A Good Day In Hell - The Official ILM Track-By-Track EAGLES Listening Thread

"Best Of My Love"

http://images.45cat.com/the-eagles-usa-best-of-my-love-asylum-2.jpg

http://youtu.be/z_M_27ciAKI

best song on the album if you ask me. its so good you wonder what the hell happened.

sad that my picture didn't show up. damn internet.

here's another one.

http://a.espncdn.com/photo/2013/0812/eagles_facial_b_g_mp_576.jpg

i mean its understated and tasteful and the arrangement fits so well and its performed in a no big deal way and its just really pretty and it flows nicely. i guess we should give all the cedit to souther. because almost everything else on this album doesn't fit that description.

/eagles_facial_b_g_mp_576.jpg

The setting is gorgeous. Insofar as I've a problem with it at all, it's with Henley's singing. Normally I want him on vocals, but not here - feels like it could've done with somebody cleaner for once to have everything bed down just so.

thought that pic was Randy Newman for a sec

you would not BELIEVE the ad i had to sit through to listen to this song in order to give it some kind of second chance
and even so, i'll say that it's among the least offensive hits
but i would much rather hear linda ronstadt singing it because don henley makes me sick

He had a chainsaw he'd bring on tour w him for fucking up hotel rooms. It was a gift to him from Azoff.

e.g. http://vimeo.com/64433918

http://images.45cat.com/the-eagles-best-of-my-love-1974-s.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/FWL0iuI.jpg

Haha, fuck that guy. Just wanted to see if I could break his amazing hotlinking security.

<!--
                     .-.   .-.
                    /   \ /   \
                .-. |    |    | .-.
               /   \ \  / \  / /   \
               |   |  '`.-.`'  |   |
                \_.' .-`   `-. '._/
                  .-'         '-.
                 /               \
                 |   45cat.com   |
                  \             /
                   '.___...___.'
                                              .-.   .-.
                                             /   \ /   \
                                         .-. |    |    | .-.
                                        /   \ \  / \  / /   \
                                        |   |  '`.-.`'  |   |
                                         \_.' .-`   `-. '._/
                                           .-'         '-.
                                          /               \
                                          |  © 2008-2013  |
                                           \             /
                                            '.___...___.'

good job!

i love this... especially compared to the terrible stuff that got us here.

If this album had just this track and the first three, it'd make a blinding EP. The middle stretch is extraordinary in its shitness.

http://i.imgur.com/IkBLyCT.jpg

Thanks, Scott.

Sorry, but this Henley -esque display of sensitivity makes me puke.

This is another one that's really fun to sing.

This is obviously better than most Eagles tracks, but I am listening with great trepidation, knowing it's going to be stuck in my head for the next several hours ... it's hard to convey just how overplayed this track was on 70s radio

This was the single that REALLY blew them up, right?

I was listening to this song when one of my coworkers called me and I answered the phone by crooning the chorus to her so thanks for helping to improve my working relationships, Eagles!

Normally I want him on vocals, but not here - feels like it could've done with somebody cleaner for once to have everything bed down just so.

this.

and, yeah, this was their real pop breakthrough, their first #1. they had only barely scratched the top 10 before this with "witchy woman," which got to #9.

Aside from the the Xmas song, every single from here up to "Seven Bridges Road" went top ten (and that one went Top 25 while the former hit Top 20).

"The Best of My Love": This has been sonic wallpaper to me for so long. Upon actually listening to it with some care, it's a pleasant, well-crafted tune; you really get a sense of their influence on late '70s-early '80s Mainstream Country. Very Urban Cowboy, and JD Souther as well. You can probably still score his 70s stuff (three solo albums and two SHF Band lps) on vinyl for a worthwhile $5-10 bucks total.

Crowe:

THE BEST OF MY LOVE
DON: A lot of the lyrics were actually written in Dan Tana’s at a booth we liked to sit in, on the front side of the bar area. J.D. Souther wrote the bridge and it was perfect. That was the period when there were all these great-looking girls who didn’t really want to have anything to do with us. We were just scruffy new kids who had no calling card. We could be cocky at times — which was really just a front — but we weren’t very sophisticated or confident. We were typical, frustrated, young men. We wanted the girls to like us, but we had all the immature emotions that young men have — jealousy, envy, frustration, lust, insecurity, and the lot. At the same time, however, we were also becoming quite adept at brushing off girls who showed any interest in us. “If you want to be with me, I can’t possibly give you the time of day. I want that girl over there who couldn’t care less if I live or die.” Hence the line in “Desperado”: “You only want the ones that you can’t get.” We knew ourselves even then. Even in our immaturity we had some insight into our flawed little characters [rueful laughter]. Shaw was right — “Youth is wasted on the young.”

GLENN: I was playing acoustic guitar one afternoon in Laurel Canyon, and I was trying to figure out a tuning that Joni Mitchell had shown me a couple of days earlier. I got lost and ended up with the guitar tuning for what would later turn out to be “The Best of My Love.”

