SuthernJammin

<p>This song as released in 1972.</p><p><br></p><p>Jackson Browne started writing "Take It Easy" for his first album, but he didn't know how to finish it. At the time, he was living in an apartment in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles, and his upstairs neighbor was Glenn Frey, who needed songs for his new band - the Eagles.</p><p><br></p><p>Frey heard Browne working on the song (he says that he learned a lot about songwriting by listening to his downstairs neighbor work), and told Jackson he thought it was great. Browne said he was having trouble completing the track, and played what he had of it. When he got to the second verse, Frey came up with a key lyric: "It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me."</p><p><br></p><p>Browne turned the song over to Frey, who finished writing it and recorded it with the Eagles, who used it as the first song on their first album, and also their first single. Frey says Browne did most of the work on the song and was very generous in sharing the writing credit. He described the unfinished version of the song as a "package without the ribbon."</p><p>Glenn Frey's changes to this song included stretching out the "E" in "Easy." He considered the song one of the most important Eagles tracks, and a great introduction to the group on their first album. In an interview with Bob Costas, he said the song represented "America's first image of our band with the vistas of the Southwest and the beginnings of what became country-rock."</p><p><br></p><p>The Eagles played this live long before they recorded it. It was one of the songs they played when they were doing four sets a night at a club in Aspen, Colorado. By the time they recorded it, the song had more of a country feel.</p><p>Thanks to the line, "Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona," music lovers have made this Southwest town a popular stop on their road trips. Winslow is on Route 40 in northern Arizona, making it a great place to stop if you're traveling from California to New Mexico.</p><p><br></p><p>While it might not be the actual corner where Jackson Browne was standing, the city designated the corner of West 2nd Street and North Kinsley Avenue in downtown Winslow as "Standin' On The Corner Park." Officially opened in 1999, the park has become a popular tourist destination and hosts a festival every year. A mural with the name of the town, and with a statue of a guy standing on the corner have filled many Flickr feeds. When the mural was damaged by fire in 2004, the Eagles donated a signed guitar that was raffled off to help repair it.</p><p><br></p><p>According to Glenn Frey, the message of this song is, "You shouldn't get too big too fast."</p>