“A brilliant record”: The Eagles solo album that blew Glenn Frey away
It’s impossible for any rock and roll band to have warm feelings about their bandmates after they break up. They figured out they couldn’t work together for a reason, and even if they separated into different factions, there’s always going to be that little bit of resentment, knowing that they couldn’t have made it work as a unit. While Glenn Frey was more than happy to continue on his own after the Eagles broke up, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t be complementary when he heard one of his bandmates doing well.
Then again, that’s easier for someone like Frey, who was always going to find his feet. He might not have been singing as much as Don Henley towards the end of the band’s run, but he was still featured heavily on some of their greatest material, and a song like ‘Heartache Tonight’ showed he hadn’t lost a step whenever he took a lead vocal. Even by the standards of their solo careers, though, Frey was often put on the side.
He never seemed as interested in having the blockbuster success that he had in the country rockers, but looking at his biggest hits, he managed to get a lot of exposure with literal blockbusters. Tunes like ‘True Love’ may have worked fine with the dad-rock crowd, but it was a lot more interesting hearing him turn up on the soundtrack to Beverly Hills Cop with ‘The Heat Is On’ or even try on his own acting chops in Miami Vice or Jerry Maguire.
If Frey was busy going Hollywood, the rest of his fellow musicians were making their own classics. No one needed to worry about Joe Walsh finding his feet since he already had a solo career to tend, but from the minute the album I Can’t Stand Still was released, everyone knew that Henley was going to be a force to be reckoned with, especially with the massive swagger behind ‘Dirty Laundry’.
But that was only the proof of concept. By the time Building the Perfect Beast came out, Henley had found a perfect extension of what he had done with Eagles, being able to blend traditional love songs like ‘The Boys of Summer’ with more pointed material like ‘A Month of Sundays,’ which may as well be an extension of what he was fighting for when writing tunes like ‘The Last Resort.’
And despite not being in a group together, Frey had to admit that Henley outdid himself when listening to the record, saying, “[Building the Perfect Beast is] a brilliant record. I’m really happy for Henley. In fact, I think that whole album he made is a terrific record. I know he worked for a year and a half on it and sweated blood and he deserves all the success he gets.”
That one may have received Frey’s lip service, but The End of the Innocence is Henley’s true crowning achievement as a solo lyricist. Considering this was released towards the tail end of the heartland rock movement, Henley sends the genre off in style with songs about growing up and feeling more desensitised about what life has to offer past your 30s, with ‘New York Minute’ even managing to work its way into Eagles set lists later down the line.
But the fact that Frey had time to complement Henley proved that that partnership had never truly gone away. The main source of friction in the group came from Frey and Don Felder, and even if he drifted away from Henley, he knew a hit when he heard one once ‘All She Wants To Do Is Dance’ came on the radio
