“Hasn’t missed a lick”: The two singers Glenn Frey considered his idols
There’s always a certain amount of pressure that comes with being the singer of a band. Even though everyone can keep working on their chop to sound fresh over the years, it’s much harder to keep your voice in check and still manage to sound like you did when your band first hit the scene during adolescence. Whereas most singers like to change the keys of their songs or put some new spin on the record, Glenn Frey thought that two singers set the standard for singing in their old age.
Then again, singing rock and roll is a completely separate animal from singing something like jazz. Even though the Eagles prided themselves on being one of the greatest vocal groups of all time, that didn’t come without some hardship, including multiple rehearsals right before a show, during which they would run through the a cappella opening of songs like ‘Seven Bridges Road’ to make sure everyone was at their best.
Not even they were safe from a few changes in their live set, either. Despite keeping their voices in check, Glenn Frey would bring down the key of ‘Take It To The Limit’ instead of matching Randy Meisner’s high notes, and there was a good chance that he would have had to work himself up to push himself as far as he did on ‘Heartache Tonight’.
But part of the reason why jazz singers work so well is because they know when to push themselves and when to hang back. There have always been artists willing to go above and beyond by scat singing or playing around with the melody, but when working off of big band arrangements, it’s sometimes better to see the voice like another instrument, almost treating it the same way someone would treat a clarinet.
And when it came to the golden age of standards singers, no one ever came close to Tony Bennett in Frey’s eyes. Although he was considered the furthest thing from rock and roll for a while, hearing him still reaching for those high notes on his collaborative albums with Lady Gaga showed the world the same face that had done his own rendition of ‘New York New York’ back in the day.
While the Eagles still kept a track record for phenomenal vocals with Frey at the helm, the frontman admitted that he saw Bennett as one of the models for how to keep one’s voice working through the years, saying, “I’m watching all the singers and songwriters who are older than I am, and they’re all my idols. You go, Mick! Tony Bennett – it’s the same voice. Hasn’t missed a lick.”
Then again, Jagger may match Bennett in terms of the raw power that he puts behind his voice. While not everyone is expected to deliver the borderline aerobics routine that Jagger does every time the Stones play, the fact that he’s still able to belt things out while running the equivalent of what’s bound to be ten miles onstage is one of the more impressive feats in rock history.
Although the Eagles may have been accused of loitering onstage by comparison, Frey seemed to take Jagger and Bennett and find the middle ground between them. There was that soft tenderness, but he was never afraid to put some grit into his delivery when the time called for it.
