With A Million Stars All Around

November 15, 2012 1:18 PM

The Eagles had been together for barely a week at the time, but Frey immediately recognized a great song when he heard it.
posted by timsteil (70 comments total)

Jesus, man, can you change the station?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:22 PM on November 15, 2012 [25 favorites]

"For me, the last verse of a song is the clincher that ties up everything that came before and gives a one-two punch to the chorus. I wrote that verse sitting at the concrete table at the Wienerschnitzel.”
posted by CynicalKnight at 1:25 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

And you think Smooth is an earworm? I just read the title and I can't get rid of this annoying, uneasy feeling. It's like being trapped in an elevator. And it's a billion stars.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 1:27 PM on November 15, 2012

Jesus, man, can you change the station?

Fuck you man! You don't like my fucking music, get your own fucking cab!
posted by El Sabor Asiatico at 1:29 PM on November 15, 2012 [5 favorites]

Huh. I did feel a strange sense of dread the one time I ate at that Wienerschnitzel. Now I know why.

But all joking aside, and in spite of the fact that I don't particularly dig the Eagles, if I can someday write just one song as good as that one, I'll be a happy man.
posted by The World Famous at 1:30 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

This is why I liked punk so much.
posted by benito.strauss at 1:32 PM on November 15, 2012 [9 favorites]

I loved country rock and I loved the Eagles. I got over it after seeing them live on the Hotel California tour.
posted by tommasz at 1:37 PM on November 15, 2012

Smuggler's Blues was a GREAT Miami Vice episode, featuring Glenn Frey..
posted by ninjew at 1:37 PM on November 15, 2012

And it's a billion stars.

I just assumed he had a cold at the time they recorded it.
posted by timsteil at 1:39 PM on November 15, 2012

I just finished reading Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends which had a lot of interesting background on the whole LA/Topanga scene at the time. Not quite as good a read as Shakey, but a lot of fun if you are interested in music of the period. Tempchin is only mentioned a few times, but the Eagles and Geffen are pretty much at the center of the story.
posted by Lame_username at 1:45 PM on November 15, 2012

Jesus, man, can you change the station?

Fuck you man! You don't like my fucking music, get your own fucking cab!

Man, come on, I had a rough night and I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man.
posted by wabbittwax at 1:47 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Jesus, man, can you change the station?

Fuck you man! You don't like my fucking music, get your own fucking cab!

Done.
posted by TigerMoth at 1:53 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

I never liked "Take It To The Limit" until I heard it interpreted by Cher. True story.
posted by Egg Shen at 1:53 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

CynicalKnight: "For me, the last verse of a song is the clincher that ties up everything that came before and gives a one-two punch to the chorus. I wrote that verse sitting at the concrete table at the Wienerschnitzel.”

Holy shit.

Do you ever feel that, in about 10 years, Google will be able to show you streaming webcam of that table from 40 years ago, Jack Tempchins munching and scribbling on a napkin?
posted by IAmBroom at 1:54 PM on November 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

I tried to get me some Eagles on Spotify and it can only supply covers from an album called 'Dinner Party Guitar Moods Vol 1'. Hipsters may appreciate.

Biggest selling US band in history. The Dinner Party acoustic versions all sound like the Beatles' 'If I Fell' but played faster and with country instrumentation.
posted by colie at 1:54 PM on November 15, 2012

I am actually going to a Big Lebowski Brew & View tonight. We're going to dress in costume, drink white russians, and yell all the lines at the screen. I've been excited for weeks.

It's at the Majestic, Madison Mefites. Be there!
posted by echo target at 1:54 PM on November 15, 2012

The '70s were a hell of a drug.
posted by Aquaman at 2:17 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

This is why I, too, liked punk so much. That isn't a good song. That's triple-distilled sonic chloroform. That song makes elevator muzak sound edgy and raw.
posted by Decani at 2:22 PM on November 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

There is one good Eagles song and it's not really that good. And this song is not the one.
posted by Foosnark at 2:27 PM on November 15, 2012 [3 favorites]

In case anyone needs a palate cleanser.
posted by basicchannel at 2:32 PM on November 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

There is, you know a lot of good music besides punk, but if all you like is punk, start a thread about punk. I will not shit in that thread, if you don't shit in other music threads.
posted by tommyD at 2:39 PM on November 15, 2012 [6 favorites]

peaceful easy feeling always left me feeling neither peaceful nor easy. But I'd be lying if I dismissed the Eagles in their entirety.

