The Eagles
The Eagles were a bunch of average musicians from divergent musical backgrounds, who all navigated to California in search of ‘the good life’. They found their way, in their love for music, drugs, alcohol, sex and general dissipation to a bar known as the Troubadour in L.A., where artists such as Joni Mitchel, the Everly Brothers, Elton John, Mick Fleetwood and Linda Ronstadt hung out.
Coming on the heels of Crosby, Stills and Nash, who were managed into stardom by David Geffen, the Eagles became the next group Geffen managed, were an extension of the 60’s Rock and Roll scene in the 70’s.
Don Henley grew up in Houston, Texas, was serious drummer, who attended North Texas State University. Glenn Frey was born in Detroit, Michigan. He was “the perfect bridge between the white-bread rock of the Beatles and the black rhythms of Motown.” Randy Meisner was born in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. He was a natural guitar player who had music in his family background, “My grandfather was a musician, a violinist, so I came from somewhat of a musical family…we kind of shifted away from pure folk rock and into the kind of newer, harder, country thing they were doing.” We encourage students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to appreciate the value of merging various styles of music to create new possibilities.
Early beginnings of the not-yet-named Eagles were a formation of the back-up band for Linda Ronstadt. “Two of the ongoing misconceptions surrounding the origin of the Eagles is that they were conceived as a permanent backup band for Linda Ronstadt and that they played behind for as a fixed unit for her entire 1971 tour. The single gig they did, in Anaheim, went extremely well…while each was a decent enough musician on his own, when they played together on stage, they were terrific…Don could sing anything he wrapped his voice around…Glenn was a great natural country singer, as well as a pretty good guitar player…As for Randy…His singing on the high end is unlike any other sound…And Bernie was one of the best and most overlooked guitar players around…Indeed, it was a band that showed off the individual talents of each member without buying Ronstadt, or perhaps even more important, one another. Frey’s urban guitar and sweet voice, Henley’s bar-band backbeat and scruffed-up vocals, Leadon’s country banjo and guitar, and Meisner’s bass and high, soulful singing scored brilliantly beneath, around, and at times in from of the sultry, luscious Ronstadt and her Cupid-cute musical connivings.”
“David Geffen had formally established Asylum Records in 1970.” After Crosby, Stills and Nash broke up, he was looking for another band to manage, finding the talents of the early beginnings of the Eagles, negotiating with Frey and Henley they decided upon the group’s name. “For one thing, it immediately identified them as an American band. For another, an eagle appeared on most American currency. Best of all, though without question, was the fact that it sounded like ‘the Beatles’. Geffen then decided to temporarily relocated the band to Aspen, Colorado, to try to keep them out of sight and way from L.A.’s three-lane superhighway of women, drugs, and drink so they could focus on their music.”
Geffen found the British producer Glyn Johns, who had produced albums of the Rolling Stones, the Who, and Led Zeppelin. The band was undisciplined and needed a lot of coaching at this point. “in spite of Geffen’s assurance that he would love this band, John’s first impression was not positive. After catching the band’s energetic set at Tulagi’s he later recalled, ‘I personally didn’t think they could play rock ‘n’ roll. When I first saw the Eagles they were doing Chuck Berry stuff and they were blatantly, bloody awful. It was a complete cacophony. You had Glenn Frey, who was a good little rock ‘n’ roll guitar player, on one side, and Bernie Leadon, a great country picker, on the other, and a rhythm section in the middle being pulled in two directions. There was no cohesion. I thought they were bloody awful. Though I knew they could sing, I turned it down.”
“Geffen refused to take no for an answer and kept after Johns until finally the producer agreed to reconsider his decision if he could here the band in Los Angeles, in a more controlled environment.” Artists need to have someone to believe in their potential to spur them on to greatness. We hope to give each student in our music school in Odessa, Texas the opportunity to see their potential and know they are valued.
“Johns recalled, ‘The rehearsal was awful. They took a break and somebody picked up an acoustic guitar and they sat down and sang a song in four-part. I said, ‘This is what this band should be, or could be.”
“In February 1972, on Geffen and Atlantic’s nickel, the Eagles took off for England and the famed Olympic recording studio, John’s creative laboratory or choice…the Eagles quickly discovered this time it was going to be all work and no play…Meisner recalls, “If we were in the studio for twenty-four hours, then he got twenty-four hours’ worth of recording. There never seemed any down time, time to cool out.”
There was not only difficulty in bringing discipline to the group’s work ethic, but also in refining the direction of their style, due to their highly eclectic diversity. “In the studio, Frey and Johns continued to clash over the type of music the band should be making. Frey was still looking to put down hard rock and roll, but Johns continued to mix the level of Leadon’s banjo and Meisner’s bass to approximate what he regarded as the sound of American country music.”
“After two grueling weeks in the studio, the recording of the Eagles was finished…The reason for the speed was clear- the band members couldn’t wait to get out of England, Johns felt he had gone about as far as he could with them, and Geffen wanted to keep his out-of-pocket expenses as low as possible.”
Going on tour, the Eagle’s stage production remained simplistic. “Part of what we tried to do was to keep the voices as ‘front’ as possible, to keep the harmonies clear, clean, and distinct. In other words, to attempt to duplicate the sound they had put on record…while the acts they opened for were the most theatrical in rock, the Eagles were decidedly not. ‘We didn’t go for the glitter or glam rock,’ Henley comments. ‘We didn’t wear gorilla suits or aqualungs.’ Ultimately, the music by itself survived and established the band’s image…The Eagles wanted something simple we could rig quickly and easily…The emphasis, always, was on sound over sight.” We hope to inspire students in our music school in Odessa, Texas to be authentic in their musical pursuits, elevating quality over superficiality.
“The crucial element of the Eagle’s breakthrough lay in the essential spirit of their easy, country-flavored rock and roll, the beauty in the sound of their songs rather than the meaning of their lyrics. It was this combination of retro country and innocent rock that shot them to the top. Unlike Crosby, Stills and Nash (and Young), whose twenty-something musical soap-operas mourned over life in the past lane, the Eales rolled back the age of rock. Their music may have lacked social relevance, but it more than made up for it in emotional significance. They managed to capture in those first songs a primal teen moment, identifiable to every kid in America who ever drank a beer from the bottle while driving around in his convertible trying to get laid. Using a basic backbeat and classic four-part harmony, the Eagles had returned mainstream rock and roll to a context of gorgeous meaninglessness, which meant everything in the world to those young enough to know the music was the message, rather than looking for the message in the music.”
Much of the Eagle’s early success was due to aggressive, organized business management. “By the end of 1972, Eagles music filled the American airwaves. At least one of the group’s first three hits was being heavily rotated on every AM and FM rock station across the country. A big reason was Geffen’s canny and relentless media push of the band…He personally visited every major rock station in all the large markets…It was a methodical, organized campaign, and by pushing these selected buttons…was effectively able to get the whole country hot-wired to the sound of the Eagles.”
In the early stages of the Eagle’s success, the divergent styles of each band member and personalities were tolerated. They were enjoying huge success and taking every opportunity to party together. “At this stage, the tense differences between Henley and Frey had a synergy that gave the band a better, if edgier, creative energy. As Meisner recalls, ‘Glenn was more of a street-tough typed. He and Henley were a real good combination in the beginning because both guys were real intelligent and knew what they wanted, and yet were so completely different, they somehow filled in each other’s personalities.” It is important to understand the value of teamwork as artists, and we hope to instill this attitude in the students of our music school in Odessa, Texas.
Everything changed, however, when Geffen decided to sell Asylum to Warner. “One moment the Eagles were an independent-minded group…The next they were a corporate band, owned by a team of suits…while Geffen made millions from the deal, the band received nothing.”
Irving Azozz became the group’s new manager. “Although he had no talent as a musician, Azoff could play all sorts of money numbers in his head. “Irving Azoff was the type who always wanted to be one of the boys…one person who really appreciated the way Azoff handled himself was Don Henley. Azoff’s style of roughhouse permissiveness pushed all the right psychological buttons for Henley. Finally, here was a father figure who behaved like a mother, someone who would not only never say no to him, but go to the mat against anyone who did. According to Henley, ‘I believed, and still believe, that Irving had his own concept of fairness and it didn’t mesh with the corporate mentality that then governed and still governs the music business. Irving had a David-and-Goliath mentality.”
Over the course several successful years, the band’s high success started giving way to excessive immorality, drug abuse and eccentricities in each of the members. “Friends of the band suspected coke fueled the ongoing and increasingly tense battles between Henley and Frey, which were mostly over one issue: who was the group’s creative leader. Both Henley and Frey were by now heavy coke users.”
“By 1975, the world-wide demand was so great that manufacturing plants worked around the clock turning out Eagles albums and tapes. On tour, everyone in the group and its manager traveled by a private jet (referred to as the ‘party plane’)…They were American rock royalty, with all the material privileges accorded to those who ascent via talent rather than birthright. They high-flying Eagles may have believed the world now and forever belonged to them, but the suits knew better. They understood that the biggest rock starts rarely stayed on the charts for more that sever years, the rough equivalent of the peak teenage-to-early-twenties record-buying days.”
“Rock and roll has always jumped rather than drifted onto youth’s latest cultural pose. The moves are easier to recognize in retrospect- the repressive fifties convulsing with Elvis, the intellectual first half of the sixties articulated by Dylan. The sixties’ migration of the music from Greenwich Village to the West Coast was a microcosm of the cultural direction of youth’s free spirit, a creative pilgrimage, as well as a rejection of the European-dominated environment of the boomer’s parents. Despite the internal struggles, the Eagles’ presentation as a group represented the abstract of the faceless Vietnam army troop, the barracks mentality, the subversion of the individual. The rise of Springsteen perfectly followed the end-of-the war resurrection of the individual, especially to the generation that had to go and fight it.”
Blinded by their success, and stuck in status quo, the Eagles could see the changes that were coming. “While the rest of L.A.’s rock stars were wiping the debris from their faces after the explosion that was Springsteen, the Eagles seemed merely to shrug their shoulders…’The Eagle’s thought rock and roll was about them and only them. They couldn’t see what was happening right before their eyes, but everyone else knew that Bruce Springsteen took something away from the Eagles that night he played the Roxy in L.A.”
The beginning of the end was around the corner for the group. “As Meisner remembers it, ‘We were all real close, more or less, up until the year of Hotel California…Success changed everything. When we first started, we were really close, like brothers. We’d sit around, smoke a doob together, drink beer, and have a good time. By 1976, it just wasn’t the same. We couldn’t set down like the guys anymore. It was all business. The friendships were kind of gone at that point.”
The selfishness and eccentricities of the group’s members started showing up on the road tours. “According to Randy Meisner, ‘At some point, the feeling of being on tour went from something like a game show to a soap opera. There was discontent among the two factions of the band over everything, from accommodations to salaries, because Henley and Frey both wanted to make sure their people were getting paid at least as much as the other one’s…It got real difficult, especially when something went wrong during the show. There was very little tolerance for mistakes.” By 1980, the group had broken up and gone their separate ways.
“‘Why did the Eagles break up?’ Azoff replied to the reporter’s question… ‘In my opinion, they broke up because Glenn and Don realized they could both make great solo albums. They realized they don’t need the Eagles anymore. That’s why you’re not going to see them go out and do a farewell tour or a farewell album or a farewell anything. It’s over, period.”
In 1992, however, the group did find its way back together again, after Henley and Frey had broken the ice with one another. The official reunion took place at the Warner Brothers soundstage in Hollywood, before a small, enthusiastic audience invited to the session by MTV. “The 1994 ‘Hell Freezes Over’ tour, originally scheduled to play seven shows across the United States for seven months, through the end of December, lasted more than two years. It took the Eagles around the worked and out-grossed all other competing concert acts, taking in more than $75 million in ticket sales. Wherever it played, the band was greeted by enthusiastic sold-out crowds made up as much of teenagers too young to have seen the band in its first go-around as of baby boomers eager to revisit the memories of their youth…The album Hell Freezes Over sold more than seven million copies, stayed on the Billboard top 200 for more than two years, and, according to Soundscan, remains solidly among the fifteen most consistent selling ‘catalogue’ albums.”
“Although the Eagles had been known for their carousing and self-abuse in their former incarnation, it was clear to everyone connected to this tour that these Eagles were no bad-boy rockers. All were approaching middle age, and those who had them were often accompanied by wives and children. Schmit’s wife brought their daughter (from his previous marriage and two songs; Felder he wife and two daughters; Frey has second wife, Cindy, and two boys. According to one close to the tour, Walsh was the biggest potential problem…as Frey had laid out a hard-and-fast role- no drinks and no drugs backstage.”
“In spite of the outward appearance of tranquility, if not peace, all wasn’t what is seemed. Within a month, it was rumored, the Eagles were no longer talking to each other. Separate vehicles once more became the order of the day.”
“In 1971, the Eagles had led the celebrated blossoming of L.A. as modern rock’s newest utopia. Twenty-five years later, they had become a band of middle-aged men singing in the emotional past tense songs that had distilled to a single, if profound theme- survival. Like all the great long-running rock stars and groups that had somehow continued to find a way to keep making music.”
“On January 12, 1998, the Eagles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame…Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Randy Meisner, Bernie Leadon, Don Felder, Joe Walsh, and Timoth B. Schmit – the Eagles – became the one hundredth entrant to the twelve-year-old institution…About the awards, Henley says, ‘There’s still this stigma that hangs over the Eagles. No matter how many records we’ve sold, no matter how successful we’ve been, we’re not considered an ‘important’ band, and it’ll always be that way. It’s partially because of the New York critical establishment and partially because we had either the fortune of the misfortune to be the middle child of rock and roll, after all the great sixties artist- Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones. They were the pioneer, we were sort of an afterthought.’”
The event was the final time the group would play together. Each member of the group made comments of their history. Frey was last. “Well, I’m doing mop up…There’s much I’d like to say tonight…Anybody who’s been in a band knows what it’s like to go through the changes…A lot has been made tonight about disharmony. The Eagles were a very laid-back band in a high-stress situation…A lot has been made and a lot has been speculated about the last twenty-seven years about whether or not we got along. We got along fine! We just disagreed a lot! Tell me one worthwhile relationship that has not had peaks and valleys. That’s really what we’re talking about here…you cannot play music with people for very long if you don’t genuinely like them. I guarantee you that over the nine years the Eagles were together during the seventies, over the three years we were together during our reunion, the best of times rank in the ninety-five percent, the worst of times rank in the smallest percentile that obviously everybody but the seven of us has dwelled on for the longest time. Get over it!” Working together in a team takes patience and discipline, especially over years of a group’s career. We hope to instill in the students of our music school in Odessa, Texas values and discipline that withstand the test of time.
Even though there is much to dismiss about the Eagles, there are perhaps some important lesson that can be drawn from there history. One would be the strength in bringing elements of diversity together, which ultimately creates a new style. The group had to be willing to be disciplined by outside forces to help them through the awkward stages of style-differences, until they started gelling with each other. Another important aspect of this story is the synergy, not only within the musicians, but also with the management that worked tirelessly to promote the group. Without this component, they would have fallen into obscurity. Finally, their willingness to put differences aside for their final tour shows maturity and deep friendship, even with the difficulties resurfacing. Quality music is ultimately about relationships.
We hope to instill these values in the students of our music school in Odessa, Texas, as they step out to establish new friendships and artistry.