The one musician Glenn Frey knew always belonged in Eagles: “Never anybody else”
It took a lot for Glenn Frey to form the germ of what would become the Eagles.
He and Don Henley had the idea for years before they actually managed to get the sound that they wanted, but even when they had the best country rock players in the industry in their band, it took a while before everything solidified on Hotel California. And even though Henley and Frey steered the ship with an iron fist at times, there were some band members who seemed to lock in perfectly from the moment that they picked up their instruments.
And when looking at the first incarnation of the band, it’s not that shocking that they already had what they were looking for. Bernie Leadon could play virtually anything with strings on it, and while Randy Meisner kept to himself playing bass, that high voice of his is what really made all of their songs soar whenever they came on the radio, especially with those high harmonies on ‘Take It to the Limit’.
There was nothing that was going to slow them down, but there were some questions over where they were going with their material. They didn’t want to spend the rest of their lives playing one style of music, but the more that Henley and Frey wanted the respect as rock and rollers, they weren’t exactly going to get it if they were becoming known for their ballads more than anything else.
‘Already Gone’ did have the right kind of drive to it, but it’s not like Leadon was happy about that. He didn’t like the band being a hybrid of all different kinds of styles, and it didn’t take long before that started to turn up at the sessions. Leadon was beside himself looking at what the rest of the band were doing, and he wasn’t about to let them get in the way of what he wanted to do.
He could have handled it a lot better than pouring a beer over Frey’s head before a show, but it turned out that Joe Walsh was already the best alternative. Don Felder was already working just fine as a middle man between the rock and roll and country sides of their sound, but once Leadon left the fold to do his own thing, getting that kind of creative dynamo in the band was the shot in the arm that they really needed at the time.
And as far as Frey was concerned, there was no sense in asking anyone else to join the band once Walsh said yes, saying, “There was never any question of trying anybody else. We never made any other calls because there really wasn’t anybody else who could join our band, and we wanted to keep it a five-piece group instead of going back down to four again. We like the advantages of a five-piece band. When we got Felder it allowed me to just play rhythm guitar and still there were two guitar players, so we could have two lead guitars playing with each other, yet there is still a rhythm instrument playing with the bass and drums.”
However, it is pretty funny that Walsh’s first official track on any of their albums ended up being the ballad ‘Pretty Maids All in a Row’. He could fit into that style perfectly, but when you look at his true contribution to the band, it’s always going to be the opening lick to ‘Life in the Fast Lane’, especially when the rest of them lock in on the same groove and start going for broke towards the end of the track.
Walsh was every bit the rockstar that everyone claimed that he was, and while that might have been a handful for the managers to deal with, that didn’t matter in Frey’s eyes. He had a surefire guitar hero on his hands, and he wasn’t going to waste his opportunity to kick some ass every single that got onstage.