James Dean is a fun rocker.
Journey of the Sorcerer is cosmic, epic, quite brilliant actually.
One of These Nights has one of the great grooves.
lyin eyes will be getting sung at campfires for at least another 500 years.
King of Hollywood is creepy and true in all the right ways.
posted by philip-random at 2:51 PM on November 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

I used to hate The Eagles. I've mellowed on the topic since my youth.
I still dont love them but "One of These Nights" and "I Can't Tell You Why" have given them a lifetime dispensation from me.
Hell, even the songs I dont particularly like from them are still well-crafted, if workmanlike.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 2:58 PM on November 15, 2012

Wow, who knew? music enjoyed by those with a 70s perspective not ALWAYS enjoyed by those with a 80s, 90s or 00s perspective.


Have to write a note to self
posted by sfts2 at 2:59 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Jeeez, what's with all the negative vibes, man? I love The Fucking Eagles!
posted by lumpenprole at 3:13 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

I don't need your fuckin' sympathy, man, I need my fucking johnson!

Wait. What?
posted by mazola at 3:16 PM on November 15, 2012

I seem to recall an anecdote relating to The Eagles when they were starting out that they were the poor man's Poco. Considering that Poco always suffered from being considered the poor man's Flying Burrito Brothers, that's saying something.
posted by KingEdRa at 3:24 PM on November 15, 2012

also, I realize it's kind of a cliche now but I was flipping through some very old Rolling Stone articles a while back and found a review of the Eagles first album (1972) wherein the reviewer made it clear:

the cool NEW song of the moment, early autumn 1972, was Take It Easy. It was fresh, it was positive, EVERYBODY LOVED IT -- hippies, straights, teenybops, rockers, probably even Richard Nixon.

It had the zeitgeist by the balls.

and that's the last good thing I'm going to say about the Eagles for a long while, I hope, because truth be told, I'm way more with Leibowski than agin him -- Creedence all the way)
posted by philip-random at 3:26 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

I, too, hated the Eagles--okay, I still hate the fuckin' Eagles--but the Langley Schools Music Project cover of "Desperado" made me realize that beneath all the coked-out '70s overproduction, there are some solid songs there.
posted by Rangeboy at 3:36 PM on November 15, 2012 [3 favorites]

There is, you know a lot of good music besides punk, but if all you like is punk, start a thread about punk. I will not shit in that thread, if you don't shit in other music threads.

Howdy, youngster, pull up a stump and let me tell you about Southern California in the 1970s. It was a different time, I tell you what. There just was not that big a choice in the music you could hear, 'specially not in Orange County. Most'a'th' radio played the same stuff, and "Oldies" meant 1950's doo-wop. You'd be in the car, and you didn't have XM, or a CD player, or maybe even a cassette player. So when your best-bet Rock station decided to play The Eagles, you didn't have much choice but to listen to it. And that happened a lot.

So, I sure as hell don't only like punk music. And I didn't come into this thread just to say "Oi, that's not punk!". I made my comment because The Eagle are very specifically the music that was around me when I first heard punk, and are precisely what punk (and New Wave) contrasted with that made them so exciting.

