“It was so frustrating”: the band Glenn Frey never liked to talk about
For any artist who needs to hear this: failure isn’t always a setback. If success came only from doing everything right, many of your favourite artists might never have made it to the spotlight. When failures happen, the best approach is to treat them as learning experiences. Take Glenn Frey, for example—before he found success with the Eagles, he had to spend years working toward the opportunity to soar with his country-rock bandmates.
Before the Eagles even formed, Glenn Frey was already chasing his rock and roll dreams. His journey started in high school when he worked up the nerve to sing ‘Satisfaction’ with a few friends after a couple of beers. But when he got serious about music with his band, The Mushrooms, it was Bob Seger who stepped in to guide him, taking Frey under his wing and helping shape his path.
Even though he sounded great working on ‘Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man’, Frey was always destined for bigger things when he moved to California. Within the first week of being there, he was already getting starstruck at every turn, but it wasn’t until meeting JD Souther that he found a confidante to work on music with.
Souther may have still been fairly green along with Frey, but they figured it would be better for them to make it together as a duo. While choosing the name Longbranch Pennywhistle pretty much guaranteed that they weren’t going to be the biggest band in the world, songs like ‘Run Boy Run’ were a case of Frey honing his talents before he got the chance to spread his wings a little more once Eagles broke through.
While the duo’s first album never went anywhere, Frey ended up getting tied up in legal agreements that meant he couldn’t put out anything else as Longbranch Pennywhistle as long as he was tied to Amos Records. The idea of playing to half-empty bars wasn’t going to happen, so Frey spent his downtime working as a salaried musician, which eventually led to him working alongside Linda Ronstadt and Don Henley.
Despite Longbranch Pennywhistle laying the groundwork for the Eagles during their short time together, Frey says that he still doesn’t enjoy looking back on it, saying, “It was so frustrating [being on Amos Records after the failure of the Longbranch Pennywhistle album]. I don’t even like to talk about it. Every day we’d go to the Amos Records office, ask if we could get released from our contracts, and they would say no.”
Even if Frey and Souther went their separate ways, they weren’t about to stop writing together. Each of them had an unspoken language in the way they approached their craft. Listening back to the best material Frey would get up to later, it’s hard to think of a track like ‘Victim of Love’ or ‘The Sad Cafe’ without having Souther’s poetic lyrics adding the cherry on top of everything.
Longbranch Pennywhistle may have never been meant for the big time, but it does hold a distinct place in the hearts of Eagles die-hards. They weren’t going to go the distance, but all of this was part of the building blocks for the rest of their career.
