dpOn this day (November 10) in 1979, the Eagles reached the top of the Hot 100 with “Heartache Tonight.” It was their fifth and final No. 1 single on the pop chart. Band members Glen Frey and Don Henley co-wrote the hit with JD Souther and Bob Seger. Frey was friends with both outside writers before he and Henley decided to form a band in the early 1970s.
Frey was part of the Detroit rock scene as a teenager. That’s where he met Seger, who was a few years older and a little more experienced. The pair almost formed a band together, but it didn’t work out. However, that didn’t keep them from being close friends and learning from one another over the years.
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Frey met Souther not long after he left Michigan for the West Coast. They shared a small apartment, jammed, and wrote songs together. Later, they formed the band Longbranch Pennywhistle. While Souther never officially became a member of the Eagles, he wrote several songs for the band with Frey and Henley.
How Bob Seger Co-Wrote an Eagles Hit
According to Songfacts, JD Souther and Glen Frey came up with most of the lyrics while hanging out and listening to Sam Cooke. “We were just walking around clapping our hands and snapping our fingers and singing the verses to those songs,” he recalled. “The melody sounds very much like those Sam Cooke shuffles. There’s not a lot to it. I mean, it’s really just two long verses. But it felt really good,” he added.
“We didn’t get to a chorus that we liked within the first few days,” Souther said. Then, one day, Frey was on the phone with Bob Seger and sang the verses for him. “Seger came right in with the chorus. He just sang it, and it was so good,” Souther explained.
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“Heartache Tonight” went to the top of the Hot 100 and earned a Platinum certification from the RIAA. IT also won the Grammy for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals in 1979.
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