The album Glenn Frey thought would ruin Neil Young: “Why are you destroying your career?”
There are always going to be a few heavy hitters in an artist’s discography that are practically untouchable. Even if the artist never has to put out another record in their lives, they will always have those moments where they took on the world and managed to win back all of their goodwill with fans. Glenn Frey already had that with Hotel California, but he knew that some artists were getting a bit too big an ego on them when they decided to release their later projects.
Then again, that kind of perfectionism is probably why the Eagles never released that much material following their magnum opus. It was clear that they had hit a wall after working on The Long Run, and even with a handful of decent songs on Hell Freezes Over, Long Road Out of Eden was never going to come out until the rest of the band was proud of every track on the record.
And that often meant going through Frey and Don Henley’s songwriting model. Even if they didn’t write the song, there wasn’t a single line, chord, or musical passage that was going to make it on an album that didn’t have their co-sign on everything. Joe Walsh may have understood what they were going for, but Timothy B Schmitt wasn’t even safe from everything, eventually saying that Henley called him over when he had a song and refused to accept any of his lyrics.
When looking at his idols, though, Frey noticed that not all of them were concerned with perfection the same way he was. It was all about serving the moment that they were in, and while Bob Dylan made it a point to be a chameleon in every sense of the word whenever he played, the frontman couldn’t help but look at Neil Young funny whenever he started going outside his wheelhouse.
After all, he had one of the greatest moments with tracks like ‘Heart of Gold’, but when he came back down to Earth, he was practically falling apart. Since his bandmates were dying around him, Tonight’s the Night was the only proper way for him to grieve, practically crying as he sang most of the tunes as he watched people like Danny Whitten throw their lives away to heroin.
Even though the record is held up as a classic, Young remembered getting some naysayers like Frey, saying, “I was playing Tonight’s The Night. We had an opening act, the Eagles. Glenn Frey said to me, ‘Why are you destroying your career? You have this incredible record that came out [Harvest], and everybody loves it. Now you’re singing about heroin and overdoses and cocaine and gunshots and blood all over the car. What are you singing this stuff for? Why do you do this?’ There’s no answer. I don’t have an answer.”
Then again, being that open and honest is what gets an audience to relate to someone a lot better. No one could have known the pain Young was going through due to Whitten’s heroin addiction, but everyone has had someone that they’ve drifted away from or watched spiral out of control, and this was their way of stepping into Young’s shoes for a few seconds whenever they put on a record.
As much as fans could easily throw on ‘Take It Easy’ and sip their margaritas during a show, Young knew there was something more to artistry than that. It was about pushing himself forward, and that normally came from him pushing the envelope a little bit.
