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

Ooo I have a childhood anecdote about this one: my father dragged me along with him to visit one of his sundry girlfriends and after getting me set up with some crayons and coloring books in the kitchen, they adjourned to the living room where the girlfriend put on Desperado and said to my father, "This song reminds me of you." I have a very distinct memory of rolling my eyes.

Anyway, I like this one, too, but definitely not for the same reason.

I live the bit about how over time the desperado will become bleached of all feeling, less human.

Love the bit*

Maybe I'm livin it too

henley sings on 'gorilla you're a desperado' right?

henley, j.d. souther and jackson browne. browne sings on "desperadoes under the eaves" too.

Girlfriend was right about that part, at least. xp

Freedom as loss of self/progressive neurasthenia

lol carl

One of my two fave Eagles tracks (it'll be a while before we're at the other one). Corny as hell, but effectively and rather nakedly so; it'll be a long while before its bleached of all feeling for me.

if ever there was an eagles song destined to be sung at talent shows and karaoke night or just about anywhere its this one. its great if you can hit high notes like linda ronstadt but you can be a pretty limited singer range-wise and still pull it off. just make a sad face and look like you're gonna cry. you can sing it softly. or you can go big.

Desperados Under the Eaves is beyond great. Desperado... not quite there.

Starting to feel like I'm the only one here whose appreciation of the Eagles works its way backward from The Long Run.

The cowboy shit annoys the hell out of me. These guys weren't exactly Marty Robbins.

No I'm with you on that. The % if tracks I like per album goes up with the more rockin aor albums.

But the cowboy shit has its moments!

Would've loved to have seen an exiled Bernie Leadon listening to "Hotel California" for the first time and going, "But where are the banjos?"

The cowboy shit annoys the hell out of me. These guys weren't exactly Marty Robbins.

Or Bing Crosby for that matter. Faux cowboy stuff is fine by me btw.

Such a fine line. It's why Uncle Tupelo could pull it off and Whiskeytown couldn't. It's much easier for me to picture Kid Rock as a cowboy than Don effin' Henley.

I didn't think I hated this song, but after listening to it again, yeah, I do. It's the moment when the Eagles finally realize they will never, ever be the Band, so hey, let's dress up like them!
http://theband.hiof.no/band_pictures/band_mfbp_back.jpg

The song seems to be about this realization: they've resigned themselves to their fate as slick L.A. studio flumpfers, and their strengths were in writing shitty faux-soundtrack music for slick, painless cowboy movies that they imagined themselves starring in.

and they got haircuts!

Tarfumes on the mark. May have been bigger egos in The Band too, but they pulled it off.

Just closed my eyes and did a search for Don Henley Robbie Robertson, and hey look, it's a Scorsese soundtrack.

soooo many groups wanted to be The Band! (in the BBC documentary based on the Hoskyns bk, David Crosby makes a point of saying how terrifying it was to have The Band watching em from the side of the stage during their second ever gig (at Woodstock))

http://www.bb-ochiai.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/sholo.jpg

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

guess don didn't want to cowboy up for the shiloh cover shot.

http://i456.photobucket.com/albums/qq285/atthetroubadour/Don%20Henley/DonCuteBlueEyes_zps53a95334.jpg

http://www.thirteen.org/13pressroom/files/2012/08/HN720023.jpg

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

http://www.donhenleyonline.com/images/felicity3.jpg

http://www.donhenleyonline.com/images/DHenleyfourspeeds1966.jpg

i don't really get the band thing. always felt like they were going for the dusty desert west coast thing. byrds-derived more than band-derived. the byrds were dressing up like cowboys pretty early on. the charlatans, etc.

i mean i've never thought of the band when hearing the eagles. lets put it that way.

the band were more civil war and the eagles more gold rush.

That's true. And I didn't see the Eagles as Band wanna-be's at all until I saw the doc. Their whole attitude seemed to revolve around being a version of The Band that made a shitload of money and had huge hits (two things The Band never really did).

