How Bob Seger helped Glenn Frey achieve greatness
The late Eagles founder Glenn Frey once said the most important thing to ever happen to him was meeting Bob Seger in Detroit. They had come across each other in the mid-1960s when Frey was touring with the Mushrooms, often playing clubs operated by Seger’s manager, Punch Andrews.
Frey said Seger had taken him under his wing, and the two stuck up a lifelong friendship that resulted in numerous rock classics. They took to sharing songwriting tips, with Seger slowly building Frey’s confidence and letting him step in on a few tracks before the Eagles exploded.
“We [realised] that songwriting was essential, it makes you original,” Seger told the Detroit Free Press. “That was the bottom line – we were both going to be original songwriters so that nobody could compare us to anybody else. Songwriting was key to the whole operation. And obviously, he was very good at it.”
Seger found his feet quicker than Frey, having had a hit with 1968’s ‘Ramblin’ Gamblin Man’, on which Frey provided backing vocals and guitar. But it was Frey’s turn in the early ‘70s. Having moved to California, he and the Eagles found massive success – but never at the cost of his friendship with Seger.
“He was so successful, and I was so happy for his success,” Seger said. “And he was always positive about my career. He was the first guy to come see me when I was writing ‘Beautiful Loser’ [saying] ‘Oh, that’s good, that’s good, keep at it, keep at it!’ He was a cheerleader for me. He was always a positive influence for me throughout my career.”
They continued to collaborate, with the Eagles pitching in on Seger tracks like ‘Fire Lake’, and Seger co-writing ‘Heartache Tonight’ alongside Frey and J.D. Souther. After spending years studying Seger’s creative process, he was the first one Frey called when stumped by a chorus for ‘Heartache Tonight’.
As Souther, who is often tipped as the “unofficial Eagle”, reported, Seger was the one who created it. “Glenn [Frey] was on the phone with Seger, and he said, ‘I wanna run something by you,’ and sang it to him, and Seger just came right in with the chorus, just sang it, and it was so good.”
Frey sheepishly asked Souther if four writers would be okay, and after hearing Seger’s “fantastic” input, he quickly agreed to it. When Seger laid down the line: “There’s gonna be a heartache tonight,” Frey’s eyes lit up.
Following Frey’s death in 2016, Seger reflected on their creative chemistry, saying: “If you can judge songwriters by the cash register, they don’t get much better than Glenn Frey.”
