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

kinda love this song. ultimate camaro rock.

http://www.dankoreproductions.com/wp-content/themes/danko/images/static-headers/1974-1977-camaro-z-28.jpg

Eagles Disco! How nuts it must have been to have heard this for the first time in '75. To go from "Best of My Love" to this. That said, I'm not too crazy about this one. Decent enough groove, but the guys once again prove that while they have excellent taste in influences, they were still streets behind in emulating them.

cameron:

ONE OF THESE NIGHTS
DON: We’d started to explore our love of rhythm & blues and the Gamble & Huff records that came out of Philadelphia. We were also huge fans of Al Green. Glenn was the catalyst for this song. I think he sat down with a guitar and started playing that rhythm part [sings it]. It was another song from the “Lyin’ Eyes” house. We like to call it our “satanic country-rock period” [laughs]. Because it was a dark time, both politically and musically, in America. There was turmoil in Washington and disco music was starting to take off. We thought, “Well, how can we write something with that flavor, with that kind of beat, and still have the dangerous guitars?” We wanted to capture the spirit of the times. So, perched up there on top of that hill, almost all night, every night, we had a big, phantasmagorical scene which included songwriting and, uh — research. Lots of research.

The song is a great showcase for high harmony. Meisner hit some notes that only dogs could hear. We also started getting into harmony parts on guitars that simulated horn riffs. It was a cool record.

GLENN: We had Don Henley’s voice, which allowed us to go in a more soulful direction, which made me exceedingly happy. There’s no doubt in my mind that One Of These Nights was the most fluid and “painless” album we ever made. A lot of things came together on One Of These Nights — our love of the studio, the dramatic improvement in Don’s and my songwriting. We made a quantum leap with “One Of These Nights.” It was a breakthrough song. It is my favorite Eagles record. If I ever had to pick one, it wouldn’t be “Hotel California”; it wouldn’t be “Take It Easy.” For me, it would be “One Of These Nights.”

I'm gonna start calling all the bad stuff I do "research".

Roach otm, this is their best track

if i were in that camero i'd be playing air guitar on the first two notes of that guitar solo.

the whole arrangement is so tight. the major sevenths behind the "oooohs" on that bridge part. where did this thing come from?

for a long time I thought "Nights" was the Eagles hearing "Jive Talkin'" and firing this off in response (esp given the falsetto harmonies in the outro), but as it turns out it pre-dates any of the '75 Bee Gees records. So working in parallel courses w/the Gibbs, it seems.

it's basically "Son of 'Witchy Woman'," much like how "Already Gone" was a snottier update of "take it easy." Build on the original hit, play it hard and give it even more hooks. This is a monster: ultimate Camaro rock as scott said.

yt commenter: "This verse may possibly be some of the best songwriting in history. I feel so cheated as my generation seem to think songwriting means saying "bitch", "dollar" and for some reason "jagger" over and over until you have a hit. This here is the real stuff!"

verse in question is the "searching for the daughter of the devil himself" w

I'm with Henley here: when they started to fuck with R&B, that's when they started to get truly great. This record is fucking exquisite, and there were more in this vein to come, all of which I treasure.

I like how he hints there that disco is of a piece with the Nixon end times. I'm sure at the time he and Frey would have said that disco en masse is worse than Kiss or the New York Dolls. But his groove here is leagues better than when he tried to rock via "James dean" or "Already Gone." He mentions gamble and huff, and we will get to their version of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes in…the middle of next week? I guess the producer whose name is too difficult to remember how to spell got the flavor that Randy wanted from the dismissive Johns.

poor Leadon looking like a guy captured and brainwashed by some knock-off Aleister Crowley cult in the above photo

when i played this on the porch this morning rufus called it "70's afro-funk" and he's never even seen a picture of don henley.

great song, arrangement, harmony vocals; a tasteful sub-Dan guitar solo; does not wear out its welcome at 4:53; totally different style and feel from the equally-solid BOML ... this is almost enough to make me forget how torturous the filler has been

That into is straight up genius

that is one long damn outro/fadeout. 90 seconds plus!

Yeah I thought it was flabby at first but there's quite a lot going on in there - high harmonies, disco guitars and such

My favorite Eagles track. Love this song. It gets stuck in my head for days and I don't mind it being there at all.

it's a super-groovy catchy song...that kiiiinda sounds like it's sung by a stalker

i think I'll use this to build my case that Henley was the Zodiac killer

but in all seriousness it's pretty fantastic. I love singing along to the high parts

Another of their best tracks, and unlike BOML, Henley's lead vocal sounds ideal for this song. I've heard this for three decades and never noticed the R&B/disco-ness of it (or what sounds like Bee Gees influence, though as mentioned earlier this (very) slightly predates their disco/falsetto phase).

