The conversation that helped form Eagles: “I would love to”
When the Eagles first formed, they didn’t seem like they were going to be one of the biggest bands of all time.
Don Henley and Glenn Frey were two of the best songwriters working at the time, but there was a lot more that they had to offer aside from the feel-good tunes that everyone expected from them. They wanted the opportunity to prove themselves to the rest of the world, but sometimes it just took one person to say the right thing for the wheels to start turning in their heads.
But it was going to take a long time before either of them was ready to front their own band. No one gets up in the morning deciding that they are going to write ‘Hotel California’ or anything, and even with the years of experience under both of their belts, Henley and Frey were coming from completely different worlds when they first moved to ‘The City of Angels’ to chase after their dreams.
There was so much more that they hadn’t covered once they arrived, and since Frey had come from Detroit, he got a firsthand education in country music when he got there. Henley had known country music all his life, having grown up in Texas, but when looking through a lot of his own gigs, it was clear that his time in Shiloh wasn’t really going to work out the way he wanted it to. He was already a standout backing vocalist and drummer, and with nowhere else to go, Linda Ronstadt’s band was the best place to be.
Frey was in the same boat after his duo Longbranch/Pennywhistle fizzled out after only a few records. He and JD Souther clearly needed to work out their songwriting chops a little bit more, and right when Henley got the call to be in Ronstadt’s band, Frey knew that he needed to go after that job as fast as he could. It was a dream to work with Ronstadt at the time, but the more that they heard about how the band was going to get fleshed out, Frey knew that he wasn’t going to get stuck playing the same songs.
Working with Ronstadt was a joy, but he knew that he saw a future much greater than that gig when working with Henley, saying, “Linda and [manager] John Boylan really liked the way Don and I played, really liked the way we sang with her. They started to get a vision of a supergroup to back up Linda. The best of the country rock musicians and we were going to be part of it. Don said, ‘Well, I would rather just be in a band with you.’ And I said, ‘You know, me too. I would love to just be in a band with you.’” Now came the dirty part: having to tell one of the greatest singers in the world that they were going to leave her.
But according to Henley, Ronstadt couldn’t have been more understanding about seeing them go off on their own, saying, “Linda was very gracious with the whole thing, as was John Boylan. They weren’t resentful at all. They were great. They were supportive, as a matter of fact.” Most band leaders would have been pissed, but Ronstadt had a new vision in her mind when they heard about them going off on their own.
She knew the best players in the business, and she felt that if they got to hear what Bernie Leadon could do, they would have the perfect band. Leadon had the country background, and with the help of Randy Meisner from Poco, they had the ideal version of what a country rock band could be. Everyone sang like a bird and could play anything that was thrown at them, and now all that was left to do was to see what else they could pull off together.
The world was their oyster, and while their career was bound to have a few ups and downs, it never would have gelled if Frey and Henley hadn’t floated the idea of what life was like outside of Ronstadt’s band. Escaping the sideman gig was possible; it was just a matter of finding the right people and praying that their friends would understand.
