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

whenever i call you friend easy

This song is dumb.

I think it really says something about the Eagles that when they actually do a 2:20 song, the 'song' part is over at like 1:40. Could use a cheesy guitar solo on the coda to go with the chant. This is also were Henley starts on the path to making full-fledged New Wave tracks w/Danny Kootch, members of the Go-Go's etc. with less leaden results.

Don: We'd heard a little about Elvis Costello, who was beginning to make some waves over here, as our friend Linda (Ronstadt) began dipping into his songbook for her albums of the time.

Glenn: Not to mention we heard Costello had been dipping into Bebe Buell, and we all wanted in on some of that action!

Don: Well, yeah.

I'll donate all I have and anything I could steal to compile these dialogues.

i wonder who out of that socal circle was the first to get into elvis costello - buckingham was a fan, ronstadt obv, nicks a huge fan (she's said on a few occasions that 'green shirt' is one of her favorite songs period). i wonder if that's how petty worked his way in - similar to ec but not quite as 'punk' in attitude, byrds fandom a obv connection.

The memoir by Buckingham's ex describes a night out to see Elvis C. As the most trad of the punk fellow travelers and blessed with Ronstadt's support, it's easy to see the attraction(s).

she's said on a few occasions that 'green shirt' is one of her favorite songs period).

from a summer '94 ish of Details, right?

In Please Kill Me, Buell tells a story about doing a modelling gig in London around '75-76 for Elizabeth Arden and how she fell in love at first sight with this guy she saw deliver some stuff to the studio. A couple years later she is shocked to see him again on stage at Hollywood High.

she is shocked to see him again on stage at Hollywood, high.

i've seen it in like four or five interviews (sometimes unprompted), she LOVES that song

xpost...and then she looks him up the next day and she gets him stoned on proper marijuana for the first time and they tool around LA and then she follows him back to England and...many years later E.C. says some nasty stuff about her in some liner notes.

and yeah ec's talent and trad leanings were apparent enough, plus my aim is true is about as socal friendly an album punk/new wave was gonna hand them

Buckingham seems like the most punk guy of all the L.A. FM crew

Stuff like "What Makes You Think You're the One" isn't far off from new wave

that's the one he said IS particularly punk inspired (Fleetwood's the only other musician on it).

GLENN: "And you know something else? Music journalists like Elvis Costello because music journalists look like Elvis Costello. Ha!”

DON: "Wait. Didn't someone else already say that just recently?"

GLENN: "Well, yeah."

Mick's metres on that one are so strange. I wonder what Henley thinks of it.

Great stuff from that Details interview:

Stevie Nicks: When we were recording "Stand Back" I decided to be really blatant and call Prince up and tell him that I had been inspired to write the song while listening to "Little Red Corvette." I told him that I figured my song was half his. He came over to the studio where I was recording and listened to it--as I turned extremely white and started to shake. Then he walked over to the piano and put on a really incredible keyboard track. And not only did Prince make it up right on the spot, he played it with only two fingers. Then he left.

Details: Did you see him again?

Stevie Nicks: Yes, when I was on the road a year or so later. I was sick, and Prince brought some cough syrup up to my hotel room. He was sweet--he walked around the room folding things, fluffing pillows, tidying up in general. Then he gave me a spoon of it himself. But when I asked for another spoonful he changed--he said, "I didn't come all the way up here just to get you hooked on another substance!" Then he left.

Details: Do you still see him?

Stevie Nicks: No. I was at the premiere of Purple Rain, and in the scene where he slaps Apollonia I freaked and had to go sit in the bathroom. Afterward I went back to see him, and when he asked why I'd left, I had to tell him, "When you popped Apollonia, it kinda popped my brain." He looked at me like it just killed him. We've never spoken since. (sighs) It’s a shame, really...we were alike in so many ways.

lol

you cant make that stuff up

i've read some more recent Nicks interviews where she describe more recent encounters with Prince

every encounter with prince reads like fanfic written on acid

I can't remember if I posted the mystery suit Prince story on ilm before

You guys please tell me when "DON: Well, yeah" becomes a full fledged ilx meme!

Mississippi I ain't heard it so plz expand!

I want to hear more Nicks-Prince stories!

Me, too!

Jesse and I took a cab to a baby shower and the radio was playing an Eagles rock block. The driver changed it halfway through the second song (Hotel California).

Before that, the driver was listening to sea shanties.

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l105/Elvis1954/Lebowski/big_lebowski-eagles.png

Ok here goes: college summer temp job processing mortgage forms. Agency supervise was cool, pretty Mexican girl in mid 20s. She told us this. So, she goes dancing at Prince's Glam Slam club. On the floor, bouncer comes over and says Prince wants to meet her. So she goes up to his lair where he's reclined on a couch. She's wearing a catsuit (it's the 90s). Prince looks at her and asks,"is that a mystery suit?"

She doesn't know how to answer so she says, "uh...I guess?"

Prince doesn't say anything but keeps staring at her. An uncomfortable amount of time goes by then when it's clear shes not going to rip her clothes off, a bouncer leads her back out to the dance floor.

Prince in unable to deal with normal people in social surrounding shocker

Bummer. I thought the girl was going to tear off her cat suit and reveal Stevie Nicks, hair blowing, bellowing "Stand Back."

