He also played drums and more for another popular ceildih band, Stairheid Dynamite.
His maxim was: “Live every day like tomorrow will be your last, because one day you’ll be right!” and it was one he lived by.
Last Tram, whose music was described as “sometimes more Deep Purple than White Heather’, played an eclectic mix of Scots, Irish and Cajun music all over the world from Dubai to Moscow and for several years “shuggled” the crowd at T in the Park.
Latterly known as the Silver Fox due to his distinguished air, Campbell was a frequent fixture at the bar of the Cafe Gandolfi in the Merchant City, or at folk music events from Celtic Connections, to Sunday sessions at the Clutha Vaults or the Scotia. “He liked to come into town, cause some mayhem, have a drink or two, and then he would get into his Mercedes 500 SL and drive home again like Mr Toad,” recalled the friend Paul Spencer, who gave the eulogy at his funeral.
Douglas Maxwell Campbell, was born in Glasgow and was educated at Keil boarding school in Dumbartonshire, where he was a keen sportsman, excelling at rugby, cricket and music.
Campbell lived in Glasgow’s Merchant City for some years after separating from his wife Lorna, with whom he remained on good terms. In those years he had a busy social life and made many friends in the area.
He was a writer of bawdy limericks with which he amused friends and well known as one who would never turn his back on a friend. He was able to see the funny side, when after allowing one friend who had fallen on hard time to use his address for mail, he discovered he had used it to claim winter fuel allowance on Campbell’s behalf.
But a keen salmon fisherman, Campbell moved latterly with his partner Gail Fitzpatrick, to a cottage in Crossford in south Lanarkshire, where the Clyde ran at the foot of the garden. When he needed surgery two years ago, having found out that his surgeon was a neighbour, he knocked on the door the night before the operation, introduced himself and presented him with a large, freshly-caught salmon.
As well as being something of a Glasgow character, Campbell was also a hard-working engineer and blacksmith whose company, Remac Services, made the clothes poles that adorn many Glasgow greens as well as contractors tools. In challenging times, he continued to make a success of the business in which Lorna was a partner, outsourcing some technical work to China, but retaining a workshop, near Shotts.
He is survived by four children and seven grandchildren. His ashes are to be spread at Beachmore in Kintyre, where his grandmother once taught, and where he cherished the memory of happy holidays with his children and the much-loved grandchildren he described to friends as “free range”.
The memorial service took pace at Daldowie Crematorium in Broomhouse where Campbell had instructed friends he wished to be cremated, because “I built the lum and when I die, I’m going to go up my own lum”.
Musician and blacksmith;
Born October 20 1944:
Died March 24 2010