This thread is for stories and tributes about the life of Glenn Frey. It can be things you've found on the web, or your own stories. We're just going to celebrate his life here.
First, what the Eagles themselves put on their site:
It is with the heaviest of hearts that we announce the passing of husband, best friend, father, comrade, and Eagles founder, Glenn Frey, in New York City on Monday, January 18th, 2016.
Glenn fought a courageous battle for the past several weeks but, sadly, succumbed to complications from Rheumatoid Arthritis, Acute Ulcerative Colitis and Pneumonia.
The Frey family would like to thank everyone who joined Glenn to fight this fight and hoped and prayed for his recovery.
Words can neither describe our sorrow, nor our love and respect for all that he has given to us, his family, the music community & millions of fans worldwide.
Cindy Frey • Taylor Frey • Deacon Frey • Otis Frey
Don Henley • Joe Walsh • Timothy B. Schmit • Bernie Leadon • Irving Azoff
Then what Don Henley put on his site:
“He was like a brother to me; we were family, and like most families, there was some dysfunction. But, the bond we forged 45 years ago was never broken, even during the 14 years that the Eagles were dissolved.
We were two young men who made the pilgrimage to Los Angeles with the same dream: to make our mark in the music industry — and with perseverance, a deep love of music, our alliance with other great musicians and our manager, Irving Azoff, we built something that has lasted longer than anyone could have dreamed. But, Glenn was the one who started it all. He was the spark plug, the man with the plan. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of popular music and a work ethic that wouldn’t quit. He was funny, bullheaded, mercurial, generous, deeply talented and driven. He loved his wife and kids more than anything.
We are all in a state of shock, disbelief and profound sorrow. We brought our two-year “History of the Eagles Tour” to a triumphant close at the end of July and now he is gone. I’m not sure I believe in fate, but I know that crossing paths with Glenn Lewis Frey in 1970 changed my life forever, and it eventually had an impact on the lives of millions of other people all over the planet. It will be very strange going forward in a world without him in it. But, I will be grateful, every day, that he was in my life. Rest in peace, my brother. You did what you set out to do, and then some.”
-Don Henley
Bernie Leadon's reply to Bob Lefsetz's piece:
hey bob-
Nice tribute to Glenn and the band. I am bummed, but very grateful that I got the privilege of participating in the History Of tour for the last two years, and play the music again, with Glenn and Don, Timothy and Joe. And I have stayed in touch with Randy Meisner and Don Felder as well.
There is a song that Glenn wrote before the band started, which he played for us at the very first rehearsal at S.I.R in L.A in late summer 1971, when the original four Eagles first strapped on instruments and played together as a band. The song was "Most of Us Are Sad", which the band recorded on the first album, titled simply "Eagles".
Randy sang the song on the album, and very well indeed. But it was Glenn's song, and when I first heard it, I thought it was a very good and insightful song, as this was a guy saying that, back when guys didn't admit weakness much, or vulnerability. That song was an album cut, never got airplay, and we didn't play it on stage, since we already played several waltzes, and couldn't do more mellow songs in the show. But listen to it now, and it might make you feel better, knowing that we're not the only ones sad today.
One thing I learned over the years about a songwriter expressing very personal feelings, is that it turns out that since all humans feel essentially the same feelings, but that most folks don't know how to express them, that when a songwriter talks about something very personal, it turns out to have universal appeal, because everyone can say "yeah! That's how I feel! He understands me like no one else!" So in a very counterintuitive way, its not the large general statement which has universal appeal, but rather the most intimate and personal which does.
I am very proud of what the band achieved, and grateful for the opportunity to be part of it, both from the first rehearsals and show, to the very last one on July 29 in the Shreveport suburb of Bossier City (with a 38 year gap in the middle.....). At the end of that last show, after the first encore Hotel California, as we were preparing to return to the stage for the last three encores (Take It Easy, Rocky Mt. Way, and Desperado), Glenn gave me a big hug, said "This isn't the end", and another big hug. We hit the stage, took our bows, went out the back to our vehicles, and off into our separate lives again. So I am very grateful today that this was my last interaction with Glenn, and that we did achieve what he said he was aiming for, to "go out on a high note".
