Desperadoes Hell Freezes Over (Again)
Author: Joseph Dunn
Publication: The Herald Sun (Melbourne)
Date: October 28, 2001
Abstract: Interview with Glenn in which his past and present lifestyles are contrasted, and then an interview with Don that discusses why he chooses the Eagles over a solo career. Questions about missing ex-Eagles are not well-received.
They sang about peaceful easy feelings, but behind the scenes the eagles were racked by resentment and drug-fuelled tantrums. now, 20 years after imploding in a mire of recriminations and broken friendships the soft-rock gods are together again, ready to take it to the limit one more time. Joseph Dunn asks why
Glenn Frey is running late. The 52-year-old Eagle wanders into the rehearsal studio sporting crumpled jeans, battered runners and an oversized T-shirt. And he has forgotten to brush his teeth. "I've got my toothbrush, but no toothpaste," he explains. "Anyone got some paste?" Assistants scurry furiously to find some as he rummages in one of the coffin-like tour trunks. "What about some salt?" he shouts after them. "I'll just use water and salt like the old days." But these aren't the old days; some toothpaste is found and Frey is spared the dubious pleasure of reacquainting himself with rock'n'roll ablutions.
The Eagles, soft-rock giants of the 1970s, are at Culver City Studios in Los Angeles to practise their ubiquitous repertoire of songs before touring once again, for only the second time since 1980. It has been five years since that previous outing and almost 20 years since their acrimonious split, which left a trail of recriminations and broken friendships. Now, with their dreamy blend of sun-kissed Californian harmonies and car-radio friendly melodies, they are putting all that behind them and hitting the open road again.
But time is catching up. All are in their 50s, their weathered faces, dulled eyes and spreading waistlines confirming that nobody is as old as an ageing rock star. The passing years have also dulled resentments that conspired to break up the band at the height of its success. The current line-up is technically Eagles V, the four previous incarnations consigned to history, and only Henley and Frey remain from the original line-up.
Founding member Frey is well aware of the passage of time: he has been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Without treatment his hands swell, making guitar-playing impossible, and he's glad to be back. "As the years go by, I think we appreciate the Eagles more and more," he begins. "I think we are all starting to understand that we occupy a unique position, in terms of our stature and longevity. We are beginning to realise how fortunate we've been, how fortunate we still are."
It's very different from the band's turbulent break-up in 1980. "We were on stage," Frey recalls, "and Don Felder looks at me and says, 'Just three more songs until I kick your ass, pal'. And I'm thinking, 'Great, I can't wait'. We were singing Best of My Love, but inside we were thinking, 'As soon as this is over, I'm going to kill him'." There were backstage brawls that had to be broken up by police; plotting between band members; cocaine-sensitised egos clashing in the recording studio; walk-outs; talk of treachery; and, finally, the split. The dream had soured. The Eagles' trip was over and the band would only re-form, Frey said, famously, when hell froze over.
Flashback to California, 1970, and the excesses of the '60s have spiralled out of control. The idealism of the counterculture has given way to a darker, nihilistic reality; and the hallucinogenic music being peddled has become increasingly impenetrable. The party is over and, as the crisis looms, America's youth retreats deep into the country's myths. Sallow faces and bloodshot eyes turn slowly west, to the dusty desert highways and the wild frontiers of the country plains. Artists like the Byrds and Jackson Browne trudge out to the great American hinterland to get back to basics with a raw, country-flavoured sound.
Glenn Frey, then 22, a brash rock'n'roller from Detroit, arrived in LA the following year with things on his mind other than music. "I was going to buy drugs in Mexico and see a girlfriend who had moved out there with her sister," he recalled later. Nonetheless, he made it into Linda Ronstadt's backing band alongside Don Henley, an earnest young drummer from Texas who he had first met in a smoky dive called the Troubador.
Henley grew up in the small town of Linden, north-east Texas, close to the borders of Arkansas and Louisiana, dreaming of becoming a rock star. "In a town like that, all you could do was dream," he once said.
Frey, already thinking about forming a band after a meeting with David Geffen - at that stage a struggling band manager who had set up Asylum Records - quickly recruited Henley to the idea. Together they co-opted two other local musicians, Randy Meisner, bass, and Bernie Leadon, guitar, and marched into Geffen's office. Without a name or a demo tape, they demanded to know whether he wanted them. Geffen, showing the shrewd instinct for success that would see him become the most powerful man in music by the early '80s, hesitated, then said: "Yes."
