“Incredible”: The albums Glenn Frey said had perfect production
Any artist trying to make the best-sounding rock album ever made is already working at a disadvantage. Many people have tried and failed to capture what their heroes have done behind the board, but the best artists aren’t looking for something that emulates the greats of days gone by. They want something that sounds best for the tunes they’re working with, and Glenn Frey knew that comes from the arrangement behind everything rather than every single note being perfectly in tune.
It only takes one look at a Rolling Stones record to recognise the power behind some of their trademark tunes. Many of the songs are based around certain jams, and not everything is locked into a grid absolutely perfectly, but that’s hardly an issue when the only objective is to make sure that everyone is in the right mood rather than if one person is singing a bum note now and again.
That might do fine for rock, but in the world of pop music, there’s little to hide behind. The whole point behind popular music is to have the kind of hits that people want to sing along to, and while it might not always make for the best song, it’s hard to argue that there is a single note out of place when looking at everything from The Beatles’ masterpieces to the thought and care that Brian Wilson put into Pet Sounds.
But Frey was looking to move beyond simple rock and roll during his solo career. He had been in that lane for far too long, and as much as he loved the idea of working on his own, he knew that the only way to differentiate himself was to make the kind of standards record that every one of his contemporaries was making.
Granted, this was not necessarily a new idea. Rod Stewart had made a living doing the kind of wistful standards that fans couldn’t get enough of, and it was also only a few years removed from what Paul McCartney would do with his album of old favourites, Kisses on the Bottom. As far as Frey was concerned, though, no one could ever manage to match what Linda Ronstadt had done with Nelson Riddle when making her traditional pop albums in the 1980s.
Despite being known as the queen of country rock and running the risk of polarising her fanbase, Frey felt that everything was in its right place listening to what Riddle did to those tunes, saying, “I’ve always loved this music and wanted to do something like this, probably since Linda Ronstadt did those records with Nelson Riddle in the ‘80s. Those albums are incredible – the arrangements are perfect, and Linda’s voice is exquisite. It’s taken me some years to get around to it, but I finally got busy, and here we are.”
And while not every song is a standard in the same way that Sinatra sang them, Frey does a fantastic job across the project, whether it’s doing justice to Nat King Cole or covering his old favourites from Ray Charles to The Beach Boys. Not every one of them was the same old-time jazz standards, but each of them had the structure to be on the same level as the bygone sounds of yesteryear.
It would be easy to categorise this kind of album as sleepy compared to the other records in Frey’s catalogue, but that’s not how he looked at it. This was the record reserved only for special occasions, and while it might not have the riffs of an Eagles project, it didn’t fall short in terms of raw sonic beauty.
