Eagles – Learn To Be Still (1994)

The Eagles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1971. The founding members were Glenn Frey (guitars, vocals), Don Henley (drums, vocals), Bernie Leadon (guitars, vocals) and Randy Meisner (bass guitar, vocals). With five number-one singles, six number-one albums, six Grammy Awards, and five American Music Awards, the Eagles were one of the most successful musical acts of the 1970s. Their albums Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) and Hotel California rank first and third, respectively, among the best-selling albums in the United States, with 38 million and 26 million album units in sales. The Eagles are one of the world’s best-selling bands, having sold more than 200 million records, including 100 million albums sold in U.S alone. They were ranked number 75 on Rolling Stone’s 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

Learn to be Still is a song written by Don Henley and Stan Lynch and recorded by the Eagles. The song is one of four studio tracks on the live album Hell Freezes Over, which was the first album to be released after the band had reunited following a fourteen-year-long break up.

“Learn to Be Still” was played live during their Hell Freezes Over tour in 1994 and came out as a single in 1995. It peaked at No. 61 on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay chart in the same year.

And this is a pretty good bootleg (soundboard quality) …. recorded live in the USA, Summer 1994. Limited Edition Picture CD.

Personnel:
Don Felder (guitar, background vocals)
Glenn Frey (vocals, guitar, keyboards)
Don Henley (vocals, drums, percussion)
Timothy B. Schmidt (vocals, bass)
Joe Walsh (vocals, guitar)

Tracklist:
01. Desperado (Henley/Frey) 3.41
02. Hotel California (Felder/Henley/Frey) 7.01
03. The Heart Of The Matter (Campbell/Souther/Henley) 5.41
04. New York Minute (Henley/Kortchmar/Winding) 6.16
05. Tell Me Why (Henley/Frey) 4.18
06. Tequila Sunrise (Henley/Frey) 3.00
07. Live In The Fast Lane (Walsh/Henley/Frey) 5.10
08. Take It Easy (Browne/Frey) 4.25
09. Wasted Time (Henley/Frey) 5.05
10. Help Me Through The Night (Walsh) 3.55
11. Get Over It (Henley/Frey) 3.28
12. The Last Resort (Henley/Frey) 7.02
13. Love Will Keep Us Alive (Vale/Capaldi/Carrack) 4.98
14. The Girl From Yesterday (Frey/Tempchin) 3.28
15. I Can’t Tell You Why (Schmidt/Henley/Frey) 4.52
16. In The City (Walsh/De Vorzon) 3.55
17. Learn To Be Still (Henley(Lynch) 4.21

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More from The Eagles:

Eagles – On The Border (1974)

On the Border is the third studio album by American rock group the Eagles, released in 1974. Apart from two songs produced by Glyn Johns, it was produced by Bill Szymczyk because the group wanted a more rock‑oriented sound instead of the country-rock feel of the first two albums It is the first Eagles album to feature guitarist Don Felder. On the Border reached number 17 on the Billboard album chart and has sold two million copies.

Three singles were released from the album: “Already Gone”, “James Dean” and “Best of My Love”. The singles peaked at numbers 32, 77 and 1 respectively. “Best of My Love” became the band’s first of five chart toppers. The album also includes “My Man”, Bernie Leadon’s tribute to his deceased friend Gram Parsons. Leadon and Parsons had played together in the pioneer country rock band Flying Burrito Brothers, before Leadon joined the Eagles.

This is the first album by the Eagles to be released in Quadraphonic surround sound. It was released on Quadraphonic 8-track tape and CD-4 LP. A hidden message carved into the run out groove of some vinyl LPs reads: “He who hesitates is lunch”.

The album was initially produced by Glyn Johns and recorded at Olympic Studios in London, but during the making of the album, disagreement arose between the Eagles and their producer. As the band tried to lean towards a more hard rock sound, they felt that producer Glyn Johns was overemphasizing their country-influenced rock sound. Johns however felt that the Eagles were not capable of that the band wanted and told the band: “You are not a rock-and-roll band, The Who is a rock-and-roll band, and you’re not that.” The band—Glenn Frey in particular, but not Don Henley—were also unhappy with the no-drug policy of Johns during the recording; furthermore they did not feel at home recording in London. The band was concerned about the lack of success of the previous album Desperado, and were more assertive in wanting more input into the album, which Johns was unwilling to allow. The Eagles spent six weeks recording in London, with both the band and the producer becoming frustrated with each other and frequent arguments between Johns and Frey. The band then took a break, decided to find a new producer and discarded all the recordings except for two usable tracks, “Best of My Love” and “You Never Cry Like a Lover”.

