GLENN FREY DIED IN 2016. DON HENLEY STILL SETS UP HIS MICROPHONE EVERY NIGHT. Not as a tribute. As a working mic. Plugged in. Tested at soundcheck. Standing exactly where Glenn stood for 45 years, stage left, three feet from Don’s drum kit. The crew calls it “Glenn’s spot.” Nobody stands there. Not Vince Gill, who sings Glenn’s parts now. Not Joe Walsh. Not Timothy B. Schmit. Glenn was 67 when he died. Rheumatoid arthritis medication. Pneumonia. Sudden. Don was the last person in the band to see him alive, at a hospital in New York on January 17th. They’d been fighting and making up since 1971. Broke up the Eagles in 1980 over a political benefit. Didn’t speak for 14 years. Then reunited in 1994 and never stopped touring. On the “Hotel California” tour last year, Don walked past Glenn’s mic during the encore. Touched the stand. Kept playing. A fan in row 3 filmed it. Three seconds long. No one in the band has ever mentioned it. The song Glenn started writing the week he died — the one Don has the half-finished tape of — has been locked in a vault in Los Angeles for nine years. Don Henley could finish that song. He chose not to. Is that respect — or is that a man who can’t bear to hear his best friend’s voice one more time?
Glenn Frey’s Empty Microphone and the Silence Don Henley Never Moved Glenn Frey died in 2016, but on some Eagles…