None of us could quite hit the same high notes that we could in the 70's (except maybe Henley still can.....), but it was only down about a half step, which is pretty good. Glenn was such a trouper during the History tour, as I fully realize now with my better understanding of the physical challenges he was battling every day out there. Like you said in your commentary, "they hit the stage with no delay". The only delay there ever was on the History tour, was to maybe hold the curtain for 5 or 10 minutes, to allow more of the audience time to get seated. Then we promptly started the show, which lasted 3 and a half hours, every night.
The truth is, as you said, that Glenn was the primary energy behind the Eagles success, as he was relentless. We all had a lot of energy and drive, but Glenn was pushing it and us all the time. So hat's off, Glenn. Job extremely well done. Millions of people have been positively affected, cheered up, supported. May your wife Cindy and your kids take comfort in that realization, and may we all be grateful as we continue to live our lives, accompanied by your soundtrack.
Vaya Con Dios
bernie leadon
Which brings me to what Bob Lefsetz wrote:
He lived the American Dream.
You know, wherein your wits, smarts and pluck, never mind the gleam in your eye, take you from nothing to everything, in this case not only accumulating riches, but influencing the culture.
And there were those who hated him for it.
They lionize Steve Jobs. And Mark Zuckerberg. The techies that changed the world.
But they hate Glenn Frey and his flock of Eagles for being so damn successful, for worming their way into women's hearts. And let me be clear, it's always guys complaining about the Eagles, girls loved them. Because females are not into pecking order, not married to the past, they can embrace that which truly satisfies, casting preconceptions aside.
And the preconception was that you had to be English, with bad teeth and little education, or American and challenging cultural commandments, or else you didn't matter. Gram Parsons might be the father of country rock, but he could never compose a song that penetrated the public consciousness to the point that radio stations could not stop playing it and none of us could ever forget it.
Like "Take It Easy."
That acoustic guitar came out of the speaker in the dashboard and in the summer of '72 all of America felt good. It was a different country back then, divided for sure, but we still believed we were winners, that if we put our minds to it we would come out on top. We were never gonna be here again, so we opened up and took across this great country of ours, lived life to the fullest, with the radio blasting all the while.
And despite the hit single, it was the era of album rock. So upon hearing the mellifluous tune you went out and purchased the Asylum LP and...you played it over and over again. Thirty seven minutes long, the debut had no clunkers, it begged to be heard. Take that modern music.
But the follow-up was a commercial dud. "Desperado" got no traction, not the LP nor the title track. The press had primed us for it, back when "Rolling Stone" was the bible of a generation, but without a hit single "Desperado" faded in an era where music dominated and we couldn't afford to buy all we wanted.
And then "Best Of My Love" went to number one. Credit a deejay, who rejected the two authorized singles in favor of it. Suddenly, the Eagles owned the airwaves.
Of course Glenn would tell us they were called "Eagles," and was unhappy that everyone appended the "the," but he and the rest of the band were thrilled with the attention and the dough. They were rock stars. Raising funds for political candidates and partaking of the goodies that accompany the success. It's one thing to be rich and famous, it's another thing for it to be based on your creativity, your art. These are the people we exalt. The Eagles were at the pinnacle, especially with the following year's "One Of These Nights," they were a stadium act, the biggest band in the land.
And the hatred ensued.
But unlike today's wimpy musicians, the Eagles barked back, owned their talent and success. Funny how we give Kanye a pass, despite not having made memorable music for years, but we excoriate the SoCal band that was bigger than the rest.
But no one was prepared for "Hotel California." When you dropped the needle on the record you heard a sound foreign to the catalog. The guitars screamed and if they were big before, the Eagles were now America's band.
