Eagles, “Take It To The Limit” (1975)JB: I became an Eagles fan this year, which is the craziest thing. I hated the Eagles so badly that we would do tours, and I would talk so much smack and be so enraged by any and all Eagles-related speech. It’s always struck me as odd that there’s become an assumption, or I think an American assumption, that musicians listen to their genre and don’t really go too far outside, or if they do it’s very specific like, “I play grindcore, but I listen to powerviolence.” But I listen to everything, and I’ve definitely got lots of love for dad rock. There’s no doubt about it. The Eagles thing was this year, though. In fact, it was like a month before we went into the studio.
The A.V. Club: What was it that brought you over to the dad rock dark side with the Eagles, specifically?
JB: You know what it was? It was that documentary that just proves categorically that they’re sociopaths. It was a game maker. They’re open about it. Now it’s not an issue for me anymore. I was like, how can anybody like this stuff? These guys are complete lunatics, and they’re just wrong. Oh no, no, no. That’s part of it, so I get it. Now I like it.
AVC: So what’s the Eagles song for you now that you’ve been converted?
JB: I’m going to pick a weird one, but I think “Take It To The Limit” is incredible. You gotta understand the background. I hated the Eagles. We all know the songs. We all know the words. We all think the guitar solo in “Hotel California” is cool, but the rest of the song maybe not so much, or that’s how I felt for a long time. But then I watch that documentary, and I’d been complaining for such a long time about how it seems to me that in pop music—and by pop music I mean anything that’s big enough that millions of people have heard of it, but there’s become this dearth of personality. I’m sure there’s a bazillion reasons that that’s happened, but it’s just too hard to pull off anymore. Even if you’re Kanye West, and you’ve got personality for miles, eventually the press and your fans are going to demonize you for it—way back when it was pre-iPod, pre-internet, pre-cellphone, it was just guys doing crazy things behind closed doors, and you’d hear about it, but it was just rumors and that’s all you heard.
But with the documentary, I could just hear in Don Henley’s voice and in the sultry stylings of Glenn Frey, I could hear that these guys are total narcissists. You can hear it, man. There’s one thing when you emanate self-confidence. There’s another thing when you self-idolize, and you can hear that. I could always hear it, and I heard it as a bad thing like “Hey, this doesn’t represent me and my kind.” We were getting ready to record Purple months ago, and Netflix had the documentary, and we all just decided to watch it.
Once I realized that those guys were as openly self-involved as they sounded, it was like the veil was drawn back and all of a sudden I gained a kind of perverse respect for them. (Laughs.) I mean, it’s perverse. I’m not going to try to rationalize it and encourage it, but their openness about that level of character, it made me kind of dig them. Furthermore, I mean, watching them perform is kind of staggering. I think it’s when they’re in Hollywood, and there’s a whole section of the documentary just on “Take It To The Limit” where you realize that Randy Meisner is basically living in this self-inflicted hell that is the ending minute-and-a-half of the song where he really does in fact take it to the limit. It’s like The Eagles doing their version of the ending to “Overkill” by Motörhead. He’s hitting those notes, and of course it’s beautiful, and it’s amazing, and those songs are really great and especially that one in particular.
I like it. It’s barely rock at all, but I did gain an appreciation for it, and it kind of became a thing. What was most interesting to me was that he has to sing these notes at the end of the song because they’re iconic notes. Even the year it came out they were iconic notes, and they’re high and hard to hit even for him with the highest voice in the band. To see him suffering at that level and really, truly trying to perform that song night after night, I got sympathetic. I liked the song enough as it was, but now there was a new layer to it. I’ve kind of been obsessed with it since then. When I go to a party and put that on my playlist, it doesn’t gain me a lot of popularity, but it’s a really good song. I’m being honest; they’re really good songwriters. I wish the style was a little harder, but maybe then it wouldn’t have worked as well. Who knows.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 8 December 2015 14:38 (eight years ago) link