Band revenue discrepancy is a crucial but seldom highlighted facet of the music industry. It has to do with the intricate mechanics of how earnings are allocated to the members of the band, which frequently take into account individual agreements, songwriting credits, and differing degrees of participation. As a vital member of the Eagles, Glenn Frey had some theories about why he was paid more than his teammates. After the 2013 documentary “History of the Eagles” was released, Don Henley and Glen Frey had a conversation with ArtsBeat about the movie. The late singer was candid about his opinion that he and Henley should have received a bigger portion of the profits in relation to the band’s 1994 reunion and the financial arrangements, explaining as follows: That was how I felt. For fourteen years, I saw Don Henley put in a tremendous amount of work. I believed that he and I were the ones who carried on with our work in our company, and it was also how we kept the Eagles alive.
All I felt was that justice was done. Following the reunion, Don Felder, a former member of the Eagles, had trouble with this issue in the early 2000s. At first, the band members split the proceeds from records, live performances, and merchandise equally. But in preparation for the reunion, Henley and Frey suggested a new corporate structure in which they would each own roughly thirty percent of new ventures, which would be twice as much as Felder, Timothy B. Schmit, and Joe Walsh combined. Furthermore, they held all of the voting shares. Felder accused Henley and Frey of self-dealing and of taking money away from the Eagles to support these new businesses in a lawsuit he brought against the Eagles members. Additionally, it stated that they compensated Irving Azoff, their manager, by entering into agreements that favored his record label and retail business.
Nevertheless, Henley stated that Frey believed they should have received more credit because they composed the majority of the band’s successes, carried more of the load, and got the record deal with David Geffen in a 2014 interview with Australia’s News. In his explanation, he used the following terms to show why they should be paid more: Glenn is perfectly comfortable discussing that. He thinks that since we caused this disaster, we should be punished. We wrote the majority of the hit songs and guided it; we were the ones with the contacts that led to the record deal with David Geffen. We still maintain the feeling that we are the band’s leaders. Later, Henley and Frey sued Felder for breach of contract, alleging that he attempted to promote “Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles,” a book about his time with the team that wasn’t released until 2008 in the US and 2007 in the UK. In 2002, the Los Angeles County Court consolidated these cases. In 2007, they reached an out-of-court settlement for an undisclosed sum.
