Glenn Frey

Glenn Frey

          When I went to work for Bizarre in 1969 my hours were long and usually included evenings, which along with my deeply ingrained lack of social skills resulted in my having a minimal social life. I did, however, occasionally deliver equipment for acts that were playing at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, at the time the preeminent live music venue in that part of the world, and it provided me with some social contact.

          The Troubadour basically had two public rooms. The live music took place in the show room, which cost money to get into. The front bar, however, was open to the public and generally patronised by Hollywood music-biz types. Considering myself to be a Hollywood music-biz type, I began to patronise the Troubadour’s front bar on the evenings I wasn’t working. People who recognised me from having been in contact with them through work accepted me there, and the general clientele tended to make me feel at home.

          What with regulars going off on tour and out-of-town friends coming by to play the Troub or just to visit, the usual gang was a changeable one. Two regulars who were usually around and with whom I frequently swapped quips and observations were Russ Giguere, from a band called the Association (‘Along Comes Mary’, ‘Windy’, ‘Cherish’, and so on), and Glenn Frey, then with a semi-electric folk-country-rock duo with JD Souther called Longbranch Pennywhistle.

          The fellow who owned the Troubadour, Doug Weston, was also Longbranch Pennywhistle’s manager, so Glenn was able to eat and drink there on the tab. He also did well with the place’s female employees and with random groupies who’d show up. One night he and Russ and I and Ed Sanders, the founder of the legendary Fugs and in town to make a solo album, upon which John Ware played drums, were at one end of the bar bending our collective elbows and making off-colour conversation about establishment politics and hillbillies’ sexual proclivities and so forth. Over the course of about four or five hours Glenn excused himself three times after being approached by decorative young women, disappeared for an hour or so each time, and then returned to us and a fresh beer.

          “Damn!” Sanders noted. “that boy gets more ass than a toilet seat!”

          As an aside, Sanders was perhaps the most convivial of all the pop and underground Legends to pass some time in the front bar between sets and otherwise. Probably the least convivial was Van Morrison, whom I idolised. Between his stunningly magnificent sets he sat at the bar over what looked like straight whisky, his stay-the-fuck-away-from-me body language and facial expression so powerful that it was tangible as well as visual, to the extent that nobody in the crowded room of socialising musicians and music-biz people dared to penetrate that palpable barrier and sit within two barstools of him.

          Despite his band’s performance genre, Glenn as a music consumer – and the Troubadour had plenty of music to consume – definitely seemed to prefer heavy-on-the-backbeat stuff. The sound of the performances in the show room made it out to the bar, clearly enough if the connecting door was open. The only time I can remember Glenn getting up from his seat and dashing into the showroom for an act was for some rockabilly band in the Carl Perkins-Elvis-Jerry Lee mode. He came back muttering about how much he was born to do rock and roll and fuck this folk-music shit.

          Hollywood, like I suppose New York and London and other places, attracts tens of thousands of the world’s most talented people every year. People who have won their colleges’ talent contests hands down, or who were way too much for Oklahoma City or Mobile or similar places to handle. Only a few, obviously, achieve fame and fortune – let alone flash-in-the-pan, essentially small-time name recognition, or poorly remunerated appreciation by cognoscenti, or even a living. When I was in the business there I almost became dulled by talent, seeing so many people who had so much of it going nowhere.

          Recognising that talent alone does not equal popular success, I became somewhat fascinated by trying to figure out what did. An oversupply of hamminess, of a willingness to do anything to catch the public’s eye, is certainly a factor. And, as with so many other things in life, unshakable self-confidence is another.

          Glenn was certain that he was going to be a star. He had absolutely no doubts at all. He told me once that one day they’d put a bronze plaque outside the door to the grotty little place in Echo Park where he was living then, commemorating it as a place he’d lived at the start of his glorious career. The funny thing was that when he said this he was completely believable. I wonder if that plaque’s there now.

          I encountered Bernie Leadon once during the course of my job. At the time he was with a revolving-door band called the Corvettes, which sometimes played behind Linda Ronstadt. I took a sort of instant dislike to him, as in the minute or two I was there he flaunted a dismissive, ego-centric arrogance bordering on right-wingedness. I’m sure I made no impression at all on him as, being a faceless, voiceless member of the servant class, my fate was to be ignored.

          I heard second-hand that when Glenn and Bernie and the others were first putting their as-yet unnamed band together their manager was so taken by the amount of self-assured star quality that they exuded that he called them ‘The Egos’. They only changed this a bit when coming up with the band’s final name.