider him an unusually lively 81-year-old. Swaddled in wool and a huge scarf in the garden of the couple’s rented home, a snowy cloud in his hair, he has a sly, sparkling cheerfulness and an explosive laugh that commands attention. “Some things are going down, but in some ways he’s more himself than ever,” Elizabeth told me before we sat down.

Partners and collaborators for nearly 20 years, the pair appear to be holding hands, leaning on each other’s shoulders, holding hands and swapping stories. At one point, Elizabeth reminds Glenn of a favorite song and he taps her on the head fondly: “That’s my memory.”

Music has always come easily to Glenn. “It gets sent to me and then I often forget I wrote it,” he says. “And this has nothing to do with dementia. This is the way my mind works. It’s instantaneous. I can’t read terribly, but if I received it, I’d be able to write it all down.”

“Glenn is a scientist,” says Elizabeth. Glenn protects his mouth with his hand to throw aside a comical story: “They usually call them stupid Scientists.”

For most of his life, Glenn made music with no hope of recognition. Two albums by the singer-songwriter in the early 1970s — imagine a more charged Terry Kaler — were no hits. His 1986 album, Keyboard Fantasies, is a meditative marvel that has been labeled ambient or new age but is in fact… uniquesold a few dozen copies on cassette. Most of his music remained private. He has countless unheard songs that were recorded in outdated formats over the years.

“It didn’t bother me at all,” he says cheerfully. “I wasn’t doing it for the audience. I was doing it because it was sent to me. The kind of music I was getting wasn’t the kind of music that would interest most audiences. People were saying, ‘What?’ He is This?” He was best known (and paid) through his role on the Canadian children’s TV show Mr Dressup.

Elizabeth remembers seeing Glen perform at a restaurant in Toronto in 1976, when she was 19 and he still identified as a woman. “Very few people in 1976 seemed gender neutral,” she says. “He was sitting there in a tracksuit, playing beautiful music, but he wasn’t remotely interested in the audience. It was like if you’re listening, you’re listening, and if you’re not, you’re not.”

Elizabeth, who was a poet, teacher, comedian and musician, met Glenn properly in 1992 and they became friends and occasional collaborators. In 2007, they reconnected and fell in love, since working together in education, activism and community theatre. “I know what’s going to happen, honey,” Glenn said. I’m going to die and then they’ll discover my music and you’ll get hired.’ I was like, ‘Fuck that, I want you to feel the fruits of your labor.’

It happened suddenly. In 2015, when Glenn was 71, a Japanese collector tracked him down and asked if he still had any copies of the keyboard Fantasies. This set off a series of life-changing dominoes: reissues, new recordings, collaborations with Sam Smith and the xx’s Romy, his first international live shows and an album of covers and remixes for the likes of Bon Iver and Arca.

Now the pair have made a new album with their music director Alex Samaras and producer Howard Billerman. “A Laugh in the Summer” was supposed to be an informal session with a choir at the Hotel2Tango studio in Montreal, but they came away with nine songs, some old and some new, each one recorded in one take.

Glenn’s version of the 19th century Shenandoah folk song reminds him of his childhood in Philadelphia. His mother, Georgie, (“an exceptionally wonderful woman”) worked in early childhood education for the United Nations and taught him ancient spirituality. His father, John, was a high school principal and classical pianist who played obsessively at home. Glenn won a scholarship to study music at McGill University in Montreal. “When I think about it, I didn’t have much of a choice. [Music] “He was coming for me.”

Glenn didn’t even know what trans identity was until the ’90s, but he “told my mom I was a boy when I was two or three. Sometimes you know. It’s not about genitals, it’s about how you feel. In the ’50s, I had to do all kinds of things I didn’t want to do. As soon as I could, I said, ‘That’s enough of this.’ “I will not pretend.”

These days, young men questioning their gender often ask him for advice. “Mostly what I’m saying is that if you feel like you can really be who you are, be who you really are. But we all take risks to be who we are in societies that don’t accept certain things.”

He has lobbied the Canadian government for years to allow transgender people to change their gender on passports without intrusive tests. “He said, ‘It’s none of your business what I do with my body, it’s my identity,’” Elizabeth says. And it’s hard for them to see those rights being undermined around the world. “We have a responsibility to continue to act in hopeful ways,” she says. “Hope is a verb. It’s work. And he has muscles.”

“There are days when I can cry,” Glenn says. “There are days when I get really angry. Then there are days where I think, ‘Okay, this is what happens. Things go forward and then they get pushed back a lot of times. That’s what we humans seem to do. Unfortunately.’

Spiritual practice has helped keep him afloat. He was a Quaker who became a Buddhist in the 1970s and found that the two religions had much in common. “You sing to be able to overcome the things that are most difficult for you, but you also sing for the happiness of others,” he says. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”

The same spirit of generosity and optimism infuses his music and performances. Having lived outside the music industry for so long, the couple sees live performances in terms of strengthening community. “It’s not an ‘I’m So Cool’ show,” Elizabeth says. “It’s: How can what we’re doing in this room with these humans be helpful?”

The musicians in the band also undertake sponsorship duties. The couple is candid about living “on the edge” financially. When the pandemic forced the cancellation of their 2020 tour, they lost their home and would have been homeless if their daughter hadn’t launched a crowdfunding campaign. Life remains fraught with danger.

“People say, ‘Don’t you sing just because you love it?’” Elizabeth says. “I sing because I love it, but, damn it, the grocery store won’t let me sing for my groceries. My landlord won’t accept a song of ours. We enjoy the work but we also have to do it.” As Glenn says: “Elizabeth was the person who took care of me, but Elizabeth needed someone to take care of her.”

They hope this won’t be Glenn’s last tour. His condition requires some adjustments on and off stage, but for the most part, he says, “not much has changed.” The couple also has a memoir and music and community workshops in the pipeline.

“We don’t want to be old in the way that our culture demands that old people be,” Elizabeth says, gazing around the autumn garden. “Yes, we are entering the decay phase of life, but when you watch the leaves turn from green to orange, the decay phase is often the most beautiful.”

Glenn smiles at her. “Mmm, that’s interesting, honey. That’s right.” There will come a time for the rocking chair, he says, imitating its squeak with a smile. “But that’s not him.”