Music
A Short Story by Michael Hannaford - posted 4/30/16
"The Eagles Don't Make It Easy: Aerosmith or the Catholic Church?”
The Eagles is one of my favorite bands. I intimately know every song from the pre-Hell Freezes Over era. From “Most of Us are Sad” to “The Sad Café,” I can sing those songs by heart.
Born two years before the Eagles’ first album, I grew up with the Eagles. My older brothers owned the first five albums, and played them all the time. The Eagles’ compilation, Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) is one of the bestselling albums of all time. The documentary film, History of the Eagles describes how the genre of classic rock radio became ubiquitous in the 1980s. One of the bands featured on classic rock stations?—The Eagles. So the Eagles were on the radio all the time. I jumped on the bandwagon in the summer of 1980 when I bought a vinyl copy of The Long Run. (My third record purchase—the other two are stories for another time.) At nine and half years old, I had arrived as a serious music aficionado.
In those early 1980s, I also started to learn to play guitar. “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” “Tequila Sunrise,” and, “Take It Easy” were some of my first guitar songs. The music of the Eagles is like abstract art: you hear it and think, “Hell, I could do that. It’s just songs about girls in Fords, sleeping in the dessert, and alcohol.” Even as a ten-year-old, I felt I could write that song. Then you try to write it, but fail. What sounds simple is not. You try some basic chords, even throw in a minor chord here or there, but your song doesn’t sound as good or as heartfelt or as insightful.
And those vocal harmonies. The strengths of the band: songwriting and vocal harmonies. You get a friend to strum along with you on his guitar, and you try to sing harmony on “Peaceful Easy Feeling”—and it’s not good. It’s not peaceful. The first producer of the Eagles, Glyn Johns, shrugged off any potential of the band until he heard them sing a cappella. Then he was sold. The harmonies were crystal clear—and more important, they were in tune. They sounded true.
The Eagles is one of my favorite bands, and three songs represent different stages of the band: “Take It Easy,” “Hotel California,” and “The Sad Café.”
Jackson Browne foreshadowed the band when he wrote the phrase: “take it easy.” Don’t take yourself too seriously; “Lighten up.” But most of the Eagles’ music is serious. Some even complain that the songs are no fun. The closest they come to playfulness is “James Dean”—and that still seems a little forced. Even Jackson Browne had fun songs like “Red Neck Friend” and “Lawyers in Love.”
So Glenn Frey finished Jackson Browne’s song about a girl in a pickup truck. Frey was clever: she is slowing down to take a look at him. “Don’t even try to understand”: to their credit, the Eagles ignore this, too. The Eagles do try to understand themselves and the world around them. And they eventually attempt to “Learn to Be Still,” but know they never will. It’s an existential thing.
Maybe that’s why some people seem to hate the Eagles. Do they seem too smug? Too smart? Too slick? In The Big Lebowski, The Dude is famous for saying, “I hate the f---ing Eagles” then getting thrown out of the cab by the Eagle-loving cab driver. When Glenn Frey died on 1/18/16, I was surprised at some of the negative vibes about the band. Why? One possible reason is the aforementioned classic rock genre: people (myself included) got tired of hearing those same songs over and over. The disdain may have also have been that “easiness.” Glyn Johns was right: the Eagles were not a rock ’n roll band. They didn’t rock.
Yes, they made the shrewd move to get Joe Walsh, famous for trashing hotel rooms, into the band for the Hotel California album. Walsh admitted he was invited into the band to “push” the live shows. But not even Joe Walsh could drive them to become the rock gods they wanted to be like Led Zeppelin or even Aerosmith.
