Critical Mass

Super or superficial?

The Eagles: Love-hate debate rages on; 44 years already gone

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Eagles illustration.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Eagles illustration.

"Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening."

-- Steely Dan,

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Eagles in 2015: Joe Walsh (from left), Timothy B. Schmit, Glenn Frey and Don Henley

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Democrat-Gazette file photo

The band the Eagles was founded in 1971 by (from left) Bernie Leadon, Randy Meisner, Don Henley and Glenn Frey.

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Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975

The Eagles

8 p.m. Monday, Verizon Arena, North Little Rock

Tickets: $54.50-$176.50

(800) 745-3000

"Everything You Did"

Not everyone hates the Eagles.

After all, the Eagles have sold more than 150 million albums worldwide, won six Grammy Awards, had five No. 1 singles, 17 Top 40 singles and six No. 1 albums. They have sold more records than any other American band. They are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And they are performing Monday at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock.

The Eagles are, in fact, quite popular.

But there are a lot of people who do hate them.

I'm not one of them, though I think I understand why some hold that position. Some people feel the band, by virtue of their massive popularity, has been forced down their throats. More than 35 years after the Eagles first broke up, you still hear them if you listen to certain types of radio stations. I have heard baby boomers assert that the Eagles are the greatest rock band in history. Though that might seem to be a laughable overstatement, true believers abound. It doesn't help that Eagles fans tend not to be very magnanimous when it comes to other sorts of popular music; many tend to have an aversion to hip-hop or dance music. Some are bumptious and incurious.

But I think a lot of people hate the Eagles for the same reason they used to hate the Dallas Cowboys (before the team became an exemplar of mediocrity): Because of the presumption implicit in the name -- they weren't just an American band but America's band -- and the way they manifested smugness. It was easy to perceive the Eagles as a band for the cool kids. In Rock 'n' Roll High School, Glenn Frey and Don Henley were football heroes, lounging around in letter jackets, being attended to by cheerleaders. They took their status for granted, as a privilege conferred upon the good-looking and talented. It was possible to perceive something of the bully in their insistence on the importance of songcraft in the face of the '70s punk revolution.

If you thought rock 'n' roll was mostly attitude and the only quality required to make

glorious noise was courage enough to risk making a fool of yourself, then you likely hated the Eagles. The band made it look so effortless, yet carried it only so far. They played it safe while looking dangerous; they would go sinuous but not twangy, the lyrics -- especially Henley's -- flirted with an undergraduate's idea of complexity (he was actually proud of that "she's got the Mercedes bends" line in "Hotel California") without really meaning anything. The Eagles were the Los Angeles equivalent of Nashville songwriting combines; their hooks were buried in light, sweet pastry. The band made superficial music to lubricate the minds of suburban moms and dads with other things to worry about.

But they weren't bad. I have never said they were bad. I don't hate them. I don't. I don't.

I have all their albums. But you only need one.

No home should be without a copy of Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975. TGH is like the Bible in that even if you're not a believer, having a copy around comes in handy. There are only 10 songs and you probably have memorized them all. This is the definitive decalogue of L.A. smooth Western pop. The Eagles were the Beach Boys in boots minus the problematic madman in the sandbox. Band members were supple and pliable, with range and chops. They were as bland as Miller Lite, smooth as a dry desert breeze. A subversive artist could smuggle all sorts of nasty business in under the cover of their sun-sweet harmonies. If you've got 43 minutes and eight seconds, I'd like to play it for you.

SIDE ONE

1. "Take It Easy " -- This is, as Frey sometimes says in concert, where it all started. The origin myth is well-known: Glenn Frey was living in a L.A. apartment building upstairs from Jackson Browne, and he heard his neighbor working on the song. He liked it and asked Browne if his newly formed band could record it. Browne said sure, adding that it wasn't finished, so Frey wrote another verse and took it into the studio.

