What Michigan Rock Star's Childhood Home Was Once Here?

The picture above was once the childhood home location of Michigander and Eagles member Glenn Frey. The address was 1616 Wyandotte, Royal Oak. The house is long gone, thanks to being destroyed when the I-696 and I-75 interchange came through.

Glenn was born in Detroit General Hospital in 1948, three years after Bob Seger was born in the same place. His musical chops began when he started playing piano at five years old. His rock chops started salivating when he saw The Beatles perform at Olympia Stadium in 1964.

That gave him the desire to perform and he soon was in a band called The Disciples. He soon joined another local band, and they ended up calling themselves The Subterraneans.

Gary Burrows of another local band, The Four of Us, asked Glenn to join on rhythm guitar. He jumped at the chance but the band broke up shortly afterward. With that, he created a new group, The Mushrooms. Bob Seger’s manager, Punch Andrews, hooked up Bob and Glenn, and persuaded Bob to write and produce for The Mushrooms. Their single, “Burned”, written by Seger, is probably their best known.

Hangouts included the Hideout clubs, Grande Ballroom, and Ann Arbor’s Fifth Dimension club.

After The Mushrooms released a single, Bob used Glenn as percussionist on "Heavy Music" and acoustic guitar / backing vocals on "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man".

According to Glenn in a Free Press article, “At one point, I was going to be the bass player in Bob’s band…..fortunately for everybody, my mother found out I was smoking pot, and she called Punch Andrews to say he might be jeopardizing his career. So of course that put the kibosh on me working with Seger. That was the impetus to go to California”.

After getting in trouble with the police – reasons he kept to himself – Glenn went to California. He says, “I remember sitting in the parking lot of Oakland Community College saying, ‘this sucks, I've got to get out of here’…..the place to go was L.A. So thank God my mother called Punch”.

When Seger came to California, he hooked up with Glenn and got to know the rest of The Eagle members. They eventually began performing on each other’s recordings. Bob co-wrote “Heartache Tonight,” the Eagles sang backing vocals on “Fire Lake,” and Glenn sang on “Against the Wind.”

It was a career that most teenage Michigan musicians dream about happening.
And it did, for Glenn Frey.
Glenn passed away on January 18, 2016 at the age of 67.

Read a little bit more about Glenn’s days in Michigan in an earlier post by clicking HERE.