Randy Meisner

[westen44]

The influence of the Allman Brothers was tremendous, in my opinion.  They were like the gods of Southern rock, with all due respect to other bands, of course.  The Marshall Tucker Band, great band, of course, but I never thought they were in the Allman Brothers league.  I did once see Marshall Tucker in concert, but it didn't change my opinion any. 

[uwe]

I understand that Steely Dan seems to be highly revered in some circles, but I have to say I never much got into the music.  I think I do remember reading somewhere, though, that the Eagles were influenced by them.  There may be a connection there, but I don't hear it.

Much of Steely Dan's charm escapes me, carefully crafted as it is, it often sounds elevator muzaky to me, all those 6, 7 and sus chords do relatively little for me. But I know where the comparison might be coming from, Henley's penchant for perfection and Frey's smooth crooner leanings sometimes give The Eagles something sterile, cool and over-crafted totally at odds with their early outlaw image. In comparison to most Eagles albums even the more polished Crosby, Stills & Nash (or: & Young) output sounds outright warty and ethno.

The Eagles are a phenomenon to me, they are - The Beatles excepted - the only "huge" band I really like. I have all their stuff plus most of the stuff of the individual members, yet they are incredibly corporate. There is also nothing in the least original or edgy in their music, it is an amalgam of American music (just like their adopted home state of California is an amalgam of the US), I hear The Band, CSNY, Buffalo Springfield, Flying Burritos, Loggins & Messina, yet at the same time they are immediately recognizable. I've seen them live twice, the only people who seem to be enjoying themselves on stage are Frey and Walsh. Henley is so incredibly earnest and serious, I find it grating, someone should tell him that he is not Bob Dylan after all and not the chronist of his generation. At the last concert I saw them he went into this incredible rant about people photographing the band on stage and sour-facedly complained about "lack of respect for artists and their work" ...   All from a guy who's earned tens if not maybe a hundred of millions with his (well-made) music and was charging huge ticket prices to ten thousand people at an open air. I cringed so much I felt discomfort.   Frey is amiable and a lounge lizard but we all know that for the right amount of money he will even sing something as obscenely horrendous as The Heat is On. Yet at the same time, I love lightweight stuff from him like this here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptoW5W0I4Bw&feature=related

Who says I have to be consistent!

[dadagoboi]

That is because I have a taste for pivotal, groundbreaking bands!  But it's not quite true: I love Judas Priest and they are/were heavily Deep Purple-influenced and less so by Led Zep, which is why I like them even more! Led Zep is more of an influence on American rock bands than on European ones, you guys had Kingdom Come and Great White, not us!

In my book serious twin guitar lead live playing as a continuous feature and not just as an occasional studio embellishment was brought to the forefront by two bands: The Allman Brothers and Wishbone Ash (when both bands met for the first time at a US gig, they were both surprised how they had developed independent from each other), you may wish to add late sixties Fleetwood Mac to that. That said, Hotel California's twin guitar sounds is more Wishbone Ash than Allman Brothers to me due ti the minorish chord progression it is set against.

Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, UFO - people tend to forget how influential Wishbone Ash's Argus was when it came out in 1972 - have all admitted that the sound of two continuous lead guitars interweaving live impressed them with early Wishbone Ash and that they borrowed it - nothing wrong with that. And without the Allman Brothers, I doubt Lynyrd Skynrd or 38 Special, The Outlaws and the Marshall Tucker Band etc would have sounded like they did. Even Clapton was so impressed that he took Duane on board for Derek & The Dominos.

W.A. had minor influence if any on American Southern bands in the early '70s.  All who had jumped on the twin guitar band wagon had their prototypical model and it wasn't them.  Some of us were actually there.

Great conspiracy theory though.

[Dave W]

W.A. had minor influence if any on American Southern bands in the early '70s.  All who had jumped on the twin guitar band wagon had their prototypical model and it wasn't them.  Some of us were actually there.

Great conspiracy theory though.

