New kid in town: Eagles reborn as Deacon Frey replaces his dad Glenn Frey
His father fronted one of America’s greatest rock bands. Now Deacon Frey is soaring with the Eagles.
As a boy, he liked to sit at the side of stage, watching as his father sang some of the most popular songs in the history of recorded music. The young onlooker had nothing but love and respect for the way his dad could charm a crowd with his talent and wit while harnessing a voice whose purity had the power to make grown men and women weep.
Night after night, the boy watched as Glenn Frey and his bandmates in the Eagles played music that came to be associated with the laid-back, sun-kissed Californian state of mind. When he was singing lead vocals on songs such as Take It Easy and Already Gone, Frey invariably closed his eyes to concentrate on hitting the right notes. Deacon Frey was born in April 1993, a year before his dad’s band re-formed after a 14-year hiatus.
Its absence from the world stage had only made hearts grow fonder, and the period following the 1994 live album Hell Freezes Over brought a renewed interest in the timeless qualities of the Eagles’ highly melodic sound, which spanned country ballads and sleek rock ’n’ roll while foregrounding sweet harmonies.
In late 2004, Deacon took a few weeks off school to travel to Australia for the band’s Farewell 1 tour, the name a cheeky nod to the fact the farewell was only just getting started. With his father’s long-time guitar technician Victor Rodriguez, the boy would sit near the racks of beautiful instruments and watch the show while wearing an earpiece that allowed him to hear exactly what his father was playing and singing.
It was the sort of intimate masterclass in musicianship that few have been lucky enough to experience. Deacon came to regard his father’s fellow musicians — drummer Don Henley, guitarist Joe Walsh and bassist Timothy B. Schmit, all of whom alternated as lead vocalists — as uncles, and the travelling entourage as his second family. Despite his proximity to the band, he never got sick of listening to the Eagles.
In January 2016, Glenn Frey died at a New York hospital from complications of rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis and pneumonia, at the age of 67. Both families were devastated: the band had recently completed a highly successful two-year world tour following the release of the 2013 documentary History of the Eagles, including a run of Australian shows in February and March 2015. The final farewell came too soon; they all thought they had more time, but it was not to be.
At a private memorial service for his father held at The Forum in Los Angeles, Deacon elected to play Peaceful Easy Feeling, a track from the band’s 1972 debut album. Nothing about the performance was easy, but with help from Schmit and founding guitarist Bernie Leadon, the young man strummed his guitar, closed his eyes and sang the very words he had watched his father sing: “I got a peaceful easy feeling / And I know you won’t let me down / ’Cause I’m already standing / On the ground … ”
Henley was impressed by the young man’s composure at the memorial and his determination to do a good job for his father. As far as Henley was concerned, the band had died on the same day as his co-founder; he had said as much in interviews following a performance of Take It Easy at the 2016 Grammy Awards.
Yet Deacon’s calm, assured performance on one of the most emotionally challenging days of his 23 years on earth lit a slow-burning fuse in the great songwriter’s mind.
Up ahead in the distance, he saw a shimmering light: America’s greatest rock band returning to the stage to continue its four-decade tradition of playing some of the most popular songs in the history of recorded music.
In March 2017, the band members met Deacon at his father’s studio in west Los Angeles with the idea of playing and singing together. More than a year had passed since the memorial, and all involved were interested to see whether the idea would work, and if they would each feel comfortable with pressing on together.
The Eagles camp had also put out feelers to a musician named Vince Gill.
Born in Oklahoma in 1957, Gill is an inductee of the Country Music Hall of Fame and has won 21 Grammy awards, more than any male country music artist. Renowned for his clear voice and guitar abilities, he was also a long-time friend and regular golfing buddy of the band’s departed co-founder. Gill is about a decade younger than Henley, Walsh and Schmit, and when he was starting out as a songwriter and musician, he regarded the Eagles as the beacon to follow.
At their first rehearsal together, Gill walked up to Deacon, put his arm around the young man and asked a question: Are you as scared as I am? Deacon laughed and said he was, whereupon Gill made an offer: I’ve got your back if you’ve got mine. From that moment on, the two newest Eagles have been firm friends and have helped each other to navigate the inner workings of a hard-toiling band that consistently strives for the melodic and harmonic perfection of its original recordings.
All Gill recalls of the minutes leading up to his first concert with the band is white noise. The venue was a packed Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, where the Eagles headlined a two-day festival last July called The Classic West, alongside Fleetwood Mac, Journey and Steely Dan.
About 56,000 people were waiting to see how the new guys would treat those great old songs. Gill could sense the crowd’s uncertainty, and he didn’t blame them for their apprehension. One song in, though, he felt the tension dissolve as both fans and musicians realised that the new line-up was a perfect fit.
