WASHINGTON — Founding member Glenn Frey’s health problems will force the Eagles to defer their Kennedy Center Honor until 2016.
The band, famous for hits such as “Take It Easy” and “Hotel California,” had been scheduled to be part of the Dec. 6 ceremony along with songwriter Carole King, filmmaker George Lucas, actress Rita Moreno, conductor Seiji Ozawa and actress Cicely Tyson.
But the Eagles, in a statement Wednesday, said that Frey, 66, has had a recurrence of “previous intestinal issues, which will require major surgery and a lengthy recovery period.”
Those issues date back to the 1980s, when Frey spoke about the damage he believed he had done to his body during the band’s heyday, when drugs and alcohol flowed freely. In 1986, he missed a much-anticipated reunion with his longtime bandmate Don Henley – the band had broken up for the first time in 1980 – at a benefit concert in California because of an intestinal disorder.
An attempt to reform the Eagles in 1990 was put off, in part, because of surgery to remove a large part of Frey’s intestine. And in 1994, their “Hell Freezes Over” reunion tour was interupted by Frey’s bout with diverticulitis. It resumed the following year.
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