by Matt Konkle
Managing Editor
The song. The melody. The whole standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona thing. It is quite catchy.
Heck, you are probably humming “Take it Easy” right now like we were on Friday’s Day Four of our trip from West Chester, Pennsylvania to the Specialty Equipment Market Association Show in Las Vegas.
Our last leg from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Vegas saw us keep rolling west on I-40 and the route brought us just north of Winslow, so we thought why not stop, right?
So we did.
Like so many tens of thousands (if not more) before us.
So we pulled into Winslow right around lunch and found a nice open parking lot next to a fully-restored (and inactive) Texaco gas station.
The song’s lyrics go, "Well, I'm standing 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.'' And it didn’t take us long to find that corner as dozens of people milled around it with smartphones sticking up and heads bopping to piped-in Eagles music that blanketed the corner.
The song was written for the Eagles by Jackson Browne back in the early 1970s, and according to a 2003 interview with filmmaker and writer Cameron Crowe, Browne came up with the line shortly after being stranded once in Winslow. However, he was also stuck on how to actually finish it off into something worthy of a song line.
Glenn Frey suggested adding the bit about a flatbed Ford and suddenly the whole thing clicked.
"Jackson was so thrilled. He said, 'OK! We co-wrote this.' But it's certainly more of him,'' Frey said.
All that notoriety from a huge song and band was a lifeline to Winslow, which had been slowly ebbing away since I-40 totally displaced Route 66 and encouraged travelers to bypass the town in the name of riding convenience.
Winslow pretty much went all in with those lyrics, creating the corner complete with Route 66 Highway badging, statues of Frey and Don Henley, a nearby park to host concerts, a brick wall backdrop emblazoned with Winslow, Arizona and finished with a reflection showing a girl driving a flatbed Ford. There is even an actual flatbed Ford sitting on a nearby curb.
What’s nice is the band totally embraced the town’s attempts to capitalize on the lyrics. In fact, Henley ended up donating $1,000 to help build ‘Standin’ On The Corner Park’ where there is now music concerts.
When Frey passed away in 2016, many in the town gathered at the park and on the corner near his statue to hold a special memorial service.
"We're so appreciative here in Winslow, not just for Glenn Frey but for the Eagles,'' Bob Hall, chief executive of the Winslow Chamber of Commerce, said in a 2016 newspaper interview. "Everybody knows that song, and it's helped us get Winslow back on the map.''
Of course, we took our requisite selfies as well, and soaked up the corner’s atmosphere for about a half hour as we watched families, couples and just random individuals wander up, survey the corner, take their own picture, and then saunter off to either the gift store across the street or nearby soda shop.
Yup, standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, such a fine sight to see.