Also in To The Limit, it's reported that Azoff & co. were so pissed that Asylum cut nearly a minute out of the song for a 'radio edit' that they made sure the label's copy of the gold record the song earned had a portion broken off.

hello FCC! enjoying the assholes complaining about how NYC/Brooklyn is no good now that they're no longer in their 20s on that other forum you and I fuck with?

1. on the crowe notes cited by whoever uptthread, Frey talks about how he uses Joni Mitchell tuning on this cut…(written AT THE SAME TIME as a made man"s post!)

2. One time, Mick Fleetwood or someone else in the FM camp fucked with Stevie by sending a shit-ton of flowers and whatever mystical stuff she would like to her room, with the note "Stevie, the Best of My Love, tonight?" Of course, he later got her pregnant during his "love 'em and lear em" phase.

...and then she wrote "Sara" about the aborted baby, as revealed by the Donster in an 90s interview.

Shaw was right — “Youth is wasted on the young.”

ugh fuck this creep

there is nothing like watching someone who had never learned how to play the bass play the bass for 30 years. so bizarre. on the other hand, some of them are inadvertent Boredoms-level dementia noise solos.

― scott seward, Thursday, September 19, 2013 5:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i wld like a grayfolded-like disc of this, pl

hello FCC! enjoying the assholes complaining about how NYC/Brooklyn is no good now that they're no longer in their 20s on that other forum you and I fuck with?

ha! and yes! and since you are asking me this in the middle of a discussion about the eagles, i will note that here in LA, home of the eagles, i have never heard a single person complain about how much better things used to be. not once. ever.

It's hard to think critically about this track---it's the sound of my childhood, still stuck in the first floor of my memory (for some reason, I associate it with a shabby steakhouse off the Blue Ridge Parkway that my folks went to on their anniversary)---but I agree that Henley isn't quite the right fit here, though he's by far the best singer in the band.

As much as I've blasted him, and will continue to, this song might've worked better with Frey. Because there's a real callowness in the lyric, sung by a dude who promises "the best" of his love is still reserved for the girl he's leaving (the bottom 40% of his love gets spent elsewhere, one imagines). Sung in Frey's voice, its innate shadiness would've come through stronger; Henley sweetened it out too much. Still, this is the song that broke 'em big; there's a sort of B.C./A.D. Eagles moment with this one and tomorrow's (unless there's a B-side i've forgotten) entry.

no non-album b-sides for on the border.

yeah, from a quick look at the singles: the Eagles were pretty stingy on non-LP b-sides, huh? there's like one in the whole decade.

The Christmas/New Year single is the only other non-lp item from their Imperial Phase.

any link to the Henley interview about "Sara"? I've heard this story for years. I hope it's true.

I forgot to say yesterday, but the key change in Good Day In Hell is disgusting

@FCC could that be because people in LA are stupid and shallow? that's not my impression…but that's inevitably what people who have lived there but are now in NYC believe…

Odd that so many of you don't seem to care for Kiss. I have a certain amount of NYC pride in them, as they are indisputably the biggest NYC band ever. I look at them as the Yankess to the Ramone's Mets. I also think they wrote and recorded awesome, well-crafted songs about partying and fucking: alongside Van Halen and Aerosmith, they are part of the Holy Trinity that inspired a bunch of dirtbags to move to the Sunset Strip, fuck chicks, do drugs, look ridiculous and make frequently great songs about partying and fucking. The Eagles, notably, yielded the mantle of dominant SoCal band to VH: you didn't see a bunch of bands in 80s LA evoking them.

It is true that Kiss doesn't have much of footprint on Classic rock radio. On another thread, i spoke of the tendencies of AOR radio in Louisville KY, more or less reflective of mid-south/Mid west culture. Kiss was not played on this format in the early 80s. I think, to programmers in the era that immediately predated "classic rock" and for that matter Clear Channel, Kiss were embarrassing. They were for kids, and also were kinda old-fashioned by 82-83. By that same token, I never ever heard Springsteen, Van Morrison, or Led Zeppelin or in fact the Eagles on the AOR station in Louisville. Those acts were basically gone.

But they did play don Henley. They played John Cougar. They played Journey. They played 38 Spayshul. They played the new singles by the acts that AOR programmers and the consultants I'm sure were on the case knew young southern/midwestern males dug. In many ways, AOR was just the top 40 of guys that were suspicious of black people and what their girlfriends liked. Classic rock radio, which emerged a few years later, is really quite boring relatively speaking.

But in my experience, AOR never fucked with glam metal. they started and stopped with Van Halen. No Motley Crue and no Ratt. Kiss of course hitched their cart to the genre they inspired, and this was reflected by their presence on MTV in the mid '80s. but later, I think, Kiss is still held at arm's length by classic rock radio. which speaks well of Kiss.

I am the king of "good day in hell" thread drift. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!

