Eagles

Before the Eagles had original songs, they had Chuck Berry: at the band's first rehearsal, guitarist Bernie Leadon remembers, "we didn't have any songs so we were mostly jamming on things like Chuck Berry songs," and their pre-fame club sets in Colorado ran on his riffs until British producer Glyn Johns complained he "didn't want to hear us squashing out Chuck Berry licks." Don Henley later put it plainly: Frey "became an avid student of the rhythm-guitar style of Chuck Berry," placing him just behind Keith Richards among the guitarists who'd absorbed Berry's chunky, funky downstroke attack.

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1958

Johnny B. GoodeChuck Berry

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1974

Already GoneEagles

listen forPlay "Johnny B. Goode" and then the Eagles' "Already Gone": under Berry's ringing lead sits a steady, chugging downstroke rhythm guitar that never lets the beat sag, the same chunky attack Henley singled out in Frey's own playing. On "Already Gone," that rhythm part punches every beat right up front in the mix, driving the song forward under the vocal rather than decorating it, the bar-band Chuck Berry habit turned into a studio single.

Bob Seger met a teenage Glenn Frey in Detroit in the late 1960s. "Glenn was like the kid brother I never had," Seger said; he produced Frey's first single with his band the Mushrooms and coached him through vocal harmonies, and Frey later sang the wailing lead-off line on Seger's breakout single "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man." A decade later, jamming at Frey's house, Seger "blurted out" the chorus of "Heartache Tonight," earning a writing credit on what became the Eagles' final number-one single.

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1968

Ramblin' Gamblin' ManBob Seger

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1979

Heartache TonightEagles

listen forListen to how Seger just wails the title line of "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" above the band, more shout than sung note, then hear that same all-in, hollered hook driving the Eagles' "Heartache Tonight," the chorus Seger sang into being in a living-room jam. Both tracks trade smooth phrasing for a raw, unison-shout hook that's the loudest, least polished thing on either record.

Founding guitarist Bernie Leadon came to the Eagles straight out of Gram Parsons's Flying Burrito Brothers, the band that spent 1969 fusing country balladry to rock instrumentation, a template Leadon carried into the new group's DNA. When Parsons died of an overdose in 1973, so did Crazy Horse guitarist Danny Whitten; Don Henley says Frey wrote "Good Day in Hell" in response, calling it "Glenn's little tribute to Danny Whitten and Gram Parsons," a eulogy dressed up as a rocker, mourning what the music business cost its casualties.

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1969

Sin CityGram Parsons

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1974

Good Day in HellEagles

listen forSet the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Sin City," with Gram Parsons on lead vocal and Leadon on guitar, beside "Good Day in Hell" and hear the same mournful pedal-steel coloring laid under a rock backbeat, a country ballad's ache refusing to slow down. Leadon carried that weary, close-harmony lament over corruption straight from the Burritos' session into the Eagles, just sped up and toughened into their own rock and roll idiom.