Sometimes the wheel that turns the Universe stops. The earth shudders, you feel a sudden stiffness in the air, and the beat of your heart flatlines. Something profound has changed. A tooth of time has hung up on an invisible gear. The protocols of life take a knee.
As many of you know,
Glenn Frey’s passing was just that for me. A close personal friend for over a
quarter century, I was not ready to give him up to eternity. In fact I had dreaded
exactly what happened with alarming detail on January 18th – the
ghastly headline everywhere, photos popping up across all media like an age
progression spanning Glenn’s lifetime, 1-minute bios on the nightly news. It
was eerily unreal, distant yet strangely intimate all
at the same time. That couldn’t be Glenn. Not my friend, so palpably real with
a voice infused with as much magic when he spoke as when he sang. But it was.
And for days on end, it echoed. It’s still echoing. So I’m writing this to
capture a little of the man as promised for those of you who have been so
supportive. But not what you’ve seen summed up already about Glenn and the
Eagles, the cross-generational triumphs of almost 50 years, the unequaled
sales, the iconography of the world’s most successful band by almost any
measure, the fractious demise and inevitable rise again – and again – of this
unique identity called the Eagles that Glenn Frey began and led from beginning
to end.
Glenn was a jeans and T-shirt guy. Oh, they called him the King of Cool,
and Cameron Crowe (to whom Glenn gave lessons on “cool”) has said his movie
“Almost Famous” was more about Glenn than any other rock icon, but behind the
elegance of jets and cars was a talent who saw it all as a game of Monopoly.
Competitive? Sure, he never dodged that. But beneath the tokens it was about
people, passions, emotions, and underlying that – the part media coverage never
got to – it was about meanings. Glenn
“climbed Mt. Moolah,” as he would say, because it was a mountain. The money was
just a measure of the altitude. He could throw down hard in negotiations, but
I’ve seen him turn down huge paydays (the Eagles going rate for a single
performance was roughly a cool million) because it didn’t click with him. You couldn’t
buy Glenn Frey, and you couldn’t stop him from giving of himself gratis. He and
his talented wife Cindy gave philanthropy a good name whether it was auctioning
off their art collection for charity or sponsoring opportunities and hope for
others. Often it was hands-on giving. I remember how torn up they were when a
young black youth from disadvantaged circumstances who they hosted every
Christmas was murdered at age 19.
The crazy thing is that I had never heard of the Eagles until the late 1980s,
a decade after their first break-up. Music had gone out of my life in a
difficult 23-year marriage, and it wasn’t until a young woman told me I was
“Desperado” that I had my first clue. A few days later I saw the song on an
album in Kmart, bought it on a whim, and jammed it into the CD on the way out
of the parking lot. The first lines froze me to the wheel and I pulled into the
alley behind the store. A few days after that riveting introduction, during a
taped interview feature by an ABC reporter, I mentioned that I’d love to use
the lyrics in a novel I was writing. The next thing I knew, the reporter had
gotten hold of Glenn returning from Russia to Boston on the way to a vacation
home in Snowmass, Colorado. And soon after that, Glenn, who had apparently read
my novel THE PHASES OF HARRY MOON, wrote to say that he and Don Henley gave me
permission to use the entire lyrics for free, asking only that I get them
correct. On the heels of that bolt from the blue, he called me from Cleveland
to ask if I would meet him in his dressing room before a concert in Auburn
Hills (Detroit). Do you get a feeling for the geography/itinerary of a rock star?
Anyway, he made me look good in front of my son when I needed to, introducing
me to the entire concert crowd.
Obscured by all the overhyped drama, you’ll never read about the
constant care he took to answer the demands of his life, the lengths he would
go to NOT offend everyday people and to repay a kindness. A hard taskmaster, a
perfectionist – yes – but generous to a fault. I’ve even seen him fret over not
wanting to “stiff” someone who did me a favor. Like many in the limelight, he
exercised a sense of justice, and he found that stressful stage to be – like
the Hotel California – something he could never quite leave.