The band relocated back to California and hired Bill Szymczyk, who had produced The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get by Joe Walsh—who was also managed by their manager Irving Azoff and who would go on to join the Eagles in late 1975—that interested the band. The band recorded the rest of the album at the Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles. They were allowed more input in how the album was made and enjoyed more freedom with Szymczyk in the making of the album. Szymczyk suggested they bring in a harder-edged guitarist to add slide guitar to the song “Good Day in Hell”. Bernie Leadon suggested his old friend Don Felder, whom they had met and jammed with on a few occasions. The band was so impressed that they invited Felder to become the fifth Eagle. The only other track on this album on which he appeared was “Already Gone”. They credited him as a late arrival on the album’s liner notes.

On the difference in sound between Johns’ and Szymczyk’s productions, Henley said: “There’s a lot less echo with Bill, for one thing. There’s more of a raw and funky presence. Glyn had a stamp he put on his records which is a deep echo that is really smooth like ice cream”. He thought that the production on the two songs that Johns produced was good and necessary. Frey, however, found that L.A. country-rock records were “all too smooth and glassy”, and wanted a “tougher sound”. Their friend and collaborator J. D. Souther ascribed the change of producer to “Eagles’ desire to get more of a live, thin sound on the albums”.

The first two singles released were more rock-oriented; Frey was reluctant to release the Johns-produced “Best of My Love” as a single, and held off its release for some months. However, when it was finally released, the label had truncated the song–without the band’s knowledge or approval–so that it would be more radio-friendly.[13] “Best of My Love” would become their biggest hit thus far, and their first No. 1 on the charts.
Songs

“Already Gone”, “James Dean”, and “Best of My Love” were released as singles from the album.

In an early review, Janet Maslin of Rolling Stone found the album “competent and commercial”, but was disappointed that it did not live up to the potential for bigger things shown in Desperado. She also thought that with three guitarists in the band, there were “just too many intrusive guitar parts here, too many solos that smack of gratuitous heaviness. Many of the arrangements seem to lose touch with the material somewhere in mid-song.” Overall, she judged the album “a tight and likable collection, with nine potential singles working in its favor and only one dud (“Midnight Flyer”) to weigh it down,” and that it’s “good enough to make up in high spirits what it lacks in purposefulness.”

The album became the band’s most successful album of the three released thus far. It debuted at number 50 on the US Billboard 200 chart in its first week of its release,[22] peaking at number 17 in its sixth week on the chart.[23] On March 20, 2001, the album was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of 2 million copies.

The Eagles began recording their third album in England with producer Glyn Johns, as they had their first two albums, but abandoned the sessions after completing two acceptable tracks. Johns, it is said, tended to emphasize the group’s country elements and its harmonies, while the band, in particular Glenn Frey and Don Henley, wanted to take more of a hard rock direction. They reconvened with a new producer, Bill Szymczyk, who had produced artists like B.B. King and, more significantly, Joe Walsh. But the resulting album is not an outright rock effort by any means. Certainly, Frey and Henley got what they wanted with “Already Gone,” the lead-off track, which introduces new bandmember Don Felder as one part of the twin guitar solo that recalls the Allman Brothers Band; “James Dean,” a rock & roll song on the order of “Your Mama Don’t Dance,” and “Good Day in Hell,” which is strongly reminiscent of Joe Walsh songs like “Rocky Mountain Way.”

But the album also features the usual mixture of styles typical of an Eagles album. For example, “Midnight Flyer,” sung by Randy Meisner, is modern bluegrass; “My Man” is Bernie Leadon’s country-rock tribute to the recently deceased Gram Parsons; and “Ol’ 55” is one of the group’s well-done covers of a tune by a singer/songwriter labelmate, in this case Tom Waits. The title track, meanwhile, points the band in a new R&B direction that was later pursued more fully. Like most successful groups, the Eagles combined many different elements, and their third album, which looked back to their earlier work and anticipated their later work, was a transitional effort that combined even more styles than most of their records did. (by William Ruhlmann)

Personnel:
Glenn Frey (vocals, guitar, guitars, piano)
Don Henley (drums, vocals)
Bernie Leadon (vocals, guitar, banjo, pedal steel-guitar)
Randy Meisner (bass, vocals)
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Don Felder ( guitar;slide guitar on 01., + 09. – credited as “late arrival”)
Al Perkins (pedal steel guitar on 07.)

