Meisner was a more adventurous, even reckless bass player than Schmidt is today or even with Poco ever was (who got he job with the Eagles on the back of his undeniable great Bee Gee'ish falsetto backing vocals, that said Meisner was no slouch vocally either, that is him all through Take it to the Limit including the high parts at the end Glenn Frey always skips when he performs the song today). But Meisner - like Leadon - was getting pesky with Henley and Frey, the two Eagle-Führers. So he had to go. Don Henley (who sour-facedly criticized Meisner "for moving too much on stage, it distracts from the seriousness of our music") can be a very nasty person if he sets his mind to it, make no mistake, ole grumpy bears a grudge with the world. There is a comparatively recent compilation of Meisner's various recordings all through the eighties and nineties out there, only a few years old. Patchy and sometimes demo'ish (or in horrible 80ies production) in places, but also with highlights.
The proceeds from Take it to the Limit alone (he co-wrote it with Frey) will keep Randy fed I'm sure, he certainly hasn't been a workaholic since he left (was kicked out of) the Eagles nest.
If truth be told, I find the mock reggae bass on Hotel California (mostly a chordy root, fifth and octave back and forth), avoiding the beautifully descending thirds of the chords which the guitars play instead, Paul McCartney would have preferred it the other way around I'm sure, you can very nicely play a chromatic sequence of B, A#, A, G#, G, F#, E and F# to the Hotel California verse, but Randy choes not to) a bit "white boy does reggae or at least how he hears it". Robbie Shakespeare he ain't. But who am I to criticise, zillions of people love the song and its groove so he must have done something right.
That said, his successor (whose solo albums I own, but certainly not for the "so-well-behaved-it-almost-isn't-there" bass playing) is to me the archtypical "I play bass because someone in the band has to". Hey, wait for it ... that is why I started out on bass too, the Eagles were just not so convinced about my backing vocals capabilities ...
I prefer the bass melody intro to One of these Nights (the song Bernie Leadon hated with a passion as "disco"). Until I learned that it wasn't played by Meisner but by Glenn Frey (Meisner wasn't even in the studio when the track was laid down)!
With the Eagles (as with Kiss, The Beatles or The Stones) everybody tends to play everything so you never know whose recording track it actually is. But Hotel California was indeed played by Randy sources say (but I wouldn't be surprised if Don Felder who wrote the music to that song - now here is one lucky guy who will never have to work again! - already had something like it on a demo, it sounds a bit like something a guitarist finding his way on a bass would come up with, especially the "chordiness" of the bass line and the lack of thirds).
