“It was so frustrating”: The one era that Glenn Frey refused to talk about
Any artist looking through their pre-fame days tends to look back on the whole thing as a painful experience. It can be bad enough looking at the old press photos that make them look like infants trying to make music, but the days when they were first trying to drum up a following elicit the same reaction most of us have when looking at old baby pictures. And while Glenn Frey didn’t have to worry about striking out too much when looking at Eagles’ discography, it’s not like they arrived fully formed out of the blue.
The art of making a great rock and roll band was about getting one’s chops up, and there was no greater tutor for Frey than Bob Seger. He had already spent time in his teenage bands around Detroit, but Seger was the one who first convinced him to become a songwriter, encouraging him to keep writing until he finally fleshed out something that he could be proud of.
But Detroit isn’t really the first place people think of when looking at the greatest artists in the world of country-rock. The biggest names in garage rock still dominated the scene, and since Frey was never going to be able to pull off being Iggy Pop, he figured he’d try his hand at moving to Los Angeles. And the minute he arrived, he met one of his longtime partners in crime, JD Souther.
Although Souther was far from the most engaging presence onstage, Frey figured he had a better shot at making the big time if he was in a group, eventually forming Longbranch Pennywhistle as a duo act with him and Souther. And listening back to their album, it’s fairly solid. No one would have seen tunes like ‘Tequila Sunrise’ or ‘Take It Easy’ coming, but their folksy approach to rock and roll wouldn’t have felt out of place next to the later Byrds records with Gram Parsons, either.
It may have been a fine, folksy album, but that didn’t translate to sales, and the minute the record dried up, Frey was penniless and tied to his label, Amos Records. Since he couldn’t get any real support from his higher-ups, the only way out was for them to break up, with Frey finding work as a member of Linda Ronstadt’s band. The seeds were being sown for Eagles, but the days of Longbranch Pennywhistle were a thing of the past.
And once ‘Take It Easy’ and ‘Witchy Woman’ began slowly climbing the charts, Frey refused to speak about his old record, saying, “It was so frustrating. I don’t even like to talk about it. Every day we’d go to the Amos Records office, ask if we could get released from our contracts, and they would say no.” But that might have had more to do with the untapped potential there.
Both Frey and Souther worked incredibly well together, but if they couldn’t make an album on their own, the next best thing was to work behind the scenes. Looking at his credentials, Souther could have been considered the honorary Eagle in many respects, having a hand in penning tunes like ‘Victim of Love’ or having the right one-liner to spark an idea for tracks like ‘New Kid in Town’.
Then again, the era of Longbranch/Pennywhistle occupied a much more innocent space in Frey’s career. He had wanted to soar as high as he could, but once he had the right band backing him, he knew that the days of woodshedding and writing for the fun of it were about to become a bit more complicated.
