Glenn Frey’s favourite albums of the 1960s: “They taught me not to be afraid”
“The greatest decade in the history of mankind,” might merely have been a line uttered by a perpetually spaced-out drug-dealer in Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I, but it is not far from the truth when you look back at the cultural impact of the 1960s, which is something that has never left the hearts and minds of songwriters like Glenn Frey.
Although Frey made his first steps into the musical realm back in the 1960s, among the age of long-haired flower-power and folk-rock activism, it wasn’t until the comparatively lavish soft rock age of the 1970s that he truly made a name for himself alongside the Eagles. ‘Peace and love’ might not have been the core manifesto of the band, and it certainly escaped Glenn Frey’s relationship with fellow Eagle Don Henley, but the songwriter certainly carried forth the inspiration bestowed upon him by the various artistic revolutionaries who populated the airwaves of the swinging sixties.
After all, the musical mainstream of the hippie age was about as diverse as they come, boasting a vast blend of Motown soul, acid-dipped psychedelic rock, folk music vulnerability, and far-out experimentalism, too. From the sounds of it, Frey attempted to soak up as many of the fruits of this cultural stew as humanly possible, rubbing shoulders with everybody from Bob Seger to Linda Ronstadt – the latter of whom would eventually inspire the formation of the Eagles.
Back in 2012, Frey disclosed the lasting impact of the “greatest decade” to The Express, revealing that, out of his six all-time favourite albums, five first hit the airwaves during the 1960s. The first of which, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, should come as no surprise, having played a role in inspiring virtually every songwriter who ever came into contact with it. “John Lennon told Brian Wilson this was the greatest record he’d ever heard,” Frey shared. “It’s not three chords and an attitude. It’s so sophisticated. I was overwhelmed.”
Perceptive readers will likely be able to guess where the Eagles songwriter went from there, highlighting the similarly revolutionary Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as being his go-to effort by The Beatles – a band which truly typified the sounds of the era. He called their 1967 record, “The first concept album,” explaining, “you hear different things every time you play it. […] It’s unfettered writing. They taught me not to be afraid to write any kind of song.”
It wasn’t all LSD-fueled concept albums back in the 1960s, though, and Frey also espoused his deep and unwavering appreciation for the world of soul, picking out two of the genre’s ultimate titans in Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding. “I grew up in Detroit and used to hear [Franklin] sing on her father’s gospel radio show,” he recalled. Admittedly, the specific album he chose for the ‘Queen of Soul’ is a compilation that only came out in 2002, but the vast majority of its tracklisting was recorded during Franklin’s 1960s golden age, hence its inclusion in this list.
For Redding, Frey went for 1967’s all-killer Live In Europe, which surely goes down among the greatest live records of all time. “A great live album that captured the energy of his show,” Frey summarised, “You hear the band, feel the crowd and his plaintive voice.” Adding, “‘Try A Little Tenderness’ is a beautifully crafted song. The way they add instruments and intensity is amazing.”
Finally, the songwriter also plucked out The Band and their transformative masterpiece Music from the Big Pink from back in 1968, coming off the back of their being Bob Dylan’s first electric backing band. “We played this over and over,” Frey said, harking back to his younger days. “It wasn’t perfect, but it was funky with a unique pulse and sound. It had respect for black gospel music and a feeling of Americana, that Appalachian, rootsy thing. It was a landmark.”
In a similar sense, Glenn Frey became a landmark artist of the following decade, reaching the upper echelon of the American rock mainstream thanks to the unparalleled success of the Eagles and their thinly-veiled hatred for one another. Still, Frey owed it all to the lasting legacy of the records he immersed himself in during the 1960s.
Glenn Frey’s favourite albums of the 1960s:
- The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds (1966)
- The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
- Aretha Franklin – Respect: The Very Best of Aretha Franklin (2002)
- Otis Redding – Live In Europe (1967)
- The Band – Music from the Big Pink (1968)
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