The 1974 song Glenn Frey never got tired of singing: “I really like that song”
When Eagles first got together, Glenn Frey was always the real spirit of the band.
Sure, Don Henley had the golden voice that sounded immaculate over every single one of their songs, but Frey had the cocksure attitude that they were one of the greatest bands in the world before they had even played a note of music. They were bound to become one of the biggest bands in the world, and it all started by having the right songs for them to sing across every single one of their records.
That said, it took a while before Frey and Henley were comfortable trading lines with each other. That first Eagles album is a good time for the most part, but when you look at the liner notes, none of the songs are attributed to the duo just yet. They were simply looking to make the best record they could, and that meant going through a lot of trial and error before they had the kinds of songs that stuck with their image.
And while Desperado set them on the right track, it’s not like they were above doing any cover songs by any means. ‘Nightingale’ was made with the intention of getting Henley more singing time on their first record, and while their sophomore effort was more about making a conceptual statement, getting a song like ‘Outlaw Man’ fit perfectly with what they wanted to do on that record.
But since that went over about as well as a synthesiser being used on a bluegrass record, Frey knew that they needed to dust themselves off and make something better. They had already honed their craft for songwriting, and while On the Border does have a few great hits on it, Frey was more partial to some of the deeper cuts that everyone ignored the first time around.
The album is nowhere close to their best by any stretch, but the lesser known gems do have a lot more going for them. Bernie Leadon penned his best ballad on the song ‘My Man’, and while Frey had his own tribute to Gram Parsons on the song ‘Good Day in Hell’, he felt that he had a kindred spirit in Tom Waits on ‘Ol’ 55’. He was a lover of classic cars as well, and he felt that him and Henley singing the song would have sounded perfect.
The subject fit their style perfectly, and even if it wasn’t a hit in any way, Frey felt that the song was made for them in a sense, saying, “I really liked the song. Still do. It’s such a car thing. Your first car is like your first apartment. You had a mobile studio apartment! ‘Ol’ 55’ was so Southern California, and yet there was some Detroit in it as well. It was that car thing, and I loved the idea of driving home at sunrise, thinking about what had happened the night before.”
Granted, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Waits wasn’t yet one of the rock’s true eccentrics by any means, but when you listen to his later records, it’s not like the man behind Bone Machine would have made a song that sounded like that. As far as he could tell, the whole thing was a parody of what he was going for, and their version may as well have been them taking out everything that made his original sound good.
But you can’t please everybody, and while Frey let that criticism roll off of his back most of the time, ‘Ol’ 55’ never seemed to get old for him. He was more than happy to make a song as an ode to his own classic cars, and even if it wasn’t a big hit, a song all about the simple pleasures in life through the eyes of someone’s beat-up car was the perfect Americana image that suited the band.