Besides, I always did like America better. Fuck the haters, Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn't already have.
posted by benito.strauss at 4:05 PM on November 15, 2012 [5 favorites]

I got burned out on the Eagles a while back, but I will still drop everything just to listen to Seven Bridges Road if it comes on. It's the harmonies.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:11 PM on November 15, 2012 [3 favorites]

I liked the part in Hotel California where they mock Steely Dan.
posted by basicchannel at 4:25 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Lame_username, thank you for finding one of my husband's Christmas presents for me.
posted by immlass at 4:26 PM on November 15, 2012

-- they mock Steely Dan

"Turn up The Eagles the neighbors are listening."
posted by timsteil at 4:29 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

Worst band ever. Robert Christgau provided the best description of their horrible music: "Slickshit"
posted by JeffL at 4:49 PM on November 15, 2012

Was there any kind of a feud going on between Steely Dan and the Eagles in the ’70s?
In the steel-cage death match of tasteful ’70s rock bands lacking muscle tone, Steely Dan fired the first shot, on their 1976 album The Royal Scam. “Everything You Did,” a bitter, vengeful song directed at a lover, features the line “turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening.” Glenn Frey of the Eagles said, “Apparently Walter Becker’s girlfriend loved the Eagles, and she played them all the time. I think it drove him nuts. So, the story goes that they were having a fight one day and that was the genesis of the line.” Given that the two bands shared a manager (Irving Azoff) and that the Eagles proclaimed their admiration for Steely Dan, this was more friendly rivalry than feud. Nevertheless, on “Hotel California” the same year, the Eagles sent a barbed-wire kiss back to Steely Dan with the lyric “They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can’t kill the beast.” Frey commented, “We just wanted to allude to Steely Dan rather than mentioning them outright, so ‘Dan’ got changed to ‘knives,’ which is still, you know, a penile metaphor.”

(Excerpted from the 2006 book Is Tiny Dancer Really Elton’s Little John?: Music’s Most Enduring Mysteries, Myths, and Rumors Revealed, published by Three Rivers Press, written by Gavin Edwards.)
posted by timsteil at 4:51 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was somehow unaware until this thread that they mocked one of my all-time faves, Steely Dan. Now I hate them even more.
posted by JeffL at 4:53 PM on November 15, 2012 [3 favorites]

I have never hated the Eagles, even during my most musically-intolerant angry young man days, but I must admit that I can't really listen to most of their output any more, other than a few select songs, maybe once every year or two. Which is fine.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:15 PM on November 15, 2012

Guess I better not start a thread about Journey, then.

When the lights go down in the ci-taaaay....
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 5:30 PM on November 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn't already have.

Fair enough, but what's with that horse with no name - the heat hot, the ground dry, and there ain't no one for to give you no name?

That song was a new pop hit when I was twelve and even I knew the lyrics were dumb.
posted by philip-random at 5:32 PM on November 15, 2012

I have a love/hate relationship with the Eagles. I heard a lot of them growing up in L.A., and a lot of Don Henley's solo stuff. Some of the stuff really, really sucks. But there are some songs that I always found hard to resist. "Life in the Fast Lane," for instance. If CSN had recorded "Seven Bridges Road," I don't think anyone would have branded it 'slickshit' (but that does fit a lot of their songs).

And there are a few that I do find cringeworthy musically or lyrically, but still enjoy as a kind of a distillation of cultural moment that produced it (even moreso with the Henley solo stuff. "Dirty Laundry" being probably the most widely known example, but most of End of the Innocence probably qualifies.) Henley's solo stuff is thematically darker than most Eagles material, though, which I think plays more interestingly against those sort of plasticized arrangements and production.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:42 PM on November 15, 2012

Fair enough, but what's with that horse with no name ?

The word among my set of tweens was that it was a sly reference to !*!*dRuGs!*!*!, but there were lots of things that we didn't quite understand. I wouldn't be surprised if that was yet another one.
posted by benito.strauss at 5:43 PM on November 15, 2012

I was in high school in the mid-seventies. I loved the Eagles. They are the reason I bought a guitar and took lessons. I also liked Santana.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 5:50 PM on November 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

Fair enough, but what's with that horse with no name ?

