{"id":6627,"date":"2012-06-13T01:11:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-13T08:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=6627"},"modified":"2012-06-13T01:11:36","modified_gmt":"2012-06-13T08:11:36","slug":"glenn-frey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/06\/glenn-frey\/","title":{"rendered":"GLENN FREY"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

GLENN FREY<\/h1>\n
\n

The Eagles\u2019 co-leader takes a solo flight through classic love songs\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe Eagles is the mothership,\u201d says Glenn Frey. \u201cWe venture to and from that.\u201d For his first solo album in 20 years, the 63-year-old Detroit native ventured far indeed: After Hours<\/em> is a collection of love songs dating from the \u201940s to the present. Producing with Richard F.W. Davis and Michael Thompson, Frey gives candlelit treatment to such gems as Johnny Mercer\u2019s \u201cI Wanna Be Around\u201d and Brian Wilson\u2019s \u201cCaroline, No.\u201d Meanwhile, the Eagles mothership hovers\u2014the group is playing a handful of shows this year, as well as working with Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney on a documentary about its storied history.<\/p>\n

What sparked the idea for this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It goes back to the early \u201990s. I was a partner in an Aspen restaurant called Andiamo. The owner wanted the restaurant to be a bit upscale and asked me to put together music that would play well in that environment. I compiled all the great hits by Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Billie Holiday \u2026 the list goes on. The restaurant didn\u2019t last long, but I was left with eight hours of great music that I continued to listen to and always\u00a0carried around with me.<\/p>\n

How did you approach it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We really wanted it to be a piano-and-voice album. That\u2019s how things always started out. We would go into the control room and talk about a song. Michael would go to the piano, we would pick a key, get a lyric sheet and start messing around. Things would evolve from there. If we liked what we were hearing, we would go out into the studio and cut a demo with piano and voice\u2014maybe put a couple of rough overdubs on, just to see what it might sound like if it were more fleshed out. Lastly we would bring in the musicians to cut the track. We also had a terrific arranger in Alan Broadbent. He really understood what we were doing and\u00a0wrote some beautiful charts.<\/p>\n

Did you sing differently?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No question. Singing contemporary songs and uptempo songs\u2014like I do in the Eagles\u2014is sort of a guitar-piano-harmonica style of singing. For these songs, it\u2019s as if you\u2019re singing like a trumpet or a flute or a clarinet. Your voice is another instrument in the ensemble. It required an adjustment, but it was a challenge I wanted to embrace. I tried to learn the songs well before going into the studio so that I could do them with confidence. It definitely increased my appreciation for everyone\u00a0who\u2019s sung these songs.<\/p>\n

Did you have trepidations?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I felt I was approaching things in the right way. You have to follow your instincts and try to please yourself first. If you do that, chances are you will please others, too. In fact, I\u00a0think I\u2019ve just scratched the surface. I\u2019ll probably make another album similar to this one. There were so many songs I wanted\u00a0to sing that I didn\u2019t get to do. Most of the time we were right on the money, but there were\u00a0a couple that I couldn\u2019t quite nail. We tried\u00a0\u201cRainy Night in Georgia\u201d\u2014the beautiful Tony Joe White song that Brook Benton recorded\u2014but it didn\u2019t seem right for me. It\u2019s all about picking songs that fit your voice.<\/p>\n

How\u2019s the Eagles documentary?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019re right in the middle of that. We feel very fortunate to have gotten Alex Gibney as the director. He has a great ability to tell a story. That\u2019s what I want for the Eagles\u2014someone who understands what we were about, and who\u2019s able to portray that accurately and in an interesting way.<\/p>\n

\u2013Russell Hall<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GLENN FREY The Eagles\u2019 co-leader takes a solo flight through classic love songs\u00a0 \u201cThe Eagles is the mothership,\u201d says Glenn Frey. \u201cWe venture to and from that.\u201d For his first solo album in 20 years, the 63-year-old Detroit native ventured far indeed: After Hours is a collection of love songs dating from the \u201940s to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[3881,3885,3676,3891,3884,844,3886,3880,3890,3754,3889,3882,3263,3888,3887,3674,3883],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6627"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6630,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6627\/revisions\/6630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}