Skip to main content

The Long Run

By



Glenn Frey's passing brings back an interesting set of memories.  I was never a big fan of the Eagles but Hotel California is one of those songs that is hard to get out of your head.  Don Felder wrote the music, which to me is the most haunting part, but Frey and Don Henley are given more credit for the lyrics.  Felder is a Gainesville native.  He and Bernie Leadon both grew up in Hogtown and helped spawn a music scene that was second to none in the 70s, which included Tom Petty among others.

I remember as a college student "camping out" to buy $6 tickets for a Tom Petty concert, as it was expected to be sold out the first day.  Petty was making his triumphant return to Gainesville, kicking off a new tour, and it was rumored Stevie Nicks would be joining him on stage, after their huge hit, Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, the previous year.  Petty may have not been ready for the big stadiums like the Eagles, but he was sure to pack the 12,000 seat O'Connell Center.

When the Eagles came to town in the early 90s it was an entirely different story.  Ticket prices had soared by then and you couldn't get a seat for less than $100.   This was the Hell Freezes Over tour that saw the Eagles come back together, which Don Henley vowed would never happen.   It turned out to be a smart marketing ploy, as they packed the University of Florida football stadium, despite many disgruntled fans who felt they were being gouged.  Some hold the Eagles personally responsible for high ticket prices, as they were the first major band to cross this threshold.

Glenn Frey had tried to go solo in the 80s, penning a few songs popularized by hit movies and TV shows.  He even popped up on Miami Vice in an episode built around Smuggler's Blues.  But, his popularity faded pretty quickly, as did Don Henley's solo effort, which I guess is why the two got the big idea to bring back the Eagles in 1994.  It was clear they would never achieve the same level of success they had in the 70s, but they could cash in on it with a grand reunion.



It worked out perfectly for them as there was a big yearning for these pre-disco era bands that hadn't been forgotten.  The core of their fans were now middle-aged like themselves and could afford to spring for a big concert, unlike the college kids that supported them in the 70s.  There was MTV for the young ones to tune into and see them "unplugged," not that this audiance would be overly interested in their music.  The Eagles would have a hard time competing with Grunge, which was dominating the airwaves at the time.

Don Felder was fired in 2001.  It seemed Frey and Henley wanted to take the Eagles back to their country roots, and there was no room for Don.  He filed a suit against his former bandmates, reaching an undisclosed settlement, but the bad taste lingered for years.  After all, he helped give the band its distinctive sound, never getting the credit he deserved.

Glenn Frey kind of disappeared himself.  The Eagles haven't enjoyed a resurgence like other iconic bands have.  There is no great call for their music on the radio.  You don't even hear young groups drawing on their music in any significant way, like they do other bands from the same era.  There are few persons covering Eagles tracks.

The Eagles continued to play in their diminished form through 2015.  They were due to be honored at Kennedy Center at the end of the year, but Glenn's remaining bandmates asked for the honor to be postponed so that Frey could join them.  Nevertheless, Miranda Lambert offered this version of Desperado, which is probably his signature song.  It will make this year's event just that much more poignant.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

By
A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...
170 comments
Read more