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

agh, sorry for the embed

there is a nice version on the folk album by castleberry and dupree. ubiquitous dollar folk album on the east coast. sweet honey in the rock connection, i think. anyway, their version is great. probably my fave eagles song when all is said and done. its just a really good song. don't know if there are any good country covers of it but there should be.

also, this could totally be a Chicago song. mid-70's Chicago.

''Hey Frey, where's all the high notes you bullied Randy into hitting every night???''

to me, this ain't much to do with gamble and huff: their big harold melvin and the blue notes moment is coming up on HC. this is like a waltz-time, big bucks Nashville production with strings' n shit to me. With the exception of this, I don't much dig their country-derived material.

but yeah, after helming some truly dreadful cuts, Randy done this, his bid for immortality. This record deserves every spin on the radio its had since 1975. Don and Glenn (who introduces it live, groan-inducingly, as "this is my wife's favorite song, about using my black card," hardy-har-har) clearly made it as great as it is, and good for them.

oh shit they STILL do that patter?? When I had to review their '03 show, Frey introduced it with: "This song is for all the guys whose gals push their credit card limits nyuk nyuk"

God they are so gross.

From Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock and Soul: the 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made. "Take It To The Limit" is tied at #830 with Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Lodi" and Irma Thomas' "Wish Someone Would Care":

Annals of Self-Pity.

A Crucial theme in pop music generally, latter-day rock and R&B performers have raised feeling sorry for your poor self to the status of an (exceptionally minor) art form. If whining pleases your palate and millions of James Taylor fans suggest that it can, you've arrived at the right review.

Irma Thomas's plaint may perhaps be the most justifiable. She was, after all, ripped off not just once but twice, and by two of the best: Otis Redding took her "Ruler of My Heart" and converted it into "Pain In My Heart," an experience that must have been leavened very little by the fact that he distinctly improved upon the original. Then the Rolling Stones took "Time Is On My Side," changed nothing much at all (oh, yeah, the guitar lick -- big deal) and cashed bigger checks than Irma would ever see in her life. Of course, the Stones can take no blame or credit for the angst that motivates "Wish Someone Would Care," since they didn't lift "Time" until a few months after "Wish" hit the Top 20, but Irma could undoubtedly see it coming. Sitting lonely in her living room, muttering to herself about injustice, "wondering how I made it and how it's gonna last," grimacing as she recalls every phony smile she's had to deliver as part of her job (any job -- she could be dishing out donuts), Irma seems most disturbed that nobody really appreciates her pain. A familiar feeling, and not only to pop stars.

It's hard to do much with an emotional cliche, but H.B. Barnum doesn't just let it lay there, he tats the story up with gushing strings and a female chorus and portentous bells at the close, so that the full weight of Irma's Sad Sack enervation becomes unmistakable. In this regard, the record lives up to its intentions perfectly, and if you have a taste for this kind of self-immolation (and what critic doesn't?), it's actually almost radiant.

The Eagles were to seventies rock stars what Uncle Scrooge was to comic book characters, the richest, most renowned, and nevertheless the most dissatisfied and greediest. Aspiring to be a Great and Artistic Rock Band, they continually foundered on the fact that God -- or the Muses or the Asylum A&R department or whoever the fuck guides these things -- intended them to be a better-than-passable vocal group, sort of the Hollies with mesquite. As a result they became studio perfectionists. Someone once told me that they used to suck lemons to make sure that their pitch stayed steady, a practice which I've never known anyone else to follow but which sure fits with the emotional tenor of their continual pleas to be taken more seriously.

Actually, the Eagles were often decent Top 40 fare (although if you ever dare tell anyone I admitted it, I'll deny it) and "Take It To the Limit" is a good example of how their music worked. Its harmonies are country but the orchestration is right out the Elton John handbook, layered on with a trowel and then sluicing on a little more, just to make sure you get the picture.

Which is meant to be the Big Picture, the story of a generation's inability to get to grips with its own restless desires, with the cramped horizons of today (ca. 1975) in contrast to the raw, wide-open promises of yesteryear (ca. 1969). I think. It's actually pretty hard to tell, because if the Eagles' arrangements were out of the Elton John handbook, not a bad place to rummage around, as these things go, their lyrics were unfortunately picked up at a Bernie Taupin rummage sale. To be charitable, one would have to call the best of them fuzzily thought out and in the end, after repeated Top 40 immersion, "Take It to the Limit" came to be my favorite mainly because it's the most ludicrous. This song, which wants to desperately to be taken as the heartfelt saga of a wasted generation, winds up summarizing itself in four lines:

You can spend all your time makin' money
You can spend all your love makin' time
If it all falls to pieces tomorrow
Will you still be mine?

