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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcb-K8k-OAE

"eat shit Dan" LOL

2. Becoming the Eagles
After the line-up of the band was secure, they were faced with the same monumental task all burgeoning bands encounter: picking a band name. The bandmates have contradictory memories when it comes to how they came up with the name Eagles.

Felder claims that Leadon thought of the name while recalling a story he had read about the Hopis people’s reverence for the bird of prey, while frequent collaborator J.D. Souther claims Frey came up with the name on a whim after seeing the animal flying above them.

https://americansongwriter.com/9-memorable-moments-from-the-eagles-career-from-breakups-to-reunions/

Imagine how different history would have been if he saw a pigeon instead.

So an origin not dissimilar to Batman.

“Critics are a superstitious cowardly lot. So our name must be able to strike terror into their hearts...”

Belatedly, I agree with the general sentiment upthread that "I Can't Tell You Why" is the Eagles' finest moment

― fair but so uncool beliefs here (Eric H.), Monday, July 10, 2023 11:29 AM bookmarkflaglink

if they'd done more songs that sounded like AM station pop that you could vibe with driving home at 4 am, I might have liked them. I didn't even realize this was them until recently.

Most people have that moment with "I Can't Tell You Why."

Otm

I probably thought it was Linda Ronstadt the first time I heard it.

It's probably the association with a good time of my life, but "New Kid in Town" does the same for me.

Happy birthday, Mystic Banjo Man!

Sirius XM Deep Tracks just played Neil Young's "Pocahontas"--->"The Last Resort" and I'm pretty sure that's the biggest quality drop-off between tracks I've ever experienced in my whole listening life.

what did Don 'n' Ghost of Glenn think of Neil?

Before Joe Walsh joined the band, the best single they had was Randy’s. R.I.P.

vale, Randy

love the anecdote from the history of eagles that's like:

*HOTEL CALIFORNIA TOUR, CROWD EAGERLY AWAITING ENCORE*
glen frey: we gotta play take it to the limit!
randy meisner: nah I'm hungover no way am I hitting those high notes let's do any other eagles song
glen frey: FUCK YOU RANDY MEISNER!!! AGGHHHH THE HEAT IS ON
randy meisner: alright bet, have fun assholes *quietly leaves most famous rock band in the world he co-invented*

rip randy we didn't deserve you

RIP, Bassman.

https://i.imgur.com/wnAdUjW.jpg

perhaps we should all claim to be randy meisner at any available opportunity, in his honor

1. ten years ago, this thread was in full throttle, and is considered one of the greatest ILM achievements; I was getting ready to get married, and would often find myself getting too involved herein instead of attending to the event…

2. and it's also great that Scott S, the initiator as such and one of the alltime ILM MVPs, is back!

3. It seems Meisner was the Eagle who came out of the band and its heyday the most damaged… probly the most accomplished and certainly the most dishy out of them all at the outset, and…he had a pretty rough life after 1977…

his million dollar moment, as someone described "Take it to the limit" ten years ago, is not described in many of the appreciations of the past couple of days as being redolent of "If you don't know me by now" (frey was really into gamble and huff at the time), but it really is…I don't think much of any of the other cuts he sang lead upon, but he also does the falsetto extemporizing in the rideout of "One of these nights," which is probly his second most memorable vocal in the band…

In an interview with Flanagan in musician mag, Glyn Johns talks about Meisner taking him aside during production of desperado and asking why the band can't sound more like Motown, which baffled Johns as much as Henley demanding that Johns make him sound more like Bonham…

Well, and, remember, Frey said that Henley was their Philippe Wynne or some shit.

Whereas Don Felder was their John Frusciante and Desperado was their Slippery When Wet. Schmitt was their Billy Preston and Stevie Nicks was their Stevie Nicks.

XP Their TEDDY PENDERGRASS! (IIRC)

I liked Dave Marsh's description of "TITTL" as "An arrangement from the Elton John handbook, lyrics from the Bernie Taupin rummage sale".

I respectfully disagree. Taupin lyrics often make exactly zero sense. Eagles lyrics are sometimes banal but they usually scan like English sentences.

Like, What the fuck is a pauper to a pawn? In contrast, any fragment of "Take it to the Limit" reads like Henry James.

The American era or Wings of the Dove era

I’m wayyy late to this thread but did you guys rate “smugglers blues?”

