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Eagles · S4 E1
Firing Glyn Johns
The band wants rock. The producer wants folk. Sessions stall in London until Glenn Frey pulls the plug
Olympic Studios, London, January 1974. Glenn Frey listens to the playback of "You Never Cry Like a Lover," shakes his head, and tells the band they need a different producer.
The Who, Baba O'Riley (1971). Glyn Johns produced this. The same man who captured The Who at their most explosive was being told by Eagles that he could not make them sound hard enough.
The Problem
Glyn Johns made Eagles sound beautiful on two albums, and that is now the problem. Frey does not want beautiful anymore. He wants loud, aggressive, electric, and Johns keeps pulling the band back toward acoustic warmth and folk precision.
“Glyn wanted us to be what we were. We wanted to be what we hadn't become yet. That's an impossible argument to win on either side.”
— Don Henley, History of the Eagles documentary, 2013
TAP TO REVEAL: How many songs did Eagles actually finish with Glyn Johns before pulling the plug?
Which of these legendary albums did Glyn Johns NOT produce or engineer?
Glyn Johns: The Resume
You Never Cry Like a Lover, Eagles (On the Border, 1974)
One of the tracks recorded with Glyn Johns that survived onto the final album. Listen for the warm, spacious production, the careful balance of acoustic and electric. This is the sound Frey was walking away from: beautiful, restrained, and exactly what Eagles no longer wanted to be.
The producer who made Eagles famous is gone, and the sessions are half-finished. Next: Bill Szymczyk picks up the phone, the band flies back to Los Angeles, and the new sound starts to take shape at Record Plant.
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