Heartache Tonight

I grew up around the Eagles, mainly hearing them on my older cousin’s 8-track car stereo or on the 45’s the girls at school would play during recess.  Though I wouldn’t have called them one of my favorite bands, I liked them.  They were one of a group of artists like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Alabama, Charlie Daniels Band, Eddie Rabbitt & Kenny Rogers that I never really considered rock music or country music – just music.

While I enjoyed songs like “Take it Easy”, “Heartache Tonight”, “The Long Run” and “Hotel California”, the first “Eagles” song that REALLY grabbed me was Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry”.  Honestly, I’m not even sure I realized at the time that he was a former Eagle.  Nevertheless, I had never heard anything that remotely sounded like THAT – that infectious groove that just got in your brain, the “kick ’em when they’re up, kick ‘em when their down” refrain and that freaking telephone ringing.  I didn’t really understand it.  All I knew was that it was brilliant.  I bought it on a “various artists” 8-track and wore that sucker out in 1982.

Although, “Dirty Laundry” was, technically, the first “Eagles” song I bought, the first “Eagles” album I ever bought was Glenn Frey’s “Allnighter”.  (It was actually Glenn’s second solo record, but I was busy listening to Don Henley when the first one came out.)  The first single from the album, “Sexy Girl”, was all over the radio in the summer of 1984 and I was smack dab in the middle of a Columbia House membership drive, so I ordered a copy.

By the time I received it, the title track had been released to radio.  Though the spooky little ditty wasn’t a huge hit, it was easily my favorite song on the album.

Its slick, polished sound also set the stage for Glenn’s later eighties successes.

“The Heat is On” was featured in “Beverly Hills Cop” and reached #2 on the charts, as did “You Belong to the City”.  That song appeared on the “Miami Vice” soundtrack along with “Smuggler’s Blues”, which was also on “The Allnighter” and actually inspired an episode of the hit TV show.

Glenn had clearly found his niche in the eighties, albeit briefly.  By the time “Soul Searchin’” was released in 1988, his career had cooled considerably with the album’s lone Top 40 hit peaking at #13.

Ultimately, “True Love” would be Glenn’s last Top 40 hit.  However, his final solo album of original material, 1992’s “Strange Weather”, would find success on the Adult Contemporary chart with its singles, which received considerable airplay.

Of course, the following year was when “hell froze over” and the Eagles finally reformed, first for the music video for Travis Tritt’s cover of “Take it Easy” and then for a full-blown tour & album.  The Eagles would remain active for over two decades this time around with their biggest hit of their 2^nd era being the #23 country hit “How Long” in 2007.

The band continued to tour over the next few years and even talked about recording one more album together.  In December of 2015, the band was slated to receive Kennedy Center Honors, but declined due to Glenn’s health problems.  He had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis since 2000 and the medication that he took to control the disease had led to colitis and pneumonia.  Sadly, he died on January 18, 2016 while recovering from intestinal surgery.

Looking back over the career of my favorite Eagle, the thing that always bothered me was that Don’s solo work garnered more respect than Glenn’s.  The two had, basically, the same solo output with very similar chart results.  Yet, much like Lennon & McCartney, Henley’s solo music is held in high regard by most, while Frey is often dismissed as a “sellout”, undoubtedly due to his Kenny Loggins-like soundtrack success in the eighties.  It always seemed unfair to me.  The eighties were an era in popular music no less legitimate or more ridiculous than any other.  The fact that a successful country rock artist from the seventies was able to adapt to the MTV era and enjoy tremendous success is no small feat, no matter how you look at it.  My frustration over the Henley vs. Frey debate actually colored my opinion of Don Henley for many years.  Though I enjoyed his solo music, in my mind, he was the pretentious dictator-like asshole of the Eagles while Frey was the happy-go-lucky “other guy” in the band who was just glad to be there.  It wasn’t until I saw the 2013 “History of the Eagles” documentary that I realized how wrong I was.

Documentary producer Alex Gibney said that the first thing that stuck him about Glenn was that he was so “forthright”.  “He may have pissed off some people in his time, but it was often because he was brash and blunt,” Gibney went on to say.  According to Gibney, Frey wanted the real story to be told, no matter how ugly it was at times…and it certainly was.  Turns out, Glenn was not “the other guy” in the Eagles – he was THE guy.  He was a driven perfectionist who had a vision and nothing short of that vision was acceptable to him.  It didn’t make him popular.  Actually, it made him threaten to kill Don Felder in 1980 WHILE on stage as soon as they finished the song they were playing.  “I can’t wait,” he reportedly said.  Fortunately, he didn’t kill him.  Felder got the point, though.  Glenn Frey was the leader of the Eagles…and they all knew it.  He drove them to be more than what they otherwise would have been and he always did what he felt was in the best interest of the band.  He was also smart enough to share the spotlight with his musical soul mate who he realized was probably more talented than he was.  He wasn’t the nicest guy in the band, but he was a good leader and it was that leadership that made the Eagles legendary.  Not bad for the “sellout” who did movie soundtracks in the eighties.

Glenn Frey quotes

Upon announcing Glenn’s death on their website, the band posted the lyric to a song from “Long Road Out of Eden”.  It was especially poignant to me, as the album was released a month after my sister died in a car accident on September 15, 2007.  The song was a comfort to me then, as it is to Glenn’s friends and fans now.

Glenn Lewis Frey (November 6, 1948 – January 18, 2016)