Before the Eagles reunited in 1994 after a 15-year hiatus from the release of their album The Long Run, the band’s longtime collaborator singer and songwriter Jack Tempchin went into the studio with Glenn Frey to work on a few songs.
“We still had songs we were working on for his [Frey’s] next album, but we never did another album for him,” said Tempchin, who also co-wrote on Frey’s previous solo albums, including his final one, After Hours, in 2012.
Tempchin’s connection to the Eagles and Frey started from the band’s inception. On the band’s 1972 self-titled debut, Tempchin contributed the penultimate “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” which was sung by Frey and peaked at No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100. Tempchin later co-wrote the band’s “Somebody,” The Girl From Yesterday,” “It’s Your World Now,” and “Already Gone.”
Along with his own solo material, Tempchin, who had also toured with Ringo Starr, Dolly Parton, Dave Mason, Jackson Browne, and more and composed songs for George Jones, Glen Campbell, and Emmylou Harris among others, continued working with Frey when he embarked on his solo career. Tempchin co-wrote a majority of Frey’s solo albums, from his 1982 debut, No Fun Aloud, to his fourth album, Strange Weather in 1992.
In 1985, Tempchin also co-penned Frey’s Miami Vice hit, “You Belong to the City,” along with “Sexy Girl,” “Smuggler’s Blues, “True Love,” ‘The One You Love,” and “I Found Somebody,” among others.
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“El Blurto”
Frey even had a nickname for his decades-long working relationship with Tempchin: “El Blurto.”
“Sometimes when you get together and you’re having a conversation, and you’re sitting there with legal pads and guitars or taped music, and you’re trying to write a song, every once in a while you’ll have these moments when you go, ‘How about this?’” said Frey. “You write four lines or you write six lines or you write two lines that you think are really good. We always sort of think that’s like ‘El Blurto.’”
Frey added, “Sometimes you can drive yourself nuts trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do, and you need to get free a little bit sometimes. Jack is actually very responsible for loosening me up a little bit, and getting me sort of unafraid to try things.”
[RELATED: 4 Songs You Didn’t Know the Eagles’ Glenn Frey Wrote for Other Artists]
“One More Time With Feeling”
After Frey’s death in 2016, Tempchin came across a cache of demos from his sessions with Frey, including one of the last songs they worked on together during those sessions in the early ’90s, “One More Time With Feeling.” The song later became the title track of Tempchin’s 2019 album. That year, Tempchin was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
“‘One More Time…’ is kind of a classic, simple lover story with a great groove,” said Tempchin. “You can hear Glenn in it a lot. It was just a thrill to finish it.”
In 2015, Frey played his final concert with the Eagles on July 29, 2015, in Bossier City, Louisiana. By 2015, Frey’s health was suffering, a combination of rheumatoid arthritis and other conditions, including treatment for intestinal issues, which caused the band to postpone their appearance at the Kennedy Center in November of that year.
While Frey was in the hospital, he contracted pneumonia and was later placed in a medically induced coma. He died on January 18, 2016, at age 67.
Though Tempchin only released “One More Time With Feeling,” he said there are more songs that he and Frey started working on, including some that they never recorded. “There are a few more,” said Tempchin. “It’s between five and 10 more things in various stages. There’s a couple that are really almost completely done, and then [there are] others that are partial. But I’ve got at least a couple that I’m very excited about that I started with Glenn and never quite recorded them.”
Photo: Glenn Frey, performing on stage with the Eagles, Las Vegas, NV, 18th June 1994. (Niels van Iperen/Getty Images)
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