Discussion of Eagles Documentary "History of the Eagles"

[EagleLady]

You know, I don't really think he was putting Glenn down in that statement. It's all in how you interpret it. In all fairness, I do think that Don Henley's solo career was a lot stronger than Glenn's...Now, maybe some people don't agree with that, but Glenn makes like he had some great "acting" career going on, & to be honest, I had no idea he did any acting. The one line he has in that movie Jerry Mcguire, I didn't even notice him, & I did not watch Miami Vice.
Don Henley's album did win some awards & I think his career was a lot stronger than Glenn's. Whatever the other guys did, I didn't really know about. I only heard of that one song "The Heat Is On" from Glenn.

So You've Never heard of Smuggler's blues, The One You Love, Livin' right, etc? I find that hard to believe, and Glenn's career wasnt a total dud.

[VAisForEagleLovers]

I wouldn't have taken it as a put-down on Glenn, either, if he didn't put Glenn down in some way in every interview. Perhaps just expecting it before I even click on the link makes me a little biased.

While I will say (and I think I did before) that Henley's solo career was pretty good, Glenn's was pretty good as well, and how you rank them depends on what you term 'success'. I know at my 'office' (I worked at IBM and worked and played sports with a lot of people) there was a lot of people who'd never watched Miami Vice until that episode and watched solely because Glenn was on it. Most continued to watch it after that. Anyway, my point was that no one can say Glenn's solo efforts were at the same level as Felder's. Well, I guess Felder has no problems saying it.

[Topkat]

So You've Never heard of Smuggler's blues, The One You Love, Livin' right, etc? I find that hard to believe, and Glenn's career wasnt a total dud.

I did hear of Smugglers Blues, but NO I did not hear those other songs, sorry but that is the truth. I did not follow Glenn's career at this time. Never saw any of his acting either.

[sodascouts]

Well, I was a child of the 80s and I started listening to the radio in earnest in 1985, the first year I was allowed to buy my own music. While I admit I was completely ignorant of seventies music, I listened to eighties music all the time. Even so, I knew only three songs by Glenn Frey: The Heat is On, You Belong to the City, and Smuggler's Blues. I knew seven songs by Don Henley: Boys of Summer, Dirty Laundry, All She Wants To Do Is Dance, The End of the Innocence, The Heart of the Matter, Sunset Grill, and The Last Worthless Evening.

While Glenn's two biggest hits charted higher than Don's did, Glenn didn't have as many hits, and he didn't have any after 1986. By contrast, Don's hits spanned the decade. If you look at the numbers, you can't deny that Don Henley was overall more successful than Glenn as a solo act on a commercial level.

The deal is that despite the fact that Henley had more hits than Glenn, Glenn still had had enough solo success in the 80s to be known for more than his work with the Eagles by the general public. That is not true of the others.

When HFO happened, I recognized only two names: Don Henley and Glenn Frey. I had no clue who Joe Walsh, Don Felder, or Timothy B. Schmit were. I think that was the case for many children of the 80s.

[Freypower]

You know, I don't really think he was putting Glenn down in that statement. It's all in how you interpret it. In all fairness, I do think that Don Henley's solo career was a lot stronger than Glenn's...Now, maybe some people don't agree with that, but Glenn makes like he had some great "acting" career going on, & to be honest, I had no idea he did any acting. The one line he has in that movie Jerry Mcguire, I didn't even notice him, & I did not watch Miami Vice.
Don Henley's album did win some awards & I think his career was a lot stronger than Glenn's. Whatever the other guys did, I didn't really know about. I only heard of that one song "The Heat Is On" from Glenn.

No kidding, Topkat. You appear to believe that because you didn't know about it, it didn't happen. So you didn't watch Miami Vice. A lot of other people did.

For your information Jerry Maguire was made after the Eagles reformed and Glenn has more than 'one line' in it. He has a small part. He also does not go around saying what a huge acting career he had.

As for your only having heard The Heat Is On, you missed out on a great deal of wonderful music. Music does not have to win awards to be good.

I could write an entire topic on what happened with me while Henley became the big star & Glenn became less & less visible as the 80s progressed. I cannot deny this & it was a very difficult period for me. But I am not going to do it; at least not here.

