The decade of the 1970s brought us heavy metal, punk and disco. So it often comes as a surprise to learn that the biggest selling American music group of that decade — and, it should be noted, the entire 20th century — turned out to be a country-rock band.
That band was The Eagles. Their co-founder, singer and guitarist Glenn Frey, passed away this week in New York at the age of 67 as a result of complications from pneumonia, arthritis and colitis.
It wasn’t completely unexpected. When the group canceled their scheduled reception as Kennedy Center honorees this past fall, it was announced that Frey’s health issues were the reason. But his death has brought the Eagles’ music back in the spotlight on airwaves and Internet streams. And as so often happens when musicians associated with specific eras pass, it pushes those who were there and lived through those times to take a look back. It’s as much about themselves as about the artist.
The Los Angeles-based Eagles were undeniably immensely popular during their primary 1972-1980 existence (beginning in the mid-1990s and up through 2013, they periodically re-formed, mostly to tour). Yet they weren’t particularly regarded at any point as an “important” band, in terms of either style or substance.
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When they debuted, they earned critical respect primarily for their ability to construct strong-melodied, radio-friendly music. Their music seemed to epitomize the laid-back California lifestyle of the early ‘70s, typified by such hits as “Take It Easy,” “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “Tequila Sunrise” — all sung by Frey.
Together with drummer Don Henley, with whom he split lead vocal and chief composing duties, Frey led the Eagles to a level of fame and fortune. It reached its zenith with 1976’s “Hotel California,” the album whose title track became as ubiquitous as that other great period time-stamper, Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
By then, though, the Eagles’ image had shifted from scruffy looking ex-hippie types trying to navigate the remains of the day (glo) of the turbulence-fraught ‘60s, to well-heeled, cynical superstars careening their way through the decadent “Life in the Fast Lane” ‘70s.
As “Hotel California” succinctly put it: “I called up the Captain/‘Please bring me my wine’/He said, ‘We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.’”
In retrospect, of course, that arc was a great part of the story of the decade. The Eagles showed up precisely as baby boomers were forced to answer the reality wake-up call for the Woodstock generation. They found their idealistic principles fading like a pair of old blue jeans, and they faced hard decisions about individual direction.
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It’s what their friend and musical colleague Jackson Browne, in his own tellingly titled ’76 tune “The Pretender,” referred to as those being “caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender.”
That Frey and Henley composed “The Long Run” as a thinly veiled semi-kiss-off to each other as the Eagles of the late 1970s were crash-landing now seems even more prophetic, and ironic, than probably either could have imagined. Whether he did it for love, or money, or both, what Frey helped build does still live on. In pop music, you can’t really ask for more.
As front and center observers of, and participants in, that very generational ambivalence, the Eagles proved far more emblematic of their times than many of their contemporaries. That goes a long way toward explaining why their music has continued to echo down through the years with listeners from that era, as well as with younger performers falling to the country side of country-rock. The Eagles’ attention-to-detail craftsmanship has notably resonated.
For boomers, especially, though, who in the scant few weeks of the new year have already seen the passing of both Frey and the more international musical and cultural ‘70s icon David Bowie, the march of time certainly seems to have somehow accelerated. So it’s likely, through the experiential memories that old songs always generate, to provide plenty of opportunities for reflection about personal as well as societal paths taken or not taken along life’s grand journey.
Billy Altman is a Grammy-nominated music critic and historian, and a former curator for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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