It was "Life In The Fast Lane." A term every baby boomer knows and said for decades, when they snorted coke, when they did what they should not do. The Eagles blasted open the highway and then we drove right down it.
And now Glenn Frey is gone.
I felt he would make it. It had been weeks, he'd made it through the dreaded holiday period, but then he passed.
And America was shocked.
The press didn't know how to react. Because they had to be cool, they couldn't attest to what data tells us, that the Eagles are the biggest American band in history.
Their "Greatest Hits" jockeys with "Thriller" for number one. And unlike so many albums of the past, it still sells. It's not in the rearview mirror. The strange thing about the Eagles is they never went away. They inspired the country pickers and they still own the bars and the radio. That's what you get what you're that damn good.
And there's no one better.
I know, I know, you'll cite artists breaking convention, your favorite player, but the truth is writing catchy songs with meaning and singing them with exquisite harmonies is damn hard to do, it's just that the Eagles made it look easy. Hell, half of Nashville walks in their footsteps, but no one's done it nearly as well, and so many of those stars don't even write their own material.
But the Eagles did. With help from J.D., Jackson and Jack Tempchin. But they weren't guns for hire, but members of the club, a roaming group of musicians who owned the hearts and minds of America throughout the seventies, and didn't let go thereafter.
So you're either sad or you're not.
But if you are...
67 is way too young. And although Don Henley had more solo success, it was Glenn's band. He started it, he guided it. And every group needs a driving force.
So it's the end of an era. And it's a great loss. You'll never be able to see the Eagles again. But if you did...
The sun would be setting behind the stage.
And at the appointed time, with no wait, they would take the stage and Glenn would say...
They were the Eagles from Southern California.
And the guitars would strum, the bass would pluck, the drums would pound and as the sound washed over you you'd become your best self.
America runs on California. That's where the innovation begins, where you go to test limits, where there's no ceiling on either creativity or success.
And people hate California the same way they hate the Eagles.
But what they really want to do is get on board.
And we all got on board with the Eagles. Even those who say they do not care. They only wish they were standing on that corner in Winslow, Arizona, with a girl checking them out.
In a flatbed Ford, made in Detroit. Where Glenn Frey emanated from.
But he remembered his roots.
And built upon them.
Want to be successful?
Need it. Study. Make friends. Seize opportunities.
And take no shit as you ascend into the stratosphere.
That's what Glenn Frey did.
You cannot make a big enough deal about his death. Because what once was is now gone. Doesn't mean we can't create something new, but so far we haven't minted stars as big as those from the seventies, never mind create music as memorable.
Glenn Frey was here for the long run. He got stuck in the Hotel California and he wasn't eager to get out. But we all meet our demise, his as a result of side effects from arthritis drugs, he just didn't want the pain.
None of us want the pain. We're self-medicating every day.
But years ago the music was enough. We just turned on the stereo and a smile crossed our face.
Glenn Frey took us there.
Now we don't know where to go.
I saved a lot of links, but its on my computer at home. If nobody else has posted it by the time I get home, I will post it then.
Here's an article from Vince Gill about Glenn. I also found an old picture of Vince and Glenn at a golf game in 1991. Garth Brooks was even in the picture.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ne...#ixzz3xigHNgWD
ETA: I edited my post to have the article here. Their are pictures with this article.
Vince Gill says that Glenn Frey was a "world-class guitar player." AP (2) The Eagles' guitar sound may be best identified with the ferocious "Hotel California" fretwork of Joe Walsh and Don Felder, but Glenn Frey's playing was also key to the group's output. Vince Gill, himself an ace guitarist who has turned in solos for artists as varied as Alice Cooper and the Doobie Brothers, says Frey the musician was underrated.
"He was a world-class guitar player. For a long time, Don Felder and Joe were front and center taking the lead role, but I don’t think a lot of people realize that all that soulful guitar playing was Glenn," Gill tells Rolling Stone Country of Frey, who died Monday at age 67.