Here: They Will Not Go Quietly: The Official ILM Track-By-Track DON 'n' GLENN Listening Thread

lol thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq7XxwIsgbU

I watch parts of this from time to time, mostly for Witchy Woman and Earlybird but the whole set is kind of amazing

we probably established this ten years ago but eagles was such a cooler band when it was Meisner + Leadon and also some assholes nobody had heard of but whatever they're alright

also randy meisner = bass beast, while he's singing most of the time, at the same time, and so handsome, so sensitive, love you randy meisner

listening to the comp "help the poor," which complies singles by meisner's early band "the poor." fun nesmith-ish sunshine pop.

compiles

Thing is, I love Meisner but I also love Schmit. Without Meisner's arrival you don't get "Take it to the Limit"; without Meisner's departure you don't get "I Can't Tell You Why," and both are essential to any cogent understanding of Eagleness.

Schmit happens.

But - and here I am about to go controp / challop: I really don't give a shit about whether Leadon or Felder is the designated stringwizard.

Joe officially replaced Bernie. Felder's just Felder -- kind of like the Y of CSN&Y.

I will never not love Joe Walsh. But he's a dramatically different kind of multi-instrumentalist than the other two.

They have always had a lot of people who can pick up a guitar and sing a song. Indeed, one of my problems with the Eagles has been: too many fucking guitars. No one needs three guitars and a piano all operating in the same sonic space. It's all midrange mush.

But banjo and mandolin? That's part of what gave early Eagles some more texture.

from 1973 to 1983 - if i'm not mistaken - there were 10 10cc albums. that might be fun...??

i never did those other ones with you guys. elton john...that was a bridge too far for me.

istening to the comp "help the poor," which complies singles by meisner's early band "the poor." fun nesmith-ish sunshine pop.

― Thus Sang Freud, Tuesday, August 1, 2023 5:34 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

compiles

― Thus Sang Freud, Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Yes---back in Scottsbluff, NE, he was a star performer with the Drivin' Dynamics, then spotted and nabbed by Denver-based Soul Survivors, who became The Poor on the fabulous Sunset Strip, picked up by Buffalo Springfield's management, made a few records, then Meisner joined original Poco, was recruited by Rick Nelson for the Stone Canyon Band (along with a couple other Poor folk, who went on to New Riders and elsewhere). You can hear some of his Poor sides, incl. at least one song that he wrote, and read much else about his adventures with them and others here; I've only just begun:

https://randymeisnerretrospective.com/

thanks for that. this "help the poor" comp also has stuff by the soul survivors, which is more garage-y. it's not clear if meisner is on the soul survivor recordings. it would perhaps be more clear if qobuz downloads came with liner notes, but beggars can't be choosers.

At a concert in Long Beach, California, for Senator Alan Cranston on July 31, 1980, known as the "Long Night at Wrong Beach", things hit a breaking point in the band when the animosity between Felder and Frey boiled over before the show began after Felder said, "You're welcome – I guess" to Cranston and his wife, thus offending Frey.

These photos below capture just the overall poisonous vibe that the year 1980 carried.

https://i.imgur.com/T2lrCyI.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/gzVH6LP.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/tPkFPPc.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/KTWFSl9.jpg

All I heard this week was how despite his shitty music, Jimmy Buffet was an all-around altruistic dude.

You won't be hearing the same about Don Henley in a few years.

Whatta bunch of sourpusses.

they are so not cool looking. what happened to cool? i guess they just look like their audience. that's what jann wenner looked like back then.

Timothy's white overalls slap, tho

He deserves a slap, yeah

Henley's probably mad the rapist got 30 years because now who's going to play him in the movie?

when i was a younger fact checking cuz, i spent some time on the phone with henley going over a transcript of a q&a that a reporter at my site did with him. henley had demanded to see the transcript because he was appalled that we had sent a woman in her early 20s to interview henley the great and powerful. first he sent me a copy-edited version of the transcript, with his own proofreading marks on them. not even remotely surprisingly, dude knows his proofreading symbols. then he got on the phone with me to argue hyphens, dashes and semicolons before something else ticked him off and he hung up on me. top-five highlight of my fact checking life.

― fact checking cuz, Friday, July 7, 2017 5:56 PM (six years ago) b

outstanding

That's awesome.

I'd like to imagine Christgau having a similarly contentious argument that ended with Henley hanging up on him over "Where's the Coke?"

Rong Night W Cranston was of course depicted in Felder's classick Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (1974-2001), the only rock book I ever read at a single sitting (my incisive take is way upthread) dig https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91dCWCGNONL._SL1500_.jp

This should give you the cover image: https://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Hell-Life-Eagles-1974-2001/dp/0470450428