The Kirkwood Casino resembled a fraternity house decorated with an empty beer can pyramid in the corner, a nonstop poker game, and with multiple TVs to keep an eye on sporting events. They called our house the Kirkwood casino.” We’d watch football from six to nine and then play cards until the wee hours. Joni Mitchell got wind of those card games, and she always was a good hang, so she started coming every Monday night and playing cards with us. In an interview with Vanity Fair about the Hollywood Hills music scene, Frey described his pleasure palace: “In 1974, I moved to a place at the corner of Ridpath and Kirkwood in Laurel Canyon, and we had poker games every Monday night during football season. The party and poker games lasted all night and spilled into the next morning. The close proximity of Laurel Canyon to the Sunset Strip meant that Frey’s house in the hills attracted a steady stream of revelers once the bars closed and friends’ gigs were done.
Frey rented a bungalow which became the meeting place for the band and their friends. We used to play poker, and you’d go into a game thinking you were going to take his money, but he always ended up winning.”ĭuring the early 1970s, the Laurel Canyon neighborhood nestled in the Hollywood Hills blossomed into a popular enclave for musicians and artists along with many iconic members of L.A.’s counterculture. It was like going into a card game with him. “Glenn was always smarter, and better prepared than you thought he would be. Ronstadt also expressed how Frey’s poker skills extended way beyond the tables and spilled into his dealings with the murky world of the music business. I told him, ‘Quit winning!’ That’s the kind of poker player I was.” I had a huge crush on Smokey at that time, and we were playing poker, and Glenn kept winning. At one point we got into a poker game with Smokey Robinson, who also was booked there. You’d play a 20-minute set, then be off for three or four hours, then play another 20 minutes - there was a lot of time to kill between sets. Times, Ronstadt explained, “We had to do four shows a night. In a remembrance piece about Glenn Frey in the L.A. A poker game fired up initiated by Ronstadt’s new guitar player, Glenn Frey.
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During a series of gigs at Disneyland in 1971, Ronstadt’s band hung out backstage with the legendary Smokey Robinson. Music historians point to that moment as the origin of the Eagles which formed soon after when David Geffen signed them to Asylum Records in 1971.ĭuring downtime backstage, Ronstadt’s touring band frequently played poker with each other and other bands, because everyone knew the basic rules and the rankings of poker hands. Boylan specifically scouted musicians who could also sing, which is why both Henley and Frey were added to the roster with Frey on guitar and Henley on drums. John Boylan, record producer and manager, assembled the best country rock musicians in the Los Angeles area to join Ronstadt’s band. ORIGINS WITH LINDA RONSTADT AND BACKSTAGE WITH SMOKEYįrey and Henley befriended each other in 1971 when they were hired as sidemen in Linda Ronstadt’s backing band.
The Eagles were one of the many card-slinging bands out there, and they happened to also be one of the most successful bands of all time. Musicians play a range of card games from drinking contests to high-stakes poker. More than a few have utilized cards to pass the time, maintain their sanity, and earn a little cash on the side. Bands, no matter the type of music or era, often share universal experiences. The unglamorous side to the rock biz involves arduous traveling from gig to gig or killing time in between sound check and show time. It didn’t matter if they were backstage, or on a tour bus, or playing in their own homes, poker was a popular pastime for the Eagles. Glenn Frey, one of the founding members of the country-rock band Eagles, often engaged in marathon sessions of poker, particularly a game he invented called “Eagle Poker.” Frey was an avid card player along with his songwriting partner Don Henley.
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