The dark underbelly

Their immaculate harmonies and perfectly sculpted soft-rock songs evoked a carefree lifestyle rooted in the hippie dream: Glenn Frey and the Eagles epitomised the laid-back cool of 1970s California. The combination of highly-polished songcraft and outlaw chic made them one of the biggest-selling groups in rock history. Yet there was a dark underbelly to their success — the product of different egos within the band battling for creative control. 

Caught between heaven and hell

The journey from innocence to decadence was reflected in their songs. Frey’s yearning melody on Lyin’ Eyes disguised an account of sleazy marital cheating; Hotel California, with its “mirrors on the ceiling, pink champagne on ice”, was given a burnished tune that turned an enigmatic tale of disenchantment into one of rock music’s most uplifting anthems. The contradictions were delicious: “This could be heaven or this could be hell,” they sang.

Warren Beatty of rock 

Breezily innocent songs with titles such as Take It Easy and Peaceful Easy Feelin’ gave way to Take It To The Limit and Life In The Fast Lane. Enjoying the fruits of their labours to the hilt, they took to drinking, drugging and fighting like debauched champions. “Led Zeppelin might argue with us, but I think we had the greatest travelling party of the 1970s,” Frey once boasted. “The wine was the best, the drugs were good and the women were beautiful.” With the Eagles, he developed a reputation as “the Warren Beatty of rock ’n’ roll”: He always had a bevy of female admirers in tow. 

The ‘bull-headed’ Lone Arranger

Don Henley, with whom Frey founded the group in 1971, credited the guitarist and singer-songwriter as the chief architect of the Eagles’ sound. “We gave Glenn a nickname, the Lone Arranger,” he said. “He had a vision about how our voices could blend.” Frey also had a hard-nosed, go-getting attitude that belied the mellifluous arrangements — one that he had learnt growing up on the mean streets of Detroit. Even the loyal Henley, who remained a lifelong friend, described him as “bull-headed”. 

Second to none

An executive at their record company (Asylum) once remarked: “These guys could sing a chorus of ‘s**t stinks on shinola’ and still sell a million copies.” Frey and the Eagles scored four consecutive chart-topping albums and five No 1 singles; their greatest hits album sold 32 million certified copies. Until Michael Jackson’s Thriller, it was the bestselling album of all time. Hotel California sold a further 22 million, making the Eagles the only act to appear twice in the sales chart of the world’s top ten albums.

Till ‘hell freezes over’

When the group eventually crash-landed, it was in spectacular fashion — and Frey was at the controls. The implosion came after a benefit concert in 1980 for the Democratic senator Alan Cranston at Long Beach. Frey’s relationship with the lead guitarist Don Felder had hit a low point, and he was infuriated when — at a press conference before the show — Felder said he did not really care about Cranston and that to him it was just another gig. By the time the Eagles took the stage, Frey had worked himself into a rage. After the first song, he walked over to Felder and told him: “When this show is done, I’m going to kick your ass.” Throughout the performance, he walked over to Felder between every number, informing him how many songs were left before he got his ass kicked. 

After The Best Of My Love had brought the crowd to its feet and the group had left the stage, Frey cornered Felder on a stairway and charged at him. Felder wielded an acoustic guitar in self-defence, which in the melee smashed into a wall — with the breaking strings and splintering wood sending a clang through the arena. The bust-up led to Henley’s infamous comment that the band would only reunite “when hell freezes over”. 

The reunion

Fourteen years later, Frey, Henley and Felder — plus guitarist Joe Walsh and bassist Timothy Schmit — reunited for a series of concerts. The baby boomers who had bought the Eagles’ records in the 1970s were now bankers, captains of industry and corporate titans, and they eagerly snapped up the tickets. The sold-out tour grossed $75 million. The concerts and the album commemorating the reunion were titled Hell Freezes Over.

Hunger for fame

Frey was born in 1948 in Detroit, where his father worked on a car production line and his mother was a cook in the canteen at General Motors. He took piano lessons from the age of five but switched to guitar after seeing the Beatles perform when he was 15. Frey later said that it was the sight of the girls in the audience going wild that made him hungry for fame. 

He eventually married in 1983 — to the Texan heiress Janie Beggs — and announced his conversion to monogamy by declaring: “The best feeling in the world is when you love somebody, not that you’ve got eight or nine girls who would walk in front of a freight train for you.” After they divorced, he often dedicated the song Lyin’ Eyes to his first wife, whom he called “the Plaintiff”. He married for a second time, in 1990, to the dancer and choreographer Cindy Millican. She survives him together with their daughter and two sons: Taylor, 24, lives in New York; Deacon, 22, studies at Emerson College in Boston; and the youngest, Otis, is 13.

Originally, a backing group

In 1968, he moved to Los Angeles and began hanging out at the Troubadour, a well-known musician’s haunt on Sunset Strip. It was there that he met JD Souther, with whom he formed the band Longbranch Pennywhistle; Jackson Browne, with whom he would later write Take It Easy; and Linda Ronstadt. The original line-up of the Eagles — Frey, Henley, Randy Meisner and Bernie Leadon — first came together as Ronstadt’s backing group. The four then decided to form their own band, initially calling themselves Teen King & The Emergencies.

The ‘loveable slob’

By the time the Eagles released their fourth album, One Of These Nights, in 1975, they were accustomed to wealth, fame and excess. “Glenn and I were living in a house that had belonged to actress-singer Dorothy Lamour, up in the hills with a 360-degree view,” Henley recalled. “We were the odd couple. I was sort of the housekeeper, the tidy one. He was the loveable slob.” Their nights were spent out on the town — “dudes on the rampage”, as Henley put it. 

Eagle poker

To amuse themselves on tour, the group invented their own high-rolling game called “Eagle Poker”. Like most other things they dabbled in, it became addictive: at one point they took a break mid-tour to fly to the Bahamas for no other purpose than to hold a non-stop two-day card game. Frey also developed a cocaine habit, regularly snorting what he called an “eight ball” — a massive eighth of a gram, which he hoovered up in seconds.

Solo career

In the 1980s he launched a successful solo career and had a hit with The Heat Is On, used as the main theme in the film Beverly Hills Cop. After the group re-formed, he continued to record and tour with the Eagles until intestinal surgery forced him off the road in 2015. 

Mr Perfection

Throughout their years of hedonism, the Eagles remained sticklers for detail in the studio. While recording the opening line of Lyin’ Eyes (“City girls just seem to find out early how to open doors with just a smile”), Frey took three days getting the word “city” just right. “It would either be a little early, or a little late, or the ‘T’ would be too sharp,” Felder said of his bandmate’s efforts. “It took a long time, but every time that word goes by now and I hear it, I can appreciate the time and dedication and perseverance that it took to get it perfect.”

I will remember Glenn Frey  for his.... Tell t2@abp.in