The Story Behind ‘Take It Easy’
WINSLOW, Ariz. – On life’s journey, we like to take our favorite music with us. When the pace of our travels through the everyday grind gets to be too fast and tiring, it’s nice to know there is a place where we can pull over, take a breather and pay closer attention to the lyrics.
Such a “rest area” exists here. This is the town that the Eagles immortalized in their 1972 debut single, “Take It Easy.”
This music mecca is the Standin’ On The Corner Park, and visitors can experience a harmonic convergence of rock and roll and American folklore.
The park, located at Second Street and Kinsley Avenue, sits right next to the roadway that used to be the legendary U.S. Route 66. It opened in 1999.
Sure, it’s obvious that Winslow’s city fathers conceived the park as a way to draw tourists and their dollars to prop up the town’s sagging economy. Ever since Interstate 40 bypassed Winslow in the late 1970s, magical Route 66 has been gone. Much of the old Santa Fe Railroad town’s income went away with “Main Street of America” when it was decommissioned.
What makes the Standin’ On The Corner project so charming, however, is the way its components appeal to so many of us. And it offers us a way to see and touch our music, rather than just listen to it.
The centerpiece is a life-sized statue named “Easy,” sculpted by Montana’s Ron Adamson. It depicts a young man, holding a guitar while he stands on the street corner. The man depicted in bronze resembles Jackson Browne.
The concept comes straight out of the song lyrics crafted by Los Angeles musician Browne and the late Glenn Frey: “Well, I’m a-standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, such a fine sight to see. It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowin’ down to take a look at me.”
The girl in the pickup truck appears in a mural painted by California artist John Pugh on the wall of a two-story building that borders the west side of the park. As if our imaginations need fuel, the mural also shows the silhouette of a man and woman through an upstairs window. Their faces are not visible, but they are embracing.
As a nod to the superstar band, of which Frey was a member, Pugh added a bald eagle perched on an adjacent windowsill.
The park received a second statue in 2016. It depicts Frey, who died on Jan. 18 of that year. Mark Devine and Paul Marshall, disc jockeys at Phoenix radio station KSLX, helped raise the funds needed for the statue’s creation.
While the clear, blue high-desert sky serves as a ceiling for the park, the floor is paved by donor bricks. Priced at $50, $100 and $500, the personalized bricks are helping to pay for the park and other revitalization of downtown Winslow.
An annual festival is scheduled at the park for the last weekend of September. Food, arts, crafts and clothing are available for purchase. A beer garden and carnival rides usually add to the entertainment.
The highlight of the weekend is a Saturday night show featuring live rock bands, and Eagles music normally is a staple of the set lists.
Diane Patterson, who was the owner of Roadworks Gifts & Souvenirs, personally has contributed to the ambience of the park. From her shop across the street, before she retired, she continuously played Eagles recordings over outdoor speakers. It was the perfect finishing touch to the Standin’ On The Corner experience.
Patterson owned a different shop in the neighborhood before the park was built. It was on the second story of a two-story building. “I figured out from the second day I was open that, if anyone was going to know I was there, it would have to be from sound,” she said. “Signs were not enough.
“So I got out my record player and put the speakers by an open window and started playing Eagles songs.”
Later she deployed a three-disc CD changer and included “Take It Easy” at least twice on every three discs she played.
Patterson, whose family moved to Winslow in 1954, became an Eagles fan early in their career when she saw then in concert in Denver. “Years later I was doing my own research on the music of Route 66, and that brought me back to the Eagles,” she explained. “Winslow is full of musical history. Touring acts used to travel from east to west on Route 66 and would stop here. We had all kinds of people from Glenn Miller to Roy Orbison play here. Supposedly, the Eagles played here a long time ago.”
According to Patterson, the “Take It Easy” song lyrics were born of an experience Browne had in the town. “He was here, and his car was broken down when he was on one of his trips to Sedona. He and four Indians were hanging out and ended up spending the night in jail for loitering. Too much standing on the corner, I guess.
“He wrote lyrics from that experience, and he was always singing them around Glenn Frey after they met. But he was stuck and couldn’t finish it. Glenn came up with the line ‘it’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford …’ and that’s how he got songwriting credit – just for finishing the second verse.”
The Eagles thought enough of “Take It Easy” that they made it one of two songs they played at their 1998 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The pairing of a popular song lyric with the mystique of U.S. 66 was a natural for Winslow. Baby boomers yearn for the days when Route 66 was a bustling thoroughfare that carried Midwesterners and their dreams toward the West Coast. And they love their rock music.
Winslow is the place to stop for a spell and celebrate that union.
