If David Bowie made some of the most important music of the 1970s to stimulate the mind, producing songs and styles that challenged convention, Glenn Frey and the Eagles were behind some of the greatest songs of that era that resonated in the heart and soul.
Their six original albums recorded between 1972 and 1980 contain some of the most timeless and influential tracks in American popular music. Today's modern country, from Garth Brooks and Shania Twain down to the latest generation of Carrie Underwoods and Jason Aldeans, are making millions of dollars writing and recording songs that are pale, but heartfelt, imitations of 40-year-old songs like Best of My Love, Take It Easy, Already Gone, Peaceful Easy Feeling and New Kid In Town.
Bowie brought a European mentality to his work, post-modern and intellectual, while the Eagles embraced tradition and affairs of the heart. Most of all, the Eagles were unabashedly American. It's no accident that the vast majority of their records have been sold in the United States because the music and lyrical themes are so fiercely rooted in Americana past and present, from the formal waltz beat of Take It To The Limit to the Saturday night soaked-in-beer "somebody's gonna hurt somebody before the night is through" of Heartache Tonight.
Frey was a kid formed on the tough streets of Detroit, shaped by working-class values and the power of crowd-pleasing music to bring people together. His musical brother, Don Henley, was a product of small-town Texas. The geography of their upbringing was different but the worldview was largely the same.
They showed up in Los Angeles at the same time with the same fire in their belly that they were strong enough and smart enough to do whatever it took to escape their upbringings and become rich and famous musicians. Ironically, the path to their fame and fortune was telling the stories of the people they left behind, providing the soundtrack to the lives of small-town and blue-collar folks in dead-end jobs and unhappy marriages who were nonetheless proud of their friends, their families, their traditions and their hometowns.
What made Frey and Henley so successful is that neither man ever lost their attachment to their roots, never broke the connection to those feelings of urgent desperation and yearning that fuelled their music.
They could be happy, but they were never content. The 2013 documentary History of the Eagles shows both Frey's tenderness and brutality. Frey didn't care one damn bit how sick and tired bassist Randy Meisner was of touring and singing the high notes on Take It To The Limit. Those were paying customers out there and they deserved nothing but their favourites, played the way they knew them, and if he had to use his fists to get Meisner out there, he was prepared to do so. He hounded Meisner right out of the band for not working hard enough, for not being a man and getting the job done.
Frey and Henley fought constantly, if not with each other, then as a team against producers, promoters, record executives and other members of the band.
Frey's legendary temper and stubbornness eventually led to a 14-year falling out with Henley and when they reunited in 1994, the intervening years may have made both men wiser but it didn't dull their principles in the slightest. That led to an agreement that sounds selfish on the surface, but makes perfect sense in the big picture. As the two remaining founding members of the Eagles and the core singers and songwriters, they were done with their band being a democracy.
They loved what Joe Walsh and Timothy
B. Schmit brought to the Eagles with their voices and their guitars but that didn't mean they deserved an equal portion of the pie.
Fortunately for the fans, Walsh and Schmit agreed to being reduced to second-class members of the Eagles and the corresponding cut in pay, recognizing that Frey and Henley were the soul of the Eagles and should be compensated accordingly. For Henley and Frey, like always, the principle of the matter was what was important and they were simply stating the obvious - their value was equal to each other in the Eagles and that was worth more than that of their two other bandmates.
The greatest irony of Frey's incredible career was how tender and sentimental his songs could be but how cold, demanding and unforgiving he could be in the music business. Frey was an American man making American music that so well-matches the split personality of America in the modern era.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