I don’t want to say that the Eagles were boring in concert, so a Los Angeles Times review of a 2014 Eagles show will do it for me: “Even at their 1970s peak, though, the Eagles were about as active onstage as the robotic Kraftwerk (but far less funky), and on Wednesday they certainly didn't strain themselves.” Now, I wouldn’t go to that extreme, because I did enjoy the two live Eagles shows that I’ve attended. Technically the shows were excellent: pitch-on vocal harmonies and lead guitar lines reproduced note-for-note. Very few bands sound that good in concert. But I’d rather listen to the Eagles in my car than see them in concert. I’d rather play the songs on my guitar while I sit on my back porch and drink a beer.
The members of Eagles were scrawny, ambitious, intelligent dudes writing about personal and societal angst. That said, the Eagles were often accused of being too corporate; however, that can work both ways. They were smart enough to start their own management company and to not lose any of those lucrative songwriting royalties. Clever but introspective; rich but traditional. In other words, they were the Catholic church of pop music.
The Eagles is one of my favorite bands.
In 1977, the song “Hotel California” won the Grammy for record of the year, and the album went platinum. I, and many others, would argue that “Hotel California” is their best song. Lyrical imagery, vocal harmonies, chord progressions, melody—and that dual lead guitar at the end. Producer Bill Szymczyk, with whom the Eagles found their greatest successes, called the song’s guitar-heavy coda one of his proudest production moments. It was the Eagles at their collective musical best. In fact, the album Hotel California, one of the few albums in which I like all of the songs, solidified their musical and financial success.
In the song, “After the Thrill Is Gone,” the band prophetically sings, “What can you do when your dreams come true and it’s not quite like you planned?” What if you have a vision, but not everyone you work with shares that vision? There had always been creative tension in the Eagles, and after Hotel California, the band began to splinter even more. As bassist Timothy B. Schmidt wisely observed, all bands are on the verge of breaking up at all times. And after The Long Run, the Eagles finally did, too.
The Eagles worked hard to earn the love of their fans and write excellent songs. As they state in “The Sad Café”: “We would sing right out loud the things we could not say. We thought we could change this world with words like ‘love’ and freedom’.” As to that last notion: no you can’t change the world and oh, yes you can. Put yourself out there. Strum a guitar. Write a song. But take it easy.
SOURCES
Eagles. Hell Freezes Over. UMG Recordings, 1994.
Eagles. Hotel California. Asylum Records. 1976.
Eagles. The Long Run. Asylum Records. 1979.
Eagles. Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975). Elektra Records. 1976.
History of the Eagles. Dir. Allison Ellwood. UMG Recordings. 2013.
Roberts, Randall. “Live Review: The Eagles Christen the Forum, Take It Easy.” Los Angeles Times. 16 Apr. 2014. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.
http://articles.latimes.com/2014/jan/16/entertainment/la-et-ms-live-review-the-eagles-christen-the-forum-take-it-easy-20140116
COMMENTS
from Desperado Dave-
Hey jackass, theirs a reason the eagles are a billion dollar band and you are just a sleazy little writer. The eagles are the best band out there look it up. Is it our fault that you cant sing or play guitar? To think you would even think you could write a song as good as the eagles. And you say that you intimately know every song- what a croc. The eagles do to have funny songs. What about “The Greeks Don’t Want No Freeks? What about “Chug All Night? Me and my posse do that all the time. You couldnt keep up with us. You probly couldnt drink just one beer without puking. The albums you hear after hell freezes over are some of there best stuff. So how can you claim that you favorite band is the eagles if you don’t know all their music? and I still dont get why you keep repeating it. Maybe you cant think of anything else to say. Plus, there isnt just one guy in the band so your line should say the eagles ARE my favorite band. Learn your grammar. I’ve seen the eagles in concert 15 times. Thats a real fan. Have you actually heard hotel california? the crowd goes nuts. you think your so clever with the catholic church thing the fact that youve even seen the big leboswki just goes to show what kind of nut job you are. Your probably some academic nut plus when you try to quote the song you sounds like a second rate grad student. Do us all a favor and “Take It To The limit” and stick it up your ass you wouldnt know a good song if you ran over it your purple preeus