And yeah, the Byrds and the Buffalo Springfield and other bands wore cowboy hats and western gear in '65-'67, but the Band inspired the whole neo-"authenticity"/"back to the land" post-psychedelic hangover thing that so much of country rock took its cues from. True, there was a ton of country rock prior to Big Pink, but a lot of it was Dylan/Band/Basement Tapes influenced (the tapes made the rounds among musicians in '67-'68), and the scene went from hippies dressing as slick country bands and playing the Opry (as the Byrds did) to hippies digging in the dust with mustaches.

(but I'm probably wrong/oversimplifying a lot of this)

many xposts to pplains --- aaahhhh!! thank you for posting that LRB version, I love it!!!

I really like this song but I think I like it more when Linda Ronstadt sings it. She brings a bit more feeling to it, where as Henley just sings it nice but he's kinda holding back.

"Another thing that interests me about the Eagles is that I hate them. "Hate" is the kind of up-tight word that automatically excludes one from polite posthippie circles, a good reason to use it, but it is also meant to convey an anguish that is very intense, yet difficult to pinpoint. Do I hate music that has been giving me pleasure all weekend, made by four human beings I've never met? Yeah, I think so. Listening to the Eagles has left me feeling alienated from things I used to love. As the culmination of rock's country strain, the group is also the culmination of the counterculture reaction that strain epitomizes. "

Christgau, '72: http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-aow/eagles.php

its kind of hard to overestimate the influence of the byrds on so many different types of people from 1966 until the 70's. but certainly dylan/band had just as much influence. both coasts were covered. folk people in general get lost in the shuffle as far as getting credit for bringing old country/mountain music to the kids/hippies. people like mike seeger and a million others toured college campuses for years all through the 60's and made country music cool to non-country audiences. thus the college jug band/string band phenomena of the 60's. every hip college having their olde-tyme combos. just as their were a million collegiate hot jazz societies and bands all across the country in the 40's and 50's.

(not to mention the endless stream of actual folk/blues/country vets who made the college circuit back then.)

Their whole attitude seemed to revolve around being a version of The Band that made a shitload of money and had huge hits

Flying Burrito Bros surely?

But, yeah, the Byrds, but if you thought the Eagles were "hardly Marty Robbins", what about McGuinn?

A related question: what was the relationship, if any, between this album and the crossing-over of outlaw country, which I guess came a little later? Coincidence? Common influences? The idea that Waylon, Willie, and the boys were somehow copying the Eagles seems comical, but something was going on.

it was in the air. well, a lot of things were in the air, but this was one of the things in the air. southern rock via allman brothers and Capricorn really starting to take off too.

outlaw also a reaction to country pop of the era. those dudes weren't having it. no sir.

Their whole attitude seemed to revolve around being a version of The Band that made a shitload of money and had huge hits

Flying Burrito Bros surely?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b7/Poco_1970.jpg

(Frey said as much)

As for "Desperado", I get kind of a Tumbleweed Connection vibe off of this one. Haven't heard Linda's yet, but it seems like the lyric (which, iirc, is written in the voice of a female character) would suit her well. I also remember hearing how bad Henley sounded on the Johnny Cash version when it came out, and at the time if I'd been able to wager money on who'd be dead within a year of it's recording, I wouldn't have picked Johnny.

The idea that Waylon, Willie, and the boys were somehow copying the Eagles seems comical

Waylon's rock roots pre-date the Eagles (and the Byrds too for that matter). Willie never rocked, really.

Nash has got a tell-all book coming out in a couple of weeks.

drug the one you're with

Suite: Judy Glassy Eyes

wineevere

Take It, Sleazy

Crosby himself had just recently ended things with Mitchell, but he was generous with his women, one night even asking his girlfriend, Christine Hinton, to head downstairs to share Nash’s bed.

bleargh...