With the loss of Glenn Frey, I probably speak for many when I say I feel like I’ve lost an old, always vigorous friend who gave me a lot of pleasure and good times over the years.
So often times it happens
that we live our lives in chains,
and we never even know we have the key.”
— From “Already Gone,” performed by Glenn Frey and The Eagles, written by Frey and his collaborator on many cool songs Don Henley
Glenn Frey–who along with his soul mate and writer of so many progressive country and rock songs he co-wrote with Don Henley–was no Don Henley as a singer. He said as much in “The Eagles” documentary the band released last year when he said there was a reason he started doing fewer lead vocals and Henley did more.
But he was certainly good enough as a vocalist to grab you with his understated delivery of lines as wonderful as these opening lines from “Lyin’ Eyes”:
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“City girls just seem to find out early,
“How to open doors with just a smile,
“A rich old man, and she won’t have to worry,
“She’ll dress up all in lace, and go in style.”
How many miles did I, and untold numbers of us in the seventies, Texas Two Step across dance floors to that song with longnecks in hand?
How many untold number of American music lovers–male and female, country and urban– cranked up the radio to sing along at the top of the lungs every time Glenn’s lament about that cheater’s “Lyin’ Eyes” came on the radio?
The Eagles were, in truth, a terribly uneven band. They churned out some god-awful bland and forgettable songs that somehow became hits. “There’s a new kid in town, everybody’s talking ’bout the new kid in town.” How such a pedestrian lyric and melody ever became a hit song is mystery.
But when The Eagles were good, they were “Hotel California” and “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Tequila Sunrise” and “Desperado” great.
Hard to believe that a rock music icon like Glenn Frey, who almost did the “live fast, die young” thing before he converted to health and fitness and domestic family life, has died at 67.
But God bless him, we’ll always have “Lyin’ Eyes” and so much more.
Here’s the skinny on this shocker.
And a more substantive obit from venerable Times obit section.
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