I mean, huh? That grab ya? Huh? Huh? How should I know what it means; that was their job and they blew it. But if you've gotta fuck up, do it right and you'll get credit from me. Oh my yes.

Meantime, John Fogerty (as always) has a story to tell. It's a tragic tale, set to a chugging rockabilly beat (surprise, surprise -- nice guitar break before the last verse, though) about a guy who's been out playing a circuit of California dives trying to become a star and after a year -- a whole year! -- is ready to quit in disgust. Just because somebody game him a Next Big Thing write up and it didn't pan out with a record deal.

What makes "Lodi" even more ridiculous is that John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater played that lousy circuit for more like a decade and never gave up, never quit. John Fogerty got drafted and still came back to being a musician. Maybe he thought that this was his story, but it sure wasn't:

If I only had a dollar, for every song I've sung
Every time I've had to play, while people sat there drunk
You know I'd catch the next train, back to where I live
Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again

Sure sounds like the Eagles', though.

Frey bullying Randy to sing this night after night, "come on, hit the high notes for the faaans, man," is really something else. Randy must've had an ocean's worth of patience, because at some point I'd have thrown Frey out a window.

xp: I recalled that Marsh entry when I heard this again. "lyrics picked up a Bernie Taupin rummage sale" is a great dig.

Maybe less an ocean's worth of patience and more "Man, Frey's being a real assho- WOW that's a big check."

Way late but sorry Alfred you're interpreting the entire Petty body of work of one line is total bullshit

Also Take it to the Limit is probably my least fav Eagles hit... so ponderous

one of many redeeming qualities the eagles possess is that Springsteen's Boswell, thus having the same vile, ethically indefensible/ unconscionable relationship that Stanley Crouch does to Wynton Marsalis, doesn't like them. Or didn't up to the point of writing that book, because I seem to remember that he and Henley probably formed an alliance re: some limousine liberal cause or another. Marsh often seems to fuck with artists who dare challenge Springsteen's various hegemonies, although again maybe landau instructed him to cool it.

—signed,

a guy who drunkenly heckled Marsh at a SxSw panel over his conflicts of interest, which was met by the little detroit tough guy's challenge to "meet me outside and say that to my face."

"Take it to the limit one more time" may be the most Eagles lyric written.

"Go as far as possible... again."

all the background harmonies/singing remind me of 60's sunshine pop and not country really. i'd really like to know what curt boettcher thought of this song.

Holy shit that Etta James version. So good.

i think marsh was just being in character for a critic of that time. or maybe even now! you really aren't supposed to like the eagles if you write about music.

don't think so, herr seward. being in character as such ain't in marsh's repertoire. his whole thing is personal: "if you do this music I don't like, you're the enemy."

Never read/heard Marsh that way at all, not even when he's ranting about the Grateful Dead or Queen.

Holy shit that Etta James version. So good.

― carl agatha, Thursday, September 26, 2013 10:14 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Seriously, I could listen to this all day. And have, so far.

well, Marsh also said he held Neil Young and his Reaganism personally responsible for the death of his father.

Killing someone's dad is nagl Neil wtf

but, to be fair, they were kind of the enemy! even we are treating them like the enemy. they make our skin crawl! two of them anyway. but they had a couple of choice tunes so we are recognizing that. but really anyone from that time could have written that about the eagles back then. don't think marsh was alone.

x-post

Yeah, I can't imagine Marsh was exaggerating to make a point. Writers, especially critics, hardly ever do that.

xp

Yeah I mean there have been uh...what like 4 or 5 deep cuts out of this mess that I'm glad I heard, but overall this exercise is not really changing my view of this band much

Such uneven records! For such slick pros they really can't seem to make a solid record

Same here. I'm grateful, though, for now I can say I've heard the Eagles' mediocre, undistinguished catalog.

and i'm not a dave marsh apologist or anything. i never found him that compelling. a big mouth and not my favorite writer to read or opinions to read. i like that one book that chuck was in. the rock & roll confidential report.

i THINK hotel california and the long run are the strongest records. haven't listened to them in ages.

also: I may be in the minority in preferring The Long Run to anything else: as rancid a final album as Gaucho, and they got their shit together, only nowhere near as sharp as Gaucho.

ha – I missed scott's post

Take It To The Limit - can't deny the craft, it's a good tune and the drumming's nice. I don't like the strings and for once the guitars didn't register at all. The singing's fine, but really I never want to hear this again.

This is much better than the replacement bassist's moment in the sun. THat's fucking unlistenable.

