The Last Bass Outpost
Main Forums => The Bass Zone => Topic started by: westen44 on February 01, 2023, 12:24:21 PM
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Randy Meisner's name was mentioned in a thread recently. Here is a video about him I ran across a few days ago.
https://youtu.be/Y9mhHyQS7OU
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I always liked his voice and his playing. Timothy B. Schmit is more of a (very good) vocalist who also plays bass in an utilitarian way. But I think Randy's life after his departure from the Eagles showed that perhaps he wasn't cut out for the touring life and had personal issues that for once could not be attributed to either Frey or Henley.
High integrity marks for Schmit refusing to sing Take It To The Limit even though it was easily in his falsetto range - he always said: "It's Randy's song." So Glenn Frey would sing it live (he had also co-written it) in post-Randy days, but obviously skipping the high parts at the end too.
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When it comes to problems in the Eagles, it appears that Randy Meisner and Timothy B. Schmit were rarely problems. Needless to say, the same can't be said for some of the other members. When I saw that Showtime documentary on the Eagles, I wondered if I would ever listen to their music again. Of course, I eventually did anyway.
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Meisner came up with some great parts , solid player.
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But the iconic bass line on the intro to One Of These Nights is Don Felder.
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I didn't know that...
I always thought that was an amazing line.
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Live, for some reason, Timothy never gets it quite right. Randy did better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8VYNvYdP5Q
Bermie Leadon apparently hated "that Bee Gees number".
Don Felder came extremely handy for the Eagles with his arrangement and guitar skills. He might not have been the most prolific songwriter (but Hotel California is largely his), but he sure made himself useful with a lot of other things. I only realized relatively late that a lot of solos I had attributed to Joe Walsh were actually his. Like here, the two solos towards the end, I always thought Joe took the first one and Don the second, but it's the other way around, Don is the player with more "bite", not Joe. The iconic harmony guitar arrangement at the end is also his.
And I really do like in this version that you can sometimes hear that the other Don is drumming and singing, it gives his vocals a rhythmic emphasis in places otherwise lost when he is upfront playing guitar to it. And I don't care what people say, I think the sound of the Eagles has a hell of a lot to do with his drumming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2arV-V82LQ
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UMPG Publishing has rather rudely blocked that first video if you're in the U.S.
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Those Chinese balloons, I tell ya ...