Introduction
You can’t make this stuff up. Just months before the Eagles reunited, band members were openly hostile with each other, throwing insults and promising they would never perform together again. But a few games of pool and a wise-cracking country star from Georgia changed all that.
How? By the early ’90s, Eagles manager Irving Azoff had an idea to get a number of country singers to cover their songs for a new tribute album called Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles. The album featured artists like Clint Black, Vince Gill, and Alan Jackson. When country singer Travis Tritt was approached to do a music video for his cover of “Take It Easy,” he had a condition: He would only do it if the Eagles appeared in the video with him. He was joking…or was he?
Turns out, Tritt’s audacious request was just the thing the band needed to get them in the same room again. That video led to the legendary Hell Freezes Over tour and album, which brought the band’s music to a new generation of fans. They would continue to perform together for more than 20 years until Glenn Frey’s death in 2016. Today, Vince Gill continues to perform with the band, but none of it would have happened without Tritt’s smart-aleck comment.