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

you sure it's not frey who's looking like bob pollard there?

http://img.comc.com/zoom/bb173365-f655-4af1-9f2c-6fbee5c03f9d.jpg

"The Hollywood Waltz": Yeah, this would have been a better Glenn song. Nice ornamental mandolin from Bernie. WTF cymbal crashes from the Donster. Overall just a weigh station to the majesty of tomorrow's track.

Yeah tomorrow makes up for a lot.

i have no idea what it could be
there's majesty in the eagles?

I read ahead on wikipedia, and I can honestly say I am intrigued.

It feels wrong to say that about the Eagles, though.

i still want your expert take on those crashing cymbals on this song today!

Thread's lost me I'm afraid. I listened to this one a few times, and nothing. Then I get here to find football players. I'll stick around to see what tomorrow's majesty is, then see how it is from there.

One hint: don't forget your towel

Don't panic

"WHAT? YOU WANT THE CYMBALS HIGHER IN THE MIX? HOW BOUT THAT, HENLEY? DOES THAT WORK FOR YOU?"

Yeah, awkward cymbal mix, and Henley is flailing.

lol upcoming track is a doozy

i've got a fever, and the only cure is more cymbal

Don't Fear The Felder

"Journey Of The Sorcerer"

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v92/lorddalek/Hitchhikers8.jpg

http://youtu.be/MbhAf62wfgE

Bernie in space!

Had high hopes for this. Turns out it's an instrumental "Convoy" on ludes.

eagles in the wild, last weekend:

i was in the liquor store, not too long after it opened on sunday. someone turns on the stereo and it's "peaceful easy feeling," really, really loud. after a few seconds, someone cuts in on the store intercom/pa system--"brian, needs to be a little softer. yeah, softer than that."

anyone know the back story on this one? Did Frey and Henley play this through gritted teeth, fantasizing about breaking Leadon's banjo over his head, or was everyone on board for this sorta-prog moment?

was everyone on board for this sorta-prog moment?

I repeat:

http://www.up-front.org/vintage_richmond/Yes-The_Eagles-Richmond_Coliseum.jpg

This song is ridiculous and I think I love it?

I would definitely go see that concert, but I would probably skip the opening act. Unless they promised to play an extended jam of JOURNEY OF THE SORCERER.

I like this, I would never have recognized it as the Eagles. My exposure to "Hitchhiker's Guide" is only indirect, but this still sounds very familiar.

Is it possible this song has been Leadon's biggest revenue stream from his time in the band? His other writing credits are mostly on Desperfiller and I guess he's missed out on most of the reunion $$$?

JOURNEY OF THE SORCERER!!!!!!!!

Oh man. Amazing.

If Stephen King doesn't use this in the TV movie adaptation of the Dark Tower, he is missing out on a sublime opportunity.

xp okay I didn't know about the Hitchhiker's Guide connection. I guess I am not the only one to figure out what this song is good for.

Felder indicates in his book that no, Frey and Henley were not into this. IIRC leadon hired a bunch of session folks and dubbed them the something or other orchestra. It's on the back of the album.

it was a sad day for my anglophile punk nerd teenage self to learn that the theme of "Hitchhikers" was by the fucking Eagles

from wiki: The Royal Martian Orchestra - strings on "Journey of the Sorcerer"

I can get with this one. It's not prog though, not really, other than the title and the folky banjo bits. What it is is a spaghetti western theme - unfortunately not an especially memorable one, but I admire the sweep of the thing. The strings had me lolling at first but on repeat listens it works.

It's so unEagles though, Bitter Creek's the only vaguely similar thing in mood or arrangement so far.

This one's pretty amazing: first for being released in the first place; second for the Hitchhiker's Guide; third for being "Space Bluegrass"; and fourth for taking up enough room on the album that we in theory were saved from a couple more Frey/Henley mediocrities in it's place.

Is it possible this song has been Leadon's biggest revenue stream from his time in the band? His other writing credits are mostly on Desperfiller and I guess he's missed out on most of the reunion $$$?

According to a RS "Where Are They Now?" piece on Leadon & Meisner circa Long Road Out of Eden, both of them are actually doing pretty good. Leadon pointed out that the first Hits album still sells better annually than most new release best sellers, and figure in that he also still gets a piece of the first four albums (and Meisner has those plus Hotel California and parts of Eagles Live and Hits II).

Poco did this combination of banjo, strings and pompousness first and far better with "Crazy Eyes"

leadon has witchy woman co-write on greatest hits
42 mil worldwide
I think he's set w/o factoring songwriting credits from first 4 plus other comps

taking up enough room on the album that we in theory were saved from a couple more Frey/Henley mediocrities in it's place.

this.

also for some reason both this song and the one of these nights album art remind me of kansas.