Gill recorded the band's "I Can't Tell You Why" for the 1993 Eagles tribute album Common Thread, choosing to add saxophone, a hallmark of Frey's Eighties solo work, to his version. "I don't know why I chose to put sax on it — it'd have been fun to play those slippery guitar parts that Glenn played. That's a very restrained solo in 'I Can't Tell You Why,'" he says.
Although the Eagles were most known for a laid-back brand of California country-rock, Gill says they were just as much a soul and rock & roll band. Thanks in part to Frey, who was raised in Detroit.
"Most people hear him sing 'Lyin' Eyes' or 'New Kid in Town,' but he was a Detroit boy. He knew what soul music was," says Gill. "He knew what rock & roll really was, probably more than anybody else in that band until Joe Walsh comes along. You have to have a leader, and he was a great one."
Gill first met Frey and the Eagles during the group's Long Run Tour, and became fast friends with the singer-guitarist, playing golf together, using Frey's Lakers tickets and, in 2007, introducing the band when they performed on the CMA Awards.
"They said, 'We'll play, but we want Vince to introduce us.' So I've been connected to them for 35-plus years," he says. "I think that's one of the most important bands ever, just from the legacy of the songs."
Gill is just one of many country artists who have paid their respects to Frey. Travis Tritt, who covered "Take It Easy" for Common Thread and helped reunite the band for the song's video, told Rolling Stone Country that Frey's work ethic was unmatched.
"If you look at the entire catalog of all the things that the Eagles did for all those years, not to mention the things that Glenn did in his solo career, it's always just top-notch," he says. "It was an inspiration just to be around him and to listen to the songs that he did both with the Eagles and on solo projects and just know that he was one of the greats of our time."
Last edited by shunlvswx; 01-25-2016 at 08:50 PM.
David Spero's post:
Glenn Frey...I could tell stories for days about him. In our business there aren't many that will stand up for you. Glenn was that guy. And his laugh....I remember sitting at the Little Nell in Aspen, having dinner with our wives, and Glenn started laughing. One of those 'he couldn't breathe' laughs. It was infectious. We all laughed, for hours it seemed. That is how I want to remember him. I really can't believe he is gone. It hurts...really really bad. Yes, he left all of us a tremendous discography, shows we will never forget, but I remember him most as a friend. The summer we did the Walsh/Frey could not have been more fun. After most shows Glenn and I would take a walk and he would bitch about this and that, but then we would laugh and then laugh some more. He gave me the title for my book. He said I should call it 'If You're Reading This I Must Be Dead.' And now he is. Goodbye my friend. Rest in peace. I will remember your laugh every day......this is a Henry Diltz photo from the Walsh Frey tour at Nautical in Cleveland. It rained like hell, but the band played on.
-Kim-
People don't run out of dreams, People just run out of time
Here's an article from LA Times.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...118-story.html
Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey dies at 67: chief architect of band's vocal and instrumental blend
Glenn Frey grew up in Detroit, the town best known musically for the catchy R&B music that came out of Motown Records, and the home of hard-charging rock acts such as Bob Seger, Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels and the MC5.
So when Frey turned up at the celebrated Troubadour nightclub in West Hollywood in the late 1960s to audition as a singer and guitarist for rising country-rock singer Linda Ronstadt, her manager wasn’t sure he’d be a good fit.
“I had pigeonholed him as this punky kid from Detroit who wanted to be a rocker,” John Boylan said Monday. “But he surprised me with the scope of his musical knowledge. The very first rehearsal we had with Linda, we were doing a [Hank Williams] song, ‘Lovesick Blues.’ He knew the country sixth chords that Hank would use — he knew the whole genre already. I figured I would have to teach this guy about ancient country music, but he could have taught me."
Frey went on to become a founding member of the Eagles, one of the most successful bands of all time — a group that will be forever associated with the Southern California country rock sound.