Tracklist:
01. Already Gone (Tempchin/Strandlund) 4.15
02. You Never Cry Like A Lover (Henley/Souther) 4.01
03. Midnight Flyer (Craft/Meisner) 3.58
04. My Man (Leadon) 3.31
05. On The Border (Henley/Leadon/Frey) 4.26
06. James Dean (Henley/Frey/Souther/Browne) 3.39
07. Ol’ ’55 (Waits/Frey/Henley) 4.22
08. Is It True? (Meisner) 3.14
09. Good Day In Hell (Frey) 4.24
10. Best Of My Love (Henley/Frey/Souther) 4.31

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Various Artists – FM (OST) (1978)

FM is the original AOR soundtrack to the 1978 film FM. In the United States, the album reached the Top Five of Billboard’s album chart and quickly earned a Platinum-certified disc. It reached 37 in the UK charts. The soundtrack also won the 1979 Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical.

QSKY radio station manager/program director Jeff Dugan (Michael Brandon) builds a large fan base by assembling a group of charismatic DJ personalities playing popular rock and roll. He soon finds that corporate management expects Jeff to use the station’s position atop the ratings to sell more advertising time. (Jeff Dugan is based loosely on Mike Herrington, the program director of Los Angeles radio station KMET while writer Sacks was working there.)

The conflict grows until sales manager Regis Lamar (Tom Tarpey) presents him with the chance to advertise for the U.S. Army using a series of cheesy radio ads. When Jeff refuses to endorse the contract, Regis takes the issue to upper management. Jeff is then ordered to run the ads as provided by the Army and on the schedule specified in the advertising contract. Rather than comply, Jeff quits his job.

All of the remaining DJs decide to take control of the station in a sort of lock-in/sit-in/protest. They get listeners to gather in the street outside the station as a sort of protest while the DJs play music without any commercials.

Jeff Dugan wakes up to hear the DJs take control of the station. The crowd is already present when he arrives at the station. The DJs lift him up to the second story with a fire hose as they have already barricaded the front doors.

The lock-in lasts only until the police get an injunction to remove the staff. A tow truck rips off the front doors and the police enter the building. The DJs battle back using a fire hose and throwing tapes and other office objects at the police.

The battle is resolved when Jeff Dugan finds himself fighting a policeman outside on an overhang. Jeff saves the policeman from falling off and decides that fighting is the wrong thing to do. He calms the crowd and announces that the DJs are coming out.

Unknown to him, the company owner, Carl Billings (Norman Lloyd), has watched from the crowd as the events unfolded. He insists that the DJs stay in the station, fires his management staff responsible for the advertising conflict, and then joins the DJs inside the station.

The story unfolds across a background of concerts, broadcast music, appearances by various rock stars, and public appearances by the station DJs. A minor subtheme to the film is the competition between QSKY and another area radio station. The major event of that subtheme occurs when Jeff arranges to broadcast a live concert by Linda Ronstadt that is being sponsored by the competitor’s radio station.

Another minor subtheme is the ongoing task of massaging egos of the various DJs to keep them happy and on the air.

Martin Mull appears in his feature film debut as a zoned-out record spinner. He plays Eric Swan, a libidinous disc jockey with eyes for everyone female. The character is self-centered, smarmy, quick tempered, and overbearingly insincere. During the course of the film, Swan beds a supposed girlfriend, encounters a female fan with a peculiar physical “gift”, and barricades himself in owing to a severe emotional breakdown due to his agent’s dropping him and his girlfriend’s leaving him, all within the confines of QSKY’s studio.

Also rounding out the cast are Cleavon Little, who plays the Prince of Darkness, QSKY’s overnight host (Little had previously played a disc jockey in the 1971 film, Vanishing Point); Eileen Brennan as ” Mother”, the 40-something nighttime DJ; Alex Karras as “Doc Holiday”, the midday DJ with the lowest ratings on the station who is eventually let go from the station; and Tom Tarpey as new sales manager Regis Lamar, the bane of the disk jockeys’ existence.

In addition, the film includes live appearances by Tom Petty & REO Speedwagon and live performances by Linda Ronstadt & Jimmy Buffett. Steely Dan performed the title theme, which became a sizable hit. The Eagles, James Taylor, Bob Seger, Dan Fogelberg, Billy Joel, and Queen were featured on the Platinum-plus soundtrack album.

Rolling Stone magazine considered the music heavily biased towards musicians who had been managed by Irving Azoff, who was head of MCA Records at the time. Some reference books claim that the TV sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati was based on FM. The physical resemblance between Michael Brandon and WKRP lead actor Gary Sandy and the fact that their respective characters were both based upon KMET programming director Mikel Hunter may have contributed to this speculation. However, WKRP series creator Hugh Wilson asserts that the sitcom was already in development when the film came out. He also states that he was “scared to death” when the film came out, afraid that it would eclipse the CBS show, which made its debut in September 1978. Wilson was relieved when FM came and went from theaters quickly. (by wikipedia)

Appropriately, the soundtrack for the 1978 movie FM feels like a radio play list of the era, collecting songs from Joe Walsh, Randy Meisner, Boz Scaggs, and other ’70s radio staples. Steely Dan’s title track, Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band’s “Night Moves,” Billy Joel’s “Just The Way You Are,” and Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” are some of the highlights from this double-disc set, which also includes tracks from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Foreigner, and Linda Ronstadt, all of whom also appeared in the film. Though FM itself wasn’t exactly a box-office smash, its soundtrack is a surprisingly durable and entertaining collection of classic rock that is arguably better than many of the ’70s rock compilations available today. (by Heather Phares)

In other words: If you like to celebrate a Seventies party … use this soundtrack and you can´t do wrong !

Tracklist:
01. Steely Dan: FM (Becker/Fagen)  4:52
02.  Bob Seger: Night Moves (Seger) 3:27
03. Steve Miller Band: Fly Like an Eagle (Miller) 3:04
04. Foreigner:  Cold As Ice (Gramm/Jones) 3:20
05. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Breakdown (Petty)  2:44
06. Randy Meisner: Bad Man (Frey /Souther)  2:38
07. Eagles: Life in the Fast Lane (Frey/Henley/Walsh) 4:46
08. Steely Dan: Do It Again (Becker/Fagen) 5:54
09. Boz Scaggs: Lido Shuffle (Paich/Scaggs) 3:42
10. Boston: More Than a Feeling (Scholz) 4:45
11. Linda Ronstadt: Tumbling Dice (Jagger/Richards  4:51
12. Linda Ronstadt: Poor, Poor Pitiful Me (Zevon/Ronstadt) 4:15
13. Jimmy Buffett: Livingston Saturday Night (Buffett)  3:10
14. Dan Fogelberg: There’s A Place In The World For A Gambler (Fogelberg) 5:41
15. Billy Joel: Just the Way You Are (Joel) 4:49
16. The Doobie Brothers: It Keeps You Runnin’ (McDonald)  4:13
17- James Taylor:  Your Smiling Face (Taylor) 2:43
18. Joe Walsh: Life’s Been Good (Walsh) 8:05
19. Queen: We Will Rock You (May) 2:04
20. Steely Dan: FM (Reprise) (Becker/Fagen) 2:54

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This is another item from the great greygoose collection !
Thanks a lot !

Eagles – Desperado (1973)

Desperado is the second studio album by the American band the Eagles. It was recorded at Island Studios in London, England and released in 1973. The songs on Desperado are based on the themes of the Old West. The band members are featured on the album’s cover dressed like an outlaw gang; Desperado remains the only Eagles album where the band members appear on the front cover.Desperado is the second studio album by the American band the Eagles. It was recorded at Island Studios in London, England and released in 1973. The songs on Desperado are based on the themes of the Old West. The band members are featured on the album’s cover dressed like an outlaw gang; Desperado remains the only Eagles album where the band members appear on the front cover.

Although the title track is one of the Eagles’ signature songs, it was never released as a single. The song “Desperado” was ranked number 494 on Rolling Stone’s 2004 list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. The album did yield two singles, though: “Tequila Sunrise” and “Outlaw Man”. Those two singles reached number 64 and number 59 respectively. The album reached number 41 on the Billboard album chart and was certified gold by the RIAA on September 23, 1974, and double platinum on March 20, 2001.

Desperado was the last Asylum Records album to be distributed in North America by Atlantic Records (catalog no. SD 5068), prior to Asylum’s mid-1973 merger with Elektra Records by Asylum’s, Elektra’s and Atlantic’s parent company, Warner Communications.

After a commercially successful first album, Frey wanted the second album to be one where they could be taken seriously as artists, and became interested in making a concept album. The original concept was for songs about anti-heroes; according to Glenn Frey, he was jamming together with Don Henley, Jackson Browne, and J. D. Souther after a Tim Hardin concert when they had the idea of doing an album about anti-heroes. One inspiration was a book on gunfighters of the Wild West given to Browne by Ned Doheny for his 21st birthday, and Browne showed them the book and suggested the theme. The book includes stories about Bill Dalton and Bill Doolin; from this came the song “Doolin-Dalton” about the Doolin-Dalton Gang. However, they ran out of ideas after writing “Doolin-Dalton” and “James Dean” about the eponymous actor. The idea for anti-heroes then become the Western-themed Desperado.

Jackson Browne himself credited the song “Desperado” written by Frey and Henley as the origin of the outlaw theme of the album. Bernie Leadon said that Frey liked the idea of an analogy between outlaw gangs and rock-and-roll: “Glenn sat everybody down and mapped out which characters in the gang could have songs written about them, or encouraged us to write songs about this concept.” As Frey said of the album in an interview in 1973: “It has its moments where it definitely draws some parallels between rock-and-roll and being an outlaw. Outside the laws of normality, I guess. I mean, I feel like I’m breaking a law all the time. What we live and what we do is kind of a fantasy.” Henley also said that the album was to be their “big artistic commentary on the evils of fame and success, with a cowboy metaphor.” However, he admitted: “The metaphor was probably a little bullshit. We were in L.A. staying up all night, smoking dope, living the California life, and I suppose we thought it was as radical as cowboys in the old West. We were really rebelling against the music business, not society.” Part of the reasons for their dissatisfaction and cynicism with the music business was due to David Geffen selling his independent Asylum label to Warner Communications which then merged it with Elektra, and the band attributed this as the reason for the lack of interest in promoting the band internationally by EMI.

The other songs in the album quickly came together after the theme had been decided. Even though Desperado is sometimes described as a concept album, it does not have a specific narrative, and the songs do not necessarily fit in with the theme explicitly. “Desperado” was the first song Frey and Henley wrote together, marking the beginning of their songwriting partnership. Henley noted: “That’s when we became a team.” “Tequila Sunrise” was written in the same week as “Desperado”; in all Frey and Henley were involved in writing 8 of the 11 songs in the album. The songwriting prowess of Frey and Henley in Desperado also marks the beginning of their dominance in the band. As Henley said; “That was a real crucial time for us. When we formed the band, it was supposed to be one of those ‘everybody’s equal’ affairs. We’d all sing and all write and so forth. But the fact is people aren’t all going to be able to do everything the same. It’s just like on a football team . . . . Some people quarterback and some people block. So we went through a lot of hassles for a while.”.

Leadon wrote two songs – “Twenty-One” and “Bitter Creek”, while Randy Meisner co-wrote “Certain Kind of Fool” and “Saturday Night”. “Twenty-One” refers to the age of Emmett Dalton, the youngest of the Dalton gang, when he was shot 23 times but survived during the raid on Coffeyville, Kansas in October 1892. Meisner came up with the idea for how someone became an outlaw in “Certain Kind of Fool”, wrote most of it, and said of his contribution: “I kinda started it. And that’s what usually happened – I’d get a verse or two, and I’m done, and they would help fill in the blanks” The only song on the album not written by the band members of Eagles is “Outlaw Man”, which was written by David Blue and chosen because it fit the theme.

The album was recorded at the Island Studios in London, which took four weeks at a cost of £30,000. The producer Glyn Johns wanted to produce the album quickly and economically, each track was therefore limited to four or five takes, and requests to record more were refused.

Henley would later state that his greatest regret was that he did not sing as well as he could on the title track “Desperado”, and would have liked to redo the song.

According to the producer Johns, he and Leadon tried to come up with a few musical links in an attempt to tie up the story for an outlaw concept in the album, however, the concept itself dissipated. The band was very happy with the finished result; after Johns had played the album back to them as an entity for the first time, they carried him on their shoulders out of the control room.

However, the finished recording was received poorly by Jerry Greenberg, the president of Atlantic Records, who said: “Jeez, they’ve made a fucking cowboy album!”

The film director Sam Peckinpah had planned to use the album as the basis for a film, but the plan did not come to fruition.

The photograph on the back cover as a reenactment of the capture of the Dalton Gang. On the ground are Jackson Browne, Bernie Leadon, Glenn Frey, Randy Meisner, Don Henley, J. D. Souther.