"I didn't come all the way up here just to get you hooked on another substance!"

this is pretty funny though

"The Sad Cafe"

http://www.donhenleyonline.com/images/eaglesgefLRhot.jpg

http://youtu.be/lTaHJYfEpcY

Henley sounds kinda weird and mush mouthed on this one like he's trying to imitate Michael McDonald.

those sandals!

Did they know it was the end? Frey, in retrospect, said the band was over halfway through recording Long Run, but did it feel like at the time? This does seem like Henley, his band facing oblivion, thought the Eagles needed their own "look how far we've come" maudlin retrospective, and he does his best Sad Hippie: "We thought we could change this world/ with words like love and freedom." But while he seems to be mourning the likes of Gram Parsons and saying goodbye to Leadon and Meisner, there's also a smug sense that he's on the mountaintop, looking back at the losers he's ditched. and then David Sanborn wanders in.

anyhow, in a happy world, this would have been the end. But we live in a fallen world.

DON: The truth is, we really thought we could change the world with love and freedom.

GLENN: Hell, there's at least a thousand chicks in Topanga Canyon and the Bay area who know what love and freedom are, thanks to us.

DON: Well, yeah.

...and back to the Eagles High-concept stuff. The electric piano is nice. Did it really take them this long to have a sax on a track? Not a great song, which was fitting for a not great band to wave goodbye. This kind of earnestness was nagl for this band.

Our heroes explain it all...

THE SAD CAFÉ
GLENN: The title comes from the book by Carson McCullers. I love the title, which didn’t have anything to do with the song, other than it was a great title. The line that really resonates for me in that song is “I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free.” There were so many of us aspiring musicians hanging around at the Troubadour. Some nights when Doug Dillard got drunk enough, and Gene Clark got drunk enough, and Harry Dean Stanton got drunk enough… near closing time… they would all start singing. There would be these unbelievable impromptu versions of “Amazing Grace” — all sorts of Ozark spiritual things with the whole bar singing… That stuff never really happened. We were getting older (when we wrote the song), and there was a sadness because we had seen, close-up, that everybody’s dreams don’t come true. Or, at least, not in the way they think they’re gonna come true.

DON: A train used to run down the center of Santa Monica Boulevard, right outside the Troubadour. Steve Martin actually had a routine where he’d get the entire audience to exit the club, hop a flatcar on that slow-moving train and ride up to La Cienega, a few blocks east. Then, everybody would hop off and walk back down to the club together. I don’t think that happened very many times — maybe not even more than once or twice, because the railroad people didn’t like it. It was kind of dangerous and there was liability involved. Still — and I don’t want to over-mythologize — it was something to remember. That was a wonderful time in Los Angeles. The city was alive with magic and a sense of possibility. People were warmer and more open than they are now.

Then, of course, there was the dark side. Friends and acquaintances of ours (from that era) had begun to meet untimely ends — classic cases of “too much, too soon.” It was either that or “too little, too late.” So we were struggling to make sense of that dichotomy, that contradiction. Is fortune a good thing or a bad thing, you know? Is being fortunate, before you’re ready to accept it and deal with it, actually fortunate — or is it unfortunate? We were struggling with our own success — riddled with feelings of guilt and unworthiness. I think a lot of young artists feel that way. We always identified with that great song “Fakin’ It,” by Paul Simon. It takes many years and lots of experience for a man to get comfortable in his own skin. But the Troubadour, Dan Tana’s restaurant, the train — all those things served as a great metaphor for the search, the journey that so many of us were on.

I don’t think that happened very many times — maybe not even more than once or twice, because the railroad people didn’t like it. It was kind of dangerous and there was liability involved. Still — and I don’t want to over-mythologize — it was something to remember

I like this, it's so unlike the 'John would pee on nuns!' school of rock war stories

I like how every name they drop in those particular anecdotes is someone waaaaaaaaaaaay cooler than them.

From Flatbeds to Flatcars: The Oral History of the Eagles

...and with any other band, I wouldn't be immediately regretting my choice of words there.

Did The Sad Cafe have a Soul Kitchen?

It was down the street from the Sunset Grill.

were we doing "Seven Bridges Rd." or no? if not, i've gotta brace myself for tomorrow's song.

and I will not go quietly

this actually makes some sort of sense in a what-if way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4jM6vMDxLE

Frey's "The One You Love," one of his first solo hits and an oppressive presence on Roanoke VA radio in 1982, seems to have come out of the Sad Cafe:

http://youtu.be/qmV9vk2950o

some wonderful Youtube comments on this one. "*-* I SPENT SEVEN WONDERFUL YEARS KNOWING THE ACTOR RAUL JULIA WHO WAS AN INTIMATE FRIEND. HE WILL ALWAYS BE THE ONE I LOVE AND I'LL ALWAYS BE HIS GIRL !! REMEMBERING RAUL." Also: "The beginning reminds me of Porn."

i'm gonna break the rules in a minute here. bonus time...

*taken from Selected Works: 1972-1999*

"Long Run Leftovers"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edXZ6Pb79II

"Random Victims Part 3"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqkD-NnjdRs

http://www.eaglesonlinecentral.com/images/eaglesRS79-03.jpg

^^ the Disco Stranglers, ready to par-tay.