Wildwood Radio Interview - Off the Record

I bought something (that I will mention in another thread), and when the item(s) showed up, I got a couple of bonus CDs. One is a compilation of Glenn's hits the seller said was "Hits and Rarities" (but I can't find a compilation under that name, so it may be "home-made"). The second CD is a copy of an interview with Glenn supporting "Strange Weather" put out by Westwood One. It's Glenn talking about different topics from the Eagles to what he wanted for the future.

I'm just curious if anyone else here is familiar with it. I was taken by some of the things he said (although I shouldn't be surprised). He talks about the "almost reunion" with the Eagles in 1990, and, as of this interview, he talks like an Eagles reunion would never happen.

I'm trying to figure out where the best place for me to upload it so I can share it. I think any Glenn or even Eagles fan would really enjoy this interview. I don't mind sharing.

As for the "almost reunion", here's an MTV blurb about the Walden Woods benefit Don Henley held that was a (mostly) Eagles reunion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJOQ...vQVgwEV4QeIhus

You might try sharing it through Vimeo or Dailymotion, those seem to not get policed as much by Don's people.

CAinOH - I know there are several types of unofficial compilations CDs/DVDs that have shown up online and in some music stores. When we visited L.A. the spring after Glenn's passing, I bought three of them in a record store. I don't know if it's the same thing you have or not, but it's probably not that different. If you can get it uploaded somewhere, I would love to take a look at it.

I would love to hear it, if you could find a way to upload it!

Sorry, guys... Didn't mean to post this and then drop it.

It's Westwood One and the interviewer is Mary Turner. I got the MP3 files combined into one file, and I'm uploading it to my Google Drive. This link should get you to it. If it doesn't work, let me know and I'll try something else.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NGa...ew?usp=sharing

There are songs between some of the interview, and the last part of the interview is actually 4 songs: Drivin' Wheel with B.B. King, Cold In Here, another song I haven't had the chance to identify, and Flip City.

ETA: I used an online site to merge the mp3 files into one. I don't think it did a great job, I'm listening to it and some of it doesn't sound great. I'll upload the individual tracks in just a bit.

Okay, there are now two links to the interview:

Link to Google Drive folder with individual tracks of interview and songs:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...HI?usp=sharing

Link to combined MP3 files:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NG...eHNCz4_ucbDUuG

As I said, if this isn't working, I'll try something else.

Thanks for going to all that trouble! I'll check 'em out tomorrow!

This is awesome, CAinOH. I've only listened to part of it, but I've never heard this interview before. I hope I can find time today to listen to all of it, but I have a pretty busy week, so I may have to pace myself. :wink: :grin:

A VERY BIG THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS WITH US!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ive always been a dreamer

This is awesome, CAinOH. I've only listened to part of it, but I've never heard this interview before. I hope I can find time today to listen to all of it, but I have a pretty busy week, so I may have to pace myself. :wink: :grin:

A VERY BIG THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS WITH US!

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If you skip through the music, it goes much faster. :)

It's a very interesting interview. But I can't discuss it if no one else has heard it. ;)

Oh no - I can't skip through the music - that would be sacrilege! lol But I'll definitely post more thoughts about this when I get a chance.

Of course, after all this... now that I have the correct names I found the interview online.

https://www.discogs.com/Glenn-Frey-O...elease/9607465

Listening to it now.

Re: He Took Advantage - Of course he starts off by praising Don Henley and being self-deprecating. That was always his way, wasn't it?

Re: River of Dreams - I have Expedition Earth. You can tell how much he loves the outdoors. I love this song so much! I remember, in my fan letter to him that I wrote way back in 2005, I told him that I thought about this song when I was scraping ice off my car's windshield, lol. Sounds like I fit the mold of the kind of person he was thinking about when he wrote it!

"I'm still fascinated by the abstract and puzzling way that songs come into my head and then ultimately get turned into records." How interesting.

Re: the Strange Weather album being the best of his solo career all in one place - agreed. It really is his masterpiece.

Re: playing guitar more on Strange Weather - I agree with Scheiner and Cindy about wanting Glenn to feature his guitar playing. He always would say how he was the "third best guitar player in the Eagles" and all that jazz but when it comes down to it, he played with sensitivity and feeling - and he knew how to rock as well. He was good. I'm glad they got him back to that.

I love hearing about what his typical morning was like.

Re: becoming "normal" after living in the "fast lane" - I love how he refers to going back to Midwestern values, and talks about how he's "a craftman first [and] a songwriter first. I'm not a star."

Here's something I wonder about. He believes he's quoting Shakespeare when he says, "I have met fame and failure and know them both for the impostors that they are." However, there's no such Shakespeare quote. The closest I can get - and I googled it to make sure there wasn't a closer match lol - is a line from Kipling's poem "If" - "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same; [...] you'll be a Man, my son!" If he heard that line and translated it in his mind to this new version which is different enough to be considered his, it is a fascinating window into Glenn's mentality about fame.

Re: The Grassroots Aspen Experience - I love how involved he was in that charity, in a hands-on, meaningful way. He didn't just give money; he was a camp counselor sleeping in the freaking tents and hiking up the mountains with those kids! So awesome.