The artwork for the album was done by artist Gary Burden with photos by Henry Diltz, both of whom were also responsible for Eagles’ first album. To illustrate the theme for the music in the album, the original concept was for a gatefold double album with the band dressed as outlaws on the front cover with images of gunfight and the Wild West inside. The centerfold idea however was scrapped by David Geffen.

On the back of the album is an image of all four members of the band together with Jackson Browne and J. D. Souther lying dead and bound on the ground, with a posse including the producer Glyn Johns (far right in a white hat), manager John Hartmann, road manager Tommy Nixon, artist Boyd Elder (later responsible for the skull artwork of Eagles’ later albums), roadies, and Gary Burden (far left) standing over them.

The photo is meant to be an reenactment of the historical image of the capture and death of the Dalton Gang. Jackson Browne said that the image on the back cover with the musicians lying dead is when the “whole thing really comes together”.

The photo shoot took place at the Paramount Ranch, an old film set for Western movies in Malibu Canyon. It was however an expensive shoot, and to justify the cost, a promotional film for the album was also made at the same time. The film was shot on Super-8, then sepia-tinted, and transferred to videotape. In each process a little video quality is lost, which Frey described as a “nice accident” as it made the video appear aged and more realistic. Henley described the promotional film, like the album itself, as “a commentary on [their] loss of innocence with regard to how the music business really worked”]

Paul Gambaccini of Rolling Stone gave the album a positive review on its release in 1973. He wrote: “The beautiful thing about it is that although it is a unified set of songs, it is not a rock opera, a concept album, or anything pretending to be much more than a set of good tunes that just happen to fit together.” In conclusion, he wrote: “Desperado won’t cure your hangover or revalue the dollar, but it will give you many good times. With their second consecutive job well done, the Eagles are on a winning streak.”

Robert Christgau however took the view that “with its barstool-macho equation of gunslinger and guitarschlonger, its on-the-road misogyny, its playing-card metaphors, and its paucity of decent songs, this soundtrack to an imaginary Sam Peckinpah movie is “concept” at its most mindless.”[24] AllMusic editor William Ruhlmann praised that Henley had more involvement with the album, but wrote that it “was simultaneously more ambitious and serious-minded than its predecessor and also slighter and less consistent.”

The album is now considered by some critics to be the one of the significant albums of country rock. Music writer John Einarson argued in his book Desperados: The Roots of Country Rock that despite its weak initial sales, the album “would set the tone for all the later soft country rock sounds, and impact what would become the foundation of “new country”, in both image and music.”

Released in April of 1973, the album was not a commercial success initially. It debuted on the US Billboard 200 chart at a lowly number 145 on its week of its release, rising to number 41 in its eighth week on the chart, It remains Eagles’ lowest charting album and it produced no hit song, as both singles released from the album, “Tequila Sunrise” and “Outlaw Man”, failed to reach top 50 on the main singles chart.

However, the success of their next album release, On the Border, as well as subsequent releases, spurred on the sales of the album. It was certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on March 20, 2001, indicating shipment of 2 million copies in the United States. (by wikipedia)

Personnel:
Glenn Frey (guitar, vocals, keyboards, harmonica)
Don Henley (drums, vocals, guitar)
Bernie Leadon (guitar, vocals; banjo, mandolin, dobro)
Randy Meisner (bass, vocals)

Tracklist:
01. Doolin-Dalton (Henley/Frey/Browne/Souther) 3.34
02. Twenty-One (Leadon) 2.10
03. Out Of Control (Henley/Frey/Nixon) 3.05
04. Tequila Sunrise (Henley/Frey) 2.54
05. Desperado (Henley/Frey) 3.37
06. Certain Kind Of Fool (Henley/Frey/Meisner) 3.02
07. Doolin-Dalton (Instrumental) (Henley/Frey/Browne/Souther) 0.48
08. Outlaw Man (Blue) 3.35
09. Saturday Night (Leadon/Henley/Frey/Meisner) 3.20
10. Bitter Creek (Leadon) 5.04
11. Doolin-Dalton/Desperado (Reprise) (Henley/Frey/Browne/Souther) 4.51

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Eagles – One Of These Nights (1975)

One of These Nights is the fourth studio album by the Eagles, released in 1975. The record would become the Eagles’ first number one album on Billboard’s album chart in July that year, and yielded three Top 10 singles, “One of These Nights”, “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Take It to the Limit”. Its title song is the group’s second number one single on the Billboard Hot 100. The album sold four million copies and was nominated for Grammy Album of the Year. A single from the album, “Lyin’ Eyes”, was also nominated for Record of the Year, and won the Eagles’ first Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.

One of These Nights is the last Eagles album to feature guitarist Bernie Leadon, who was later replaced by Joe Walsh. Leadon left the band after the One Of These Nights tour. The seventh track, “Visions”, is the only Eagles song on which lead guitarist Don Felder sang the lead vocals, despite his desire to write and sing more songs. The album was the band’s commercial breakthrough, transforming them into international superstars and establishing them as America’s number one band. They went on a worldwide tour to promote the Album.

The Eagles began working on their fourth album in late 1974. Glenn Frey and Don Henley wrote four of the nine songs by themselves, and they also collaborated with other members of the band on three other songs. Many of the songs were written while Frey and Henley were sharing a house in Beverly Hills, including “One of These Nights”, “Lyin’ Eyes”, “Take It To The Limit” and “After The Thrill Is Gone”. Henley joked in an interview with Cameron Crowe that it was their “satanic country-rock period” because “it was a dark time, both politically and musically” in America, referring to the turmoil in Washington and disco music starting to take off. He added: “We thought, “Well, how can we write something with that flavor, with that kind of beat, and still have the dangerous guitars?” We wanted to capture the spirit of the times.”

Frey said that “One Of These Nights was the most fluid and ‘painless’ album [they] ever made”, and thought that the quality of the songs he wrote with Henley had improved dramatically. However, Leadon was becoming increasingly unhappy during the making of the album. He wrote three of the nine songs, none of which was released as a single. He was unhappy with the more rock direction of the band that Frey preferred, at one time walking out of a meeting to discuss which take to use after the recording of a rock track. Leadon would leave the band in late 1975, after the album was released.

Frey also began to sing less as a lead singer starting with this album, singing solo lead on only one song (“Lyin’ Eyes”) and sharing lead vocals with Henley on another (“After the Thrill Is Gone”). Henley later said: “[Glenn] was generous in that respect … If I began to do more than he did, it was because if someone had a strong suit he would play that card. ‘You sing this, you sing it better,’ that kind of thing.” Randy Meisner sings lead on two songs, one of which, “Take it to the Limit”, a composition he co-wrote with Frey and Henley, was released as the third single from the album. It is the only Eagles single on which Meisner sings lead.

The cover for the album is an image of an artwork by Boyd Elder, also known as “El Chingadero”. Elder created artwork of painted skulls in the early 1970s, and pieces of his work, titled “American Fetish”, were exhibited in an art gallery in Venice, California in 1972. Among those who attended the opening were members of the Eagles who performed “Witchy Woman” at the show, an early appearance by the band as the Eagles. Elder was also a friend of the album cover designer Gary Burden, who had been responsible for the Eagles’ three previous albums and who was interested in using one of Elder’s pieces for this cover.[10] Elder presented two of his works to the Eagles in Dallas in late 1974, one of which was then chosen for the cover of One of These Nights. Later another work of Elder, an image of an eagle’s skull, would be used for the cover of Their Greatest Hits album. The painted animal skull motif was also used in the cover for their compilation album The Very Best of, and the skull of One of These Nights was used for the cover of the documentary History of the Eagles.

The album cover for One of These Nights is the last Eagles album design on which Burden was involved. He made the skull stand up off the page by debossing large areas together with detailed and elaborate embossing in the wings and feathers. According to Burden, the cover image represents where the band was coming from and where they were going – “The cow skull is pure cowboy, folk, the decorations are American Indian inspired and the future is represented by the more polished reflective glass beaded surfaces covering the skull. All set against the dark eagle feather wings that speak of mysterious powers.” The album artwork received a Grammy nomination for Best Album Package.

Stephen Holden of Rolling Stone, in an early review of the album, expressed a liking for the album for its relative lack of conceptual pretension compared to the Eagles’ previous albums, but did not consider it a great album. He thought the band’s ensemble playing “unprecedentedly excellent” but they “lack an outstanding singer”, and that while “many of their tunes are pretty, none are eloquent.” He added: “And for all their worldly perceptiveness, the Eagles’ lyrics never transcend Hollywood slickness. Their hard rock has always seemed a bit forced, constructed more from commercial considerations than from any urgent impulse to boogie. And when the Eagles attempt to communicate wild sexuality, they sound only boyishly enthused. These limitations, however, seem built-in to the latter-day concept of Southern California rock, of which the Eagles remain the unrivaled exponents.

