Glenn Frey Ronstadt needed a backup band for an upcoming tour, her manager John Boylan hired Frey because he needed someone who could play rhythm guitar and sing. Don Henley was approached by Frey to join Ronstadt. Randy Meisner and Bernie Leadon were also hired, although as the backing band personnel changed through the tour, the four had only played once together at a gig at Disneyland. Frey and Henley decided to form a band together while on the tour, and they were joined by Meisner on bass and Leadon on guitar, banjo, steel guitar, mandolin and dobro, forming the Eagles, with
Emil Frey Emil Frey Emil Johann Rudolf Frey (24 October 1838 – 24 December 1922) was a Swiss politician, soldier in the American Civil War and member of the Swiss Federal Council (1890–1897). Frey was born in Arlesheim, Switzerland, as the son of Emil Remigius Frey. His father was a liberal separatist politician. Frey's family provided refuge for Friedrich Hecker when he fled the repression following the revolution in Germany in 1848. Frey later emigrated to the US, arriving in Belleville, Illinois, an area with many Forty-Eighters, veterans of the 1848 revolutions in Europe. For a while he worked for Hecker, but