There's a white male rock critic orthodoxy which for 45 years has handed down its prejudices and cliched version of history to each successive generation of white male rock critics. Those of us with a different view have just got on with enjoying great music and not giving a stuff. And, sometimes, these guys end up endorsing a new version of history when they old one isn't working for them. I remember when The Bee Gees were hated for the crimes of being too successful and not accepting that their careers were over when punk took off. As Lennon said in one of his last interviews, "There's nothing wrong with The Bee Gees. They do a damn fine job". Not at all what your average rock critic was preaching in Rolling Stone and the NME of the time.
The Eagles are the same. Their crimes are: being too prominent in a genre which the public wasn't supposed to like (it's ok to like Gram Parsons because he died young, sold in modest numbers, and was gone way before punk); too obviously delighted with their own success both with the ladies and financially (it's ok to like Nick Drake because he couldn't get arrested and died broke and unhappy, so no threat to the rock critic self-esteem); and having the entirely natural (but annoying) arrogance of very young men whom made it very big.
I play at the opposite end of the success scale, in a pub band, and it's the artists that the rock critics and the ageing hipsters hate that get us our biggest reaction, including when we try very hard to sing and play Eagles songs one fifth as well as The Eagles did them.
Never underestimate the power of envy and schadenfreude when a too-wealthy, too- long established, too-big-for-their-boots musician dies. I think it's always poignant when people who have helped soundtrack my life die. In the last month alone, Lemmy, Dale Griffin, Bowie, now Glenn Frey: these were people who archieved at a very high level because they had what it takes.
Re: Glenn Frey: Gone but not Forgotten
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Originally Posted by AlreadyGone95