Only Neil Young can write Neil Young songs, that's what.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:00 PM on November 15, 2012 [3 favorites]

And they stole their signature song from Tull
posted by stargell at 7:07 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

High school 71-75, college thereafter. So my musical tastes were formed before punk but nonetheless, the Eagles were thought of by myself and most of my friends as a "girl band". You know, your girl friend had the greatest hits album right next to her copy of Seals & Crofts. But that mostly laid back west coast country wasn't exactly getting the testosterone the jump it required. And being we all grew up in the upper Midwest, country was the music we were absolutely rebelling against. That was our parents' music. Besides, the Eagles were not exactly the spike in the limbic system that some other bands were in those days.

These days I will acknowledge that the songwriting skills of the Eagles were pretty damn good. But I still shudder when I hear just about anything off that damn greatest hits album. My wife can play all the Seals & Crofts, Elton John, or James Taylor she wants but I am happy that she gave up her Eagles Greatest Hits a long time ago.
posted by Ber at 7:22 PM on November 15, 2012

I got burned out on the Eagles a while back, but I will still drop everything just to listen to Seven Bridges Road if it comes on. It's the harmonies.

A great song, but it wasn't written by the Eagles and it's been done better by other performers.
posted by Rangeboy at 7:36 PM on November 15, 2012

If the Eagle did nothing else, they did Ol' '55, and I had to find out who wrote it. Turned out it was this strange genius name of Tom Waits, and lord knows, I was feelin' alive.
posted by tommyD at 8:35 PM on November 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

“Apparently Walter Becker’s girlfriend loved the Eagles, and she played them all the time. I think it drove him nuts. So, the story goes that they were having a fight one day and that was the genesis of the line.”

Something I totally spaced when posting that (kind of apropos right?), is that Becker's girlfriend OD'ed, he got sued for wrongful death, he got hit by a cab, and moved to Hawaii to kick heroin. And that was the end of Steely Dan.

For a while.
posted by timsteil at 8:50 PM on November 15, 2012

There is a special place in hell for the person who wrote that insipid piece of crap "Hotel California".
posted by dunkadunc at 10:35 PM on November 15, 2012

I believe it's a room in the Hotel California.
posted by philip-random at 12:19 AM on November 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

So Steely Dan & the Eagles are contemporaries and share a subset of fans and maybe both sometimes sing about rich white guy problems, but otherwise I will never understand why people assume that because I love Steely Dan I am also an Eagles fan. The Eagles are, like, the Robert Frost of rock 'n roll, while Steely Dan is more like the W. H. Auden or Wallace Stevens.
posted by rhiannonstone at 12:39 AM on November 16, 2012

Because they objectively sound the same, coked up seventies production values and all?
posted by MartinWisse at 2:14 AM on November 16, 2012

My rough grab at a tentative hypothesis is that somebody doesn't know what "objectively" means.

I await proof of the contrary. Bring data.
posted by Wolof at 2:33 AM on November 16, 2012

Whatever.

Me, I remember cocaine with great, great fondness.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:32 AM on November 16, 2012

Me, I remember cocaine with great, great fondness.

Had to stop this drug very early myself. Too encouraging, too too good.

Too too, err, too.
posted by Wolof at 3:59 AM on November 16, 2012

I find it funny, having the strong sense that many people like only one kind of music.
posted by sfts2 at 5:35 AM on November 16, 2012

Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends

The secret ingredient is Waddy Wachtel.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:17 AM on November 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Eagles: Cheap imitation America.

Anyone who would try to call "Horse With No Name" a "Neil Young song" has not the slightest clue what makes Neil Young sound like Neil Young. As a fan of both, I can assure you, they are not like each other! (might sound good if they tried though).

It might be said that America was sounding amazingly like an update of CSN. It is interesting to note (to my big surprise) that was the doing of their producer, and not the band. Personally, I liked their producer's vision better. The band wanted to be more pop.
posted by Goofyy at 7:31 AM on November 16, 2012

I'm listening to Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 right now. Yes, partly out of spite. And I'm loving it.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:37 AM on November 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Anyone who would try to call "Horse With No Name" a "Neil Young song" has not the slightest clue what makes Neil Young sound like Neil Young. As a fan of both, I can assure you, they are not like each other! (might sound good if they tried though).

