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Long road out of eden tour12/30/2023 ![]() The legendary Gram Parsons, whose sound the band slavishly aped, called them “bubblegum” in an interview shortly before his tragic death in 1973. “That crushing insecurity is why they’re dicks.”Īn authenticity gap plagued the Eagles from the outset. Tom Scharpling advances this theory about their paper-thin skin: “I think they knew the rap on them the whole time is that they’re these pretty boys who are trading in the mythologies of country music and Americana or whatever you want to call it, but they’re just not legit,” he says. The band found the experience unhappy, and decades later, Glenn Frey would continue to complain that his vocal on “Peaceful Easy Feeling” was out of tune. The Eagles’ self-titled debut ultimately yielded the standards “ Witchy Woman” and “ Take It Easy,” and set a template for their cultural contributions. But this was the band’s first time in the studio and Johns needed their full attention. And sure, that must have been a nuisance for the Eagles. Not a partier, Johns informally banned drugs from the studio, meaning that “we’d have to sneak off to the bathroom to do dope,” according to Henley. Punk rock never knew such pugnaciousness.Ī representative example: The group despised their first producer, Glyn Johns-legendary for his work with the Who and the Stones-whom they blamed for being too bossy. They were mad at the press, their label, their publicists, concert promoters, fellow musicians, and one another. Almost immediately their grievances were countless. Unlike many bands who achieve dickishness in escalating proportion to their success, the Eagles seemingly needed no prompting. The Eagles were a machine built on umbrage and limitless material gain. These hand-picked panel members are all music enthusiasts who consume music at a pace roughly equivalent to an average 18-wheel driver on trucker speed. In an attempt to finally achieve convergence, I conscripted a panel of experts that included radio legend and rock historian Tom Scharpling, treasured cultural critic Rob Sheffield, and celebrated singer-songwriter Will Sheff to reexamine the case against the Eagles 50 years after they first thrust their way into the mainstream. Why are the Eagles the most unloved band to ever sell a hundred million records? Where and when did all of this start and is there any chance for this cognitive dissonance to be resolved? They are, and have always been, dedicatedly off-putting. That episode was not a discrete phenomenon-this has always been Henley and Frey’s modus operandi. Millennials might have first heard of “Hotel California” when emergent supernova Frank Ocean sampled it on Nostalgia, Ultra in 2011, a flattering occurrence to which Don Henley responded by referring to the culture-shifting Ocean as “a talentless little prick.” ![]() A couple generations now know them as the Dude’s most hated band in The Big Lebowski. ![]() Secondly, they have a way of turning up in the strangest contexts. For one thing, their infuriatingly precise mix of rock and roots essentially created the template for contemporary country music radio, with its brick-walled story songs and note-perfect ripping solos. But the songs were burned into my memory forever.įifty years after the Eagles’ first release, they continue to exert a monolithic familiarity. All the harmonies, honky-tonk men, and scarlet women made me intuitively uncomfortable. As adults drank beer and children capered in pools, the Eagles’ soft rock provided uneasy companionship. What matters is that you know them: “ One of These Nights,” “ Desperado,” “ New Kid in Town,” friggin’ “ Hotel California.” During my suburban Long Island upbringing, their smooth sounds were the other thing you heard besides Billy Joel at any given barbecue. Or be difficult and don’t concede that point. Their songs are, let’s face it, incredible. They were led by the dueling macho songwriters Don Henley and Glenn Frey. They made a federal case over whether you called them the Eagles or just Eagles because they said it was just Eagles. They were the cockiest commingling of self-styled swinging rods that ever smugly rocked and countried their way to the top. They were the talented rookie athlete who never shut up. I’m talking about the Eagles from Los Angeles-the most successful country-rock band ever to aggressively straddle the globe. No, not the Philadelphia Eagles (though that too is complicated) or bald eagles (for whom I experience a patriot’s unnuanced love). Many relationships in life are conflicted, but none anywhere is more so than my own to the Eagles.
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