If you’ve seen me perform with Just Wanna Play, you know that I am, just like every other member of our band, a huge fan of the Eagles. We open almost every set with “Take it Easy” and close almost every set with “Hotel California.” I’m not the ultimate Eagles historian. I know we all love the songwriting and grew up on songs like “Peaceful, Easy Feeling”, “Witchy Woman”, and “Already Gone.” We learned today that founding Eagle Glen Frey had passed away at the age of 67.
I think one of my earliest memories of the Eagles is taking a road trip with my family down to Disney World. We only had three tapes in the van for a drive over 12 hours long. One was Bad Company’s self-titled album. The second was Boston’s debut album. The third was “Hotel California” but I swear we listened to “Life in the Fast Lane” more than any other song. (It might have been an 8-track, but I’m not ready to reveal that I’m that old. I was young and just have a fantastic memory. That’s my story.)
From the early years with Bernie Leadon and Randy Mesiner to the later years with Feldman, Schimdt and Walsh, Frey was there for the entire journey. The Eagles reinvented who they were a dozen times, and Frey was one of the pillars that kept the machine humming along. He was a big contributor the band that influenced thousands or hundreds of thousands of bands that came in the wake of the Eagles. Their band of harmony and layered instrumentation is sorely missed in modern pop.
Frey was fighting rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis and pneumonia at the time of his death. He is survived by his wife and three children.
RIP Glen. Thanks for the decades of wonderful music.
Here’s our cover of “Take it Easy” during a gig in 2013: