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1
00:00:48,480 --> 00:00:49,504
- Pretty close. It's good.
-Not too bad.
2
00:00:49,675 --> 00:00:51,632
It's gonna be about two minutes,
so come on.
3
00:00:51,802 --> 00:00:52,792
Do what you got to do.
4
00:00:52,970 --> 00:00:55,700
We got to go.
I need a wrist band.
5
00:00:55,180 --> 00:00:58,138
It's something that you can't do
forever, you know?
6
00:00:58,308 --> 00:01:01,426
This is not a lifetime career
that we can do, you know.
7
00:01:01,603 --> 00:01:03,435
-80 __
-it's not?
8
00:01:09,319 --> 00:01:11,276
All right, let's go.
9
00:01:27,546 --> 00:01:30,400
Thank you, and good evening.
10
00:01:30,173 --> 00:01:32,130
We're the Eagles from Los Angeles.
11
00:01:35,929 --> 00:01:40,930
One, two, three, four.
12
00:02:04,820 --> 00:02:06,730
People are always
saying things to me like,
13
00:02:06,251 --> 00:02:08,913
"You're just like a normal person."
14
00:02:09,870 --> 00:02:12,296
And I always say, "Of course."
15
00:02:14,801 --> 00:02:16,132
All right!
16
00:02:22,309 --> 00:02:24,160
We might be a little more
world-wise, you know,
17
00:02:24,186 --> 00:02:25,267
than some of those kids, that's all.
18
00:02:25,437 --> 00:02:27,348
We just maybe have
less innocence than they do,
19
00:02:27,522 --> 00:02:29,104
but, I mean, I eat, I sleep,
IfaHinlove,
20
00:02:29,274 --> 00:02:30,764
I fall out of love, I work.
21
00:02:30,942 --> 00:02:32,728
You know, I do pretty much
the same thing.
22
00:03:04,559 --> 00:03:08,473
We saw a poster of us
when "On the Border" was made.
23
00:03:08,647 --> 00:03:11,264
Everybody looked like
little kids, you know,
24
00:03:11,441 --> 00:03:13,148
like, early 20s and stuff.
25
00:03:13,318 --> 00:03:16,185
And everybody didn't have
their wrinkles and their baggy eyes.
26
00:03:16,363 --> 00:03:18,650
Sort of like a president
when he first takes office.
27
00:03:19,449 --> 00:03:21,690
And then,
like four or five years later,
28
00:03:21,868 --> 00:03:24,781
you know, he just walks out,
and his hair is gray,
29
00:03:24,955 --> 00:03:26,116
and his eyes are drooping,
30
00:03:26,289 --> 00:03:28,872
and he's just really,
you know, real burned.
31
00:03:38,468 --> 00:03:41,381
The first thing that happens
is you get some kind of label,
32
00:03:41,555 --> 00:03:43,910
and then you got to live up to it,
33
00:03:43,265 --> 00:03:45,381
and then you just
get caught in that,
34
00:03:45,559 --> 00:03:49,268
and I forget
what the second thing is.
35
00:04:02,993 --> 00:04:04,859
It's hard.
It's like living two lives.
36
00:04:05,360 --> 00:04:07,528
You know, I have a family,
three kids.
37
00:04:07,706 --> 00:04:10,744
And it's just hard
to live in between that line,
38
00:04:10,917 --> 00:04:14,751
you know, of being out on the road
and being away for a month.
39
00:04:39,696 --> 00:04:41,937
Maybe we wouldn't want
to do this anymore,
40
00:04:42,115 --> 00:04:43,731
or maybe we can't do this anymore,
41
00:04:43,909 --> 00:04:46,401
or maybe nobody will give a shit
if we do this anymore.
42
00:04:56,460 --> 00:04:57,810
Thank you.
43
00:05:08,391 --> 00:05:11,990
No, I insist. You first.
44
00:05:11,269 --> 00:05:13,101
Hi, there.
45
00:05:15,690 --> 00:05:17,931
Lock it up.
A hearty bunch out there.
46
00:05:18,109 --> 00:05:19,395
Oh, he's not even here.
Now...
47
00:05:19,569 --> 00:05:21,276
Hey, driver, lock 'em up
for us tonight, okay?
48
00:05:21,446 --> 00:05:22,231
Out of sight.
49
00:05:22,405 --> 00:05:25,318
You just don't know
what those kids will do.
50
00:05:25,492 --> 00:05:27,529
Doggone.
51
00:05:32,916 --> 00:05:33,781
How about a beer?
52
00:05:33,959 --> 00:05:35,324
- Is that what I heard?
-You got it, brother.
53
00:05:35,502 --> 00:05:38,711
Don't hurt yourself, young America.
54
00:05:40,600 --> 00:05:40,996
Would you like one?
55
00:05:41,174 --> 00:05:43,165
Yeah, I would like one.
I'm gonna drink tonight.
56
00:05:44,845 --> 00:05:47,712
I think they feel like
they're up there, you know,
57
00:05:47,889 --> 00:05:49,846
like they're on the stage.
58
00:05:50,160 --> 00:05:52,474
'Cause we look like them.
We dress like them.
59
00:05:52,644 --> 00:05:54,226
Part of it is that,
and part of it's the records.
60
00:05:54,396 --> 00:05:55,431
I think they just relate to the songs.
61
00:05:55,605 --> 00:05:58,643
I think it's 50/50, I guess.
62
00:05:58,859 --> 00:06:00,224
The thing is now is to try to see
63
00:06:00,402 --> 00:06:02,439
how long we can stay up here
at the top of the mountain.
64
00:06:02,612 --> 00:06:05,149
It's very narrow and windy up here.
65
00:06:05,323 --> 00:06:06,859
We can probably continue
doing what we're doing
66
00:06:07,330 --> 00:06:09,700
as long as the songs keep coming.
67
00:06:09,244 --> 00:06:10,450
That's the only thing
that frightens us
68
00:06:10,620 --> 00:06:12,861
is to not be able
to do that anymore.
