Glenn Frey died

January 18, 2016 • 6:00 pm

It’s starting off a bad year for rock musicians: today Glenn Frey of the Eagles died at the young age of 67. According to the Eagles’ own website,

“Glenn fought a courageous battle for the past several weeks, but sadly succumbed to complications from Rheumatoid Arthritis, Acute Ulcerative Colitis and Pneumonia. . . . Words can neither describe our sorrow, nor our love and respect for all that he has given to us, his family, the music community and millions of fans worldwide.”

The older I got, the more I appreciated the Eagles, Frey’s musical talent, and the songs, many co-written with Don Henley. Here’s one of my favorites, a great live performance from 1977, with Frey singing lead:

The man couldn’t last, but his music will.

35 thoughts on “Glenn Frey died”

  1. This was another unexpected and tragic passing of a great talent. This is a good time to make a contribution to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America at ccfa.org. I have battled Crohn’s for 30+ years and it has come close to killing me on three occasions. Frey had a good run and left an amazing legacy that will be appreciated for generations to come.

  4. Add yet another musician to that unhappily growing list: Dale (Buffin) Griffin, drummer for the 70’s glam group Mott the Hoople, who died Sunday also at age 67 from Alzheimer’s. Coincidentally, one of Mott’s biggest hits, “All the Young Dudes,” was written, produced and engineered by…David Bowie.

    1. The great joy of pop is one’s visceral quasi-unevidenced disdain for groups and genres: bejasus, I hated The Eagles MOR emasculation of l’Amérique Profonde’s Country.

      But what goes around comes around. Dale Griffin produced my group’s session for the BBC John Peel radio show in the 80s. The pop combo laid down the tracks. And offered to sit in on the engineering and production process.

      Dale said, “Nah, you lot f*%k off down the pub. You can’t polish a turd.”

      Nice man, Not; mind you, the production was great. Rest In Pop, both. x

      2. Ah, I only knew the name as the engineer on many a classic Peel session, hadn’t realised he’d been in MtH.

  5. They say these things always comes in threes but it seems like more than that. What next?

  6. “It’s starting off a bad year for rock musicians”

    Only if you don’t consider all the ones born in the previous two weeks….

  7. There’s trouble in the streets tonight
    I can feel it in my bones
    I had a premonition
    He should not go alone

    — Smuggler’s Blues

    Hell has now frozen over for good. RIP, man.

  8. Is this the way it goes? People in your demographic start pealing off like so many lemmings? I’d like to go back to 1977 and start over.

  9. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend History Of The Eagles. One of the best rock docs out there. It’s currently on Netflix.

    2. I agree, great documentary. Frey and Henley didn’t come across that well (as people – it’s hard to knock them as musicians) but the film does a great job of showing the dynamic of the group and why a split was inevitable.

    1. Thanks, that was brilliant – I’ve never heard that acoustic version before of one of my all-time favourites. Shame the audience feel the need to interrupt a virtuoso performance by clapping and whooping during it.

  11. Its been a tough week for my youth!

    The first concert I ever attended was during the Eagles 1977 tour. I saw them a second time in 2013, with Bernie Leadon joining in, and the harmonies were as good as ever. Maybe the two best concerts I ever saw.

    Though most critics thought Don Henley was the better singer, Frey was my favourite Eagles singer. I think the contrast of James Dean and Peaceful Easy Feeling says it all about his range and abilities.

    It has been a sad week for the post sixties generation.

    Dan

    1. My first ever rock concert was August 1978, Met Stadium, Minneapolis, MN. Pablo Cruise, The Steve Miller Band and the Eagles. (On the Hotel California tour.)

      Holy s#!t was that a concert! Hard to top.

  12. The one she was driving wasn’t as shiny, the green wasn’t quite the same, and the background was of course quite different, but otherwise, THIS is what she was driving. In my mind’s eye, anyway.

    One of my favorite rock lyrics.

  13. Great band The Eagles, musical,and thats saying a lot with the crap floating around these days. The Solo from Hotel California was voted a couple of years ago by the readers of Guitar magazine the greatest Guitar Riff ever!

  14. Glenn Frey also had a wonderful solo career during the 1980’s after the Eagles first breakup. The song “You Belong to the City” with Bill Bergman playing the saxophone is one of the great iconic songs of that era.

  16. A great talent, much too soon gone.

    Listen to the Eagles singing “Seven Bridges Road” (from the Eagles Live album). If those harmonies don;t give you goosebumps, you can’t like music.

    2. I don’t care for live versions of much of anything. The crowd noise sound like an intrusion into my own reactions to the music. I guess that’s why I never attend concerts.
      I couldn’t find the studio version but I did find this cover by Home Free which sounds pretty good:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTTid4CBcd4

  17. I saw the Eagles on their “Hell Freezes Over” tour in the 90s. It was so thrilling to realize I was breathing the same air as the men who provided the sound track of a lot of my memories.

    Thankfully, we will always have their music.

  18. I lived in LA or close by from 1970 to 1980, when the Eagles got so famous, and their fame was always a baffling mystery to me. I can’t remember a single person who actually like their music, but I can remember quite a few who aggressively loathed it. Maybe I just hung out with the wrong crowd.

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