There was more sad news for the world of music this week with the death of Glen Frey of the Eagles fame. As always seems to happen on these occasions I was prompted to dig out some of his work, both Eagles and solo.

With the Eagles, the natural starting point has to be “Hotel California” which is generally accepted to be the band’s finest piece of work. The album, released over 39 years ago (oh blimey!) in December 1976, turned out to be one of the biggest selling albums in music history and contains a series of classics, not least the title track. Of course Glen Frey was only one of five great musicians who made the album but he was the co-writer, along with Don Henley, of much of the album’s finest work.

I settled down to listen to my original vinyl version of the album and rolled back the years thinking, firstly, what a wonderful piece of work this is and secondly, why don’t I play it more often? The music is outstanding and the lyrics both poignant and thought-provoking. This wasn’t disposable tat for the pop charts.

As I lost myself in the album I came to the last track, “The Last Resort”, a song written and composed by Henley (the main writer) and Frey about the greed of mankind (particularly the early American settlers in the West) the destruction of the land and those who inhabited it. The lyrics could apply to what mankind has done and continues to do to the world as a whole and these lines have a particular resonance –

“We satisfy our endless needs and justify our bloody deeds/In the name of destiny and in the name of God”.

Beautiful music combined with incisive intelligence. It really doesn’t get much better than that.