Named after the US national bird, the Eagles toned down the raw folksiness of pioneer bands such as the Byrds and produced a smoother, more commercial sound, later dubbed country rock.
They released their self-titled debut album in '72. The first single taken from it, Take It Easy, struck a chord with the jaded American public and climbed to No. 12 in the charts. It was followed by two more hits, Witchy Woman and Peaceful Easy Feeling, which evoked the space and freedom of a mythical America. The bittersweet idealism of the songs captured the mood of California and proved irresistible to US radio. With the release of the second album, Desperado - which cast the group as a band of cowboy outlaws, based on the legend of the Doolin-Dalton gang - the Eagles were well into their stride. But, in reality, they were far from outsiders rebelling against the commercial Establishment and they quickly realised the need for more combative management. They recruited Irving Azoff, soon to be known as "Your Shortness" to his band and "the Poison Dwarf" to his enemies. But his 160cm-stature belied his business acumen and his ruthless nature was well suited to the cut-throat environment of the LA music scene.
Azoff was to oversee the business interests of the Eagles, which would eventually make them the world's richest band with career earnings of more than $800 million. Frey summed up Azoff's appeal in a Rolling Stone interview in '75: "When we met Irving we had two gold records and $2500 in the bank. Now we make half a million every year and see every penny." Azoff's negotiating tactic: "Figure out a fair price and add a third", appealed to the band.
But the money didn't ease the unrest. Frey and Henley increasingly called the shots, and Meisner and Leadon felt marginalised. Don Felder was drafted, and a simmering rivalry between him and Leadon only added to the souring atmosphere. Matters came to a head towards the end of the '75 tour. "One night he (Leadon) couldn't take it any more," Meisner recalled. "Glenn was in the hotel bar and Bernie walked in, picked up a beer, dumped it over Glenn's head and walked out. That was it. Bernie quit."
He was replaced by Joe Walsh as the band entered the studio for what would become its watershed album, Hotel California, which would eventually sell more than 16 million copies. By the time it was finished in '77 Meisner was on the verge of leaving. "My last days as an Eagle were pure hell," he would remember, "nobody was talking to me." After a gruelling concert and a backstage fist fight with Frey, he walked out, to be replaced by Timothy B. Schmit. "Up to that point I had always thought of them as my friends," Meisner said. "Since then, I've always thought of them as traitors."
Frey once described the history of the Eagles as: "Went on the road, got crazy, got drunk, got high, had girls, played music and made money." To which might be added: "lost friends." The band's catchphrase when referring to women was "Love 'em and Lear 'em," on account of their penchant for private jets. Their appetite for cocaine and partying became the stuff of legend.
But that was then. Today, in Culver City Studios, the Eagles are older, wiser and more sober. They are even thinking of recording a studio album together for the first time in 22 years. "We have a lot more perspective now," Frey says. He and Schmit have been shepherded into the room by their publicist, Larry Solters, who hovers protectively within earshot. It's hard to understand why: the Eagles, it is plain, have done all this before. "Unlike 1980, we've learned to watch out for the warning signs," Frey continues. "If we're getting a bit frizzy, and a bit tired and edgy, we know to back off. I wish we'd been wiser back then." Schmit takes over. "I love the phrase, 'Youth is wasted on the young'," he says.
Cynics might suggest this nostalgia is inspired more by the desire to cash in than by any genuine change of heart among band members, the potential for which even they have in the past recognised. Wasn't it Frey who once said there would never be a "greed and lost youth tour"? "Let me just say this," Frey says, coming to life, as Solters looks up attentively. "None of us need any money, we're not doing this because we have to. We all want to be in a band together again. We miss it." And any rumours that it's a record company dragging them out of retirement for one last cash bonanza are scotched equally robustly: "The Eagles don't have a record deal. We're going to make a new record with our own money, our way, and we're going to put it out ourselves. Call me kooky, but that's what I want to do.
"We feel we're a better band now, with a better feel for the way each other plays. And we're not high, so we know what's going on."
Looking at them both, so sedate, it is hard to imagine the wild tantrums and colossal consumption that earned the band such infamy 25 years ago. Even harder to see them in front of 100,000 screaming fans, belting out Take it to the Limit, and New Kid in Town. Frey has the gnarled look and round-shouldered, lumbering gait of a grizzly bear; while Schmit, his long, flowing hair streaked with silver, has a soft, melancholic air, inviting instant protection.