“The Rolling Stone Album Guide judged the album to be the band’s “most musically adventurous outing yet, flirting with disco on the title song, a waltz on “Take It to the Limit”, and bluegrass psychedelia on Leadon’s “Journey of the Sorcerer”.

William Ruhlmann of AllMusic in a retrospective review was more favorable; he thought that it had more original material and that the material was more polished. He wrote: “One of These Nights was the culmination of the blend of rock, country, and folk styles the Eagles had been making since their start; there wasn’t much that was new, just the same sorts of things done better than they had been before. In particular, a lyrical stance—knowing and disillusioned, but desperately hopeful—had evolved, and the musical arrangements were tighter and more purposeful. The result was the Eagles’ best-realized and most popular album so far.”

The album first entered the Billboard 200 chart at No. 25 the week of its release, and climbed to No. 1 in its fourth week on the chart, where it then stayed the next four weeks. It is the first of the four consecutive No. 1 albums by the Eagles. The album was certified Gold three weeks after its release on June 30, 1975, and it received its 4× Platinum certification on March 20, 2001, signifying shipment of over 4 million copies in the United States.

Personnel:

Don Felder (vocals, guitar, slide guitar)
Glenn Frey (vocals, guitar,  piano, harmonium)
Don Henley (vocals, drums, percussion, tabla)
Bernie Leadon (vocals, guitar, banjo, mandolin, pedal steel-guitar)
Randy Meisner (vocals, bass)

+

David Bromberg (fiddle on 04.)
Albhy Galuten – Synthesizer on 03.)
Jim Ed Norman – piano on 05. + 06.)
+
The Royal Martian Orchestra conducted by Jim Ed Norman (04.)

Tracklist:
01. One Of These Nights (Henley/Frey) 4.51
02. Too Many Hands (Meisner/Felder) 4.43
03. Hollywood Waltz (B.Leadon/T.Leadon/Henley/Frey) 4.04
04. Journey Of The Sorcerer (B. Leadon) 6.40
05. Lyin’ Eyes (Henley/Frey) 6.22
06. Take It To The Limit (Meisner/Henley/Frey) 4.49
07. Visions (Felder/Henley) 3.58
08. After The Thrill Is Gone (Henley/Frey) 3.56
09. I Wish You Peace (Davis/B. Leadon) 3.45

*
**

Eagles – Earlybird (Live At BBC Theatre London) (1973)

Probably one of the most successful bands of the 1970s and the most successful of the West Coast genre were, without question, The Eagles. Formed in 1971, they quickly grabbed the audience‘s attention and made a very fast climb to the top. They took their Country/Folk/Hard Rock hybrid out of the clubs and small venues straight to the stadiums, and they made a considerable impression on the Rock World – and they led the way for numerous acts to follow in their footsteps.

Tonight it’s a concert recorded for the BBC’s Sight And Sound Series with BBC Radio 1 and BBC TV – this is the Radio 1 portion. It all went down on March 20, 1973 – roughly a month before the release of their 2nd album Desperado, while still promoting their self-titled debut album, which boasted three top-40 singles and was a huge seller.

Like the Jackson Browne concert from last night, the Eagles concert tonight captures the band fresh, still getting a handle on their success and approaching their performances with the edge that only comes from playing something an audience hasn’t heard live before.

The Eagles were a hugely influential band, and dominated the Pop Music scene in the U.S. for much of the 70s. And while there were other genres evolving and growing, it was this brand of Rock that captured the mainstream as well as the FM audience in the U.S. – and for the first time in a long time, they were all on the same page.

Personnel:
Glenn Frey (guitar, vocals)
Don Henley (drums, vocals)
Randy Meisner (bass, vocals)
Bernie Leadon (guitar, banjo, vocals)

Tracklist:
01. Train Leaves Here This Morning (Clark/Leadon) 4.09
02. Saturday Night (Meisner/Henley/Frey/Leadon) 3.46
03. Peaceful Easy Feeling (Tempchin) 4.36
04. Certain Kind Of Fool (Meisner/Henley/Frey) 3.46
05. Earlybird (Leadon/Meisner) 5.18
06. Witchy Woman (Henley/Leadon) 5.40
07. Take It Easy (Browne/Frey) 5.47
08. Out Of Control (Henley/Frey/Nixon) 3.08

*
**

Glen Frey:
(November 6, 1948 – January 18, 2016)
REST IN PEACE !