Frey died in New York on Monday from the rheumatoid arthritis he’d struggled with for 15 years as well as acute ulcerative colitis and pneumonia.
“When they went on tour with me, it was the first time Glenn had ever gone on the road,” Ronstadt recalled Monday. “We didn’t have enough money for everyone to have their own rooms, so the guys had to double up. That’s when Glenn and Don [Henley] started working together. When they said they wanted to form a band of their own, I thought, ‘Hot dog! Yes, you should put a band together.’ The first time I heard them sing ‘Witchy Woman,’ I knew they were going to have hits.”
His death could spell the end of the Eagles, a group whose sound captivated listeners worldwide starting with their first No. 1 hit, “Best of My Love” in 1974, and continuing with such successes as “One of These Nights,” “Lyin’ Eyes,” “Take It to the Limit,” “New Kid in Town,” “Heartache Tonight,” “The Long Run,” and one that became a contemporary standard replayed nightly by bar bands around the world, “Hotel California.”
That song explored the darkness they found lurking beneath the bright promises of fame and fortune often dangled in front of musicians, actors and other artists who come to California in pursuit of their dreams.
Frey and band mate Don Henley wrote of the excesses they observed — and famously indulged in themselves — in and around Hollywood:
Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice.
And she said, “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device”
Besides reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart in 1977, “Hotel California” was subsequently honored with the Grammy Award for record of the year.
In a statement issued Monday, Henley said Frey “was like a brother to me; we were family, and like most families, there was some dysfunction.”
That was a reference to the internal tensions the band was notorious for, and which led the group to disband at the end of the 1970s.
Henley had famously said the Eagles would reunite “when hell freezes over,” a phrase the band good-naturedly adopted when it did indeed get back together in 1992 for a new round of recordings and regular tours that continued into 2015.
“The bond we forged 45 years ago was never broken, even during the 14 years that the Eagles were dissolved,” Henley wrote. “We were two young men who made the pilgrimage to Los Angeles with the same dream: to make our mark in the music industry — and with perseverance, a deep love of music, our alliance with other great musicians and our manager, Irving Azoff, we built something that has lasted longer than anyone could have dreamed. But, Glenn was the one who started it all.”
Azoff, who has managed the Eagles for most of their long career, said Frey was as astute in business as he was in music.
“He was always telling people, 'When you're in the music business, you've got to have your music right, and you've got to have your business right,’” Azoff said Monday. “He had incredible instincts. He and Henley and I would always plot what was coming next. He wasn't just an incredible writer, singer and musician.
“I don't know of a better family man, or father. He's just gone too soon.”
The Eagles were to have been recognized with a 2015 Kennedy Center Honor in December, but in November the band requested that it be put off until “all four Eagles — Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit — can attend.”
At the time, Frey had a flare-up of intestinal problems he’d struggled with for years, Azoff said, and was hospitalized with plans for surgery. But he developed pneumonia and never was strong enough to undergo that procedure.
In 1986, Frey missed a reunion concert with Henley because of an intestinal disorder. An attempt to reunite the Eagles in 1990 was put off in part because of surgery to remove part of Frey’s intestine. And in 1994, their “Hell Freezes Over” reunion tour was interrupted by Frey’s bout with diverticulitis.
Frey and Henley collaborated on most of the Eagles’ signature songs, hits that came to define a quintessential Southern California pop sound in the 1970s, as distinctive as the Beach Boys’ sunny harmonies had been a decade earlier.
Frey and Henley, originally joined in the Eagles by Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner, brought the two-, three- and four-part harmonies characteristic of country and bluegrass music to rock, powering them with electric guitars and drums in a tradition that had started with the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and the Flying Burrito Brothers.
Henley credited Frey for being the chief architect of the vocal and instrumental blend that defined the Eagles.
“We gave Glenn a nickname, the Lone Arranger,” Henley wrote in 2003. “He had a vision about how our voices could blend and how to arrange the vocals, and, in many cases, the tracks. He also had a knack for remembering and choosing good songs.”