Frey apparently wrote the best verse, the iconic "standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona" line that introduces some specificity into what is otherwise a vague lyric. Browne's first verse -- "Running down the road, trying to loosen my load/I got seven women on my mind ..." -- sounds temporary, something to hold the place for a better lyric to come. When Frey's epiphanic lyric kicks in, he roots us in a sense of place and evokes a specific incident, one strong enough to have become a primal country rock scene. There's a statue and mural in downtown Winslow to commemorate the moment the girl in the flat-bed Ford slows down to ogle the singer.

Frey and Browne have said it was based on a real incident. Only it was Flagstaff, not Winslow, where Browne noticed the girl in the Toyota pickup checking him out as she cruised the Der Wienerschnitzel fast-food restaurant on Route 66.

Browne also released a version of the song on his 1973 album For Everyman. His version is notable for the interplay between Sneaky Pete Kleinow's pedal steel and David Lindley's electric guitars, especially in the extended outro. But the Eagles' version sounds better. Frey's lead vocal is supported by a marvelous arrangement that involves the other band members alternating behind him. The secret weapon is multi-instrumentalist Bernie Leadon's double-time banjo that checks in around the 1:40 mark.

2. "Witchy Woman" -- The band's second single was written by Henley and Leadon, with Henley on lead vocals. Apparently Leadon had been working on the key g minor figure while he was still a Flying Burrito Brother. Henley composed most of the casually misogynistic lyrics while he was feverish and "semi-delirious." A biography of Zelda Fitzgerald that Henley was reading at the time inspired some of the lyrics, such as "she drove herself to madness with a silver spoon," which is apparently an absinthe, not cocaine, reference.

3. "Lyin' Eyes" -- A Henley and Frey collaboration from 1975, this second single from the One of These Nights album was the first Eagles song to cross over to mainstream country playlists (No. 8 on the country charts). Again, the lyrics evince evidence of a less-than-developed sense of empathy for women. The song is basically about a trophy wife who's cheating on her wealthy husband with a boy with "fiery eyes and dreams no one can steal." While it's not really fair to expect a '70s rock song to conform to the politically correct standard of the 21st century, the complaint implicit in the lyric seems self-serving and boorish, kind of like that line in Dan Fogelberg's "Same Auld Lang Syne": "She said she married her an architect/Who kept her warm and safe and dry."

4. "Already Gone" -- Wow, a real rocker, with a simple (I-V-IV) chord structure, a driving rhythm, two guitar solos (the first by Frey, who also sang lead, and the second, a squealing outro by Don Felder, who had only joined the band the day before). Most of all was that creamy, thick harmony on the chorus which, as much as anything, defines the Eagles' sound. So it's surprising it wasn't written by the band, but by songwriters Jack Tempchin (who also wrote "Peaceful Easy Feeling") and Robb Strandlund.

As kiss-off songs go, it's not a bad one. It's not in the same league as Bob Dylan's "Positively Fourth Street" or Jackson Browne's "I'm Alive" but the line "you'll have to eat your lunch all by yourself" could have been something like the '70s analog to "Bye, Felicia."

The song appeared on the 1974 album On the Border and was one of the first tracks recorded in Los Angeles with producer Bill Szymczyk. Their previous two albums and some of On the Border were recorded in the Notting Hill neighborhood of London with legendary British producer Glyn Johns, with whom the band and manager David Geffen had a tempestuous relationship. In his book Sound Man: A Life Recording Hits with The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, The Faces ..., Johns attributed his friction with Frey to his policy of not allowing drugs or alcohol in the studio.

"Randy Meisner told me he was unhappy with the sound I was getting," Johns wrote. "When I asked him to explain, he told me when he heard an Eagles song on a radio station with poor reception and interference in the signal, it did not sound very good. I thought he was joking but he was deadly serious."