You're right. Wishbone Ash was virtually unknown here.

[westen44]

An example of why Desperado is a great album. 

[uwe]

"W.A. had minor influence if any on American Southern bands in the early '70s.  All who had jumped on the twin guitar band wagon had their prototypical model and it wasn't them.  Some of us were actually there.

Great conspiracy theory though."


"You're right. Wishbone Ash was virtually unknown here."

Huh? I didn't say Wishbone Ash inspired the Southern Rock bands, I said the Allmans did and that they developed independently from each other, let's reread this class:

"In my book serious twin guitar lead live playing as a continuous feature and not just as an occasional studio embellishment was brought to the forefront by two bands: The Allman Brothers and Wishbone Ash (when both bands met for the first time at a US gig, they were both surprised how they had developed independent from each other), you may wish to add late sixties Fleetwood Mac to that.

And without the Allman Brothers, I doubt Lynyrd Skynyrd or 38 Special, The Outlaws and the Marshall Tucker Band etc would have sounded like they did."

You guys are like Mitt, first shoot, then aim!  

All I said was that The Eagles' twin guitar solo at the end of HC sounds more Wishbone Ashy than Allmanny (the Allmans sounded jazzier in their twin guitar stuff, WA more classical). Add to that how Joe Walsh by his own admission is more Brit guitar than yank guitarists of his time influenced. And The Eagles don't fall in my classification of Southern Rock either, they are "West Coast Light Rock" to me. And that there was a connection timewise, producer- and studiowise between WA's There's the Rub and The Eagles' HC album. The sound (not the music) of these two albums is indeed similar.

You guys should have become attorneys, you're good at disproving what other people haven't stated!  

Unless, of course, Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and UFO are Southern Rock bands to you both, then you must be right.  

"Thin Lizzy, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, UFO - people tend to forget how influential Wishbone Ash's Argus was when it came out in 1972 - have all admitted that the sound of two continuous lead guitars interweaving live impressed them with early Wishbone Ash and that they borrowed it - nothing wrong with that."

Teaches you that dearly anticipating that you wish to disagree with someone should not deter you from closely reading what he wrote first. Old attorney recommendation between friends, sure helps unveiling conspiracy theories too.  

[gweimer]

You guys should have become attorneys, you're good at disproving what other people haven't stated!

Oh, I have to steal this one! 

As far as Wishbone Ash goes, they are my second favorite band behind King Crimson.  I haven't listened to them in a while, but I know people who feel that Wisefield/Powell worked better than Turner/Powell.  I would suspect that their reputation grew here in the States on the heels of a tour with Grand Funk, which is where my friends all discovered them.  Argus definitely broke them out.  You couldn't go anywhere without hearing "The King Will Come" or "Blowing Free" for a few months.

[uwe]

Wishbone diehards will always long for the Powell/Turner guitar duo responsible for the beauty of Argus, but I prefer Powell/Wisefield too. Wisefield was more versatile (hence his career as a session and tour musician with Al Stewart, Tina Turner, Roger Chapman, the Queen Musical and Nokia Night of the Proms before and after WA) than either Powell (who started rehearsing technique anew when Wisefield joined!) or Ted Turner (who had only been playing for a comparatively short time when he joined the original WA line up - he was so young, his mom spoke to the band! - but had great feel and tone). Wisefield was a more American style guitarist - funky licks and all -, not the terse more folky-lean Brit style of Ted Turner. For that old WA fans blame him for allegedly being responsible of the band "Americanizing" in his era (later seventies), but it's bollocks, it was a conscious move by all of them as they were immersed in American music by their lengthy tours there. This song, sung and written by him, is often seen as WA "selling out" to which I defiantly cry "who cares if it comes across a little like a Peter Frampton pastiche, they could have used a few more songs of that type on each album if it had given them only a tenth of Frampton's sales!" 