KISS is held at arm's length by classic rock radio because the vast majority of their songs are shitty. those dudes could not write a tune (and they know it!), their playing barely qualifies as "workmanlike" most of the time

i've never liked Kiss. they may be the only well-known american hard rock band that i don't like! how's that for a distinction? on paper they are the greatest thing on earth. i've said it on here before, an evil fire-breathing bloody kabuki devil comic book band? it can't lose! i'd rather listen to the archies any day of the week. my brother loved Kiss when we were kids. my youngest song went through a Kiss phase that lasted for a while and i think i heard enough Kiss to last me my entire life. i have never owned one of their records either. i think if you loved them when you were a kid you will always kinda love them. i can dig it. i like Ace okay. saw him play in a bar in brewster, ny once pre-comeback tours and he was lots of fun. i like his big hit. but even his big hit is nowhere near as good as the original version of his big hit.

as a kid I liked KISS without ever being able to identify their songs on the radio or even tell you what any of their songs were. the music was completely incidental. and you go back and look at their recorded output and it's obvious to see why - their songs suck, they didn't have the hooks or the chops to pull it off.

they needed someone like Chinn/Chapmann behind them feeding them tunes, which just didn't happen for whatever reason (greed probably)

naw. I humbly submit that Clear Channel and its discontents care not one single whit, despite various station Id spots proclaiming fealty to notions of enduring quality, etc etc, for the merits of songs. They care about familiarity. I'm sure market research has decreed Kiss' lack of prominence as such.

As to Kiss' musicianship: the only person onboard who you might cast aspersion towards is Peter Criss, who, BTW, did a better job at enacting his band's rhythmic agenda then Henley did for his. Marginally.

I still dig a tiny handful of Kiss songs, and Alive! is a decent record (though ffs, they were not by any stretch "the P-Funk of white rock" that the 1994 Book Of Rock Lists -- or, more specifically, James Bernard -- proclaimed).

I saw them in 1997, thinking it'd be a fun spectacle, and it was. But two songs in, it dawned on me: they don't swing for shit. They're not AC/DC.

Clear Channel and its discontents care not one single whit, despite various station Id spots proclaiming fealty to notions of enduring quality, etc etc, for the merits of songs. They care about familiarity

not denying this (its definitely true) but the reason KISS songs aren't familiar to most listeners is because their shit isn't actually catchy. "Rock and Roll All Night" is as hook-laden as they got, and that one wears out it's welcome by the end of the first chorus.

i like, don't love, kiss and my favorite song of theirs is "beth," which i'm sure makes me suspicious at best and criminally soft at worst, and which also probably explains why i'm here hanging out on an eagles thread instead of, for example, the bunnybrains thread.

@veronica i have no grand theory re people in la vs people in ny except that maybe i'm not hanging around with enough hipsters and media elitists here in the california sun. also, classic rock radio here plays both the eagles and van halen to death, as one might expect. it also plays both boston and the cars to death. go figure.

I was kinda shocked watching a live clip of their 70s stage show awhile ago at just how leaden they were. I have a dim memory of Simmons willingly copping to their lack of musicianship and songwriting abilities as a factor behind their decision to go so hard with the schtick - they knew they needed something else to get over.

xp

Why in the hell did I think Kiss was from Boston.

I wasn't getting them confused with Aerosmith? But I could've swore that where Kiss was from.

But they're not. Nowhere in the world does it say Kiss is from Boston except wherever my head was at two minutes ago and for the past 35 years.

they are soooooo deadly slow and plodding. and not in a cool doom metal slow and plodding way. and they weren't heavy enough! some good talented heavy band should do an album of kiss songs where everything is faster and heavier. i know people have covered a million kiss songs, but one actual good Kiss album with Kiss nowhere near the place would be cool. i always wished that someone would do that with guided by voices too. have a really good rock band with a good singer cover their best and catchiest songs. and i still want willie nelson to do an album of Dead covers. there is still time. would be his biggest album ever. and he could really do them great. i have a lot of ideas...

Not to distract from the Kiss Konversation, but I just wanted to share that in order to balance out this thread, I ordered and now have received today the first six (count 'em) Michael Nesmith albums on CD.

I'm thinking right now, which would sound better/worse: an album of KISS songs covered by the Eagles, or an album of Eagles songs covered by KISS? Either could be so cringeworthy it would be great......

Back to "Best Of My Love". Nothing to sneer at here; this is a great song and the Eagles' best. Nice guitar picking, a strong melody, gorgeous pedal steel guitar throughout courtesy of Bernie Leadon, and lyrics that adroitly capture those three words I've heard (and said) too many times - "this isn't working":

"I'm going back in time and it's a sweet dream
It was a quiet night, and i would be alright, if i could go on sleeping
But every morning i wake and worry what's gonna happen today
You see it your way, i see it mine, but we both see it slippin' away"

I can't help but imagine an alternate reality where, as with the previous album Desperado, the label issued two flop singles (in this case "Already Gone" which barely cracked the top 40 and "James Dean" which fell far short), and decided to quit there, not bothering to release "Best Of My Love" as a third single just as they didn't "Desperado". They wouldn't have had their first of five chart-toppers, and maybe the Eagles would have shortly thereafter fell into obscurity, or at least a band that couldn't fill stadiums at $150/seat at reunion concerts.