Showing posts with label glenn frey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label glenn frey. Show all posts

Friday, January 22, 2016

The Eagles and Country Music

It may have hit country music lovers the hardest -- the news of Glenn Frey's passing.

Why?

Well, because Eagles music is country music. The Eagles can call it whatever they want to call it, but it's country music. Oh yes. Is it any coincidence that Don Henley has just released an album of country songs? No.

I said it before, but it's relevant here -- when I first became aware of the Eagles, I essentially dismissed them; no admission by me that I actually liked those songs. I was inured to the shuffle beat and the moaning cry of a steel guitar that'd roped me into country music in the first place. By the early seventies, though, country music (as I knew it) had gotten lost. I was consigned to listening to songs by people like Billy "Crash" Craddock and Dave & Sugar. People forget how disoriented country music became in that decade. We had Charlie Rich lighting a match to John Denver records, and it was like the 2016 presidential race -- who is pure? Who isn't? Who is that interloper? We hate him! Meanwhile, us little people were just trying to pluck one decent record out of the muck.

This is, I know, obscure, but Tanya Tucker's sister, LaCosta, released a decent album around that time. On it was a track called, "Best Of My Love". I liked it! I thought it was really cool and different. I had absolutely no clue. Eagles? Yes, I'd seen their "Best Of" album in the store, but...eh...not my genre of music, so whatever. Oh, this is an Eagles song? Well, what the hell?

Honest to God, this was how I was introduced to the Eagles:


Thus, I begrudgingly decided I'd give the Eagles a spin. By that I mean, I paid attention when their songs came on the radio. I still wouldn't buy an album that wasn't labeled "country". I heard "Take It Easy" and "Lyin' Eyes", which I thought was good, but too long. It did have something, though. I heard "Already Gone". I did appreciate the harmonies.

Gradually, the Eagles kind of seeped in. "New Kid In Town" caught my breath. I think that was the first single by the group that I actually laid down money for.

Years whizzed by, and in the early nineties, a bunch of country music stars I loved, like Diamond Rio and Brooks & Dunn and Vince Gill, got together and recorded an album called "Common Thread:  The Songs of the Eagles".

That's when it finally hit me: the Eagles are country!



One of the best female country singers ever and my favorite Eagles song:


(Even if one of Trisha's songs has become a perpetual earworm that hasn't subsided, even after all these months.)

Tell me the Eagles weren't country!

Come on!

They could call themselves whatever they wanted. They could deceive themselves, and us. But they were country. I guess they fooled everybody -- every post-hippie who liked them -- every disco'ing guy who dressed up in a powder-blue leisure suit and thought he was hip. But the Eagles, in their subversive way, embedded country music into everybody's consciousness, and nobody was the wiser.

Least of all, me.












Tuesday, January 19, 2016

The Songwriting of Glenn Frey






There is apparently a whole culture of hating the Eagles. Sure, I've seen The Big Lebowski, and I always wince at the scene where Jeff Bridges' character expresses his hatred for them. (I've read that the actor,  unlike the character he played, does not hate the Eagles. Whew - because I like Jeff Bridges and I wouldn't want to be disillusioned by another actor.) The Washington Post posted an article today about how "the Eagles outlasted everyone who loved to hate them". Some obscure music critic was cited in the story, giving his lofty pronouncements about the "superficiality" of the Eagles' music. But you know, guys who make a living commenting on other people's creations are so deep.

Let's posit that the Eagles made "superficial" and - gasp! "commercial" music. Name an artist who didn't. Think songwriting is so deep? Come on. Sometimes a song means something and lots of times, it doesn't. I speak from experience, rather than from the perspective of a guy jotting his critiques in a spiral notebook in his basement. Some of my best songs are little bits of nothing; gossamer. My "meaningful" songs are apparently only meaningful to me, and not to the people who've heard them.

And commercial? Shoot! Why in the world would a musician actually want to make money? I know lots of electricians and MD's who work for free. Don't you?

Here's the thing about Glenn Frey:  he wrote perfectly crafted songs. To whit:

Best of My Love
Desperado
Busy Being Fabulous
New Kid in Town
One of These Nights
Tequila Sunrise*
What Do I Do With My Heart
I Can't Tell You Why

*denotes excellence

There are more, of course. There are a few I'm not fond of, but believe it or not, there are also some Beatles songs I'm not crazy about, either. There are more than a few of my own songs that I despise.

And great songwriting isn't simply a matter of writing down a few pithy lines. A songwriter must marry those words to an evocative melody. Glenn Frey could do both.

Maybe the hatred comes from a general hatred of the decade of the seventies. It did basically reek. Music in the seventies, for the most part, was awful. Sure, we fondly remember Elton John in his giant red glasses and feather boa, singing Benny and the Jets, but that song was hardly substantial. Most songs recorded during those years weren't. So, I guess the Eagles sounded damn good by comparison, right?

And the Eagles sound damn good by comparison to any time in music history.

Thanks Glenn Frey, for the inspiration; and for songs that made me cry, made me dance, made me feel.










Monday, January 18, 2016

It Can't Be True




I was sorely late to the party. In the early nineteen seventies, I would scour Woolworth's record department for country singles. I wasn't into buying albums -- I could barely afford 45's -- but I'd see that blue cow skull picture on the cover of the most prominently displayed album and wonder what the deal was with these "Eagles". Of course, they were "rock"; they weren't Freddie Fender or Charley Pride. I dismissed them.

I have no cognition of hearing The Eagles for the first time. It was like they weren't there, and then they were. And then I begrudgingly sort of liked them.

As time went on, I understood that the country music I knew had evaporated, and I latched onto artists like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and the Sweethearts Of The Rodeo...and The Eagles. And I thought, what the hell is wrong with you, Shelly? Are you so pasted into your prejudices that you can't see? These guys, these Glenns and these Henleys, are singing the shreds of your soul!

I wrote a song, Ice Storms, exactly to emulate The Eagles. Exactly. I intended it that way. There was never one iota of a doubt, while I plunked on my guitar that February day, what I was doing.

This news takes my breath away.

Here we go:





Shit. My favorite.


Don Henley sang it, but Glenn wrote the words:



And he didn't give it up, even four decades later:



This one hits hard.

Damn.

This one hits hard.