Eagles guitarist and founding member Glenn Frey has died at the age of 67. He had been suffering from intestinal problems for several months. TEN's Alan Corr interviewed Glenn in 2012 for his album After Hours, his first solo release in 16 years
“There are too Ns in my name because my mother was such a fan of Glenn Miller.” says Glenn Frey, main man of The Eagles, one time Miami Vice guest star, and father of three. On the phone from a rainy New York, the 63-year-old singer is in talkative form.
In fact, trying to get a word in edge ways is hard work as Frey cruises on autopilot to talk up After Hours, a new solo album of standards and personal favourites on which he sings songs by Tony Bennett, Randy Newman, Nat King Cole, Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson.
“It’s After Hours weather over here in New York” he laughs. What a pro. He’s even turning the elements to his advantage. These are the songs Frey grew up but also the songs in parents fell in love with (and to) and it marks Frey’s return as a solo artist after 16 years spent getting back on the road with The Eagles and starting a family with his second wife.
“With this album I now have a new appreciation for the craft and a respect and admiration for a well-written song because I know how hard it is, I know how much work it takes,” he says. “It’s not just talent. The thing about a good song is that there’s never anything out of place, it all makes sense. I’m glad I wanted till now to make this record.”
He took no notice of Paul McCartney or Rod Stewart’s ventures into similar territory while making After Hours (“For me, it was important to have a singular vision of what was going on.”) but it was also important for Frey to get the project completed in time for his parents to hear it. His dad is 92 and his mother is 86.
Has he played it to them yet? “Yes! My folks love everything I do but I think this is a record that they have a particular love for and being able to finish this record and give it to them was incredible. I have a few surviving aunts and uncles and they love this stuff. It reminds them of when they were kids, when they were young parents. That’s certainly a big plus.”
It was the unlikely pairing of Michael Bolton and Clint Eastwood which set the whole record in train. Frey, a keen golfer, often performs at a weekly volunteer party held in Pebble Beach golf club in LA by Eastwood and Bolton. “We were up there and they ask the comics to tell jokes and the singers to sing songs and Clint said he’d like me to sing one of my hits and something from the forties or fifties,” Frey says. “So I did it and a couple of days later at a dinner party Michael approached me and suggested I make a whole record of standards.”
It certainly a more mellow set from Frey, a man who’s witnessed the carnage that massive success can bring close up. He was born in Detroit and went through a succession of local bands including The Disciples, Mushroom and even an outfit called The Four of Us, before heading south to soak up the new sound of Californian soft rock in the late sixties. Down at the famous Troubadour club, he met Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Brown and one Don Henley.
The Eagles became one of the biggest acts of the era and still play sell out tours today since their reformation but in true Behind The Music style, tales of drug abuse and inter-band fighting are legendary. When Frey eventually and inevitably took flight in 1980 it had gotten to the point where he and a certain band member were exchanging physical threats on stage. “We’d be singing Best of My Love, but inside both of us are thinking, 'As soon as this is over, I'm going to kill him.'”
His solo career included The Heat Is On and memorably Smuggler’s Blues in 1984 which inspired Miami Vice scriptwriters to enlist Frey to play a role as a pilot for smugglers on the series. Further acting roles followed included detective series Wise Guy and Jerry Maguire. He also cleaned up and kicked drugs in the mid-eighties and after years of toying with plans to reform The Eagles, hell finally froze over in 1994.
Their return has seen box office receipts go through the roof but all of the band members are also busy with solo projects. Joe Walsh has just released a new album, Don Henley is working on a country record, and Timothy B. Schmit is currently on a solo tour. More Eagles shows may be on the horizon next year and right now the band is back together working on a 40th anniversary album and DVD.
"We've interviewed 20, 30 different people, gotten every bit of footage we can - especially from the 70s,” says Frey. “We found Super 8 footage, photographs, interviews and stuff we didn't know we had. We're trying to get the project ready for release hopefully by the end of the year.
After Hours must have been a liberating experience in more ways than one for Frey; to quote Peter Gabriel’s song Solsbury Hill, written after his departure from Genesis, it gave Frey a chance to walk out of the machinery. The machinery of The Eagles in this case.
“It’s a different dynamic when The Eagles record,” he says. “With The Eagles there are four captains on the ship and that’s what we do and that’s the way it works and there’s something rewarding about the collaboration and the co-operation and the compromise.
“I kept saying to myself there are millions and I mean millions of Eagles' fans around the world and if even a small portion of them were to hear After Hours and get it, well, what a wonderful surprise it would be to be able to share with them all of these great songs which mean so much to me.”
Alan Corr
Click on the video to hear Glenn from a 1996 Eagles Press Conference in Dublin
