Glenn Frey probably had the least regret about the end of the Eagles of any member of the band. When Don Henley called the remaining musicians together around the turn of the millennium for another studio album – the first since 1979 – it was Frey who didn’t show up for the appointment.
It was also Frey who drove first Bernie Leadon and then Randy Meisner out of the band in the 1970s. Glenn Frey was the bully alongside breeder Don Henley. He was the chairman of the Eagles, Henley was the second man – but Henley wrote the lyrics and he sang most of the songs. They shared writing credits (Frey is credited as a writer on “Hotel California” alongside Don Felder and Don Henley, but was barely involved in the piece), they shared a mansion, they shared the drugs, they shared the women. The 70s were their time together.
“Leave it, Glenn!”
When they barely shared anything in the ’80s, they still shared fading success. Glenn Frey had success in 1984 with “The Heat Is On” from the film “Beverly Hills Cop”, Don Henley had his biggest hit with “The Boys Of Summer”. Frey wanted to be an actor and took a supporting role in “Miami Vice” – he was very good as an airplane mechanic. But when he presented a compilation of his small film appearances at a garden party for his 50th birthday, someone in the audience shouted: “Leave it, Glenn!” Nobody took his ambition seriously. In Cameron Crowe’s film “Jerry Maguire” he plays a role as an unscrupulous football manager. Crowe knew him. Glenn Frey was a tough guy, and he was always just Glenn Frey.
In the 1960s he was the most ambitious of young musicians in Detroit. He always hung around where Bob Seger was, who was recording his first record at the time. Seger became aware of the boy who played the guitar and piano and sang passably. Frey wanted rock’n’roll, but Seger was already in Detroit, and he was soon no longer there either. Glenn Frey moved to Los Angeles and struggled for a while. He lived in a house above the garage-like apartment of a young musician named Jackson Browne. Through the ceiling he would always hear Browne writing his songs on the piano, then making tea, then playing the piano again. Frey understood how someone who is very talented works. As an 18-year-old in New York, Browne played guitar at Nico concerts. He could write songs like a young god.
The Eagles defined the West Coast sound
In 1971, Frey formed the Eagles with drummer Don Henley, who had played in Linda Ronstadt’s band, while Browne was recording his first record. Browne and Frey wrote “Take It Easy,” which appeared on the first Eagles album (and which Browne still plays in concert to this day). “Take It Easy” said everything about the Eagles and nothing about Jackson Browne.
But the Eagles didn’t take anything lightly either – they were the most uptight, ambitious and possibly hard-working band in the world. They defined the West Coast sound by combining the sweet harmonies of introspective songwriting, country music and mainstream rock. By 1975 they were already the most successful American band, and they were also the wildest. They enjoyed the fact that hardly anyone knew what these guys actually looked like. They were able to walk through Los Angeles, their city, undetected. But they never left. The songs were created at home and in the studio and were tested for suitability while driving. Frey and Henley weren’t on the beach, they weren’t on vacation, they only knew the “Peaceful Easy Feeling” with cocaine, methaqualone and alcohol. After “Hotel California” they struggled to “The Long Run”, the 70s were over and with them the Eagles.
In 1994 they came back again, released the magic live album “Hell Freezes Over”, undertook a fabulously successful tour and earned fantasillions. They made no secret of the fact that manager Irving Azoff was the most important man in the company. Solo careers languished; Timothy B. Schmit, Don Felder and Joe Walsh had nothing else. Felder was fired after the Millennium Concert in 2000. The remaining Eagles finally released “Long Road Out Of Eden” in 2007, a double album and the sum of their work: with author friends like JD Souther and Jack Tempchin, they lamented the decline of an America that never existed. They complained about the disappearance of the forests. They complained about the Iraq war. They lamented the end of love, the dimming of the sun, the hedonism of celebrity. It is a touchingly ambivalent and sentimental record, the record of masters of their fate.
Frey walked all the way back
The Eagles undertook a “First Farewell Tour”; they were always ironic. Frey and Henley had a documentary filmed in which they tell how they did it all against a dark background with the authority and sepulchral voices of old university lecturers and mafiosi. Glenn Frey is once again the smart one, Don Henley the intelligent one. In 2012, Frey released a record of American evergreens, nostalgic lounge music: “After Hours”. He walked all the way back.
Frey wrote the last song on “Long Road Out Of Eden” with Jack Tempchin. It’s called “It’s Your World Now”: “Leave something good behind/ The curtain falls/ I take my bow/ That’s how it’s meant to be/ It’s your world now.”
Glenn Frey would have been 75 years old on November 6th.