69
00:06:13,390 --> 00:06:14,996
If nothing comes up,
we would be in trouble.
70
00:06:15,166 --> 00:06:16,201
So far, so good.
71
00:06:16,376 --> 00:06:19,539
I think we can maintain this
for a few more years.
72
00:06:19,713 --> 00:06:21,249
I don't see why not.
73
00:06:21,423 --> 00:06:22,663
Other people have --
the Rolling Stones
74
00:06:22,841 --> 00:06:24,957
and the Who and the Led --
and Led Zeppelin --
75
00:06:25,135 --> 00:06:28,969
I almost said the Led Zeppelin --
have done it.
76
00:06:29,139 --> 00:06:30,971
Chicago's done it.
77
00:06:32,726 --> 00:06:36,594
Groups last longer
than they used to, you know.
78
00:06:40,400 --> 00:06:41,890
Shit don't float.
79
00:06:59,878 --> 00:07:04,497
90% of the time, being in the Eagles
was a fucking blast.
80
00:07:04,674 --> 00:07:06,756
You know, I was living the dream.
81
00:07:12,265 --> 00:07:13,755
We never in our wildest dreams
82
00:07:13,934 --> 00:07:17,427
figured on being this successful
and lasting this long.
83
00:07:18,897 --> 00:07:21,605
We were a bunch of guys out there
touring the country.
84
00:07:21,775 --> 00:07:23,937
We had a little private plane.
85
00:07:24,110 --> 00:07:27,193
We had parties after the shows.
We had a good time.
86
00:07:27,364 --> 00:07:29,355
We were starting to make
some money.
87
00:07:32,953 --> 00:07:37,380
We had three guitar players finally,
you know, so we could rock a bit.
88
00:07:37,207 --> 00:07:39,448
So, it was a good time,
a good time for me,
89
00:07:39,626 --> 00:07:41,617
a good time for Don.
90
00:07:45,548 --> 00:07:47,840
Everybody was really happy...
91
00:07:48,885 --> 00:07:50,876
...then.
92
00:07:56,590 --> 00:08:00,974
It was going really fast,
and probably too fast.
93
00:08:07,821 --> 00:08:10,153
There was turmoil within the band.
94
00:08:10,323 --> 00:08:12,485
We put a lot of pressure
on ourselves.
95
00:08:12,659 --> 00:08:16,152
As Glenn used to say,
"We made it, and it ate us."
96
00:08:16,329 --> 00:08:18,161
It's hard to be in a group.
97
00:08:18,331 --> 00:08:19,571
It's a bit like being in a marriage,
98
00:08:19,749 --> 00:08:21,956
if you quadruple it
or quintuple it, in our case.
99
00:08:23,920 --> 00:08:25,502
They asked Don
when the Eagles broke up,
100
00:08:25,672 --> 00:08:27,663
"What was that like for you?"
101
00:08:27,841 --> 00:08:30,674
And he said
it was a horrible relief.
102
00:08:31,594 --> 00:08:35,303
And I think
that clocks it pretty well.
103
00:08:37,642 --> 00:08:39,804
You're a real pro, Don, all the way.
104
00:08:39,978 --> 00:08:41,685
Yeah, you are, too --
the way you handle people.
105
00:08:41,855 --> 00:08:43,937
Except the people you pay,
nobody gives a shit about it.
106
00:08:44,107 --> 00:08:47,850
Fuck you. I've been paying you
for seven years, you fuckhead.
107
00:08:48,280 --> 00:08:51,191
So much stuffjust happened.
108
00:08:51,364 --> 00:08:56,234
You know,
there's a philosopher who says,
109
00:08:56,411 --> 00:08:59,449
As you live your life...
110
00:09:00,874 --> 00:09:06,745
...it appears to be
anarchy and chaos
111
00:09:06,921 --> 00:09:09,709
and random events,
112
00:09:09,883 --> 00:09:14,343
non-related events
smashing into each other
113
00:09:14,512 --> 00:09:16,844
and causing this situation,"
114
00:09:17,150 --> 00:09:22,351
and then -- then this happens,
and it's overwhelming,
115
00:09:22,520 --> 00:09:28,937
and it just looks like,
"What in the world is going on?"
116
00:09:29,110 --> 00:09:35,277
And later, when you look back at it,
117
00:09:35,450 --> 00:09:39,990
it looks like
a finely-crafted novel,
118
00:09:40,163 --> 00:09:44,770
but at the time, it don't.
119
00:09:45,210 --> 00:09:49,124
And a lot of the Eagles' story
is like that.
120
00:09:50,423 --> 00:09:52,414
I'm gonna fuckin' kill you.
121
00:09:52,592 --> 00:09:56,506
I can't wait. I can't wait.
122
00:10:00,433 --> 00:10:02,470
We might as well start
at the beginning.
123
00:10:06,940 --> 00:10:09,557
I grew up in Detroit, Michigan.
124
00:10:09,734 --> 00:10:10,815
My dad worked in a factory.
125
00:10:10,985 --> 00:10:13,568
My mother baked pies
at General Motors.
126
00:10:13,738 --> 00:10:16,526
I started taking piano lessons
when I was five years old.
127
00:10:16,699 --> 00:10:20,112
That alone could get you beat up
after school in suburban Detroit.
128
00:10:28,253 --> 00:10:32,292
Detroit was Motown, and so
they played all the Motown hits.
129
00:10:39,681 --> 00:10:42,799
And that was the kind of stuff
that we would listen to.
130
00:10:43,643 --> 00:10:45,725
I stopped playing piano
when I was 12.
131
00:10:45,895 --> 00:10:46,805
It was too much.
132
00:10:46,980 --> 00:10:48,311
I wanted to do other things,
133
00:10:48,481 --> 00:10:51,519
and I think the girl thing
was starting to happen, as well.
134
00:10:54,154 --> 00:10:56,111
Then the Beatles came along,
135
00:10:56,281 --> 00:10:59,230
and my Aunt took me down to see
the Beatles at the Olympia.
136
00:11:00,827 --> 00:11:01,737
It was crazy.
137
00:11:01,911 --> 00:11:03,367
I remember having a girl
138
00:11:03,538 --> 00:11:05,495
that was standing on her seat
in front of me
139
00:11:05,665 --> 00:11:11,456
fall backwards into my arms,
delirious, going, "Paul, Paul."
140
00:11:11,629 --> 00:11:14,291
You know, and I thought,
"Oh, my God."
141
00:11:14,799 --> 00:11:17,666
I have a very vivid memory
of seeing the Beatles
142
00:11:17,844 --> 00:11:19,926
with my parents
on our old Admiral TV set.
143
00:11:20,960 --> 00:11:21,427
It was like a bolt of lightning.
144
00:11:21,598 --> 00:11:24,135
It had a huge impact on me.
It was revolutionary.
145
00:11:24,309 --> 00:11:26,801
And it was an impact
that would last a lifetime,
146
00:11:26,978 --> 00:11:29,940
and I know that had
a huge impact on Glenn, too,
147
00:11:29,272 --> 00:11:31,263
even though we didn't know
each other at the time.
148
00:11:35,111 --> 00:11:37,220
Linden, Texas, is my hometown.
149
00:11:37,197 --> 00:11:39,655
It's a small town
in Northeastern Texas.
150
00:11:39,824 --> 00:11:41,640
When I was growing up,
151
00:11:41,242 --> 00:11:43,654
the population
was about 2,500, 2,600.
152
00:11:47,957 --> 00:11:50,540
It's primarily an agricultural area.
153
00:11:50,710 --> 00:11:52,371
Some people worked
at the steel mill.
154
00:11:52,545 --> 00:11:54,661
It's just a typical
small Texas town.
155
00:11:54,839 --> 00:11:56,705
There's an old courthouse
156
00:11:56,883 --> 00:12:01,200
dating back to before the Civil War
and one stoplight.
157
00:12:01,179 --> 00:12:04,467
It's kind of like "The Last
Picture Show," you know?
158
00:12:05,892 --> 00:12:06,882
It was a great place musically
159
00:12:07,600 --> 00:12:09,392
because it was kind of
a cultural crossroads.
160
00:12:09,562 --> 00:12:10,518
It's really located
161
00:12:10,688 --> 00:12:12,850
where the old South
begins to meet the West.
162
00:12:14,567 --> 00:12:17,355
Linden, Texas, was the birthplace
of Scott Joplin
163
00:12:17,528 --> 00:12:19,110
and T-Bone Walker.
164
00:12:22,325 --> 00:12:23,736
Both my parents loved music,
165
00:12:23,910 --> 00:12:26,493
so we had a lot of records
in the house.
166
00:12:26,663 --> 00:12:31,320
I was exposed to music
of all kinds from an early age --
167
00:12:31,209 --> 00:12:32,370
you know,
country-and-western music,
168
00:12:32,543 --> 00:12:35,251
Western swing music,
gospel music, blues,
169
00:12:35,421 --> 00:12:38,789
Johnny Cash, Hank Williams,
and Patsy Cline.
170
00:12:45,682 --> 00:12:48,344
There was a 50,000-watt
radio station in New Orleans,
171
00:12:48,518 --> 00:12:52,227
and I heard things on that station
that I didn't hear anywhere else.
172
00:12:53,564 --> 00:12:55,931
So, I had a lot of radio coming in.
173
00:12:57,902 --> 00:12:59,518
And when I would go to work
with my dad,
174
00:12:59,696 --> 00:13:04,310
he would listen to a station
in Shreveport, Louisiana -- KWKH.
175
00:13:14,919 --> 00:13:17,661
And that station
broadcast a radio show
176
00:13:17,839 --> 00:13:19,125
called the "Louisiana Hayride,"
177
00:13:19,299 --> 00:13:23,213
where Elvis Presley made
his first radio broadcast in 1954.
178
00:13:36,274 --> 00:13:40,393
The very first rock-'n'-roll record
I bought was by Elvis Presley.
179
00:13:43,781 --> 00:13:46,273
My playing the drums was
sort of an organic process.
180
00:13:46,451 --> 00:13:48,317
I began by beating
on my school books
181
00:13:48,494 --> 00:13:51,657
with my fingers and with pencils.
182
00:13:51,831 --> 00:13:52,866
I would beat out little cadences,
183
00:13:53,410 --> 00:13:55,453
and I used to drive
my classmates crazy doing that,
184
00:13:55,626 --> 00:13:57,287
until, I think, one day,
somebody said to me --
185
00:13:57,462 --> 00:13:58,748
I think it was my friend
Richard Bowden --
186
00:13:58,921 --> 00:14:01,300
he said, "Why don't you just
start playing the drums?"
187
00:14:01,841 --> 00:14:05,500
I managed to cobble together
a drum kit from old drums
188
00:14:05,219 --> 00:14:08,337
that I found stashed in the back
of the band hall in high school.
189
00:14:08,514 --> 00:14:10,926
And then one day, my mom said,
"Come on, get in the car."
190
00:14:11,100 --> 00:14:13,717
And she drove me to a town
about an hour and a half away
191
00:14:13,895 --> 00:14:17,308
called Sulphur Springs, Texas,
to McKay Music Company.
192
00:14:17,482 --> 00:14:19,180
Much to my surprise,
193
00:14:19,192 --> 00:14:21,809
she bought me a set
of red-sparkle Slingerland drums
194
00:14:21,986 --> 00:14:24,353
that I still have today.
195
00:14:24,530 --> 00:14:26,692
So, I have to give my parents
a lot of credit.
196
00:14:26,866 --> 00:14:28,197
They bought me that drum kit
197
00:14:28,368 --> 00:14:30,609
even though
they couldn't really afford it.
