The song Glenn Frey wrote to make fun of Donald Trump: “This obnoxious guy”
Rock and rollers have never been shy about having a little bit of fun with their lyrics. Fans might want to hear their favourite artists singing about nothing too cerebral whenever they get behind the microphone, but the best way for someone to blow off steam is to have songs that were a little bit tongue-in-cheek now and again. The Beatles had songs like ‘Day Tripper’ and even The Stones had some of their humorous songs like ‘Dead Flowers’, but Glenn Frey knew that nothing was funnier than going after people who took themselves too seriously.
Then again, Eagles came dangerously close to falling into that territory during the end of their career. The entire Hotel California album was already about people who tried a little too hard to become famous and end up swallowed by the business, but by the time The Long Run started happening, it was clear that Frey and Don Henley were in trouble of not learning their own lesson when going through tunes like ‘The Disco Strangler’.
So when everyone finally got to go off on a solo career, it was much easier for Frey to have songs that were a bit looser. Henley was always bound to fly with that fantastic voice, but listening to albums like No Fun Aloud, Frey was content to return to the rudimentary take on rock and roll. Nothing was too off-the-wall, but by the time he got around to making albums like Strange Weather, he knew how to toe the line between rock and roll silliness and some serious subject matter. And looking at ‘Big Life’, the two could converge pretty well.
Long before he ever took office, Frey wrote this song to be a send-up of people like Donald Trump, saying, “I just started thinking… I’ve run into some people who I think give money a bad name. [Laughs] And so I just imagined this sort of obnoxious guy who was sort of a combination of Donald Trump and Ted Turner. I wrote this tune, and basically it’s this sort of braggadocious, obnoxious guy who gets on this aeroplane and is trying to impress this girl with this long list of why he’s cool…. all his money and his accomplishments and his investments and stuff.”
And while the song itself is incredibly funny in many respects, it manages to have the kind of sly attitude that Henley was never quite as good at. Henley’s voice is fantastic, but it’s also unapologetically sincere, so a song like this was never meant to work with him. But when it’s in Frey’s hands, it’s easy to picture him being the grown-up version of that punk kid who saw the phoniness in every adult that tried to tell him what to do.
It’s not like rock and roll is short on some of those figures, either. Trump may be one of the high-profile examples of someone who seemingly wants to erect a statue of himself for all the world to see, but people like Gene Simmons are equally as interested in their status, to the point where you can find Kiss merchandise for any household appliance that you can get your hands on.
But judging by Long Road Out of Eden, Frey never forgot about the values that he talked about on ‘Big Life’. He knew that there were people who liked to flaunt their money around, but if a song like ‘Frail Grasp on the Big Picture’ is any indication, he was still vicious when it came to people who took themselves a little bit too seriously whenever the cameras were on them.
While it’s easy for any rock star to come off as self-righteous when taking someone else to task, but when listening to what Trump has been doing, it’s not like Frey didn’t have a point back in the day. He’s still interested in showing people how much money he has and how important everyone should think he is, but if you strip away all the money, power and fame, one has to wonder what much is left under there.