I assure you that you opinion is bad and wrong, as demonstrated by the inherent ignorance of your comment. Take it from me, you are not the person you think you are. Thanks for playing.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:47 AM on November 16, 2012

Thank god for the Eagles. Without them, there surely would never have been a Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, or any other West Coast music that mattered.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 8:37 AM on November 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

I like the Eagles' version of "Seven Bridges Road", but I didn't know about Dolly Parton's version of "Seven Bridges Road". Cool.

I'm no fan of the Eagles - to put it mildly - and I really really dislike the lyrics for "Already Gone", but hearing all three of those guitars going at once in the middle section is ear candy.

But I'd rather listen to [insert name of band that you've probably never heard of because I'm so cool and all that :-)].
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 9:00 AM on November 16, 2012

Your assurances are of value only to yourself, sir. Mr. Young is about dissonance. America hardly touches the stuff. Mr. Young is Canadian. The guys from America grew up in England and played the London scene.
posted by Goofyy at 9:16 AM on November 16, 2012

The secret ingredient is Waddy Wachtel.

Amen. And anyone who hates the Eagles and needs convincing that Waddy Wachtel makes great things sound better just needs to be reminded that The Church's Starfish album was produced by Waddy Wachtel. From what I've read, The Church didn't get along with Wachtel at all, but the album they made together is easily one of the best albums of all time.
posted by The World Famous at 9:17 AM on November 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Me, I remember cocaine with great, great fondness.

Maybe a year out of high school (1978), a good friend of mine got into coke. We all did, sort of, but he really got into. Because unlike other drugs, coke was harmless, other than the odd nosebleed.

He was dead within the year. Not by overdose. Suicide. He'd taken a fifty thousand dollar inheritance and turned it into a huge debt, with bad people after him to collect. And he'd alienated so many people with his apocalyptic egoism, nobody cared enough to help him out.

Fuck cocaine, I decided. I've done it maybe two dozen times since, and found it good for the immediate esteem and not much else.
posted by philip-random at 10:17 AM on November 16, 2012

also, required viewing:

From The Byrds To The Eagles Part 1 of 7
posted by philip-random at 10:18 AM on November 16, 2012

Your assurances are of value only to yourself, sir. Mr. Young is about dissonance. America hardly touches the stuff. Mr. Young is Canadian. The guys from America grew up in England and played the London scene.

Sigh. My point was to genericize your comment to show the offensive dismissiveness inherent in "assuring" someone they "don't have the slightest clue" what they're talking about.

To make the point, again: I've been a Neil Young fan my whole life. I've seen him live numerous times, solo, with Crazy Horse, and with CSNY. To reduce Neil Young to "dissonance" is like saying French cuisine "consists of butter." Futhermore, a band from here may be perfectly capable of emulating another performer from there when they choose to do so, so I suppose you must have even less than "the slightest clue."

Or you could just offer your opinion without feeling the need to discredit mine based purely on the band's genealogy and a single adjective, rather than what the actual song we're talking about sounds like.

But this is a derail anyway, so whatever...
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:39 AM on November 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Goofyy, you are being goofy here, I think. If Horse With No Name doesn't sound similar to Neil Young, then red isn't similar to violet.

Fun fact: in Vancouver, early spring 1972, Horse With No Name was the #2 song on the weekly Top 40 and Neil Young's Heart of Gold was #3.

Donny Osmond's Puppy Love was #1.
posted by philip-random at 11:45 AM on November 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Maybe a year out of high school (1978), a good friend of mine got into coke. We all did, sort of, but he really got into. Because unlike other drugs, coke was harmless, other than the odd nosebleed.

He was dead within the year.

Yup, it's an all-too-common story. I've had more than a handful and friends and acquaintances killed by it over the decades. The same goes for booze, for that matter. Neither are anything like harmless, of course.

So it goes, sadly. I still remember the drug itself with fondness.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:43 PM on November 16, 2012