198
00:14:34,207 --> 00:14:35,288
The first band I was in
199
00:14:35,458 --> 00:14:38,291
was a band with my high-school
buddy Richard Bowden
200
00:14:38,461 --> 00:14:40,668
and another high-school friend,
Jerry Surratt,
201
00:14:40,838 --> 00:14:42,545
and we played Dixieland jazz music.
202
00:14:42,715 --> 00:14:45,673
Nobody sang.
We just played music.
203
00:14:52,433 --> 00:14:53,673
I went to a high-school party,
204
00:14:53,851 --> 00:14:55,433
and there were four kids
who were freshmen in high school
205
00:14:55,603 --> 00:14:56,638
who were playing.
206
00:14:56,813 --> 00:14:59,271
I was a junior, and I had
a couple beers that night
207
00:14:59,440 --> 00:15:01,898
and said, "Hey, you know,
do you know Satisfaction'?
208
00:15:02,680 --> 00:15:03,183
'Cause I can sing it."
209
00:15:03,361 --> 00:15:06,399
So, I became the lead singer
of the Subterraneans.
210
00:15:11,244 --> 00:15:13,110
I played in the Subterraneans
for a while,
211
00:15:13,287 --> 00:15:15,745
and then I played in another band
called the Mushrooms.
212
00:15:15,915 --> 00:15:17,906
The most important thing
that happened to me
213
00:15:18,840 --> 00:15:19,995
when I was in Detroit
was I met Bob Seger.
214
00:15:28,761 --> 00:15:30,343
He took me under his wing.
215
00:15:30,513 --> 00:15:33,551
He invited me to recording sessions
that he was having, you know,
216
00:15:33,724 --> 00:15:35,886
so I could see
how records were made.
217
00:15:36,600 --> 00:15:37,676
I was his mentor.
218
00:15:37,854 --> 00:15:39,940
He was just so young,
219
00:15:39,272 --> 00:15:41,889
and I liked him right away
because he was so funny.
220
00:15:42,660 --> 00:15:44,230
He had a great sense of humor,
221
00:15:44,193 --> 00:15:47,982
and, like me, I could see
he was really ambitious.
222
00:15:48,156 --> 00:15:50,147
He really wanted to be on the radio.
223
00:15:50,324 --> 00:15:52,986
He cut a song
called "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man."
224
00:15:53,161 --> 00:15:55,778
He let me play acoustic guitar
on the basic track
225
00:15:55,955 --> 00:15:57,821
and sing background vocals.
226
00:16:03,713 --> 00:16:06,375
You can really hear Glenn
blurt out on the first chorus.
227
00:16:06,549 --> 00:16:08,631
He comes out really loud.
228
00:16:08,801 --> 00:16:10,870
Tremendous gusto.
229
00:16:10,261 --> 00:16:11,717
Of course, that was
a national hit for us,
230
00:16:11,888 --> 00:16:14,129
so that was really cool.
231
00:16:14,307 --> 00:16:16,719
Bob was the first guy
that wrote his own songs
232
00:16:16,893 --> 00:16:18,475
and recorded them
that I had ever met.
233
00:16:18,644 --> 00:16:20,385
He said, "You know,
if you want to make it,
234
00:16:20,563 --> 00:16:22,304
you're gonna have to
write your own songs."
235
00:16:22,482 --> 00:16:24,640
And I said,
"Well, what if they're bad?"
236
00:16:24,233 --> 00:16:25,894
And he said,
"Well, they're gonna be bad."
237
00:16:26,680 --> 00:16:27,979
He says, "You just keep writing
and keep writing,
238
00:16:28,154 --> 00:16:29,815
and eventually,
you'll write a good song."
239
00:16:32,740 --> 00:16:33,405
We were gonna have
a band together.
240
00:16:33,576 --> 00:16:34,987
He was gonna get rid
of his other guys,
241
00:16:35,161 --> 00:16:37,277
and I was gonna be his bass player.
242
00:16:37,455 --> 00:16:39,321
It didn't work out.
243
00:16:39,499 --> 00:16:41,957
My mom found me smoking pot
with a friend of mine
244
00:16:42,126 --> 00:16:43,241
in somebody's basement,
245
00:16:43,419 --> 00:16:45,706
and she called up
Seger's manager, Punch Andrews,
246
00:16:45,880 --> 00:16:49,623
and said,
"Just a minute, not so fast."
247
00:16:52,386 --> 00:16:53,968
In the years leading up
to the Great Depression,
248
00:16:54,138 --> 00:16:56,220
my dad had to quit school
after the eighth grade.
249
00:16:56,390 --> 00:16:57,596
He had to go home
and work in the fields
250
00:16:57,767 --> 00:17:00,800
with his brother and sister
to help support the family.
251
00:17:00,186 --> 00:17:02,848
His fondest wish --
in fact, his life's goal
252
00:17:03,220 --> 00:17:04,854
was that I would go to college.
253
00:17:05,608 --> 00:17:08,771
Every Saturday night, he would
bring home seven quarters,
254
00:17:08,945 --> 00:17:10,777
and we'd put them in a piggy bank,
255
00:17:10,947 --> 00:17:14,360
and when those quarters
amounted to $100,
256
00:17:14,534 --> 00:17:17,710
he would take me to the bank
and we would buy a savings bond,
257
00:17:17,245 --> 00:17:19,282
a United States savings bond,
258
00:17:19,455 --> 00:17:22,664
and put that away
for my college education.
259
00:17:23,876 --> 00:17:25,662
So, between what my dad had saved
260
00:17:25,836 --> 00:17:28,168
and between what I was making
doing gigs all over Texas
261
00:17:28,339 --> 00:17:29,955
and Arkansas and Louisiana
on weekends,
262
00:17:30,132 --> 00:17:33,900
I paid for 3 1/2 years of college.
263
00:17:33,261 --> 00:17:35,628
They have a world-famous
music department
264
00:17:35,805 --> 00:17:37,387
in which I did not excel.
265
00:17:37,557 --> 00:17:38,638
I took one music course.
266
00:17:38,808 --> 00:17:42,517
I think it was beginning theory,
and I flunked.
