Bob Seger releases tribute song to Eagles founder Glenn Frey

Rock ‘n’ roll legend Bob Seger a few months ago wrote a song in tribute to the late Glenn Frey, co-founder of The Eagles. Seger is offering the tune away as a free download.

Frey, 67, died a little more than a year ago after suffering from several illnesses.

You can download the tune here. You also can listen to this YouTube video of the song, which contains plenty of images from Frey’s career:

Frey and Seger grew up in the Detroit area and became friends long before each became famous. Seger talked to Rolling Stone about the genesis of the new song:

“It’s obviously not meant to be a hit,” he says. “There’s no chorus per se or title section or anything. The idea was just to honor his memory and talk, very specifically, about my impression of him in 1966 when we first met.” […]

Seger and the Nashville studio pros got the song on tape very quickly. “I think it was take one or two,” Seger says. “It was the first song we did that day. I said to the drummer, ‘Hit it hard even though its a ballad and that’s a little incongruous.’ I wanted a ballad with a heavy beat because that’s the way I remember Glenn.”

Frey’s and Seger’s careers intersected several times. For instance, Frey sang backing vocals on Seger’s first hit, “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man,” and Seger co-wrote one of The Eagles’ hard-rocking tunes, “Heartache Tonight.”

Frey’s biggest link to Route 66 — other than a slew of popular road songs — was he and Jackson Browne co-wrote “Take It Easy,” a signature hit for The Eagles in 1971 that contained these now-famous lines:

“Well, I’m a standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, such a fine sight to see,
It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowing down to take a look at me.”

Eventually, the city of Winslow erected a statue of a long-haired troubadour (not Frey or Browne, as it turns out) at a corner of Route 66 with a flatbed Ford parked nearby. The song left such an impression on popular culture, an estimated 100,000 people each year visit what now is known as Standin’ on the Corner Park in Winslow.

Just hours after Frey’s death last year, flowers, candles and keepsakes were left at the Standin’ on the Corner Park statue. Hundreds attended a memorial to Frey at the park days later. In September, Winslow dedicated a new statue at the park that resembled an early 1970s version of Frey.

(Screen capture of Glenn Frey during a “Take It Easy” performance by The Eagles in 1977)