Vince Gill To Play With Eagles At Classic East and West
The Eagles have made another announcement about who will be assuming the guitar and vocals duties of founding member Glenn Frey (who passed away in 2016). They’ve announced that country superstar, Vince Gill, will join Glenn’s son Deacon Frey when the band plays their Classic East and Classic West concerts this year.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the band confirmed that Gill and Deacon Frey will split the vocal duties on the songs that Glenn Frey sang.
Gill made a lasting impression on the surviving members of The Eagles when he covered The Eagles’ ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ at the Kennedyy Center Honors in December of 2016.
“In my mind, I always thought I’d have made a good Eagle,” Gill told the LA Times. “But in a million years, I never would have seen this coming. It’s pretty surreal. I turned 60 recently, and to get to be a part of this amazing legacy of songs, that’s the greatest part of all this for me.”
Don Henley told the LA Times that bringing Deacon Frey into the fold was his idea.
“Bringing Deacon in was my idea,” said Henley. “I think of the guild system, which in both Eastern and Western cultures is a centuries-old tradition of the father passing down the trade to his son, and to me, that makes perfect moral and ethical sense. The primary thing is I think Glenn would be good with it — with both of these guys. I think he’d go, ‘That’s the perfect way to do this.’ ”
Deacon Frey explained to the LA Times that The Eagles and their manager Irving Azoff asked him if he would be interested in performing with the group.
“They came to me with the idea, and it’s been really great,” said Frey. Frey also mentioned that the first songs he learned to play were Eagles songs. “The first songs I learned on guitar were ‘Take It Easy’ and ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling.’ He was always very supportive and very encouraging of my music and my love for music. He got me a guitar when I was 7—a baby Taylor.”
While the band feels under a lot of pressure performing without one of their founding members, they feel confident that they are handling their approach to these performances in a professional and ethical manner.
“I think we’re doing it in a highly ethical manner that I think Glenn would approve of. That’s important to me, it’s important to Glenn’s family. If there are some detractors, then there are some detractors. I’m not going to spend a lot of time defending this, because I don’t see anything wrong with it. I think we’re carrying on a family tradition in a very family type way.”