267
00:17:42,687 --> 00:17:44,348
I made an
268
00:17:44,522 --> 00:17:47,605
But I didn't really care
because I was an English major.
269
00:17:54,323 --> 00:17:55,529
Well, after the Mushrooms,
270
00:17:55,700 --> 00:17:58,863
I got invited to join this band
called the Four of Us.
271
00:17:59,360 --> 00:18:01,903
Started getting into
some of the California bands --
272
00:18:02,810 --> 00:18:04,664
the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield,
the Beach Boys.
273
00:18:04,834 --> 00:18:07,121
Always wanted to go to California.
274
00:18:07,295 --> 00:18:09,878
And I got out there,
my mind was blown.
275
00:18:10,470 --> 00:18:12,840
The vegetation --
I'd never seen palm trees.
276
00:18:12,258 --> 00:18:14,374
You know, it was just like
a dream come true.
277
00:18:23,686 --> 00:18:27,600
The first celebrity I saw
was David Crosby.
278
00:18:33,946 --> 00:18:36,187
And he had on
that flat-brimmed hat
279
00:18:36,365 --> 00:18:38,720
that he wore
on the second Byrds album,
280
00:18:38,242 --> 00:18:39,482
and he had a little leather cape on,
281
00:18:39,660 --> 00:18:43,699
and I just looked and I thought,
"My God, there's David Crosby."
282
00:18:43,873 --> 00:18:46,285
Zoom, and we went right by.
283
00:18:53,633 --> 00:18:56,295
And the first person I met
was John David Souther.
284
00:18:56,469 --> 00:18:58,631
We wanted to get high
and play music.
285
00:18:58,804 --> 00:19:00,545
There were two of us with guitars.
286
00:19:00,723 --> 00:19:03,306
We were listening to a lot
of that sort of interface
287
00:19:03,476 --> 00:19:05,968
between rock 'n' roll
and country-and-western music
288
00:19:06,145 --> 00:19:08,807
that was happening
in Southern California at the time
289
00:19:08,981 --> 00:19:10,960
with the Byrds
and Dillard & Clark
290
00:19:10,274 --> 00:19:12,936
and the Burrito Brothers and Poco.
291
00:19:24,163 --> 00:19:27,406
There was a lot of great music
of that sort going around then.
292
00:19:27,583 --> 00:19:28,823
Longbranch Pennywhistle here.
293
00:19:29,100 --> 00:19:30,742
I suppose you wonder
what that name meant,
294
00:19:30,920 --> 00:19:31,910
and John David and I --
295
00:19:32,880 --> 00:19:34,546
It was a well-kept...
funky women.
296
00:19:35,716 --> 00:19:37,127
The songs weren't very good.
297
00:19:37,301 --> 00:19:39,918
I don't think Glenn and I were very
far along as songwriters then.
298
00:19:46,600 --> 00:19:48,510
We were a funny little group,
but we got gigs.
299
00:19:48,229 --> 00:19:50,687
We, you know, managed to play
in some of the folk clubs
300
00:19:50,856 --> 00:19:51,561
around L.A. --
301
00:19:51,732 --> 00:19:56,522
the Golden Bear
and the Ash Grove.
302
00:20:05,955 --> 00:20:08,492
We had a chance meeting
with Kenny Rogers
303
00:20:08,666 --> 00:20:09,781
in Dallas, Texas, one day.
304
00:20:09,959 --> 00:20:11,916
He was coming through town
with the First Edition.
305
00:20:12,860 --> 00:20:14,770
They were very hot at the time.
306
00:20:17,383 --> 00:20:19,440
I remember this
like it was yesterday.
307
00:20:19,218 --> 00:20:22,510
This little kid came up
and said, "Mr. Rogers,"
308
00:20:22,221 --> 00:20:25,555
he said, "I'm Don Henley,
and I'm with a group called Felicity,
309
00:20:25,725 --> 00:20:27,307
and we're doing a show tonight,
310
00:20:27,476 --> 00:20:29,638
and we'd love to have you
come see us."
311
00:20:29,812 --> 00:20:32,224
And I said, "You know,
I'm really sorry, but I don't do that.
312
00:20:32,398 --> 00:20:35,356
I don't just go to clubs
and watch groups."
313
00:20:35,526 --> 00:20:38,234
He said,
"I really think you'd like us."
314
00:20:38,404 --> 00:20:41,192
And I thought,
"Well, that's pretty cool," so I did.
315
00:20:55,296 --> 00:20:58,914
Kenny is a Texas boy, and he was
looking for groups to produce.
316
00:20:59,910 --> 00:21:00,126
So, I brought them to L.A.,
317
00:21:00,301 --> 00:21:03,760
and they literally lived at my house
for about four months.
318
00:21:05,347 --> 00:21:07,133
We changed their name to Shiloh.
319
00:21:07,308 --> 00:21:10,676
It was so much fun
to take them into the studio.
320
00:21:22,310 --> 00:21:24,693
With Shiloh, we made one album,
and it had a single called
321
00:21:24,867 --> 00:21:27,985
"Simple Little Down Home
Rock and Roll Love Song for Rosie."
322
00:21:28,162 --> 00:21:30,119
Not exactly a short title.
323
00:21:35,961 --> 00:21:38,248
We didn't know much
about the business at that point.
324
00:21:38,422 --> 00:21:39,628
We were pretty naive.
325
00:21:43,719 --> 00:21:46,510
We kicked around
in the L.A. clubs for a while,
326
00:21:46,222 --> 00:21:47,383
played the Whisky,
327
00:21:47,556 --> 00:21:51,490
played some of the clubs
down in the South Bay area,
328
00:21:51,227 --> 00:21:52,934
and nothing really happened for us.
329
00:21:55,815 --> 00:21:59,399
J.D. and I were looking
for any place to play.
330
00:21:59,568 --> 00:22:01,275
We had heard about
this guy Jackson Browne.