OK, I'm halfway through... gotta rest for a bit now!

Thanks for uploading, CA!

I will listen to it later tonight.

I'll write more later as well, but, first of all, I think this is a fascinating and insightful interview that I'd never heard before - so another huge thanks to CAinOH. Glenn does say a lot of the same things we had heard him say before, but he elaborates in more detail than usual that gives us a better understanding of him as a normal person - not a superstar.

"I have met fame and failure and know them both for the impostors that they are." Even if he was confused about the origin of this quote, I agree with Soda about what it says about Glenn's mentality. Actually, I think all of the things that Soda mentioned form a common thread about his mentality. The self-deprecation, continued fascination about the song-writing process, description of his typical normal morning, return back to his mid-Western values, and participation in the Aspen experience rather than just a donor - IMO, these were all the choices he made to keep himself grounded, and live his life as a normal person. I do think in the early years of his fame, he did get caught up in the 'lifestyles of the rich and famous', but he quickly came to see this as the facade that it is. This theme is prevalent in so much of his music starting as far back as the One of These Nights album and continuing throughout his solo career. To quote him, "Right before my eyes, I realized we all stand on common ground."

To be continued ...

I've got time to post a couple more thoughts about some of the name-dropping Glenn does in this interview ...

It's very interesting that Glenn said that the guy he writes about in Big Life could be Donald Trump, Ted Turner, or Lou Adler. Wow - pretty stunning. I'll bet Glenn never thought in a thousand years when he wrote that song that Trump would one day become president.

Then, he said that he wanted his next album after Strange Weather to be country. He said he was looking forward to going to Nashville and look up his old friend, Vince Gill. He also mentions Clint Black and Collin Raye. He said he already had some material - I suspect The Girl From Yesterday was one of the songs he was referring to. But, he never cut that album in Nashville. I guess the Eagles reunion that he said wouldn't happen messed up his plan.

Of course, I'm glad "Hell Froze Over", but I wish he had made it over to Nashville beforehand. As I said elsewhere, I would have loved to have that album. Interesting that "Common Ground" would have been the title cut, and that he felt his voice was best suited to acoustic music. So much he wanted to do.
"People don't run out of dreams....People just run out of time"...

I enjoyed this. It was so nice to hear Glenn all relaxed and happy and also to hear songs from Strange Weather. I haven't listened to him much recently and it's a good reminder of how much I like his voice whether he's singing or just speaking.

I loved the idea of Glenn playing with Taylor in the morning to allow Cindy to catch up on sleep and later wandering down to his studio beside the babbling brook. What a life!

I agree, UTW, he sounds very happy here as in some other interviews of the era. He was so happy to have made Aspen his primary residence (who wouldn't?). He appreciated getting away from LA and all it entails, and back to nature. I was just wondering when/why he moved back to California? It appears it was not that long.

Apparently , it ended up being a vacation house, only visiting a few times a year as I have read. I saw much later where Glenn complained that Aspen had become a place where the billionaires where trying to push the millionaires out! (No worse than LA, you wouldn't think!) Maybe once he began touring heavily with the Eagles again, Cindy alone with two small children, wanted to be close to her folks back in California.

From the photos the house and creek were idyllic as he said. Goodness knows, I would have stayed!

Okay – Here are a few more of my thoughts about this awesome interview …

One of the funny moments was when Glenn talked about going to California. He said he “couldn’t wait to rob a few liquor stores” to get enough money to head out to the West coast.

I also got a kick out of him talking about avoiding stardom. He said the best time to be famous was when you wanted a good seat at a restaurant or concert tickets.

Re: The Aspen Experience – he said it was just as rewarding and inspirational for him as it was the for the inner city youth. And, in typical Glenn fashion, he nicknamed his group “The Mad Dogs”. He said really connected with the Mad Dogs because they weren’t that familiar with his background – probably the only song they knew of his was “The Heat Is On”.

When he discussed the ill-fated 90’s Eagles reunion that he backed out of, he elaborated on the reason. He compared it to a relationship with a former girlfriend in that with the passage of time, you remember mostly the good times and you can be friends, but you can’t ever be intimate again. He said working in a band is a very intimate thing, and he quickly realized that if you put the five Eagles back together in the same room, they would act exactly the same way they did 12 years earlier. He felt he had spent the last 12 years directing his life away from rock ‘n roll and, except for the 'moolah', this would have been a step backwards for him.

And lastly, he talked about his goals:

• Score a motion picture – This one especially caught my attention because he told us the same thing when we met him in 2007, but said he was looking for the right one. Sadly, this was one of his dreams that was unfulfilled.
• Have a brother or sister for Taylor. Check!
• Raise $200,000 for The Aspen Experience – Don’t know if this one was accomplished, but I’d bet he did.
• Improve his golf handicap from a 17 to a 12 – He said he’d have to ignore his career and play golf every day to get it where he wanted. He said that the reason golf was so addictive is because when you hit a great shot, it’s because you were able to do it exactly like the pros did.

Finally, I've said this before, but, it is such a shame that the record company didn't do more to promote Strange Weather. It is such an excellent album and deserved to be heard by the masses. When I had Glenn sign my copy (see my avatar), I told him this and said he should play some of these wonderful songs in his solo shows.