When Glenn Frey’s mother wouldn’t let him join Bob Seger: “Not so fast”
It’s hard to really separate the success of the Eagles without Glenn Frey at the helm. Despite his fading into the background when Don Henley took a lead vocal, he always served as the team captain, overseeing every song and making sure that nothing that could be considered filler landed on any of their classic albums. If things had gone only slightly differently, though, Frey may not have been looking to move to California and join the era of country rock at all.
That’s not to say that Frey didn’t love that style of music. The first day that he moved to California, he remembered being starstruck driving into town and seeing David Crosby hanging out on Sunset Boulevard. Still, the image that he built as one of the foundational pieces of rootsy rock and roll was something that he had to be taught rather than coming to him directly. Even when working with the band, part of the problem he had was adding convincing country leads to Bernie Leadon’s songs half the time.
You have to remember that Frey didn’t get his start in sunny California. He had come from a family of automotive workers out of Detroit, but while his musical chops were honed in the ‘Motor City’, the thought of him trying to compete with The Stooges or becoming a signing to Motown Records didn’t really make sense for him, either.
He was more interested in classic rock and roll, which Bob Seger had already commandeered. Before the genre had a proper name, Seger was the prototype for what heartland rock was going to be, and by taking Frey under his wing, he practically had a partner in crime when working on songs like ‘Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man’.
Outside of being an older brother figure to Frey, Seger also helped teach him how to write songs. No one in the industry got by covering everyone else’s material, but Seger was one encouraging him to fight through every bad song he wrote, knowing that as long as he kept at it, he would write a classic. If he needed a place to hone his craft, though, what better way to become a songwriter than going on the road with Seger and watching a master at work?
Whereas Frey had everything squared away, things came to a screeching halt when his mother ended up putting a wrench into things, saying, “I was going to be [Seger’s] bass player. It didn’t work out. My mom caught me smoking pot with a bunch of friends and said, ‘Just a minute. Not so fast.’”
Even though that kind of opportunity could have been a death blow, Frey wasn’t ready to give up. He knew that his favourite music was coming from California, and the only way for him to become one of the biggest stars in the world was to move to where the action was, eventually meeting his girlfriend in Los Angeles and meeting people like Linda Ronstadt and JD Souther on his first days there.
Still, it’s hard to fight back against a band that doesn’t have Mom’s seal of approval. It might have been the best financial decision for Frey to make, but Mrs. Frey probably called it right. I mean, Frey and Seger could have been great together, but the real tragedy would have been the Eagles frontman never meeting Don Henley and creating classics like ‘Hotel California’ later down the line.
