(Credits: Far Out / The Eagles / Album Cover)
Fri 13 March 2026 21:15, UK
Last year, my parents went travelling in Arizona and gleefully sent me pictures every day of them sitting in deserts or standing by a statue of the Eagles frontman Glenn Frey. I was… so happy for them.
If you couldn’t detect the subtle hint of sarcasm in that statement, it was more than a little depressing to receive this onslaught of sunny skies and majestic landscapes while I sat at home in the pouring Scottish rain, but nevertheless, the snap of Frey caught my attention despite my gritted teeth.
Without disrespecting Arizona in any way, shape or form, it’s not exactly the first place of inspiration you would think of for a band who were famously so Californian that it was almost painful. However, as the band were just starting out, it happened that Jackson Browne was also in their orbit. He was just the tonic they needed.
Browne and Frey were living in the same apartment building in California, but while the former was writing songs for his debut album, he became a little stuck on a song that would later become ‘Take It Easy’. He’d already written a lyric of “Well, I’m a-standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona,” based on the time his car broke down in that very same Navajo city.
Yet feeling pretty uninspired by the rest of the contents of the track, he passed it off to his musical acquaintance, Frey, to finish. In that sense, the rest was history, and the tune made the Eagles instantly iconic from their very beginning. But it still left the matter of Winslow itself, and the impact it had on that unsuspecting city.
For a place with a population of just over 9,000, it was a turn-up for the books that their little corner of the world was suddenly on the main stage of the latest rock and roll behemoth. In some ways, it was their only choice to embrace the newfound fame, but it was something they were more than happy to lap up.
As such, in 1999, a carefully-crafted statue of Frey was erected at the Standin’ on the Corner Park. There were fine details to the attraction – US route shields with the lyrics, a mural of a storefront, complete with the reflection of a red pickup truck and a blonde woman, as referenced in the song.
There is even a small eagle perched inside the mural, just to top off, as a nod of thanks for what the band had done for the reputation of that little place. With Eagles fans flocking from all over afterwards, the Frey effect was immortalised and forever there to stay.
If you were Browne, though, would you not be a little pissed off that your lyric led to another guy getting solidified in bronze and celebrated as a rock and roll hero? That’s just the price you pay when you let songs go – and, just like me, he’d have to see that image through gritted teeth.