Gill describes Deacon as a good kid and a pretty heady character. He always hits the mark and never lets the band down; in other words, he’s an ideal companion in an industry where reliability can be in short supply. For Deacon, though, the preparation ahead of that first show was a little different, as he didn’t have the decades of onstage experience Gill could draw on.
In conversation, the elder Eagles speak of the young man with the utmost respect. In a high-rise boardroom at the band’s management firm in Los Angeles, the 25-year-old is dressed down in a bright yellow LeBron James LA Lakers basketball jersey and baseball cap, while his colleagues wear dark blazers and collared shirts.
During a band interview, Deacon tends to let his second family do most of the talking, but he’s thoughtful and expansive when asked directly. His first family, too, has been nothing but supportive of his decision to join the band. His sister, Taylor, is working as his road manager: she sits at the far end of the boardroom, quietly listening. Ahead of the Dodger Stadium show, Walsh warned Deacon that as soon as he walked on stage, he’d be hit with piercing floodlights. Don’t look at them, said Walsh, and try not to look at the audience either: instead, try to be inside the songs, without feeling as if everybody in the crowd is holding a clipboard and judging him. After all, just about everyone is either staring at the big screens or looking at their phone.
Henley’s advice was a little more vulgar: you have to give a shit without really giving too much of a shit. The real work of live performance is a strange and somewhat unnatural combination of the need to be present without being too self-conscious. But, Henley assured Deacon, if he focused his attention on the songs, everything else would take care of itself.
In the moments before he made his public debut as an Eagles member, Deacon recalls the small voice of a lifelong sports fan whispering in his ear: he was about to perform at Dodger Stadium, one of the country’s greatest baseball parks. How cool is that? Like his bandmates, Schmit was impressed by the calm presence of the young man, at least on the surface. It reflected the reverence with which he had approached the task of studying, rehearsing and preparing for that first show.
Having composed himself for the four minutes required to perform a song at his father’s memorial the year before, Deacon had proved he could handle challenging situations. “It was a combination of excitement and fear, which I think is totally fine, and healthy — and honestly, it helps,” he recalls of his Dodger Stadium debut, smiling. “There’d be something wrong if I wasn’t nervous.”
On a mild Saturday afternoon last month, the Eagles are preparing to play their last concert of a six-show run in their home state of California. Once night falls at a baseball stadium surrounded by skyscrapers in central San Diego, the five musicians stand in line at the front of stage and open with the sweet vocal harmonies of Seven Bridges Road, before Walsh introduces Deacon to sing Take It Easy. From that moment on, the crowd is wholly on his side as the young guitarist alternates between backing vocals and taking the lead.
Although the musicians don’t address it from the stage, there is an unshakable sense that in 2018, an Eagles concert is a tonic for troubled times in the United States of America. Outside the stadium, personal and political divisions run deep. Yet inside Petco Park, for 2 ½ hours none of that matters.
Instead, 40,000 citizens — young and old — put aside their differences to celebrate a peerless catalogue of songs and the musicians who wrote and recorded them. For much of the show, as the band rolls out hit after hit, the crowd is on its feet and in full voice. Some dance to remember, some dance to forget.
Taking in this spectacle, a favoured line of Frey’s comes to mind: people did stuff to those songs, as he liked to say. They fell in love. They quit their jobs. They got married. They learned their limits with alcohol and drugs. They went on cross-country road trips.
Although this band is imbued with the unique sensibilities of the place where it was born, this sense of soundtracking lives is not exclusive to California. Instead, its connection to the global human experience has been hooked in deep for 46 years, and counting. Far from featuring merely faithful renditions of creaky old transmissions from a simpler time, though, the San Diego concert instead comes to life as an electrifying romp through the American songbook, with perfectionist production befitting the band’s stature and its own high standards.
Henley, Walsh and Gill each take lead vocals for a track or three from their respective solo careers, but most of the 26-song set is composed of exactly what the audience expects to hear: the very best moments from the seven Eagles studio albums.
Halfway through the main set, Deacon strums and sings the song that he performed on one of the hardest days of his life. With eyes closed, his second family by his side, his father’s guitar technician in the wings and the crowd willing him on, he leads the band through Peaceful Easy Feeling with the apparent ease of a far more experienced musician.
Up on the big screen, as the song reaches its final chorus, live footage of the youngest Eagle morphs into a black-and-white photograph of his beloved dad leaning on an acoustic guitar.
While the crowd sustains its applause for the sight of Glenn Frey, his son completes a small but important ritual. Deacon opens his eyes, turns, looks up at the image of his smiling father and quietly says two words: thank you.
The Eagles will perform in Melbourne on March 5, 2019; Brisbane, March 9; and Sydney, March 13. Andrew McMillen travelled to California as a guest of Frontier Touring.