331
00:22:01,445 --> 00:22:03,231
He'd been playing
the same clubs we had,
332
00:22:03,405 --> 00:22:05,897
but we never had seen him perform.
333
00:22:06,750 --> 00:22:08,237
This is California.
Mr. Jackson Browne.
334
00:22:08,410 --> 00:22:09,491
Ah, thank you, thank you.
335
00:22:09,662 --> 00:22:11,323
Then there were
a bunch of gigs that they had
336
00:22:11,497 --> 00:22:12,578
and some gigs that I had
337
00:22:12,748 --> 00:22:15,240
that they would show up at my gigs
and me at their gigs,
338
00:22:15,417 --> 00:22:16,828
and we became really good friends.
339
00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:18,830
This is --
340
00:22:18,254 --> 00:22:19,836
And we'd start talking about,
341
00:22:20,500 --> 00:22:21,746
"Where do you live,
and what's going on?"
342
00:22:21,924 --> 00:22:25,462
And Jackson said, "You know,
you should come down to Echo Park.
343
00:22:25,636 --> 00:22:27,673
Rent's real cheap."
344
00:22:27,847 --> 00:22:30,680
Glenn got the apartment
next to my apartment,
345
00:22:30,850 --> 00:22:35,560
and this apartment cost like $125
or something a month, you know.
346
00:22:35,729 --> 00:22:36,969
And I needed to economize,
347
00:22:37,147 --> 00:22:39,730
so I moved into the basement
underneath Glenn's place,
348
00:22:39,900 --> 00:22:42,232
which I could get into
for $35 a month.
349
00:22:42,403 --> 00:22:43,643
It only had one door.
350
00:22:43,821 --> 00:22:47,359
It was really just kind of
an illegal place, just a cubbyhole,
351
00:22:47,533 --> 00:22:51,710
and that's where Jackson lived,
with J.D. and I above.
352
00:22:51,245 --> 00:22:52,201
You know, that was it.
353
00:22:52,371 --> 00:22:55,790
There was a stereo, a piano,
a bed, a guitar,
354
00:22:55,249 --> 00:22:58,370
you know, a teapot.
355
00:23:00,713 --> 00:23:03,375
We slept late in those days,
356
00:23:03,549 --> 00:23:05,415
except around 9:00 in the morning,
357
00:23:05,593 --> 00:23:08,500
I'd hear Jackson Browne's teapot
going off,
358
00:23:08,178 --> 00:23:10,385
this whistle in the distance.
359
00:23:10,556 --> 00:23:13,173
And then I'd hear him
playing piano.
360
00:23:13,350 --> 00:23:15,557
I didn't really know
how to write songs.
361
00:23:15,728 --> 00:23:20,630
I knew I wanted to write songs,
but I didn't know exactly --
362
00:23:20,232 --> 00:23:23,520
you just wait around for inspiration,
what was the deal?
363
00:23:23,694 --> 00:23:28,734
Well, I learned through Jackson's
ceiling and my floor
364
00:23:28,908 --> 00:23:31,320
exactly how to write songs
'cause Jackson would get up,
365
00:23:31,493 --> 00:23:34,736
and he'd play the first verse
and first chorus,
366
00:23:34,914 --> 00:23:36,996
and he'd play it 20 times
367
00:23:37,166 --> 00:23:39,578
until he had it
just the way he wanted.
368
00:23:39,752 --> 00:23:41,413
And then there'd be silence.
369
00:23:41,587 --> 00:23:44,450
And then I'd hear the teapot
go off again.
370
00:23:44,214 --> 00:23:46,501
Then it'd be quiet
for 10 or 20 minutes.
371
00:23:46,675 --> 00:23:48,916
Then I'd hear him
start to play again,
372
00:23:49,940 --> 00:23:51,176
and there was the second verse.
373
00:23:51,347 --> 00:23:52,553
So, then he'd work
on the second verse,
374
00:23:52,723 --> 00:23:53,884
and he'd play it 20 times.
375
00:23:54,580 --> 00:23:56,490
And then he'd go back
to the top of the song,
376
00:23:56,226 --> 00:23:58,183
and he'd play the first verse,
the first chorus,
377
00:23:58,354 --> 00:24:00,436
and the second verse
another 20 times
378
00:24:00,606 --> 00:24:03,348
until he was really comfortable
with it and, you know,
379
00:24:03,525 --> 00:24:07,180
change a word here or there,
and I'm up there going,
380
00:24:07,196 --> 00:24:09,107
"So, that's how you do it --
381
00:24:09,281 --> 00:24:15,402
elbow grease, you know,
time, thought, persistence."
382
00:24:32,540 --> 00:24:33,795
I wanted to kill him sometimes.
383
00:24:33,973 --> 00:24:38,467
Jackson would play the same phrase,
"Doctor, My Eyes" for six weeks.
384
00:24:38,644 --> 00:24:40,851
The same thing with "The Pretender."
I just wanted to murder him.
385
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:48,526
And it was during that period of time
that I met Glenn Frey
386
00:24:48,696 --> 00:24:50,186
because we were
on the same label
387
00:24:50,364 --> 00:24:51,479
called Amos records.
388
00:24:51,657 --> 00:24:53,864
Some of the things that struck me
when I first met Glenn
389
00:24:54,340 --> 00:24:55,616
were things we had in common.
390
00:24:55,786 --> 00:24:59,324
Both of our dads made a living
in the automotive industry.
391
00:24:59,498 --> 00:25:02,206
Glenn and I loved old cars,
especially cars from the '50s.
392
00:25:02,376 --> 00:25:05,585
He had a '55 Chevy
that he named Gladys.
393
00:25:05,754 --> 00:25:09,167
And we drove around Los Angeles
in Gladys.
394
00:25:09,341 --> 00:25:10,376
Check out some of the new talent.
395
00:25:10,551 --> 00:25:11,507
There's no better place in town
396
00:25:11,677 --> 00:25:13,213
to catch those new singers
and songwriters
397
00:25:13,387 --> 00:25:15,173
than down
at the Monday night Hoot Night,
398
00:25:15,347 --> 00:25:17,930
Doug Weston's world-famous
Troubadour, happening tonight.
