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Bob Seger gives away touching free song to honor Glenn Frey

The singers were friends for 50 years before Frey, who co-founded The Eagles, passed away a year ago.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
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Gael Cooper

One year ago Wednesday, singer-songwriter Glenn Frey, co-founder of The Eagles, died in a New York hospital at age 67 while recovering from surgery and battling numerous medical conditions.

Stars we lost in 2016

Singer Bob Seger is honoring his late friend by releasing a tribute tune, "Glenn Song," free on his website for anyone to download.

Seger and Frey had been friends for more than 50 years since meeting as teens in Michigan in the mid-1960s.

"The most important thing that happened to me in Detroit was meeting Bob and getting to know him," Frey told the Detroit Free Press back in 2003. "He took me under his wing."

Seger told Rolling Stone that for the tribute song, he "wanted a ballad with a heavy beat because that's the way I remember Glenn."

The lyrics are tear-jerkers. "When I think about you I always smile," Seger sings. "And then I go back for a while."

Podcast

Seger told Rolling Stone he has no blockbuster aspirations for the song, but wanted to pay tribute to his lost friend. "I hope 'Glenn Song' doesn't make his wife Cindy cry," he said. "But it probably will."

Fans were crying too.

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