Revisit – “No More Cloudy Days”

I LOVE this tune…one of the last written and sung by legend Glenn Frey…the originator of one of the greatest song writing bands in our lifetime.  I began as a musician from the birth of The Beatles and Woodstock and the bands I was part of from the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s focused a the vocals with instruments. Everyone in the band sang either harmonies or lead vocals. During those decades and still today, one of the hardest things for any band is finding a great singer, let alone have all the members of the band be good singers as well. Background vocals supporting a lead vocalist along with everyone playing instruments is just what I consider to be “as good as it gets”. I played a lot of genres over the years but in recent years I migrate to ballads with great vocals and meaningful lyrics. The 1950’s were famous for great vocal bands and singing groups but after The Beatles started writing, playing and adding those great vocals, everything changed. This created young musicians of the times to want to do the same and The Eagles are about the best vocal bands that came from that time, but they had something completely unique….their vocal sound and the songs…a blend of rock and country, which was original at that time.

“These cloudy days, make you wanna cry. It breaks your heart when someone leaves and you don’t know why ” – Glenn Frey

(above lyrics from the song, “No More Cloudy Days” from the “Long Road Out of Eden” album. Check it out…it’s a great album.)

WOW…what a January it has been for losing some of music’s legends! One being Glenn Frey of The Eagles. The Eagles have always been one of my most favorite bands, because of the songs but even more so because of the vocals. Their strong vocal harmonies had such a tone and quality that gave them a unique sound and set them apart from other bands of their time. Then their songwriting developed and gave them longevity as Music Icons

There is a great documentary “The History of The Eagles” that has played on CNN and is also streaming on Netflix. It was a story that illustrated to me how those times of the 1970’s were times when the recipe was there to follow and become famous in music that doesn’t exist today. I think about myself and my beginning bandmates and how we had those great 4 part vocal harmonies and were also set apart from so many of our peers. In the documentary, there was a line of Glenn Frey’s from when he first went to California and met Jackson Brown…he said, the only way you’re going to become famous was to write songs. Our band just didn’t write the songs. We were a local town bar band. We had fun, made some money and did something that many others couldn’t…be really good doing what we loved.