399
00:25:18,100 --> 00:25:20,683
The Troubadour club was
the center of the musical universe.
400
00:25:21,520 --> 00:25:22,806
It was a very seminal place.
401
00:25:22,980 --> 00:25:24,812
It was the place to see and be seen.
402
00:25:26,108 --> 00:25:28,270
Every Monday night
they had an open stage.
403
00:25:28,444 --> 00:25:30,151
It was called Hoot Night.
404
00:25:33,365 --> 00:25:36,608
The Troubadour was the place to go
if you were young and happening
405
00:25:36,785 --> 00:25:40,198
and trying to get involved
in the music scene.
406
00:25:40,372 --> 00:25:42,283
It was happening there.
407
00:25:58,223 --> 00:25:59,964
I saw a lot of great acts
at the Troubadour.
408
00:26:15,741 --> 00:26:19,951
I witnessed Elton John's American
debut performance in 1970.
409
00:26:34,176 --> 00:26:36,543
Everybody who was anybody
at the time played at the Troubadour.
410
00:26:38,764 --> 00:26:39,799
Of course, Linda --
411
00:26:39,973 --> 00:26:44,183
And she still has one of my favorite
voices in the business, ever.
412
00:26:53,737 --> 00:26:57,105
The Troubadour is really responsible
for the entire music scene.
413
00:26:57,282 --> 00:26:58,568
I mean, everything I got, really,
414
00:26:58,742 --> 00:27:01,985
was virtually through either
performing there onstage
415
00:27:02,162 --> 00:27:04,494
or in the bar, you know?
416
00:27:08,710 --> 00:27:11,420
I was just started
managing Linda then,
417
00:27:11,213 --> 00:27:14,800
and Linda was gonna be a star --
that voice as big as a house.
418
00:27:14,842 --> 00:27:16,424
There wasn't anybody in the room
419
00:27:16,593 --> 00:27:18,459
that cared about anything
but that voice.
420
00:27:22,224 --> 00:27:23,714
One night, we're down
at the Troubadour,
421
00:27:23,892 --> 00:27:26,725
and John Boylan comes to me --
he's managing Linda Ronstadt --
422
00:27:26,895 --> 00:27:29,478
and he says,
"I'm taking Linda on the road.
423
00:27:29,648 --> 00:27:31,605
We need guys who can sing.
424
00:27:31,775 --> 00:27:33,436
You want to play rhythm guitar
and sing?"
425
00:27:33,610 --> 00:27:36,398
I offered him $250 a week,
and he took it.
426
00:27:39,825 --> 00:27:41,736
I went back to him, I said,
427
00:27:41,910 --> 00:27:44,402
"Can you give me
some of that money right now?"
428
00:27:44,580 --> 00:27:46,617
I think he gave me 50 bucks.
429
00:27:46,790 --> 00:27:49,953
And then I found Don
from this band called Shiloh.
430
00:27:50,127 --> 00:27:51,834
I heard him playing
at the Troubadour.
431
00:27:56,425 --> 00:27:58,700
I was looking for a job.
432
00:27:58,177 --> 00:27:59,963
Glenn introduced me to John Boylan.
433
00:28:00,137 --> 00:28:02,344
I auditioned at this little house
in Laurel Canyon.
434
00:28:02,514 --> 00:28:05,723
I had listened to her album
hundreds of times,
435
00:28:05,893 --> 00:28:07,475
so I knew the songs
backwards and forwards,
436
00:28:07,644 --> 00:28:11,570
and I guess I passed the audition
because I got the job.
437
00:28:37,883 --> 00:28:39,248
I learned a lot from Linda.
438
00:28:39,426 --> 00:28:41,292
It was a very formative experience
for me.
439
00:28:41,470 --> 00:28:44,700
And she could hang
with the guys, you know.
440
00:28:44,181 --> 00:28:48,266
She could drink tequila
with the rest of us and hold her own.
441
00:28:54,316 --> 00:28:56,102
It was really very ad hoc.
442
00:28:56,276 --> 00:28:58,688
We had a station wagon,
put the gear in the back.
443
00:28:58,862 --> 00:29:01,900
We'd all get in it and drive
to the college and play there.
444
00:29:02,741 --> 00:29:04,527
As a cost-cutting measure,
445
00:29:04,701 --> 00:29:06,408
band members had
to share rooms in those days,
446
00:29:06,578 --> 00:29:08,660
so Glenn and I were roommates.
447
00:29:08,830 --> 00:29:11,413
- What did you guys eat?
-I had a bowl of Rice Krispies.
448
00:29:11,583 --> 00:29:14,826
Ladies and gentlemen,
Linda Ronstadt.
449
00:29:20,175 --> 00:29:21,131
It's funny. I seem to get people
450
00:29:21,301 --> 00:29:22,712
at a critical stage
in their development,
451
00:29:22,886 --> 00:29:23,842
and they sort of build their chops.
452
00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:25,594
I mean, there's nothing
that gets your chops up better
453
00:29:25,764 --> 00:29:27,950
than playing every single night.
454
00:29:33,939 --> 00:29:35,270
Linda and John Boylan
455
00:29:35,440 --> 00:29:37,226
really like the way
Henley and I play,
456
00:29:37,401 --> 00:29:39,938
really like the way
we sing with her,
457
00:29:40,112 --> 00:29:41,978
and they start to get a vision
458
00:29:42,155 --> 00:29:45,364
of putting together a super group
to back up Linda --
459
00:29:45,534 --> 00:29:48,743
the best of the new
country-rock musicians,
460
00:29:48,912 --> 00:29:50,619
and we were gonna be part of it.
461
00:29:50,789 --> 00:29:53,156
I remember talking with Don,
and Don said,
462
00:29:53,333 --> 00:29:57,247
"Well, you know, I'd rather, like,
just be in a band with you."
