This story published originally in 2019, an interview with J.D. Souther befor e his show in Bonita Springs on Oct. 25, 2019. Souther died Sept. 17, 2024.
Glenn Frey was J.D. Souther ‘s roommate, and the two would spend hours discussing, playing and listening to music.
The pair met in 1969 in Southern California, an already vibrant music scene that proved fertile ground for brilliant talents who lived and worked together.
“When Glenn and I met, we had both just recently left other bands,” Souther said in a 2019 telephone interview before performing at the Southwest Florida Event Center in Bonita Springs.
“We were listening to a lot of acoustic music and we were hanging out together because our girlfriends were sisters. So Glenn and I had very little to do other than listen to music and play music.”
The two were born in Detroit but took different paths to arrive in the burgeoning Los Angeles music scene of the late 1960s and early ’70s.
While Frey — who later would help found The Eagles — grew up in Royal Oak, a Motor City suburb, Souther’s family moved when he was 3, first to Shaker Heights near Cleveland, then to Dallas and eventually to Amarillo, Texas, where he grew up.