[VAisForEagleLovers]

Just to clarify here, Eagles were played on country stations (at first), then as AM went by the way-side and FM became all powerful, there were two other genres, Rock and Pop. Eagles were played on Rock and Pop, as was Henley's solo stuff. Glenn's was not played on Rock stations, for the most part. If you lived here in DC and listened to DC101, you never knew Glenn had a solo career. I knew because my soon-to-be-ex-husband saw No Fun Aloud in a record store and bought it for me. I don't remember hearing any of Glenn's music on the radio until the late 80s when I started listening to Top 40 (pop) stations more. This depended on where you lived and the radio stations involved, I think. So I totally get that TK may not have heard much of Glenn's solo stuff.

[VAisForEagleLovers]

I'll add that even now, if you listen to Classic Rock stations, you seldom hear any of Glenn's solo work and if you do, it's SB or HIO, and that's it. You hear a lot of it if you listen to the 80's channels, or something like The Bridge on SiriusXM.

[Freypower]

I wasn't disputing that she didn't hear it.

[Thirsty&Hot]

Here's the quote from Don Henley taken from Marc Eliot's To The Limit about how things went down with Randy that shows insight into his relationship with Glenn as well - it goes into more detail than the documentary:

Henley: "Glenn had much more patience with Randy than I did. Glenn tried to help him write his songs and get performances out of him. The night in Knoxville, that was the biggest song in the set. Because he was strung out, he didn't want to sing it. It's that self-destructive thing that rises up in all of us. 'I'll show me!' The truth of the matter is, he was afraid he couldn't hit the notes. The audience didn't give a $hit whether he could hit them or not. They just wanted to hear the song. When he refused to sing it, Glenn calmly went over and tried to console him and said, 'Randy, it's going to be okay, you can sing it, let's just go back out and do it.' Meanwhile, the audience is out there cheering. 'No man, I'm not going to sing the f--king song,' Randy said, snapping at Glenn. Glenn backed up a couple of steps and said, 'Well, f--k you then!' That's when he threw the towel, Meisner took the swing, and everything escalated."

This is very interesting. When I was watching the documentary, I totally got where Glenn was coming from when he wanted Randy to sing the song, and being really upset when he refused. I especially liked the part about how he said people have come to the show to hear it and have waited years to hear some songs, and that they owed it to the fans to sing them. My brother saw them in Ann Arbor in 1976 and said Take it to the Limit was probably the highight of the show and everyone went crazy when Randy hit the high note.

I felt for Randy watching it, because he seems like a really decent guy, but as professionals who are being paid a pretty nice sum of money to go out there and play, I completely understood Glenn's frustration.

Thanks for the quote soda! That's interesting how patient Glenn was with Randy. And I think I may have said it before in this thread, but it was pretty much the same thing NYC fan said... how I really dug what Glenn said about some of the fans waiting their whole lives to hear them play these songs live and they owe it to us to give us what we want to hear. That's why to this day they still play all the hits live

and while I can see how anyone can get stage fright..Randy was awesome and I wish he could've seen that! Then again, I guess all artists have their insecurities...it's easier said than done sometimes. As an artist myself, I suppose I can relate to often not seeing my own potential. Though by that time, Randy had been performing tons of gigs with positive feedback from the audience. so I dunno haha. what's done is done and dissecting the situation won't change a thing.

[Topkat]

Quote from Sodascouts

When HFO happened, I recognized only two names: Don Henley and Glenn Frey. I had no clue who Joe Walsh, Don Felder, or Timothy B. Schmit were. I think that was the case for many children of the 80s.
__________________

Soda, that is because you are younger(lucky you) I knew all of them & I did know the Eagles from the 70's.

People here have all grown up at different times. When HFO happened, people went to see the Eagles. I knew who they were, & I think people who grew up in the 70's knew who they were, all of them. I was not going to see Don Henley or Glenn Frey as individual artists. People were going to see the "Eagles", as we remember them as the band reunited, if that makes any sense. I would say that the name "Eagles" is what drew in the audiences, not just Don & Glenn. Of course there is no "Eagles" without them, but I'm just saying it was the "band" that everyone wanted to see!