What was Eagles founder Glenn Frey’s first band?
When Linda Ronstadt brought future Eagles songwriting partners Glenn Frey and Don Henley together as backing musicians in 1971, it must have seemed like a musical match made in heaven. Frey and Henley certainly thought so themselves, as they decided to start their own band while still on tour with Ronstadt, who was encouraging of their decision.
Yet each man had taken the long way around to reach the band that would define their respective careers. Henley had started a band in his native Texas which went through multiple lineup and name changes before recording a self-titled album under the name Shiloh in Los Angeles during the summer of 1970. And although he was the younger of the two, Frey’s path to founding the Eagles was arguably even longer.
His ensemble outfit Longbranch Pennywhistle, started alongside longtime collaborator JD Souther, was far more established than Henley’s band. They released their sole album, a pioneering record in the country rock genre, in 1969, with three of Frey’s compositions on the tracklist. Prior to meeting Souther in California, Frey also worked with future country rock star Bob Seger in his native Detroit, who mentored the young singer and guitarist’s first forays into making records.
Seger wrote and produced a single for Frey’s band the Mushrooms in 1967 called ‘Such a Lovely Child’, which was heavily influenced by early psych rock groups like 13th Floor Elevators and The Byrds, as well as the raw sound of British invasion band The Animals. Frey returned the favour by singing and playing guitar on Seger’s single ‘Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man’ a year later.
So, was this Frey’s first band?
The Eagles frontman was already a seasoned performer by the time he formed the Mushrooms, however. He’d previously been a guitarist and backing vocalist for The Four of Us, which was led by Gary Burrows, the brother of fellow Mushrooms member Jeff. And that wasn’t his first outing as a musician, either.
While still in high school, Frey was part of a group called the Subterraneans with several classmates, which was the first band he played real venues with. The group went to Dondero High School in Royal Oak, a suburb of Detroit, and they’d venture into the home of Motown to play gigs in its budding rock scene. “At that particular time, the holy grail was really the Hideouts,” Frey explained to the Detroit Free Press in 2003. “These were the happening teen clubs in Detroit.” It was there that he honed his craft as a guitarist, and where he was spotted one night by Burrows.
Even before his first time on a stage outside of his school, though, Frey had a group of his own with “a couple of friends”. They sang folk songs together, while he played a four-string tenor guitar. According to the man himself, the trio called themselves “the Disciples”. If we can call this a band, then it was the first Frey was ever part of.
All in all, he spent four years playing in bands around Detroit, three of them as a serious performer, and could well have stayed there were it not for his girlfriend Joan Sliwin moving to California. Perhaps if he had, his music would have become more influenced by local proto-punk groups like the MC5 and the Stooges than the soft rock he discovered on the West Coast.
In any case, he would bring sounds from the Motor City into the Eagles’ music over the subsequent decade, and was arguably the band’s main proponent of straight-up rock and roll. Frey earned his stripes in the era of garage bands, Beatlemania and early folk rock. And his records with Henley were all the better for that early musical education.