He liked giving,
he liked to surprise people with gifts. He had an oversized sense of “the
moment” and we shared that magic in so many ways. Whether it was putting my son
and I up for three days in Greta Garbo’s “casita” at LaQuinta for his 50th
birthday party in the company of Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Don Johnson and
innumerable other entertainment and sports celebs, or sharing a quiet dinner in
St. Paul at the last minute with the love of my life and me, or cracking jokes
with him as we sat at the Motown Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed upon him, or
his dedicating a music video (“I’ve Got Mine”) to me and using a line from one
of my novels in the lyrics, Glenn’s giving always had an aura of uniqueness around
it.
That said, the casual times were no less golden: shooting the breeze in
hotel suites that might have a grand piano or a table long enough to bowl on; sitting on touring trunks in the gloom of a cave-like storage room alone with
Glenn and Bob Seger talking about private jets the way teenagers once talked
about hot rods; sharing a platter of killer ice cream with Glenn in a greasy
spoon somewhere in Royal Oak or Ann Arbor; Glenn picking me up in a borrowed
Escalade in Crosslake Minnesota and a weekend of sterling conversations in
which he taught me the intricacies of the “dogo” (which I finally learned to
say instead of calling it a “zither thingy”). That same Crosslake weekend
featured many laid-back moments with Cindy and two of their children (Deacon
and Otis Douglas Lincoln Frey – Taylor was in Thailand). It was also the only
time I’ve been on stage during a concert – hey, the floor vibrates!
Though Glenn suggested I come on tour a couple of times, I never had that pleasure. I’ve met him coming in on a private jet in out-of-the-way airports, and I’ve toured the tour buses (the term elaborate doesn’t do them justice) that transport “roadies” and staff across stateside itineraries, and of course I’ve enjoyed many sound checks and concerts backstage, but Crosslake was the Full Monty of total exposure for me. It began with Cindy’s father serving up Glenn’s unvarying pre-concert meal (burgers, and in those days a throat-marinating swallow of Blue Nun) at their residence on one of the lakes, and then we hit the stage. A sudden downpour at the outdoor venue gave me another special experience, as I wound up in a room at the Manhattan Beach Hotel with Glenn and the band while they kept nimble rehearsing different phrases through the rain delay. Then it was back on stage for Deacon’s debut, and at concert’s end a mad dash for the waiting Escalade. Glenn took the wheel and drove like James Dean until we made good our escape back to the house. A perfect “fourth encore” sealed the memory.
There is something I like to call “the Walt Disney touch” – an unerring radar for the eclectic. Glenn had it. Genius? Unquestionably. “The Lone Arranger,” as he was sometimes called could separate out the best of everything in music, production values, art, talent of any stripe, or for that matter in skills from any walk of life. This included cuisine. Whether we were sitting at a card table in his dressing room or eating special filets at Manny’s Steakhouse, the food was always fit for a king. I’ve never eaten better than when we feasted on what his personal chef would serve up.
There wasn’t much in a material way I could give back, but I’ve always been honored to share his confidences and to articulate perspectives or analyze dilemmas he might pose in our private conversations. We were each other’s confessor in the deepest sense. Glenn had a way of speaking as if he were announcing magic. Gonna miss that hushed voice saying my name with the excitement of a pending adventure when I picked up the phone.
And did I mention laughs? More than anything, Glenn loved subtle wit and
wry humor. He had an ear for that and for style of delivery. That was a medium
of exchange between us. I could always crack him up. I remember telling him a
story at breakfast once and Cindy looking at him in alarm because he was
laughing so hard that he couldn’t catch his breath. “Cheer up!” I said as he
was coming up for air, and that put him back to gasping until he finally had to
leave the table. He held his own in storytelling, and sometimes the theatrics
weighed in heavily. Once, when we were talking about parenting, he even sang a
whole song to me a cappella right there in a fancy restaurant to explain male
psychology. Don’t remember the novelty lyrics except that they involved “curing”
characters like Richard Speck and Hitler.
Glenn’s business savvy guided him to trust the right people. Cindy,
Tommy Nixon, Jerry Vaccarrino and uncountable others behind the scenes organized
and executed a vast interface with the world. Glenn didn’t like the computer
and dictated or handwrote almost anything he sent, but I’m sitting here reading
an old email which may be one of the few he pecked out himself on a keyboard.