5. "Desperado" -- While this painfully turgid Henley/Frey ballad, the title track of the band's second album, has become one of the most covered pop songs in history -- everyone from Diana Krall to Ringo Starr to Black Oak Arkansas has taken a crack at it -- the Eagles' version was not a chart hit. It wasn't even released as a single, probably because Linda Ronstadt had released her Top 40 cover version a few months before the Eagles' album came out.

"Desperado" is one of those pop moments you either cherish or loathe. To my ears it sounds pretentious and clunky, with a lyric that strains and wobbles -- "Don't you draw the queen of diamonds boy/She'll beat you if she's able/You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet" -- syrupy strings and Henley's aching vocal. It's either a whiny, faux-rustic masterpiece of schlock or a masterpiece.

SIDE TWO

1. "One of These Nights" -- This is one of the more enjoyable of the band's Henley/Frey pop singles, with Henley's voice being put to good, soulful use. It's the title track of their fourth album, arguably their best.

2. "Tequila Sunrise" -- Another Henley/Frey bauble, this one dithers the line between L.A. singer-songwriter lassitude and Gnashville combine songwriting. This rueful hangover song is better received as a one-off hit than as part of the semi-concept album Desperado; it's strange that it didn't chart better. It was the first Eagles single to fail to reach the Top 40.

In the liner notes of the 2003 compilation, The Very Best Of, Don Henley wrote:

"I believe that was a Glenn title. I think he was ambivalent about it because he thought that it was a bit too obvious or too much of a cliche because of the drink that was so popular then. I said, 'No, look at it from a different point of view. You've been drinking straight tequila all night and the sun is coming up!' It turned out to be a really great song."

4. "Peaceful Easy Feeling" -- The second Eagles song from the 1972 debut in which a Der Wienerschnitzel figures somewhat prominently. Here's what songwriter Tempchin had to say about it on peacefuleasyfeeling.com:

"I went to a street fair in [San Diego's] Old Town and saw a girl with turquoise earrings against her dark skin. I never spoke with her but I put her in the first line of the song. I guess I was trying to distill the beauty of every girl I saw into words on paper and then into a song.

"In those days I carried my $13 Stella guitar [that I bought in a pawn shop] with me everywhere I went. I wrote the last verse of the song in the parking lot of the Der Weinerschnitzel fast food restaurant on Washington Boulevard in San Diego ...

"Jackson Browne, Glenn Frey and J.D. Souther were helping me to hook up in L.A. I was staying at Jackson's and sitting in his piano room playing my new song. Glenn Frey heard it and asked what it was. He said he had a new band [the Eagles] that had only been together for eight days and he wanted to know if I'd mind if they worked it up.

"The next day he brought me a cassette of what they had done with it. It was so good I couldn't believe it. A few months later, they went to the UK and recorded their first album. When they got back, Glenn played some of the cuts for me ... I knew it was the best record I had ever heard."

5. "Best of My Love" -- If one wanted to be snide, one might observe that this Henley-sung number not only topped the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1975, but it reached the top of the Easy Listening charts a month earlier. But there's no denying that the bridge -- "I'm going back in time/And it's a sweet dream ..." -- which was written by J.D. Souther -- is a lovely, transporting pop confection. And those harmonies -- these guys, are, if nothing else, real pros.

...

So why do people hate them so?

For some, the Eagles represent a kind of curdling of the spirit of rock 'n' roll, the embodiment of Max Weber's theories about success corrupting inspiration, about bureaucracy subverting charismatic leadership. The Eagles are rock band as business plan. For a lot of people, its members represent all that's bad about professional rock 'n' roll. They punched out hits like widgets, maximized profits, put aside petty personal grievances when it became apparent that they could cash in with a Hell Freezes Over tour.

Yet most Eagles fans aren't those fans. Truth be told, most Eagles fans are probably fairly casual about popular music; they have a healthy indifference to critical opinion. They hear the music; they hum along; they smile. They buy the greatest hits album, one of the biggest-selling albums in the world.

Email:

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

Style on 07/26/2015

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