Glenn Lewis Frey was born Nov. 6, 1948, in Detroit and was inspired by the Beatles to take up the guitar. He played in bar bands in the Motor City as a teenager, and for a time was part of rocker Bob Seger’s band.
But Frey had greater ambitions, and he went to California, drawn by the vibrant rock and country folk scene brewing in the mid- to late 1960s.
The Troubadour was a focal point of that musical community, and it is where Frey met Ronstadt through mutual friend and musician J.D. Souther.
Frey and Souther formed a folk-based band called Longbranch Pennywhistle that began to make a name for itself, and for a time they shared an apartment in Echo Park, living above yet another soon-to-be-prominent singer-songwriter: Jackson Browne.
Frey said it was Browne who taught him the discipline needed to become a first-rate writer.
“He had his piano and guitars down there,” Frey wrote in the liner notes for the Eagles’ 2003 compilation album “The Very Best of the Eagles.” “I didn’t really know how to sit down and work on a song until I heard him playing underneath us in the basement.
“I had never really witnessed that sort of focus — someone being that fastidious — and it gave me a different idea about how to write songs; that maybe it wasn’t all just going to be a flood of inspiration. That’s when I first heard ‘Take It Easy,’” a song Frey helped Browne finish and which became the Eagles’ first national hit, in 1972.
While becoming one of the most successful acts in pop music, the Eagles also had detractors who criticized the band’s often ultra-polished sound as soulless and excessively calculated.
But fans continued to lap up the band’s recordings and concert tickets. The group’s 1976 compilation album, “Eagles/Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975,” is the second-biggest-selling album of all time, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America, the trade organization that bestows gold and platinum records.
It has alternated over the years at No. 1 and 2 with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” which holds the top spot with certified sales of more than 30 million copies, to more than 29 million for the Eagles’ album.
During the band’s hiatus in the 1980s, Frey released three solo albums and ultimately logged 13 singles that made the Billboard Hot 100. Two of those peaked at No. 2: “The Heat Is On” (featured in the Eddie Murphy comedy “Beverly Hills Cop”) and “You Belong to the City.”
He also mapped out a second career as an actor, appearing in “Miami Vice” and other TV shows and starring in the short-lived 1993 series “South of Sunset.”
But it was with the Eagles that his reputation largely rested. After the group reunited in 1994, its tours generated bigger business at the box office than the group had in the 1970s, in large part because of the dramatic increase in the price of concert tickets over the decades.
The band commissioned a “History of the Eagles” documentary that aired on Showtime in 2013, and it recounted the light and the dark aspects of the group’s track record, including Frey and Henley’s decision to fire guitarist Don Felder, who had composed the signature guitar parts that help define “Hotel California.”
The documentary set the stage for a “History of the Eagles” concert tour that surveyed the group’s four decades of music-making and ranked No. 8 among the highest-grossing tours of the year worldwide, raking in $86.5 million in 2014, according to the concert industry-tracking magazine Pollstar.
As part of that tour, the Eagles played six sold-out shows at the newly renovated Forum in Inglewood at the outset of 2014.
Whether the Eagles could continue without Frey was a question no one was prepared to address Monday.
“I haven’t even given it a thought,” Azoff said. “It’s of no importance right now.”
Frey is survived by his wife, Cindy, and their children Taylor, Deacon and Otis.
“There will be a major memorial, and it will be in L.A.,” Azoff said. “The only thing the family and guys in the band ask is that we want to plan it right.”
randy.lewis@latimes.com
Last edited by shunlvswx; 01-25-2016 at 08:56 PM.
From Billboard.com
"Other artists expressing their appreciation for synchs included Joe Walsh. Three days after Eagles bandmate Glenn Frey’s passing, Walsh was on hand to co-present the award for best use of music by a brand. Talking to Billboard before the ceremony, he declined to comment on Frey’s death. “I haven’t said anything because there are no words,” he said."