Suite 101: I've heard that, these days, the supposedly improvised 'banter' with the audience is actually scripted. Is that true?
"I wouldn’t know… I would know that when I was in the band that Glenn really was the main front spokesman. He carried the dialogue and he had the history of being very repetitive from show to show. Every once in a while, he’d throw some new element in about a song and get a laugh or something, but it was pretty much like a show.
"A lot of the show was choreographed. I came out when Don came out from behind the drums, Joe and I would go over and play together on a certain area of the stage and it was almost like a play - and it was identical from night to night, musically and script-wise. I don’t know wehat they’re doing now – I haven’t seen their show, to tell you the truth…
Suite 101: I think Glenn Frey makes the same joke every time he introduces Take It To The Limit, that it's his "wife’s credit card song!"
"Well, after being in the band and hearing Randy Meisner sing Take It To The Limit... and there’s only two people that I’ve seen live sing that get huge standing ovations. One year it was Roy Orbison that opened for us... I think it was on part of the Hotel California tour and he would sing the song Crying, where again he gets really high.
"It was our cue – when we heard the audience explode with appreciation and reaction to him singing those really high notes that, ‘Okay, we’ve got five minutes’. Every night, like clockwork, he was able to do that. Randy Meisner did that every night on Take It To The Limit. You could count the same number of goosebumps on your neck every night when Randy hit those high notes at the end...
"Audiences would stand up explode with just overwhelming appreciation and I’m not certain that that’s performed the same way. I think Glenn sings that now, if I’m not mistaken… He did co-write it with Randy, but to me I don’t think that song will ever be the same without Randy Meisner singing it. It’s like Whitney Houston. That song, I Will Always Love You, I think it was a Dolly Parton song. Dolly can sing it, but it ain’t gonna do the same thing that Whitney did!"