Eagles’ Bernie Leadon sat down with Rock History Music and recalled what the beer-pouring incident caused in the band. He also reflected on how they eventually had to bring him back for their 2013 tour.
Leadon opened up about the incident that left a lasting mark on his reputation and admitted that he never realized how much attention this one act would cause. “I didn’t realize that pouring the beer on his head though was going to be this giant thing in social media essentially too.”
“But one time when after Wikipedia became established and I looked at my own entry in Wikipedia, it basically said, ‘Bernie Leadon left the band because he poured a beer on Glenn Frey’s head,’ which I thought, ‘Well, that’s kind of a funky legacy.’ They don’t talk about my guitar playing, they just talk about me pouring a beer on Glenn’s head,” he said.
Leadon’s apology appeared to open the door for future conversations with the band. After the footage of him discussing the incident was seen by the band’s management during pre-production for an Eagles documentary, Leadon received a call from their manager, Irving Azoff. “I was asked the question, ‘What about pouring the beer on Glenn’s head?’ and I said, ‘Well I made an amends to him. I sent him a letter and I regret it. I said it wasn’t a cool thing to do and I regret it and I’ve apologized to him.'”
“So, shortly after that footage was seen by them in pre-production for the documentary, I got a call from the manager Irving saying, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about doing a history up tour and wonder if you’d be interested, and Glenn would like to talk to you,'” the rocker recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah, I would be interested. I don’t know what the parameters are but let’s talk about it. So then Glenn called me and in the course of that conversation he said, ‘I got your letter and appreciated it.’ The fact that he was calling me was evidence that he felt better about things.”
He then clarified why the band was ‘stuck’ with him only. “So, the fact that I cleared that up with him and apologized was the reason that be became possible for them to consider having me and ironically they wouldn’t work with Felder because he’d sued them. So, they weren’t going to work with him and Meisner wasn’t really physically up to it so I became the only one that was available to come back to from the past.”
When the Eagles first formed, Leadon was mainly a country musician, playing banjos and country guitar on their debut album, and ‘Desperado.’ As the band’s sound evolved, Leadon’s songwriting style started to clash with the band’s direction.
In ‘History of the Eagles,’ Glenn Frey explained the tension, “Bernie Leadon is one of the greatest country guitar players, but whenever I wrote a rock and roll song, he was the lead guitarist. When Bernie would write a country song, I was supposed to be the lead guitarist, and I wasn’t a country player by any means.”
One day, during a recording session, Leadon walked out because he didn’t like the song they were working on. As the band’s future was discussed, he became frustrated. In a heated moment, the guitarist poured a beer over Frey’s head backstage, telling him to calm down. This incident caused the end of Leadon’s time with the Eagles as the band moved forward without him.
Leadon later apologized for his outburst, but it was clear he would be leaving soon. Glenn Frey quickly replaced him with Joe Walsh, and they went on to make ‘Hotel California.’
