That's one of the reasons I don't read YouTube comments. There are a lot of people out there who claim to be Eagles fans, who loathe Glenn & will not give him credit for anything.
Glenn himself downplays his own playing so much that it's difficult for those who know to counter this stuff. If only just occasionally he would play more solos in concert, people might give him more recognition.
As for the singing... don't get me started.
Indeed. I've never heard/seen another musician downplay his own abilities as much as Glenn, with the singular exception of Gene Simmons. Gene talks like he's nothing although everyone who's worked with him praises him as a bass player, and his recordings and live work support this.
The comment about the rockier solos on the early records being played by Bernie doesn't stand up to scrutiny - I only mentioned the songs Glenn plays lead guitar on the debut album in this thread recently, and I don't think it's a coincidence that these happen to be the four most rock songs on the album. You can add Desperado's Out Of Control (the hardest rocker the original quarter recorded) and Certain Kind Of Fool to the list of his early leads as well, so that's two thirds of Desperado's rockers. Bernie actually mainly played lead on the country and country rock songs - Take It Easy, Peaceful Easy Feeling, Tequila Sunrise, Most Of Us Are Sad etc. Of course, this does rather contradict Glenn's own comments about Bernie playing lead on the rock songs and him playing lead guitar on the country songs in the early days - there are a few exceptions to the former (such as James Dean, Outlaw Man, the 1973 version of How Long) but I'm stuck for non-rock Glenn leads aside from Earlybird and Midnight Flyer, both of which are strictly bluegrass rather than country.
I must admit I do find comments like the one you gave about ICTYW amusing. 'Someone show me how to tell the dancer from the dance' (guitarist from the guitar?), indeed. I must admit I was somewhat surprised myself when I discovered how many leads Glenn actually plays on the Eagles records - when I first heard the Hotel California album having only skimmed through the liner notes I thought that Don Felder played lead on Try And Love Again, and it was unexpected when on re-reading them I found that it was actually Frey on lead.
The strangest comment I've read on Youtube was one I found which stated that most of the guitars on the Eagles albums were played by session musicians with some guy called Ritenour doing a lot of them (I assume they had in mind Lee Ritenour). They were referring to the 1970s albums so I'm not quite sure where they got that one from, especially given that the Eagles had already hired a session player as a full-time guitar player in Don Felder! They were corrected though IIRC.
As far as I can tell, Bernie played lead guitar when Glenn sang lead and vice versa and as Glenn tended to sing more rock and Bernie more country, by implication that meant Bernie played lead on the rockers and when Bernie was playing banjo, Glenn had to play lead guitar. Of course, Glenn played lead on Randy's songs and some of those were rockers.
Weird - it sounds like they confused Steely Dan with the Eagles.
About the liner notes regarding Try and Love Again: Joe is credited with "Gretsch guitar" as if that tells you anything. Gretsch makes both acoustic and electric guitars so ... that doesn't tell us what part he played. But someone else said Randy specifically asked for Glenn to play the lead on his song, so that settles it.
P.S. Not to go off-topic but since we're talking about anti-Glenn comments on YouTube, I think the documentary turned some people against him? Some folks think he came off as angry and that he and Don lorded it over the other band members.
They took a couple of scenes when he was describing in realistic terms a couple of events & they constructed a universe out of it, as my husband says. None of the people who make the negative comments about him ever consider whether what he did was valid. They just decided they would 'hate'.
FP - I like your husband's saying "they constructed a universe out of it" - so true. And, as we've said before, while some folks may have come away from the documentary with negative opinions of Glenn and/or Don, thankfully, many more viewed them positively and the film seems to have boosted the band's popularity and image with the general public.
"People don't run out of dreams: People just run out of time ..."
Glenn Frey 11/06/1948 - 01/18/2016
A most bizarre Eagles-related thread in the KISSFAQ forum: http://www.kissfaq.com/forum11/viewt...p?f=1&t=106777
I don't mean "bizarre" in that he's insulting Felder. It's just that I have never thought of Ace when I've heard Don or vice versa.
Before anyone starts bashing Ace, I just want to say that he recorded lots of brilliant solos on KISS albums. Very memorable and hummable ones - songs within songs.
What do you think, does the solo sound like Ace Frehley?
(Slightly off-topic here, but I don't think something like this deserves a thread of its own.)
Last edited by chaim; 02-16-2015 at 06:20 PM.