Randy Meisner

[uwe]

Question: How many Eagles do you need to play Hotel California?

Answer: All seven of them - old and new - if it's before the RRHoF:



With Meisner still (plus assorted beards and 'fros):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXT1h3Ags94&feature=related

The other Don gives it a try alone, in case you wondered why he got to write, but not sing it with The Eagles, to be fair it's not awful, but his namesake's vocal grit is hard to match:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3NR4iZ5--M&feature=related

[dadagoboi]

The other Don gives it a try alone, in case you wondered why he got to write, but not sing it with The Eagles, to be fair it's not awful, but his namesakes vocal grit is hard to match:

Felder wrote the music, Henley the words.  

[gearHed289]

I like the Eagles. They used to write great "story songs" (such as Lyin Eyes, which I love). Always some tasty bass work too, regardless of who's playing.

BTW - PS played bass on Love Gun too, Uwe!

[Denis]

Speaking of Don Felder, I love his "Heavy Metal" selections.



and

[uwe]

"Felder wrote the music, Henley the words. "

I know, the chord combinations aren't very Eagle'ish in the sense of how Henley and Frey write at all. I wouldn't be surprised if Don Felder listend to a bit of Django Reinhardt in advance.

Henley's lyrics are either nicely image-evoking and deeply meaningful or pretentious rubbish, take your choice. The vocal melody - whether Felder's or Henley's idea - is even, especially in the verses, a bit lame, chord-sticking and less than lush-melodic for The Eagles' high standards. Doesn't matter, however, it conquered the world.

When I first heard HC I thought: Except for the vocals this doesn't sound Eagles at all. Took me a while to like it, it wasn't an immediate hit with me at all. The prominent harmony guitars at the end surprised me. The Eagles had used harmony lead playing before (e.g. in One of these Nights, and Boston's debut was all the rage back then with its umpteenth layered lead sounds, it came out six months before and was omnipresent), but not to this extent. Bill Szymczyk had prior to his production duties with The Eagles for this album just finished producing an album for ...

... you guessed it, these guys, same studio and all  ...



Martin Turner (who rates Bill Szymczyk highly) says to this day that Hotel California's (the album's) sound owed a little debt to Wishbone Ash's previous recording right down to Don Henley's drums. Listening to There's the Rub (the album), he doesn't seem to be entirely wrong!

[uwe]

I like the Eagles. They used to write great "story songs" (such as Lyin Eyes, which I love). Always some tasty bass work too, regardless of who's playing.

BTW - PS played bass on Love Gun too, Uwe!

This I knew! It sounds too nimble. I like Gene Simmons as a bass player but he always sounds a little heavy-handed in playing. He once said in a interview that he is sometimes asked to play certain guitar parts on Kiss albums because he sounds rougher than Paul and/or whatever other guitarist they have on their pay roll. "I do the beefy parts when needed."

[westen44]

Outlaw Man was actually the first Eagles song I ever heard in the early seventies. Loved the chorus immediately and the lyrics seemed ... so bad-ass dangerous. (LOL - Glenn Frey and sounding bad-ass dangerous!) It was on this compilation:



which opened a whole new world of rock to me, every track on that double album was a cracker. I didn't know what to like best, I wore the grooves of that darn thing thru. It's fair to say that those two dozen tracks - only a few of them what you would call heavy rock back then, much less heavy metal today -  shaped my musical taste to this day, the ones I considered then (and still today) iconic in bold type:

Kick Out The Jams - MC5
Iron Man - Black Sabbath
I'm Eighteen - Alice Cooper
Freedom - Jimi Hendrix
Must Be Love - James Gang
Smoke On The Water - Deep Purple
Bang A Gong (Get It On) - T.Rex
Give It To Me - J. Geils Band
b]Right Place Wrong Time - Dr. John [/b]
D'yer Mak'er - Led Zeppelin
Bluebird - Buffalo Springfield
Cindy Incidentally - Faces
Touch me - The Doors
Ramblin' Man - Allman Brothers Band
Only You Know And I Know - Delaney & Bonnie
Domino - Van Morrison
Outlaw Man - Eagles
Starship Trooper - Yes
Radar Love - Golden Earring
Johnny B. Goode - Grateful Dead
What A Shame - Foghat
Stealin' - Uriah Heep
Lonely Feelin' - War
Ride Captain Ride - Blues Image

"Ride Captain Ride" may have been more iconic, but the B side got a lot of attention, too.  It's still a great song, though, with a more outdated sound than the A side. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3RkFSWh1dM&feature=related

[dadagoboi]

Henley's lyrics are either nicely image-evoking and deeply meaningful or pretentious rubbish, take your choice.

Henley's on record as being heavily influenced by the ambiguity of Steely Dan's lyrics and making a conscious attempt to do similar on Hotel California.

Felder was a Gainesville, Florida musician whose early claim to fame in the late '60s was as a blues player in the B.B. King mold with a jazz influenced band called Gingerbread.  They changed their name to Flow, went to NYC, cut a record with Rudy Van Gelder and broke up.  He got to hear a lot of twin guitar stuff long before Wishbone Ash formed.

[nofi]

in uwe's world every band is shaped by one of his favorites. you can look it up.

[dadagoboi]

in uwe's world every band is shaped by one of his favorites. you can look it up.

[westen44]

in uwe's world every band is shaped by one of his favorites. you can look it up.

Like Chekhov on Star Trek who is always claiming that anything of importance was invented by the Russians? 

[Highlander]

Meisner and Frey, live, backing Linda Ronstadt in '72... possibly Henley on Drums, Sneaky Pete on the steel - The harmonies are obvious, ish...

 

Meisner (as part of the Stone Canyon Band) with Rick Nelson - I posted this on a much earlier thread that referenced James Burton and a riff that might have appeared elsewhere... part of the song called Promises... Meisner was on a live album and the studio albim, Rudy the Fifth - the Stone Canyon Band period of Nelson's career were some of his best work, imo... Gypsy Pilot has some great melodic, very up-front work... I still have the vinyl for both of these LP's...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2nGXfh2wU0&feature=share&list=PL26CEA950AD826A3F 

[westen44]

It does mean something to still have the vinyl albums like those Rick Nelson albums.  I used to have about the first five Linda Ronstadt albums until a guitarist "borrowed" them and I never saw them again.  He also got part of my Hendrix albums. 

[westen44]

Henley's on record as being heavily influenced by the ambiguity of Steely Dan's lyrics and making a conscious attempt to do similar on Hotel California.

Felder was a Gainesville, Florida musician whose early claim to fame in the late '60s was as a blues player in the B.B. King mold with a jazz influenced band called Gingerbread.  They changed their name to Flow, went to NYC, cut a record with Rudy Van Gelder and broke up.  He got to hear a lot of twin guitar stuff long before Wishbone Ash formed.

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.

[uwe]

in uwe's world every band is shaped by one of his favorites. you can look it up.

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.