Vince Gill understands that a huge loss preceded his arrival in the Eagles lineup. It’s something he’s long lamented following the 2016 death of Eagles stalwart Glenn Frey.

There’s “just gratitude that I was the guy they decided would work,” Gill said not long after joining the group. “Just that – because Glenn was a great friend, and in my heart of hearts I wish I wasn’t doing it. That would mean Glenn would still be around, but life is what it is and you just go do what you can do because of what happens. Those songs deserve to live on as long as they can.”

For some, Frey’s passing seemed like a natural endpoint for the group – and surviving co-founder Don Henley initially indicated that he agreed. “I don’t see how we could go out and play without the guy who started the band,” Henley said a few months after Frey died. “It would just seem like greed or something. It would seem like a desperate thing.”

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By the time the Classic East and Classic West music festivals were announced the following year, however, Henley had changed his mind. He confirmed an Eagles rebuild with the addition of Frey’s son, Deacon, and hinted at another new hire. “Since it’s Glenn’s blood, it’s his son, I think that’s appropriate,” Henley mused back then.

The final piece of the puzzle turned out to be Gill, a long-standing country solo star who rose to initial fame singing Pure Prairie League’s Top 10 1980 hit “Let Me Love You Tonight.” That seems to have played a key role in Henley’s decision-making.

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Early into his tenure, Henley was asked to explain Gill’s presence. “He smiled and said, ‘Because he knows how to be in a band,'” Gill tells American Songwriter in a new interview. “That was just such a beautiful validation.”

In the years that followed, Gill earned scores of new fans with his determination to recreate Eagles songs – including “Tequila Sunrise,” “Take It to the Limit,” “New Kid in Town” and “Lyin’ Eyes” – just as they had been written and recorded. (Gill has also consistently enthused about a number of other Eagles songs, including “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “I Can’t Tell You Why,” the latter of which he covered in 1993 on Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles.)

“I don’t have to have the attention; I don’t have to have the spotlight,” he admits to American Songwriter. “I don’t have to do all the talking. It’s proven to me that it doesn’t really matter what role you have, just as long as what you’re trying to do is make it better. That’s what I like.”

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