I agree with Donu Arapura's complaint about the artificial distinction between modern and classical algebraic geometry. The only distinction to me seems to be chronological: modern work was done recently, while classical work was done some time ago. However, the questions being studied are (by and large) the same.
As I commented in another post, two of the most important recent results in algebraic geometry are the deformation invariance of plurigenera for varieties of general type, proved by Siu, and the finite generation of the canoncial ring for varieties of general type, proved by Birkar, Cascini, Hacon, and McKernan, and independently by Siu. Both these results would be of just as much interest to the Italians, or to Zariski, as they are to us today. Indeed, they lie squarely on the same axis of research that the Italians, and Zariski, were interested in, namely, the detailed understanding of the birational geometry of varieties.
Furthermore, to understand these results, I don't think that you will particularly need to learn the contents of Eisenbud's book (although by all means do learn them if you enjoy it);
rather, you will need to learn geometry! And by geometry, I don't mean the abstract foundations of sheaves and schemes (although these may play a role), I mean specific geometric constructions (blowing up, deformation theory, linear systems, harmonic representatives of cohomology classes -- i.e. Hodge theory, ... ). To understand Siu's work you will also need to learn the analytic approach to algebraic geometry which is introduced in Griffiths and Harris.
In summary, if you enjoy commutative algebra, by all means learn it, and be confident that it supplies one road into algebraic geometry; but if you are interested in algebraic geometry, it is by no means required that you be an expert in commutative algebra.
The central questions of algebraic geometry are much as they have always been (birational geometry, problems of moduli, deformation theory, ...), they are problems of geometry, not algebra, and there are many available avenues to approach them: algebra, analysis, topology (as in Hirzebruch's book), combinatorics (which plays a big role in some investigations of Gromov--Witten theory, or flag varieties and the Schubert calculus, or ... ), and who knows what others.
I think this is a very good question, because studying commutative algebra on its own is hard, it is much better to do it with some idea of what all that means geometrically.
In my opinion the best entry to commutative algebra is provided by Miles Reid's Undergraduate Commutative Algebra. Miles Reid is an algebraic geometer so when he writes about commutative algebra, it is with geometry in mind. I would say that this book has everything that you need to be able to start in algebraic geometry except dimension theory which is done excellently in Atiyah-MacDonald.
I would suggest that you read this book, which is brief so you don't lose sight of your ultimate goal and you can already start feeling that you're actually reading about geometry. When you're done start reading algebraic geometry. For instance Hartshorne. In that book as you discovered there are a lot of algebra results quoted and even more is needed for the exercises which you absolutely have to do. More than half of the important material is in the exercises!
When you get stuck in a problem, ask yourself if you can translate the problem or part of it to an algebra problem and then see if you can find anything related to that in one of the standard commutative algebra books such as Eisenbud or Matsumura or for that matter the stacks project.
As you discovered you will also need homological algebra, but not just any general homological algebra, but the kind that is used in commutative algebra. There is a great book for that: Bruns-Herzog: Cohen-Macaulay Rings. This is also a big undertaking, but you don't need to read the whole book to get going. Say read the first two chapters, but not even necessarily in one go. Take you time while you're doing some other things. And most importantly, whatever you read in that book (or for that matter in any algebra book) try to see if you can give statements and notions geometric meaning or at least come up with examples that come from geometry. For instance, find your favorite example of a non-Cohen-Macaulay variety. Then find another one.
Of course, as you advance you will need more and more algebra, but after awhile you actually get into the habit of acquiring that knowledge as you go on. It makes more sense to learn these more advanced notions when you get there.
Without trying to be comprehensive, I assume sooner or later you will need to learn about associated primes (this already happens to some extent in Reid's book), integral extensions, going-up, going down theorems, dimension theory, regular sequences, depth, and the big whale: flatness. Flatness is extremely important, but somewhat hard to grasp full depth at first (or even later). Don't despair, you'll start having a feel for it if you keep at it. Anyway, there are many more things to learn, but you didn't ask that.
So for now, I'd say read Reid's book, then read Hartshorne (or something similar) and then try to get the algebra knowledge that you're missing as you go along.
Best Answer
I'm looking at the paper "On the theory of local rings" by Chevalley (Annals of Math. 44 (1943)). In this paper he explains how to localize at a multiplicative set $S$ of non-zero divisors, and calls this the ring of quotients of the set $S$.
There is no question that Chevalley was motivated by algebraic geometry.
The paper "Generalized semi-local rings", by Zariski (Summa Brasiliensis Math. 1 (1946)) attributes the theory of local rings to Krull (in a paper called "Dimensionstheorie in Stellenringen", Crelle 179 (1938), which I don't have a copy of at hand) and Chevalley (in the above mentioned paper), so it seems that the Chevalley reference above is a reasonable guide to the situation.
Of course none of these references quite address the origin of the term localization at $S$, but (based on my prior preconceptions, and bolstered by having looked at these two papers) I am fairly confident that it was indeed motivated by algebraic geometry.