The singer-songwriter Glenn Frey called an “inspiration”
The story of the Eagles encompasses many twists and turns, with the group closely embodying the notion of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Accordingly, they have several discernible chapters and an array of members. Yet one man was everpresent and vital to the group’s existence: Glenn Frey.
Alongside Don Felder and Don Henley, Frey co-wrote most of the band’s output and was also their frontman. Without his efforts, they likely wouldn’t have gone on to become one of the groups most inextricable from the heady essence of the 1970s and the rootsy sound of California. This is a paradox, given that none of the founding members are from The Golden State. Frey was a native of Detroit, Michigan, a far-flung clime from the bright lights of the ‘City of Angeles’.
Co-writing classics such as ‘Take It Easy’, ‘Tequila Sunrise’ and ‘Heartache Tonight’ – which Frey also sang the lead on – for many, his hearty vocals and lyrics exploring ideas such as a life spent on the sprawling American highways are the Eagles to a tee. Their form of Americana is about as nostalgic as it comes in the moments that the Detroiter headed up.
Famously, Frey’s relationship with Henley is also significant to the band. Despite his importance to the operation, he once anointed the drummer-cum-vocalist as the most crucial figure to the group for bringing real creative accomplishment to the fold. Frey admitted that without Henley, they’d likely just have been another vocal harmony act writing cloying love songs.
While the Eagles’ definitive sound sets them apart from the mass of other acclaimed acts the early 1970s produced, the group was always open about their influences. Furthermore, as they all hailed from different corners of the US, the band had varying personal and creative contexts but were united by a love of the same music.
Regardless of emerging from America’s industrial heartland in ‘The Motor City’, Frey’s rootsy style, which was more at home on the rolling plains than it was in the urban landscape famed for its soul music, was fostered by that of famed singer-songwriter Bob Seger. When he was just a teenager in 1967, Seger helped him secure management and a recording contract. The young Frey would even play on Seger’s definitive single ‘Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man’, which, from the contemporary context, appears a spiritual precursor to the work he would later craft in the Eagles.
According to Frey, Joni Mitchell was another more surprising figure who had an impact on the group’s decision to push on after reaching the supposed summit of success in their formative years. Famously, the pair dated during the early stages of the decade, and she supposedly wrote ‘Help Me’ about him. Ironically, this revelation about her influence came after their split and years before the band’s actual masterpiece, Hotel California, arrived in 1976. It serves as a reminder that there’s always more to be done for artists.
When speaking to Crawdaddy! in 1974 via The Guardian, Frey revealed how the unrelenting Mitchell had been a great “inspiration” to him and his band. He explained: “I mean, shit, here I am on the road in LA, my home! All my furniture’s in storage, I’m on the streets and … yeah, I’m real aware of that. I want to stay sharp as long as I can. Christ knows, Joni Mitchell has been an inspiration. It can be done. You can go further. You don’t have to fizzle out at 27.”
While it’s hard to imagine the Eagles without Frey, the thought that the band might not have been the cultural force they are without the outspoken Mitchell, who once decried his partner Henley as a “jerk,” is a strange one to get your head around.
