“A couple of beers”: the song that made Glenn Frey become a performer
The Eagles were never a band known for their outstanding stage presence. They could always produce magic whenever they played live, but the sight of every member standing still and performing great songs wasn’t exactly going to give an at like Alice Cooper a run for its money on any given day. Glenn Frey still felt most comfortable onstage, though, and one of the first times he got up onstage came courtesy of The Rolling Stones.
Before Frey had even gotten started singing for the first time, he was given the piano instead by his mother. Although he got a good ear by taking lessons for the first part of his childhood, it wasn’t exactly the coolest thing to be doing, leading to a few strange looks from his schoolmates and bullies liable to beat him up if they saw him playing.
Frey lived in Detroit, and the rise of Motown made everyone change their tune about piano lessons. It might not have been what everyone wanted to do after school, but as long as you could play songs by artists like Smokey Robinson, you could keep everyone’s eyes on you for all the right reasons.
Frey didn’t want to be a soul singer for the rest of his life. He wanted to listen to rock music, and seeing The Beatles for the first time became his conversion point. When seeing The Beatles during his teenage years, he remembered thinking that rock and roll was calling, which probably only intensified when a girl fainted right before him at the mere sight of Paul McCartney.
If the future Eagle would become a superstar, he would need a few people behind him. Although he didn’t click with everyone at his school, he met a band a few years younger than him who clicked over The Rolling Stones, telling The History of the Eagles, “I was a junior and I had had a couple of beers that night and I said, ‘Hey, do you guys know ‘Satisfaction’? Because I can sing it.’”
It’s not like Frey could have picked a much better song to audition with. ‘Satisfaction’ isn’t the most complicated track in the world to sing, but being able to get the signature grit that Mick Jagger put into the final take is usually the make-or-break moment where people start to wonder whether the singer really has the swagger that they claim to have.
Frey didn’t need to worry about swagger, though. After being welcomed into the band, Frey started forming different acts in his native Detroit called The Mushrooms, where he got in touch with Detroit legend Bob Seger. While his dreams had started to come true, he did have one false start when his mom forbade him from going on tour after he was caught smoking pot.
If he wanted to chase that rock and roll dream that Jagger planted in his brain, it wouldn’t be in Detroit. After scraping up enough money, Frey ended up moving out to Los Angeles, where he eventually put together a duo with JD Souther before being asked to play rhythm guitar for Linda Ronstadt, whose band also featured a hotshot drummer from Texas named Don Henley. It may have started with a rock and roll song in the middle of the Motor City, but Frey’s passion for music drove him from the British Invasion to the world of California sunshine.
