Credit: Far Out / TIDAL
Mon 17 August 2026 22:30, UK
Glenn Frey knew better than anyone that the Eagles were always going to thrive on momentum.
Becoming one of the biggest stars in the world isn’t always something that happens overnight, and Frey and Don Henley were willing to take the long road if it meant getting the right results once they reached their peak as songwriters. And while they have sold more records than almost any American band, that doesn’t mean that they were going to continue on as if nothing had happened after one too many years away.
The band had already ended pretty badly after a fight onstage between Frey and Don Felder, and it didn’t look like the bridges were still intact for a long while. None of the rest of the band really wanted to break up by any means, but Frey knew that there was going to be a lot more fun awaiting him as a solo star than there ever would be getting the Eagles back together. And no amount of money was going to change his mind on that, either.
I mean, the fact that Frey turned down the first US Festival after getting offered a million dollars was already a pretty firm stance. Not a million dollars for a full-on reunion, mind you. This was supposed to be a solid million just for a few hours of his time, but he still couldn’t be asked to even entertain the idea. All the while, though, Henley was out there becoming one of the biggest stars in the world, despite the fact that he would have welcomed the idea of a reunion.
Being in a band means sharing the credit and blame among your friends, but Frey waited years before one song changed his mind. Even though he didn’t need to play a note in the video for Travis Tritt’s cover of ‘Take it Easy’, all the shoot did was remind Frey of the good times that he had with all of his friends. If they were really going to bury the hatchet, though, the real test was going to be if they still had gas left in the tank.
The rest of the guys certainly did since they almost got back together without Frey a few years earlier, but the heart of the band really revolved around Frey and Henley. You couldn’t have one without the other, and while the first sessions of the reunion started off a little skittish, it wasn’t until Henley showed Frey the title for the song ‘Get Over It’ that Frey started to find the magic all over again.
It took a lot of woodshedding and a few rough hours cooking the song up, but for Frey, this was the turning point where he felt like they could do anything, saying, “During The Long Run, our creative relationship became strained, perhaps just because we’d been going to the well for so long. We struggled to complete all the songs for The Long Run album. Let’s just say that I was less than confident that Don and I could get back in a room together and get through a piece of work. ‘Get Over It’ showed us that we could get together and write again. For that reason, it’s an important song to me.”
Further reading: From The Vault
And compared to their old hits, this is exactly what a more seasoned version of the band was supposed to sound like. This was the fastest song that the band had ever made up until that point, and even when looking at their track record, they hadn’t made something that sounded anywhere near as heavy as this throughout their entire career.
The band were enjoying turning their voice up a little bit more, and for a reunion of the biggest band in the world, that was all that you could ask for. Many reunions tend to happen, and we all collectively watch a group of has-beens fall on their faces, but the minute that those opening guitars kicked in on Hell Freezes Over, it was like the clouds had parted and the California sunshine started coming down again.
