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

well, not making "desperado" a single might be one reason!

It wasn't?!

and Alice Cooper's was still better.

"tequila sunrise" and "outlaw man" were the singles.

Year Single Chart Position
1973 "Outlaw Man" Billboard Pop Singles 59
1973 "Tequila Sunrise" Billboard Pop Singles 64

the album got to number 41 in the states. did better on canadian charts. which makes sense as canada was suffering from stampeders fever.

http://s.cdon.com/media-dynamic/images/product/music/album/image5/rubes_dudes_rowdies_import-stampeders-1195523-frnt.jpg

stampedin' into your heart!

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/2CPt3eSBJiQ/maxresdefault.jpg

As with the first LP, you can spy the path of an alternate Eagles here: a mildly ambitious country-rock band that petered out around 1975. Fair to say this is the most Leadon-influenced album?

my pal michael robbins wrote the best Eagles poem. i forgot about it. i wish i could copy it here but i don't know how to copy googlebooks stuff. its here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=SC-ptkaj8UQC&pg=PT43&lpg=PT43&dq=%22michael+robbins%22+%22desperado%22&source=bl&ots=MxctQbFe4e&sig=1YzF915aX3GqB0iedfP4tWRfOCA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UhAiUvPuE_PHsATGkYHIDg&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22michael%20robbins%22%20%22desperado%22&f=false

Yeah this is really good, can hardly fault this at all. Maybe have Henley singing the whole thing, The Eagles need a bit of grit and he's the raspiest. This has plenty grit even without that though, and the great merit of cutting in with a minor chord or something whenever things start to get trite ('lay down your law books...' - in fact the end of every verse, which is nicely done).

It's a good piece of writing, nice arrangement (harmonica suits them well), and pretty much ideal to open a concept album. I suspect said concept album is going less interesting places than it might, but that's another day. Best since Witchy Woman anyway.

I love this song, not gonna front

I like this one. It achieves that rare feat of a concept album track being able to both set up a narrative and push the story ahead within a 3:30 run time. The "Better keep on movin'" part reminds be of the Derek & The Dominoes version of "Little Wing".

Never heard this album (apart from the singles) all the way through. Henley's vocals on this reminds me of Rod Stewart a little. Was ready to launch into a Two Minute Hate, but it's a good song.

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/4vX9v-RF9Es/hqdefault.jpg

ha, everyone was so ready to hate. hey, this song is good!

i was looking forward to this album tbrr

i was talking to this great guy i know - he's a musician who performs under the name Dredd Foole - and i asked him what his earliest memories of the eagles were. what he thought of them at the time. and i kinda figured he would wrinkle his nose and all that, but he said that Desperado was an album that really meant a lot to him at the time. that album and Carney by Leon Russell. those albums fit his mood/frame of mind at that moment. it made me want to play them both.

My favourite Eagles record fwiw

(I used to have that first Dredd Foole album!)

Missing two pages (stupid Googlebooks), but here's Grace Lichtenstein's essay on the Desperado lp from Stranded

I had the first dredd foole and the din album too!

I like that essay; stoked for the album now

This is decent, but it kind of makes me think that, in their heart of hearts, they really wanted to be the west coast Band.

^^^

I had the Dredd Foole and the Din album too. Downloaded it to hear it again a few months ago, in fact.

I was 12 or 13 the first time I heard this album, my dad or step-mother owned a copy.

This track felt portentous, like the opening scenes of a grown-up Western. I'd seen "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" but but this seemed darker and meaner: Bill Dalton is not buying either God's will or the law books, he's cussing, he's clearly a serious outlaw. His sidekick appears out of nowhere and joins up like one of the Magnificent Seven. They ride out. To be continued!

At this point I was totally on-board. I loved how the album cover looked like the Time-Life "Old West" books I was getting in the mail:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b5/Thecowboys.jpg

Don't get the love for this one; find it rather dull and unspectacular country-rock, especially for an album opener.

Wow, the Time-Life "Old West" series!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8kZDZ4eXXk

http://img0.etsystatic.com/001/0/5863214/il_570xN.352465900_mckg.jpg

in the 70's there were Osmonds...and lots of cowboys.

and Osmonds dressed as cowboys. obviously. from time to time anyway.

[osmondscrazyhorses.jpg] haha xpost

Well they were a little bit country iirc

The story of the Desperado artwork:

http://youtu.be/lcTTdwv1Xp4

"Twenty-One"

http://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Henry-Diltz-Eagles-Gunfire.jpg

http://youtu.be/k-L_sxkI9xY

Digging this. Maybe because it reminds me of the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Christine's Tune." But so far, my favorite/least-annoying Eagles harmony singing.

pretty much "Son of Earlybird" but fine enough (Leadon's main lyrical theme of the time was "being young and a slacker is great, man"---hell, there are worse themes).

The subtitle “Musical Memoir” signals what Ms. Ronstadt’s book is about, but also what it’s not about — the hedonistic excesses of the pop star’s life. She sidesteps the rampant drug use, though in conversation she acknowledged, “I tried everything,” including cocaine, which she did to such excess that she needed to have her nose cauterized, twice. For Ms. Ronstadt, who was often the only woman on the bus and in the hotel, those were not always happy times. “All the men chased girls,” she said. “They were good guys,” she reflected. “Well, no they weren’t. They were cowboys. They were gunslingers.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/arts/music/linda-ronstadt-discusses-her-memoir-and-parkinsons.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

I keep hearing songs like this and going, Really? The best-selling American band of all time?

But then I look at the list, see that ABBA even beats them and go, Damn, American bands. Get with it.

The Beatles
Michael Jackson,
Madonna
Led Zeppelin,
Elton John
Pink Floyd
Mariah Carey
Celine Dion,
AC/DC
Whitney Houston
The Rolling Stones
Queen
ABBA
Eagles

Doolin Dalton is nice and I like 21, I'm a sucker for banjo ..not a bad start

The Eagles have the best-selling album in the US, but Thriller still trounces it in the rest of the world.

Best selling album in the U.S. that's not a compilation by an American band : Rumours

Best selling album in the U.S. that's not a compilation by a full-blooded American band: Appetite for Destruction

Best selling album in the U.S. that's not a compilation by a full-blooded American band not from California: Boston

Nice one. A cool step back from "Doolin'"'s cinematic panorama. Who's on dobro?

Bernie.

Fleetwood Mac is an American band?

the restrictive clauses are confusing

I think of them as more of a multinational, the result of a series of well-planned mergers.

They are not coming to your town, nor will they help you party down.

loool

Fleetwood Mac is an American band?

That's why I had to add "full-blooded" to the next one. Thank God it wasn't Foreigner.

I wasn't aware until this week that Desperado and its singles sold relatively poorly upon its release. Unless there's some deep cuts I'm unaware of (and of course, there are many), I think they gave up this banjo-y stuff once they made it huge.