[Stjofön Big]

Concerning  Eagles, I really loved that band when they came along with their first album - must have been like '72. Really liked Desperado too, thought Meisners work was really great. Listened to it every day! Great story built around the connection rock band - outlaws. Maybe a bit romanticising the lifestyle, it was also over the edge at times. Then came their third - was it On the border(?), which I thought was a really slick attempt to reach the bigger money. Started losing interest in the band. When Hotel California came out, could have been ther fifth album, I thought it was silly. Never bought it. And so all interest in The Eagles was gone...
But I liked the playing of Meisner and the guy from Burritos, Frey.

[gweimer]

I saw Wishbone Ash during the Argus tour.  One thing that stuck with me, and probably accounts for my interest in lap steel, was Ted Turner playing slide by laying his Strat on what may have been an ironing board.  I still think about trying to pick up a lap steel some day.
Over time, while WA lost their direction and consistency, I have found New England to be my favorite album, and it's the Wisefield/Powell team there.

[Dave W]

They were very little known here. I'll stand by that statement. Never heard them played on any AOR station. I'm surprised to read that two of their albums made it inside the top 100.

[Highlander]

You live in a very big country, Dave, and I'm certainly aware how big some bands or artists got in a local area until they broke nationally, ie Bob Seger or Nugent in Michigan, REO in Illinois, etc - always possible to have slipped by you... most of you guys would never have heard of a band called Stray but they were certainly very popular in London in the 70's... doodlysquat anywhere else though...



Leadon was the Burritos link, Stjofon, and from there you get GP... Mr Parsons was another romantascist... wrote and played some truly beautiful music... I still prefer his version of Wild Horses to any other - the (urban myth) story goes that it was written for him - he hanged with Richards during that era and again, reputedly, influenced them with Honky Tonk Women...

 

Leadon played in a ridiculously competent pickup bluegrass outfit post the Eagles that played a pub/bar gig in Putney, West London - four piece with Bernie Leadon, Chris Hillman and iirc Al Perkins but can't remember who the 4th person was - the place was rammed...

Re D&TD - Duane Allman is now credited with writing the introduction to the song Layla and there's a great story re Clapton and Allman's first meeting - iirc, it was at an ABB gig in Florida, Tom Dowd mentioned them and EC freaked, after knowing a lot of his session stuff (Pickett and Aretha, etc) so they went and on seeing EC in the crowd ABB's roadies got him into the pit - Duane was not told of this and suddenly spotted EC, tapping his feet, eyes closed, seated on his butt in the pit, and froze mid-solo, where Betts took over for him - Dowd told a story of the pair of them (EC & DA) then spending the whole night with acoustics, like old friends, "how'd you do this?"  "How'd you do that?" and his biggest regret is that he did not have a tape rolling - that's also the story for Key To The Highway -  they'd hit the groove at a rehearsal and he realised the tape was not rolling, hence the fade in... the sessions were heavily influenced by certain medicinal products...

Wishbone - never saw the original but certainly saw the Wisefield lineup more than a few times - they played a special show at the Marquee (400 persons venue) and someone opened a fire exit and the estimate is that a further 300 got in - There are very few gigs I have ever seen that topped this one, with the possible exception of Skynyrd in '76 at Hammersmith or the 4 times I saw Gillan at the Marquee - 3 different lineups in 18 months - the only constants being IG and Colin Towns...

I never did understand why Wishbone kept saying that Bad Weather Blues was an "old favourite" when most of us went huh?

And bringing us back to the Eagles, I think Mr Anderson is very gracious about this rather interesting chord progression that is quite well known...

 

[nofi]

i agree with dave and gweimer. WA was a non entity in america and we live the counrty's width apart. this country ain't that big to miss the bands you named

move on kenny....i've heard of stray as well as bolex dimentia...

[Highlander]

But you're an expert and a trawler like me, Nofi, and as for Bolex...  



... One-third of that package and a Zzebra on the bass...

[Highlander]

Oh yeah, the Eagles made a video short for the Desperado album I've never managed to find - anyone know a source for it...? I've seen plenty of stills from it but never the video...