The world of rock has lost another, Glenn Frey of The Eagles. Those of us whose musical heroes hit their peak in the early 70s are going to have a rough next few years. Guardian writer Dorian Lynskey remarked a few days ago that he expected a disproportionate amount of his music writing over the next decade will be obituaries. He’s not wrong.
Much like with Bowie I was never a huge Eagles fan; not even their definitive album “Hotel California” managed to find a place in my notoriously doughnut-shaped record collection. But like Bowie their music has always been part of the cultural furniture. One memory of their music was a friend at university, someone I’ve sadly long lost touch with. His first love was soul and funk, but The Eagles were the one rock band he adored. Though even then he said they got too heavy after Joe Walsh joined the band.
Unlike Bowie, The Eagles were never popular with the fashionable critics during their heyday. Their polished and professional sound meant they were dismissed as less authentic than the less successful West Coast bands who preceded them. Their laid-back West Coast sound was the antithesis of rock’n'roll, and of course the punks and new wavers hated them as they represented everything they were supposed to be rebelling against. But time is the ultimate critic, and The Eagles’ music has stood the test of time in a way many of their supposedly more worthy rivals has not.
My choice of song to attach to this post gives away the fact that I’m not a hardcore fan. It’s not even a song Glenn Frey had a big hand in writing. But it is their definitive song; the American equivalent of Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven in the rock canon. It’s a song I’ve seen covered by, of all people, Stolen Earth, and they did a killer version too.
