(Credits: Far Out / Greenwich Entertainment)
Mon 3 November 2025 20:00, UK
It’s hard to think of modern California music without Glenn Frey.
He may have been born and raised in Detroit, but what he did for the ‘Sunshine State’ with the Eagles in the 1970s created the perfect soundtrack for those nights of driving down the highways right outside of Los Angeles. Not everything that the band played came without their fair share of disagreements, but Frey always knew that the right moment between his bandmates could remind him why he fell in love with rock and roll.
But it wasn’t exactly easy getting to become one of the biggest songwriters in American history. He knew that he had a lot of work to do when he first began working with Bob Seger, but thanks to mentors like Jackson Browne, he found out pretty quickly how to write the perfect song for any situation, whether that was coming up with a great line like ‘Lyin’ Eyes’ or drafting up an entire concept for how an album like Desperado would take shape.
Songwriting can be fun, but by the end of Hotel California, the whole thing could feel like pulling teeth after a while. Every single record you make is about trying to outdo the one before it, and even though that can be fun at times, it can feel like an albatross around your neck half the time when you’re trying to find the perfect hook that ties the entire song together. So when that burden was lifted after their breakup, Frey was free to do whatever he wanted.
For the first time since Hotel California, making music no longer felt like a job, and while his debut solo album No Fun Aloud lit a fire under Don Henley’s ass, it did get Frey enough of a foothold to become a solo star. Joe Walsh and Henley were bound to become solo legends, but given his hits like ‘The Heat Is On’ and dipping his toes into the acting pool every now and again, Frey helped to keep the spirit of the band alive even if they were no longer playing together.
Nothing was going to convince him to stop having fun making music, but it was all going to depend on whether the people showed up at the gigs. Even for a legend like him, there are bound to be gigs when you get the jitters, but Frey knew that there was nothing that could compare to hitting the exact right note or nailing the perfect vocal harmony when the houselights come on.
Even when looking at his career as a studio legend, Frey said there was no way to capture the same feeling of playing live, saying, “I’m not someone who will have people over for a social evening and play them my new record. I enjoy performing immensely. More so now than ever, in fact. Those are golden moments for me.” Which is ironic considering how the golden age of Eagles ended.
Despite the whole thing blowing up because of Frey and Don Felder having a fight onstage, it seemed that Frey couldn’t let go of that urge to play live when the band reunited, either. Hell Freezes Over may have been a nice way to give fans a taste of the classics, but it’s not exactly an accident that they spent more time on the road than in the studio half the time ever since the mid-1990s.
Because if you look at how much it took for them to make Long Road Out of Eden, it’s not like they were going to remember putting the harmonies on a track like ‘Somebody’ for the rest of their lives. It was nice to have new music in the world, but Frey always preferred giving fans those moments live whenever he kicked into ‘New Kid In Town’ or did his own rendition of tunes like ‘Take It to the Limit’.
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