Earlier today the Eagles co-founder, singer and guitarist Glenn Frey became the latest entrant to a quickly overcrowding Rock ‘n’ Roll heaven, succumbing to a variety of maladies. He was sixty-seven years old.
The internet will surely be flooded this week with tributes to the man and there’s probably not a lot I could write here that isn’t already known about Frey. After all, he’s been in the public eye ever since the Eagles scored their first hit in 1972 with a song he co-wrote with Jackson Browne, “Take It Easy.” That band is the object of a fair amount of scorn these days, and some of them might want to rewrite the above title to read queasy feeling, but Frey and the Eagles were part of the soundtrack of my life, and if I step back from and remember what I thought of a lot of their songs before I reached the saturation point with them, I’d have to admit they wrote and recorded a lot of good tunes.
And Frey was responsible for many of them. “Take It Easy” is one song I never get sick of: with its rich harmonies, fun, unforgettable lyrics that everyone can sing along to, a catchy melody and just the right amount of twang, this is the perfect country-rock song and Winslow, Arizona should be damned proud of it. For many, the association of “Southern California” with “laid back” began with Glenn Frey, the man leading this post-60s mellow revolution, singing lead on songs like that first hit, “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “Tequila Sunrise.”
Frey, as we recall, could rock out, too. And there’s one rocker that’s foremost on my mind at this time because he’s saying goodbye to us all. While David Bowie left us barely a week before with “Lazarus” where he sings “Look up here, I’m in heaven, I’ve got scars that can’t be seen”, Fry — a long, long time ago — had left his own parting nugget to ponder:
Just remember this, my girl, when you look up in the sky
You can see the stars and still not see the light
But him, he’s already gone.
- Christian Marien Quartett – ‘How Long Is Now’ (2024) - April 18, 2024
- Dave Douglas, feat. James Brandon Lewis – ‘Gifts’ (2024) - April 11, 2024
- Thollem – ‘Worlds In A Life, Two’ (2024) - April 8, 2024
