Bob Seger on the Eagles song Glenn Frey “sang the crap out of”
The story of the Eagles is complex, with many comings and goings and a constant power struggle between the band’s three primary songwriters, Don Felder, Don Henley and Glenn Frey. While this triumvirate of musicians would lead the group to most of their most culturally significant efforts before an eventual schism when Felder was fired in 2001, others would also help them craft classics.
One of the best-loved songs by the Los Angeles band that was brought to life with outside help was the rootsy ‘Heartache Tonight’ from 1979’s The Long Run. Written by Henley, Frey, J.D. Souther and Bob Seger, it originated in a jam Frey between and Souther. While Souther was never an official group member, he is sometimes dubbed the ‘Unofficial Eagle’ and helped them write several highlights. He and Frey were close, given that he was the first person his fellow Detroit native met after relocating to the ‘City of Angels’ in the late 1960s.
The group’s final chart-topping hit originated through the old friends jamming. According to Souther, they penned the first verse after listening to the grooving soul of Sam Cooke. Stuck for a chorus, a few days later, Frey called another Detroiter, the roots rocker Bob Seger, who had helped incubate his talent when just a teenager. Reportedly, he quickly blurted out the line and melody that would go on to become the track’s heartiest hook.
Presented with what they were looking for and more by the heartland legend, Frey, Souther and Don Henley finished the song and took it to the finish line. It became one of the highlights of The Long Run, the Eagles’ last record before splitting up in 1980, which wouldn’t be followed up until 2007’s Long Road Out of Eden.
According to Souther, in an interview with Songfacts in 2011, the pair didn’t find a chorus they liked for days after first jamming, and when Frey was on the phone to Seger, he told him he wanted to run the song by him, and then sang it. In a demonstration of his aptitude, Seger fast responded with the chorus and belted it out. Over the moon, Frey then called Souther and asked him if four writers were appropriate to have on the track. He was told they were if it sounded good enough. In response, Frey sang Seger’s part, and he was instantly blown away without it backed by the music.
In classic Eagles style, the song’s origins are surrounded by conjecture, with conflicting accounts of the details. Seger has even maintained that he was in the room with Frey when he devised the chorus, saying he hadn’t been there for more than five minutes before he finally hit upon and blasted out the chorus to his friend.
Given that Seger is such a legend of the era and played an instrumental role in the song coming to fruition, since it first hit the charts, his fans have been begging him to add it to his live oeuvre. He’s been reticent to do so, given that he thinks his late friend Frey “sang the crap out of” it to the point it would be a struggle for him to replicate its high-end.
“I don’t want to face a lifetime of singing that onstage,” Seger told USA Today. “It’s hard to sing! It’s at the highest end of my range, really blasting it. Glenn sang the crap out of that.”
