Jan. 18--Glenn Frey, the guitarist and singer who was a founding member of the Eagles, died Monday in New York City, the band said in a statement. He was 67.
Frey died of complications from rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis and pneumonia, the band said.
"He was like a brother to me," said fellow founding member of the group Don Henley on Monday in a statement. "We were family, and like most families, there was some dysfunction. But, the bond we forged 45 years ago was never broken, even during the 14 years that the Eagles were dissolved.
"We were two young men," Henley's statement continued, "who made the pilgrimage to Los Angeles with the same dream: to make our mark in the music industry -- and with perseverance, a deep love of music, our alliance with other great musicians and our manager, Irving Azoff, we built something that has lasted longer than anyone could have dreamed. But, Glenn was the one who started it all."
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Speaking exclusively to The Times, Azoff said Monday, "He was always telling people, 'When you're in the music business, you've got to have your music right, and you've got to have your business right. Glenn taught me as much about business as he taught me about music. He had incredible instincts. He and Henley and I would always plot what was coming next. He wasn't just an incredible writer, singer and musician, he also had incredibly good business instincts.
"I don't know of a better family man, or father," Azoff said. "He's just gone too soon."
The band as an entity posted a statement on the Eagles web site that said, "Words can neither describe our sorrow, nor our love and respect for all that he has given to us, his family, the music community and millions of fans worldwide."
Azoff noted that Frey had been hospitalized in New York City since Oct. 27, and although he had been scheduled to undergo intestinal surgery, he developed pneumonia and was never strong enough to go through that procedure.
The Eagles were to have been recognized with a 2015 Kennedy Center Honor in December, but in November the band requested that it be put off until "all four Eagles -- Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit -- can attend."
In a statement released at that time, the Eagles said Frey had suffered a recurrence of "previous intestinal issues, which will require major surgery and a lengthy recovery period."
Those issues date back to the 1980s, the Washington Post reported. In 1986, Frey missed a reunion concert with Henley because of an intestinal disorder. An attempt to reunite the Eagles in 1990 was put off in part because of surgery to remove part of Frey's intestine. And in 1994, their "Hell Freezes Over" reunion tour was interrupted by Frey's bout with diverticulitis.
Over the course of the group's career, the Eagles have sold more than 120 million albums worldwide and won six Grammy Awards.
In a 2014 review of an Eagles concert at the Forum, Los Angeles Times music critic Randall Roberts summed up the band's influence on pop culture during the 1970s and '80s:
"The messages that the Eagles spread about California life were, after all, some of the most prominent of the era. Delivered over FM airwaves at the peak of terrestrial radio's power and ingrained into the minds of anyone living through the 1970s and '80s, the Eagles' best songs captured a California settling into itself, more concerned with its valleys and hanging out than surf and sun.
"... For better or worse," he wrote, "the Eagles helped to further characterize the region in the cultural imagination."
The Eagles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
Times critic Robert Hilburn wrote that it "was a moment of triumph for the band because it had been widely dismissed by much of the East Coast music establishment in the '70s for its laidback Southern California country-rock style.
"But the group's music eventually took on a harder edge and its lyrics explored a generation's struggles to balance the innocence and idealism of the '60s against the creeping disillusionment of the '70s with a biting, literary edge."
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