Glenn Frey: Another rock icon gone
“There’s talk on the street, it sounds so familiar,” from “New Kid in Town,” off “Hotel California,” is appropriate to the occasion.
So is “Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day,” from a chart-topping song by the Mamas and the Papas, another group with a California sound, in one of the 1960s’ summers of love.
January, the first month of a new year, is barely half over but already hard on rock ‘n’ roll icons. One especially dreads to check his email or Twitter feed on a Monday these days.
First went David Bowie, who by pioneering glam rock transcended musical and sexual barriers, two days after turning 69.
Then on the following Monday, with many on holiday for an American martyr who had a dream, came the shocking news about Glenn Frey.
The death of the group’s founder, guitarist and keyboardist shattered any dreams of an Eagles reunion, less than a year after a farewell concert tour that included a stop at North Little Rock’s Verizon Arena.
Having turned 67 in November, Frey lived longer than Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison or Janis Joplin, yet feels snatched us from too early. They may need a shuffleboard court in rock ‘n’ roll heaven for Frey and George Harrison and Jerry Garcia in the ultimate concert hall envisioned by the Righteous Brothers (whose Bobby Hatfield, in Elvis-like fashion, also has “left the building”).
Frey’s death came as a blow to anyone who grew up listening to the Eagles’ music in the 1970s. Coming along after the Beatles’ breakup and before disco dominated the airwaves, the group headed by Frey and Don Henley and including Randy Meisner had a fresh American sound. Like the Beach Boys, who said in a perfect world they would all be California girls, the Eagles were influenced by the laid-back lifestyle associated with the West Coast.
From their first hit, “Take It Easy,” Frey singing vocals written by himself and Jackson Browne, the Eagles spoke to young people disillusioned by Vietnam and Watergate and groping for answers. The most bashful teenager, even in Winslow, Ariz., could imagine “seven women on my mind — four that wanna own me, two that wanna stone me, one says she’s a friend of mine.”
Frey and Henley collaborated on the 1973 release “Desperado,” featured many years later in a “Seinfeld” episode and covered by artists as varied as Johnny Cash, Andy Williams and Judy Collins. Someone eager to make it work with an old lover urges that if not with himself to “let somebody love you before it’s too late.”
“Lyin’ Eyes,” from 1975, one of the greatest crossover songs, can be heard on any oldies station or that plays classic country. In that year, the Eagles had their first two chart-topping singles, “Best of My Love” and “One of These Nights,” while an American icon in the making, Bruce Springsteen, appearing on the covers of Time and Newsweek simultaneously, was declared the “future of rock ‘n’ roll.”
Springsteen indeed gained his ascendancy in American rock but not before the Eagles released their defining work, if not that of the decade. While the music world pined for Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life” album, the Eagles released “Hotel California,” featuring the work of former James Gang member Joe Walsh. In the Eagles’ hands, the decadent lifestyle of the “me-first” 1970s never seemed closer or more appealing.
“New Kid in Town” topped the charts in February 1977, followed in May by the album’s title track, with its mirrors on the ceiling and pink Champagne on ice and from which one “can check out any time you like but you can never leave.” The title track is famous for the fade-out of dueling guitars, which after repeated listenings swayed a then-college senior to replace the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” as No. 1 on his personal hit parade, where “Hotel California” remains.
Even so, the Eagles reached their zenith musically with a third release from the album, “Life in the Fast Lane,” introducing a new phrase to the vernacular. The song both depicted and decried a lifestyle that in the cocaine-stoked 1970s coincided with that of a subtle move to the far right that would usher Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980.
The Eagles, saying everything that needed to be said, should have called it quits then, like the Beatles after “Abbey Road.” Bigger than ever, they turned out one more album, taking the single “Heartache Tonight” to No. 1 and charting with “The Long Run,” the title track, and “I Can’t Tell You Why.” But like the Beatles on “Magical Mystery Tour” after reaching the heights with “Sgt. Pepper,” the group sounded tired.
Henley went on to record “The Boys of Summer” and “The End of the Innocence,” two seminal tracks from the 1980s. But Henley without Frey is like Lennon without Paul McCartney or Stevie Nicks sans Fleetwood Mac. Something is missing and irreplaceable — in the Eagles’ own words, “already gone.”