Months before the Eagles released “Take it Easy” in 1972, Glenn Frey performed the song on a second-hand guitar for a former high school girlfriend in Royal Oak.
Nanci Kezlarian had just finished graduate school when her ninth-grade boyfriend, now an emerging rock star, stopped in for a visit.
“I had a guitar I bought at garage sale,” said Kezlarian, 67, who is now a therapist in Brentwood, Calif. “He told me to bring it up from the basement. He said, ‘Let me play you a song we’re working on’ and played ‘Take it Easy.’ It was in our family room on Hendrie Boulevard. I loved it.”
Frey, who died last month, stayed in touch with a number of his former Dondero High School classmates over the years. The naming of Glenn Frey Drive next to his old high school --now Royal Oak Middle School -- inaugurated a trip down memory lane this week for those who knew him.
The official unveiling of the newly named street Thursday was planned with WCSX - 94.7 FM personality Jim O’Brien, who promised a girl in a flatbed Ford to evoke the lyrics of “Take it Easy.”
Months after Frey’s family-room rendition of the Eagles early hit, he sent Kezlarian a postcard reminding her of the song.
“Now its number 23 in the nation and headed to the top 5 and a million records sold,” Frey wrote. “We’re touring with Jethro Tull, Procol Harum. It’s incredible. Love, Glenn.”
Kezlarian still has the postcard and a handful of letters Frey sent her. She last saw him at her Brentwood home in 2012.
She and fellow 1966 Dondero graduates Phil Moore and Bob Wilson got together this week in California to attend an invitation-only memorial tribute to Frey with his wife and others.
Wilson, a longtime friend of Frey’s who played with him in his high school band “The Subterraneans,” said Frey used to come back to Michigan in the early years and sometimes later on in his career.
“He had a fondness for Michigan,” said Wilson, who lives in Oxford. “And he had friends here like Bob Seager, Punch Andrews and the attorney Howard Arnkoff.”
Early on, it was apparent Frey had a deep interest in music and the determination to make things happen.
“He had leadership skills and he was fun,” Wilson said. “More than anything, Glenn Frey was fun.”
Frey made a point of visiting his friends at schools where they worked. He played piano and sang songs when Kezlarian was a teacher in the 1970s at West Bloomfield High School in Orchard Lake.
He also made in-person financial donations to the Upland Hills School in Oxford, an independent school for students ages 4 to 14, which Moore cofounded more than 40 years ago.
“He gave his time, talent and treasure to our school so that it would flourish -- and it did,” Moore said.
In addition to writing checks and visits to Upland Hills, Frey donated some of his guitars for auction so that students at the school could make a trip to Mexico several years ago.
Moore met Frey when they were 13 years old and involved in wrestling at the former Clara Barton Junior High School. They sat waiting with their opponents before bouts. Frey sized up Moore’s opponent then spoke to Moore.
“That guy looks like he could eat you for lunch,” Frey told him, and a friendship was born.
Years later when Frey was ready to make a donation to Moore’s school he showed up and talked with his former classmate.
“He said, ‘You don’t even have to wrestle me for it -- here’s my checkbook,” Moore recalled.
Frey met up with his old Dondero school friends at Kezlarian’s house in Brentwood a few times over the last eight years, but spurned email and sent written letters instead.
“He left the world better than he found it,” Moore said. “He believed he had done exactly what he set out to do.”
Frey lived in Brentwood after he started his family in the 1990s but moved to New York in 2012, the last year the former Dondero friends got together.
“Glenn wasn’t the type to hang out with a lot of celebrities,” Kezlarian said. “He was paying more attention to his inner self.”
Among the mementos she keeps is a copy of a menu from the former Golden Griddle Pancake House in Royal Oak. She wrote the date, April 15, 1963, on the menu at the time.
That was the day she and Frey ate there on their first date.
Frey was her first boyfriend and his mother, Nellie, drove the young couple to their stops that day.
“We went to play miniature golf, which was popular back then,” Kezlarian said. “This year will be the 50th anniversary of our graduating class from Dondero. It’s so painful for me know I’m never going to see Glenn again.”
Re: Remembering Glenn Frey
Originally Posted by JanetteG
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