Why do you say that, Bill?

they are responsible for the two least-eagles-y eagles hits and they might be my two fave tracks! i sense a pattern...

i'm still trying to figure out if i agree with spirit of radio being head and shoulders above every other rush song over here though....might take me a minute.

Actually, I'd say it's neck-and-neck with "Tom Sawyer," or rather it barely noses ahead because Geddy Lee amends the line "glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity" with a "yeah!" that implies he's celebrating said prizes/compromises, which takes it somewhere far beyond what ol' po-faced Peart probably had in mind when he wrote that line.

i do love that song but i don't know if i love it any more than i love free will or jacob's ladder on that album. great first side. the second side definitely got neglected by me when i bought that album.

i still love free will lyrics

Each of us
A cell of awareness
Imperfect and incomplete
Genetic blends
With uncertain ends
On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet

hmm…I seem to be in multiple minorities here: I think Kiss and Rush are totally great, the eagles are great, and that greatness is not canceled out by album filler, and like right honorable Lord above, the Long Run is best they done.

chiefly, my notion of music I like or dislike or viscerally despise or adore beyond measure is more of a good/bad dichotomy, rather than one centered around right/wrong. anyone whose ever made music I dislike is not my enemy.

My guess is that that us ILMers here are a lot lot younger than Marsh and his contemporaries, the Eagles. Marsh (and probly Henley to a significant extent) comes from an ideological standpoint common to boomers upset that the promise of the 1960s did not pan out. He was offended by them as his peers, representing qualities he considered a betrayal in ways that I think most reading this thread cannot sympathize with. Or shouldn't.

For him, Springsteen is RIGHT. So he can be married to Landau's right hand woman, write numerous books about Springsteen, host Springsteen shows on Sirius and thus loudly and often viciously advocate in public and as ostensibly a journalist/writer, a man for whom his household's livelihood depends. This is a conflict of interest any way you shake it. And again, I think any clear reading of his works reveals that everything is personal with this guy.

We need a Rush track-by-track to get over all the Eagles ickyness.

i love rush! or, you know, i did when i was a kid. i don't listen to them too much anymore but when i hear them i like hearing them. maybe an 80's rush listening party. i stopped buying their abums after permanent waves.

"Geddy Lee amends the line "glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity" with a "yeah!" that implies he's celebrating said prizes/compromises, which takes it somewhere far beyond what ol' po-faced Peart probably had in mind when he wrote that line."

There's a tension between the content and the delivery of this line that kinda summarizes Rush for me, for good or for ill.

Why do you say that, Bill?

― pplains, Thursday, September 26, 2013 10:46 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hard to put my finger on. It's just so damn WIMPY

For him, Springsteen is RIGHT. So he can be married to Landau's right hand woman, write numerous books about Springsteen, host Springsteen shows on Sirius and thus loudly and often viciously advocate in public and as ostensibly a journalist/writer, a man for whom his household's livelihood depends. This is a conflict of interest any way you shake it. And again, I think any clear reading of his works reveals that everything is personal with this guy.

― veronica moser, Thursday, September 26, 2013 11:24 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He wrote two books about Springsteen, both of which were combined to make a third, which added maybe 50 pages or so. So say he wrote three Springsteen books. I wouldn't call that "numerous."

He's also been pretty critical of Bruce (for supporting Kerry/throwing his lot in with the Democrats, for making middling records). Granted, not nearly as critical as someone outside the circle. But the comparison to Crouch/Marsalis doesn't hold for me.

For one thing, Marsalis is awful, Springsteen isn't. That aside, Crouch and Marsalis essentially conspired to define what "jazz" is and, more importantly, what it isn't (Miles electric is worthless, the avant-garde is pointless, and retracing Miles' 1965-66 steps is the only conceivable way forward). For Marsh/Springsteen to be the equivalent of Crouchsalis, they would have mounted huge anti-hip-hop campaigns and taken over all available outlets discussing the music and shutting down debate across the board, and putting forth the idea that Bruce is the only current rocker worth listening to. That didn't happen.

He's never hidden his connections with Bruce, and trusts that most readers will be able to think critically enough to keep things in perspective.

Crouchsalis!

a mythical two-headed beast...

Ha, I wish it was mythical (although I'm actually really looking forward to reading Crouch's Bird bio).

there's a third marsh/springsteen book for whatever that's worth: "bruce springsteen on tour: 1968-2005." and none of them will be remembered in time as the definitive springsteen bio. he has been eclipsed in that.

springsteen autobio a la chronicles would be the best. i really only wanna read stuff from the horse's mouth these days. that's why i loved that tom petty interview book so much. though there is probably a springsteen interview book out there somewhere...

dylan interview book is also great.