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

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.

Mick & Keith weren't exactly sticklers for proper songwriting credit, though. Just ask Billy Preson, Mick Taylor, or Wyman, who supposedly came up with the riff for "Jumpin' Jack Flash."

Woody Payne made out pretty well from "Love In Vain," though.

And the story goes that "Ruby Tuesday" was a Brian Jones melody.

What kind of falling-out did the Doors have in 1969 to begin crediting writers individually, I wonder? First coupla albums everything was just "The Doors" (or Willie Dixon or Brecht/Weill)

to his credit, Jagger has at least said he had no hand in writing tune or melody of "Ruby Tuesday."

Xpost iirc, the Doors thing was that Krieger wrote most of The Soft Parade and Jim (briefly) wanted people to know who did what.

wow that was like stringy cheez goo slopped all over a perfectly decent spare banjo/drums tune and then at 5:30 i started to kinda like it! the last minute is good!
my feelings about this song are very confused
it's better to know that there were very few eagles on it

I can't front: despite being the progenitor to rafts of pukey kitsch this album cover slays.
agree, esp how the goat head/horns looks like a uterus

album cover hints at a level of coolness that even this mostly-ok eagles album cannot possibly deliver

journey of the sorcerer is good fun; the strings are such a weird addition, almost turns it into a tv theme song

it was a tv theme!

Which is probably a high crime in Henleyland.

i can only imagine how many people wanted to use dirty laundry as a t.v. theme.

it WAS used in To Die For.

Henley's done surprising amount of film work (exclusive tracks in Fast Times..., Vision Quest, er, Leap of Faith). He even gets litigious when you don't want to use his music:

LAWSUIT Don Henley is suing Paramount Pictures, claiming that it reneged on a deal to pay him $1 million (and $25,000 in studio costs) to record a song for the studio's upcoming Ashley Judd/Tommy Lee Jones film ''Double Jeopardy.'' According to Variety, Henley maintains that he struck up an oral agreement with a Paramount executive in July for the tune, which was also to appear on the ex-Eagle's next solo record. However, he says that after he wrote the ballad ''Taking You Home,'' the studio opted to go with a different song and maintained that its deal with Henley wasn't final. The singer's lawsuit claims, ''Paramount is trying to avoid its obligations under the agreement because Paramount's marketing department changed the marketing plans for the movie, deciding to try to sell it as an action/adventure movie, rather than a 'relationship' movie, so that a ballad was no longer appropriate as a focus for the marketing.'' Despite Henley's verbiage, a Paramount rep had no comment.

(from a '99 EW news column--other stories include Martin Lawrence going into a coma, Oliver Stone going to rehab, the announcement of the '99 Family Values lineup, and Janine Turner signing on to a Harold Ramis comedy pilot for HBO. Ah, 1999!)

This story is trending. Was disappointed it wasn't about Glenn Frey getting aggro. Was has this thread done to me?

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Wildlife/2013/0924/Oh-deer%21-Eagle-kills-deer-in-startling-glimpse-of-alpha-bird-behavior

don feldeer

My Eagles sighting of the week, if not the month...

My 30th high school reunion was last weekend - the first event was Friday night in downtown Claremont and as me and my gf walked through town we heard "that opening" coming out of one of the restaurant patios. Sure enough, a dude I can only describe as Parrothead Charlie Daniels was covering "Hotel California" with all of the gusto of a drunk redneck biker. I'll give him a little credit - the glop of reverb he put on his vocals and on the backing track (basic rhythm via some tablet I couldn't ID) gave it a vague Suicide-feeling, but his howling was strictly unintentional. Plus I fucking hate that snappy sound that all modern acoustics-with-built-in-mics seem to make.

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.

Not every member gets the same songwriting royalties in U2 though do they? No matter what the songwriting credits say.

Bono and the Edge get more because they write lyrics.

Bono lets someone else write lyrics?

"Lyin' Eyes"

http://www.glennfreyonline.com/images/GFreyHCSB01.jpg

http://youtu.be/covmIKXwCeM

i feel like almost every single eagles song could be a minute or two shorter. why is this song over 6 minutes long?

oh and as far as U2 goes if i were U2's bass player i think i would be happy to work for a thousand bucks a week plus tips. i would do whatever bono told me to do without fail. and i would make bono's bed at night and get him his slippers. because i would be the luckiest man on earth. even luckier than bill wyman!

Haha, yeah, this (although I think he's a good player).

Man I'm way behind

So one of these nights right into that funky song that sounds like bad company trying to be the bee gees.... killer open! Seems like a new Eagles...urban..then that snoozy Hollywood song kills the nice

Lol this scorcerer song...goofy

Kinda cool. Would never guess it's the eagles

Bet the A&R loved that

Confession: Lyin Eyes is one of my favorites

There's a great bit in the Dixie Chicks' "Shut Up and Sing" doc where a couple of them are in the studio with I want to say Chad Smith, Red Hot Chili doofus, who was playing drums on the record (thanks Rick Rubin). They got to talking about money, and Smith says that the RHCP simply share the credits and split the money four ways, and the one or two Dixie Chicks there was like "you can do that?" Like it was a completely foreign, crazy concept.

If you want to bet on longevity, it looks like Coldplay does that, too. And Radiohead. Maybe not coincidentally, the Rubin-produced Chicks record "Taking the Long Way" is the first where they all seem to share equal credit, more or less.

Lyin' Eyes is hella long. It doesn't drag as such, it's more that at some point I find myself thinking man, I've been listening to this forever. I was pleasantly surprised to find them sticking quite well to three minutes on earlier albums, but I guess that's gone now. A lot of verses and choruses here. No telescoping is possible, there's not a word could've been omitted.

It's okay, obviously well-crafted, but kinda static. Those harmonies - and your smiiiiiiiiiiiiiiile - just sit there, like blocks of Perspex.

What's the last line? 'Money can't hide your lyin' eyes?'