After much speculation, it's official. Country star Vince Gill and -- as previously announced -- the late Glenn Frey's 24-year-old son, Deacon, will join the Eagles lineup when the band plays the Classic West and Classic East festivals, set for July 15th and 16th at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles and July 29th and 30th at Citi Field in New York.
The news was announced in the Los Angeles Times, which talked the key players involved. Gill said, "In my mind, I always thought I'd have made a good Eagle. But in a million years, I never would have seen this coming. It’s pretty surreal. I turned 60 recently, and to get to be a part of this amazing legacy of songs, that’s the greatest part of all this for me."
Head Eagle Don Henley said he saw Deacon play some of his father's songs at Glenn Frey's memorial, and that helped convince him. Henley said, "I think of the guild system, which in both Eastern and Western cultures is a centuries-old tradition of the father passing down the trade to his son, and to me, that makes perfect moral and ethical sense. The primary thing is I think Glenn would be good with it — with both of these guys. I think he’d go, ‘That’s the perfect way to do this.'" (Los Angeles Times)