He begins with a double “Mayday!” and asks me to call the Dog House (studio) to
help him write liner notes, which I sometimes did for a box set or tour promo.
We shared a sense of psychology and style in writing. Shaping the right words
is as close as I’ll ever get to know what it was like to create those fabulous
classics that he and Don Henley, Jack Tempchin and a few others penned into
immortality.
Devastatingly, in the end not even business manager Irving Azoff, who
marshalled eight of the world’s top specialists to Glenn’s side in his last
illness, was enough to make my friend immortal. Thank God Glenn left music and
his legend to ease the loss.
Breaking rules. That’s what creativity does. Glenn Lewis Frey personified that in a way that made him an original among originals. If you’re still reading this unapologetically long tribute, let me close with something I posted on Facebook:
The world has lost a man it knew well and a man it hardly knew at all. I knew both in the personage of close friend Glenn Frey, and my life is immeasurably enhanced because of it. Glenn hid a lot of pain for the last third of his life. Pain didn’t fit his drive for perfection. I remember the last time I saw him. We were in his dressing room after an Eagles concert, along with his personal manager Tommy Nixon and his young son Otis. Glenn was upset because a cue had been missed in the blackout between two songs in the concert – a finger pick was supposed to be placed in the frets of the guitar that Glenn would switch to in the dark. When it wasn’t there, he had to perform the next number without it. Now in the dressing room, he expressed his displeasure with a colorful phrase. Immediately his young son said, “that’s a bad word, and you shouldn’t say that.” I tried to hide my smile, but I could feel Glenn’s eyes on me as he softened. When I finally looked at him, he took my hand and ran it over his. I had known for over 20 years that he suffered from RA, but I couldn’t believe the distortion it had caused to his hands. No words, no complaining. He just wanted me to know why he needed that pick. How he played keyboards and guitar to continue expressing America’s most iconic anthems in concert no one will ever know. But that was Glenn and the music and the band that he fostered and led over five decades – the most successful band in history. I’ll be writing more about Glenn and the Eagles from time to time (email me at mn222mn@earthlink.net if you aren’t on the free mailing list and would like to be), but for now please know how grateful I am for the emails, messages, phone calls and comments of condolence and support. … As you once wrote to me over a quarter century ago, Glenn: “…isn’t it great when the Big Fella brings people together like us?” It was. It still is. Eternity would be impossible without you.
A few photos below… #1-2 Glenn Frey and me in his dressing room before an Eagles concert; #3 me with Tommy Nixon, Glenn’s long-time personal manager; #4-10 photos from the Crosslake concert taken from on stage (I’m standing next to the light/soundboards) showing Glenn and Deacon; #11 Deacon back at the house in Crosslake, strumming out some phrases; #12 Otis on his grandfather’s shoulders at Crosslake concert; #13-14 Otis playing tambourine in Crosslake concert (also his young friend Kaylee).
Your correspondence has become a major driver in my life, dear friends and fans. The Q&A’s I sometimes post for a monthly column at StorytellersUnplugged especially have touched, informed and sometimes daunted me. Ranging from writing and personal questions to relationship stuff, I’ve collected a few of your zaniest questions for this latest archived column titled GOTCHA Q&A. Here’s the link: http://www.storytellersunplugged.com/2016/01/15/thomas-sullivan-gotcha-qa/#respond
Had intended for both this Valentine’s Sullygram (and my column) to share a Q&A about relationships, since that’s overwhelmingly what you write me about. But I’ll have to leave you with just a generalization that vaguely addresses the range from despair to ecstasy which sums up the human condition on matters of the heart. When it comes to love, it’s amazing how little you need when you have none, how little you can live on – a token, a few notes of a song, a secret admirer, moments spent in a long-ago place. This is the great triumph of the human heart: that it can sink roots of imagination ever deeper in search of a pulse, that a single drop of warm blood can restore its aching hollows and fill its vessels. Hope, after all, expands all things and fills a vacuum. Hope is a flood and purity is a white feather.
