“Sound like demos”: Glenn Frey on the last good record Neil Young made
Every artist that has ever played rock and roll is going to come under fire at one point in their lives for selling out. No matter if their artistic change is completely justified or not, fans will always find ways to pick people apart the minute they start making a song that they either don’t agree with or don’t like the sound of in some respect. While Glenn Frey was never afraid of the word “sellout” during his time in the spotlight, he would be dead in the ground before he took that kind of criticism from his fellow musicians.
Because when he first hit the big time, Frey seemed to fulfil everything he set out to do as a musician. Most artists look at their songwriting as a craft, but judging by what Don Henley brought to the table with Frey, all roads were pointing to something like Hotel California, and once they achieved all of their dreams as the reigning kings of California rock and roll, it was almost a no-brainer why they could never recover from it on The Long Run.
Even though that phase of the band ended pretty badly, Frey wasn’t about to stop making music. He had spent time putting in the work for years, and now was his time to officially start having some fun. His first few solo hits like ‘The Heat Is On’ were never going to crack the charts in the same way that Henley would with ‘The End of the Innocence’ later on, but he was more than willing to work on any project he could get his hands on.
After all, the best way for people to remember your legacy is to remind them at every opportunity, and it didn’t take long for Frey to branch out into other endeavours. Music was simply one of his interests now, and when he started doing guest appearances on Miami Vice and played a big wig who wouldn’t take shit from Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire, he proved to have some decent acting chops behind him as well.
Then again, Frey’s approach pretty much spat in the face of what Neil Young wanted out of a rockstar. For every hit that Eagles had during their lifetime, Young was more interested in stretching himself and listening back to some of his strange detours; he wasn’t afraid to drive himself into a ditch if things weren’t going his way. But when Young started giving Frey hell for starring in Pepsi commercials, Frey wasn’t going to roll over.
When confronted about Young’s stance, Frey felt that Young’s approach to the limelight was all wrong, saying, “I don’t know what’s worse — releasing 17 albums that sound like demos and taking the public’s money for that or me taking a million dollars from Pepsi. Right, Neil? Who’s ripping off who, guy? You haven’t made a decent record since Harvest, Neil… I just don’t think he should set himself up as rock’n’roll’s conscience.”
For any casual Young fan, though, Frey’s comments come off a bit like sour grapes from him. He could have been rightfully pissed off at getting called out, but from Harvest onward, Young had some of the best albums of his career. Yes, Tonight’s the Night was rough around the edges, but that’s the entire appeal when talking about someone who was picking up the pieces of losing the most important people in his life.
So while Frey does have a point about how no one should become the moral compass of music, Young has a lot more to be proud of than what his contemporaries had to say. He was among the finest artists of his generation, and in 100 year’s time, people will be playing albums like Rust Never Sleeps as much as they are playing Hotel California.