We haven't paid fealty to the cover art of this LP yet have we. I can't front: despite being the progenitor to rafts of pukey kitsch this album cover slays.

man Glenn Frey is an A-1 dick.

"I withstood the abuse until I could no longer tolerate it, and stood up for myself," Felder told Rolling Stone in 2008. "Now I feel a huge weight off my shoulders. You know, I admire a band like U2 who share a brotherly love and, despite the money, still care about the music. That was never the case, and never will be, with the Eagles. . . I find it ironic that a band with a name that stands for freedom in America is ruled with iron fists. When you can't even have fun onstage without being accused of pulling focus, it's time to question why you're there. I wasn't willing to do it for the money."

Randy Meisner doesn't share Felder's bitterness. "You're wasting your time thinking about that stuff," he said. "I got a great business manager. When he invests, you make money. I got my house paid off, my wife, two little chihuahuas and tomato plants that are five feet high right now. I'm happy as a clam."

Bernie Leadon has a similar attitude. "When my son was around 12, he asked me if I regretted leaving the band," he says. "I told him if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have met his mother, and he wouldn't exist. And I wouldn't trade him for anything. I have a lot to be grateful for. Also, when those early albums sell, I still make money. The first Greatest Hits album goes platinum every single year. I get royalties just like it was a new album. In a way, I'm still part of a band that goes platinum every year."

It's fascinating how Frey and Henley each have so few solo writing credits: it's like they can't be mediocre apart.

"In a way, I'm still part of a band that goes platinum every year."

seriously, this is pretty cool. even if you did have to hang out with those two doofuses for so long. that's gotta be some real money.

i mean anyone with a co-write credit probably lives off of eagles money, no? tempchin. souther. jackson has his own money. but take it easy money is probably nothing to sneeze at.

Royalty statements fascinate me. I suppose it depends on his publishing deal. Does he make enough to pay for a house and not work for the rest of his life?

It took some doing for them tho:

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/73339/songwriters-settle-eagles-royalty-suit

haha, well there you go!

Happy for Randy with his chihuahuas.

Royalty statements fascinate me. I suppose it depends on his publishing deal. Does he make enough to pay for a house and not work for the rest of his life?

at this level, absolutely.

i'm a bit rusty on this, but as a very rough rule, the songwriting royalties from one song on a million selling album are roughly $70,000. so if an album is selling a million copies every freaking year, that's $70,000 every freaking year. if it's a three-way co-write and the writers are dividing the money equally (which is a big if, but only the writers and their lawyers and businesspeople can answer that), that's $23,000 per year from that one song based on sales of that one album. but that's not the only album that song is on, so you're getting royalties from all those other album sales too. and those are only mechanical royalties. if you were a member of your band, you're also getting royalties from all those album sales, separate from your publishing. and you're getting your ascap or bmi money from radio and tv play. and you're getting sync money.

and then there's all those other songs you wrote.

so yeah i'd say the eagles are making him a very good living in 2013.

so if you wrote 10 songs on a million selling album, that's $700,000?

I think that's one of the reasons U2 and R.E.M. credited every song to every band member, just to avoid songwriting problems like this.

(xp) roughly, yes.

i like to think that bands like u2 and rem, in addition to being smart in a business sense, do that because they understand that authorship is hazy at best in a band situation. and even if bono or edge or buck or whoever walks in with a perfect, fully-formed song, with all the guitar and bass and drum parts and harmonies carefully laid out before, never to be changed by anyone else, why should he get paid billions of bucks more than everybody else for the rest of his life, when everybody else is spending exactly as much time as he is in the rehearsal space, on the road, etc.? i'm sure, in the end, bono and the edge are getting more money than their rhythm section anyway, but i think songwriting credits and the accompanying opportunities for wealth are a great way for musicians to be rewarded for their work no matter who came up with the words.

I dunno if they've changed their deal, but iirc Paul McGuinness got publishing dough. That's the way did things until the early twenties. No songwriting credit, obviously, and he contributed nothing, but the generosity acknowledged his integral part.

I seem to remember Stipe crediting certain R.E.M. songs ("Driver 8" was one) entirely to Bill Berry, admitting that no one else in the band contributed. And yet they all ended up super rich and not dicks to each other.

it's where some 1980s bands had the benefit of history: they saw how much publishing, etc. became toxic for everyone from the Beatles to Creedence to the Band, and saw that they could preempt this problem at the start by crediting all songs to everyone.

remember reading in keith's book how he thought bill wyman was so dumb because he left before the big tours and that's where they made so much money and he definitely wasn't getting huge royalty checks with almost zero songwriting credits to his name.