Yeah, there was a thread a few months back about when rock went disco, and I'd never thought about it that way either 'til then

best intro ever in the history of intros.

― scott seward, Saturday, September 21, 2013 7:44 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

One reason I always hated this song is because the beginning sounded like a lazy rip of "Come Together." Listening again, they're not that similar, but I can't get excited about this song. The groove is alright, and even at his worst Henley's singing doesn't annoy me, but it's just so stiff. This is probably the first thing I'd reach for if someone asked what stiff playing sounds like.

basically when i HEAR that intro i think its the best intro ever. always sounds very cool to me. i love how the whole thing sounds.

yeah, it's a great headphones song, lotsa layers

cannot deal with this song

:(

now and forever

"Too Many Hands"

http://a.espncdn.com/photo/2012/1209/play_g_felder_gb1_576.jpg

http://youtu.be/YIq1RDwvRSM

tablas by Don Henley

Fake Randy kinda my favorite Eagle.

http://www.gambling911.com/gambling-news/randy-meisner-imposter-still-conning-super-bowl-vegas-020409.html

http://www.sfweekly.com/1998-04-29/news/fake-it-to-the-limit/

This feels like a Skynyrd rip, but I can't pin down exactly which Skynyrd song they're ripping off. The tablas are a nice touch, in that they defensively shout, "Hey! We're ambitious! L-look!....um...tablas!"

As we're walking, I walked up very close behind and said "give me my ticket". He reached in to his pocket and handed me my ticket......GOT IT!

Ticket to the limit

anyway, kinda reminds me of mark gormley for some reason.

the Eagles couldn't sequence their records worth a damn: let's follow "Nights" with a second-rate piece of Randy clunk ("we are doing what is best/for our future") and just derail any momentum we've got. the story of Fake Randy Meisner is eight times more interesting than this track. Outro is okay: Felder's riffs and even Henley-on-tablas.

I consistently confuse these guys. Leadon? Meisner? Felder? I'm lost in a fog of Anglo-ness.

The only thing missing from this band of Randy, Dons and Glenn was a guy named Gary.

For the first 10 seconds or so I could pretend I was listening to Fleetwood Mac, but Randy's range is not quite as high as Stevie's

moon spoon night right blah blah
randy's lyrics are always so, idk, nowhere. like a shitty steve miller

nice guitar though

i don't mind it as album filler it's just kind of a boring comedown from that great opener

i didn't know randy meisner existed before this thread

"One of These Nights" also marks the exciting shift of Eagles LPs named after the first track of side 1, rather than the last track of side 1.

Randy's the token Poco dude

yeah for me this is a quantum leap (been listening all along; wish I had my dad's Eagles vinyl, but spotify is doing the trick ok).....in my head, though, the production is pushed more in the direction of disco/funk stones...that falsetto! it's so wrong, but so right--like some guy has Maurice Williams at knifepoint...

Randy's the token Poco dude dog

let's get to know our eagles. Bernie Leadon was a world-class banjo player who was in the critically acclaimed country-rock supergroups Dillard & Clark and the Flying Burrito Brothers. he's a bluegrass guy who could play anything. banjo, guitar, mandolin, etc. not a rock star type.

http://www.nashvilleledger.com/Editorial_Images/10017.jpg

http://i510.photobucket.com/albums/s348/chilca0001/Bernie%20Leadon/bernie4.jpg

Randy Meisner moved to california and ended up in the band Poco. They kicked him out of the band and replaced him with a dog. he joined Eagles and played bass and sang on one HUGE Eagles song and then he quit the band because he HATED touring. also not a rock star type.

http://hollywoodagogo.com/Randy%20Meisner%20young.jpg

Don Felder was a guitarist from Florida who had been in bands with Bernie Leadon and Stephen Stills and he kicked around the country as a guitarist until he ended up in california playing with david blue and the eagles got to know him via his old pal Bernie and when they needed some extra guitar work he did some studio time and ended up in the band and kinda cemented their trademark double guitar camarorock signature sound.

http://images.gibson.com/Lifestyle/English/aaFeaturesImages2010/don-felder_Doubleneck.jpg

frey and henley you know. joe walsh you know. timothy b. schmit came later replacing randy meisner on bass just as he had replaced randy in poco after randy got booted from poco.

that was for alfred.

yeah randy seemed really not cut out for the rockin life, he had a family & the whole nine when he joined the eagles, right?

whoops--one song behind.....(listens): yeah, today's kinda sucks.

eagles had a good poco depth chart

I don't mind this one too much - it's not more than filler, but it's decent filler with a bit of drive and good guitars, as opposed to the slow plodders on earlier albums.

The vocal though, he sounds so uptight having to strain for every note.