“I freaked out like everyone else”: Glenn Frey names the ‘Great American Supergroup’
Towards the end of the 1960s, the California rock scene had started to turn a corner. It wasn’t that far removed from the Woodstock generation at this point, but acts like The Byrds were quickly moving away from the psychedelic movement and getting back in touch with what made rock and roll and country work so well together. Glenn Frey was more than willing to fly the flag for American music with the Eagles, but he knew that Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were untouchable compared to their peers.
This is strange to say about a group where half of them didn’t even come from the US. Sure, Graham Nash cut his teeth in The Hollies overseas, and Neil Young repped for Canada, but what they created on their first handful of releases is some of the purest Americana music ever created.
Rather than relying on the heavy guitars or one great riff, albums like Deja Vu feel like they could been recorded over a weekend at a ranch in the middle of nowhere, with every band member dialling things back to a more rustic approach to music. Sure, there were still pop songs like ‘Teach Your Children’ and ‘Our House’, but the name of the game was about pairing things down to the essence of a song rather than any bells and whistles.
If there’s anything that Frey probably saw in them, though, it was the harmonies. No matter what song they were playing, hearing all three (or four) of their voices coming together practically served as the unofficial choir of California before Frey hooked up with Don Henley after bailing on Linda Ronstadt’s backing band.
Even at the time when Frey was singing songs like ‘Take It Easy’ and ‘Tequila Sunrise’, he still thought that Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were the benchmark that everyone should look up to, eventually telling Cameron Crowe, “Hey, man. I bought that first album and freaked out right along with everyone else. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young are, in essence, The Great American Supergroup.”
It’s not like the band didn’t catch on, either, with Frey remembering in History of the Eagles, “Someone had asked Stephen Stills what he thought of the Eagles and all he said was, ‘They just wanted to be us”. But CSNY marked one facet of the California rock scene, and the Eagles were making songs that were meant for the entire world.
While it’s a little bit difficult to listen to the number of protest songs coming from Young or Nash, hearing tracks about a man running from the law in ‘Desperado’ or walking out on a relationship in ‘Already Gone’ could resonate with anyone who’s had to deal with their own sense of heartache in life. The Eagles even managed to cover some ground no one had thought of yet, either, aligning themselves with soul music on ‘Wasted Time’ and breaking out their hard rock chops on ‘Life in the Fast Lane’.
Even Young got tired of the group after a while, only sticking around for a few singles after Deja Vu to work on solo joints like After the Gold Rush. Crosby, Stills, and Nash would carry on for years afterwards and even have some more hits, but looking at the number of records that the Eagles put on the hit parade, it’s hard not to see them as the ones that carried the torch for that rustic flavour of rock.