Then again, with the Eagles, live shows were always about the music and harmonies, not the on-stage spectaculars. It was after the shows that the band really exerted itself. "It's going to be more sensible now," Frey says. But will they miss the rough and tumble? "We're not old, we're only 50," says Joe Walsh, who has arrived wearing track pants and a slightly hypnotic T-shirt. "Fifty's okay, you know," he reiterates, with more energy than Frey, Schmit and Solters combined. "Every now and then we get nostalgic. You daydream about the old days, about the good stuff. You tend to remember the fun and not draw on the bad stuff. Every now and then you think, 'Yeah, we're gonna swing this like we used to'."
"At least we can say, 'Remember when .' instead of, 'I wish I'd .'" Frey adds.
It won't just be them saying "Remember when ." The fans, too, will be remembering when last they picked the breezy strains of Lyin' Eyes out of the night air. "Our fans from the '70s will bring their grandkids to our show," Walsh says, laughing. "I mean, there's a whole age range out there now."
He's not wrong. The Eagles have sold more than 120 million albums worldwide and are the only American band to have three albums that have each sold more than 10 million copies in the US. Their first reunion tour, Hell Freezes Over, grossed more than $250 million and was seen by two million people. Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975 album recently became the biggest-selling record of all time, overtaking Michael Jackson's Thriller. The band's back catalogue has consistently sold about 1.5 million records annually since 1980, they have won four Grammy Awards and the music remains as recognisable as ever. But they must feel the generation gap. Don Henley, who has yet to arrive, once ascribed the success of their music to the fact that it captured a time and a culture. What do they make of the current crop of bands that do the same for today's youth?
"The world has changed so much in the last 30 years," Schmit says, struggling to reconcile his rock'n'roll credentials with parenthood. "There's a lot of angry music out there. I have a tough time with the music my kids listen to. I don't believe in censorship, but at the same time I don't think a young kid's mind can process some of the things on radio today." Frey and Walsh agree. Paradoxically, for a band that made a fortune from the growth of the record industry, the Eagles are ambivalent about its effects. "There are fewer and fewer creative people involved in record companies now. It's so money driven, instead of art driven," says Frey, before excusing himself to "go see a man about a dog". It is exactly what critics accused the Eagles of being in the '70s.
Henley, 53, arrives as Frey is leaving, wearing rugged, lace-up boots and a grumpy expression. Are the two founding members, once best of friends but by the time of the Eagles' break-up sworn enemies, still avoiding each other? "Absolutely not," Solters says. "There's no agenda here." Henley, though, is obviously peeved the Eagles are still attracting attention because of the money they made. "Anyone who thinks the Eagles is the ultimate corporate band is a fucking hypocrite," he says. "We're good businessmen, yes, we have good management, and fortunately we got to keep a little of the money we made instead of having it stolen from us. Every band that makes a record is in bed with the record companies. I don't care if it's Fred Durst (from Limp Bizkit) or Pearl Jam. All these kids are in it up to their necks."
Henley looks tired. Since the break-up he has had a successful solo career, but wants to be part of a band again. "I'm tired of being the boss," he says. "It's fine to do the solo projects, but it feels good to be back together. We don't know how much longer we've got to ride this wagon. As we say in Texas: you gotta make hay while the sun shines."
The sun stopped shining for Randy Meisner and Bernie Leadon a long time ago. Even now, reconciliation is out of the question. Henley regards them simply as former band members of no consequence and he sees no reason to include them in this or any other reunion. He is not in contact with either and somehow it seems sad he should feel this way. But Felder, who was eased out of the band in February, is not going so quietly. The guitarist and co-writer of Hotel California is taking legal action, claiming he's owed "a vast fortune" in unpaid royalties. He has asked the judge to liquidate Eagles Ltd, the company the band set up in '74 to deal with its business interests, and of which he, Henley and Frey are equal shareholders. It's not something Henley wants to discuss and there is a weariness in his voice at the mention of yet another feud that has the potential to cast shadows over the band's plans.
And, in truth - despite their ill-disguised boredom at having to relive the past; their platitudes about the reasons for re-forming; the faintly suspicious presence of their publicist; and the lingering impression, confirmed by the Felder court case, that all is not as friendly as it seems - the Eagles have done well to be here. "God knows, we've been through the self-destructiveness," Henley says, "but we've come out the other side and that's quite an achievement, considering how many of our peers and friends are dead."
Larry Solters glances at his watch and calls time on the interview. Henley rises to join the others on stage, stops as if he has just remembered something and says: "I feel so at home when I'm up there and see the guys out in front of me singing. It's just comforting, I guess." He pauses again, then adds with half a smile: "Besides, what else would we do?"