463
00:29:58,255 --> 00:30:00,410
And I said, "Well, yeah, me too.
464
00:30:00,215 --> 00:30:03,628
You know, I'd rather just be
in a band with you."
465
00:30:07,431 --> 00:30:09,638
So, we went to Linda and said,
466
00:30:09,808 --> 00:30:12,891
"You know, we really appreciate
everything you've done for us,
467
00:30:13,610 --> 00:30:15,974
and it means a lot,
and we love playing with you,
468
00:30:16,148 --> 00:30:18,765
but we'd like to have
our own band."
469
00:30:27,326 --> 00:30:29,158
Now, you know,
I think a lot of people,
470
00:30:29,328 --> 00:30:30,739
you know, could get miffed by that,
471
00:30:30,912 --> 00:30:33,280
say, "Well, wait a second.
I brought you out here, you know.
472
00:30:33,206 --> 00:30:34,571
I gave you a payir19j°b
473
00:30:34,750 --> 00:30:37,412
when you couldn't afford your own
drinks at the Troubadour bar,
474
00:30:37,586 --> 00:30:39,748
and now you want to quit?"
475
00:30:43,633 --> 00:30:46,546
Linda was extremely gracious
about the whole thing,
476
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:47,926
as was John Boylan.
477
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:51,900
They weren't resentful
or bitter at all.
478
00:30:51,183 --> 00:30:52,344
They were great.
479
00:30:52,517 --> 00:30:53,848
They were supportive,
as a matter of fact.
480
00:31:06,198 --> 00:31:08,280
They started talking
about putting a band together,
481
00:31:08,450 --> 00:31:11,488
and we told them
they should get Bernie Leadon.
482
00:31:11,661 --> 00:31:14,995
I was in several bands in L.A.
Early on, I met Linda.
483
00:31:15,165 --> 00:31:16,781
Then I worked
with Dillard & Clark --
484
00:31:16,958 --> 00:31:20,792
Doug Dillard, banjo player,
and Gene Clark from the Byrds.
485
00:31:20,962 --> 00:31:24,296
And so, now I'm in an offshoot
of the Byrds world,
486
00:31:24,466 --> 00:31:26,878
and then that turned
into an invitation
487
00:31:27,520 --> 00:31:28,884
from the Burrito Brothers
from Chris Hillman
488
00:31:29,540 --> 00:31:32,467
to come join them
for their second album on A&M.
489
00:31:39,773 --> 00:31:43,232
And I was still in the Burritos,
but they had lost Gram Parsons,
490
00:31:43,402 --> 00:31:46,360
and it had changed, and I wasn't
that interested anymore.
491
00:31:49,324 --> 00:31:51,315
Bernie was a very accomplished
banjo player,
492
00:31:51,493 --> 00:31:52,779
and he could also play guitar
493
00:31:52,953 --> 00:31:54,819
in what we called
the Bindi lick style.
494
00:31:54,996 --> 00:31:57,158
It was pioneered by a fellow
named Clarence White.
495
00:31:57,874 --> 00:32:00,241
And then Glenn told me
about this guy named Randy Meisner
496
00:32:00,419 --> 00:32:02,376
who had been in a band called Poco.
497
00:32:02,546 --> 00:32:05,789
Randy could sing really high,
and he also played bass.
498
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:10,671
So, Glenn just kind of
asked me one day
499
00:32:10,846 --> 00:32:13,929
if I'd be interested
in starting a group with him.
500
00:32:14,990 --> 00:32:17,387
And he had Henley and Bernie.
501
00:32:17,561 --> 00:32:20,679
That was the first Eagles.
502
00:32:20,856 --> 00:32:23,630
So, the plan was that Glenn and I
503
00:32:23,233 --> 00:32:25,395
would try to recruit
Bernie and Randy,
504
00:32:25,569 --> 00:32:27,230
and then we would all go
to David Geffen
505
00:32:27,404 --> 00:32:30,271
and see if he would give us
a recording contract.
506
00:32:30,449 --> 00:32:33,908
In the '70s, Asylum Records
was considered the L.A. sound --
507
00:32:34,770 --> 00:32:38,360
Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills,
Nash & Young, Jackson Browne.
508
00:32:38,206 --> 00:32:42,416
David Geffen, who started Asylum,
is our patron, you know.
509
00:32:42,586 --> 00:32:45,749
A medici, medici of rock 'n' roll.
510
00:32:46,631 --> 00:32:48,463
It's a very artist-oriented company,
511
00:32:48,633 --> 00:32:50,965
and whatever they want to do,
we support them.
512
00:32:51,136 --> 00:32:52,342
If we believe in them,
we'll stick with them,
513
00:32:52,512 --> 00:32:53,547
whether they make it or not.
514
00:32:54,306 --> 00:32:56,923
Jackson was our conduit
to David Geffen.
515
00:32:57,100 --> 00:32:59,570
He was the first guy to get signed
516
00:32:59,227 --> 00:33:02,140
by Geffen's new
Asylum Records label.
517
00:33:02,314 --> 00:33:04,146
So, we all walk in Geffen's office,
518
00:33:04,316 --> 00:33:06,273
and we basically said,
"Here we are."
519
00:33:06,443 --> 00:33:09,561
Bernie Leadon just boldly
says to Geffen,
520
00:33:09,738 --> 00:33:12,230
"Well, do you want us or not?"
521
00:33:12,407 --> 00:33:13,943
They were dying to sign with me.
522
00:33:14,117 --> 00:33:16,859
I think they were very ambitious,
particularly Glenn.
523
00:33:17,370 --> 00:33:18,653
Glenn wanted to have a hit band.
524
00:33:18,830 --> 00:33:20,320
I loved the way Don sang.
525
00:33:20,499 --> 00:33:22,740
You know, we all had hopes for it.
526
00:33:22,918 --> 00:33:25,580
All of a sudden, we were signed
to Geffen's new label.
527
00:33:25,754 --> 00:33:27,415
They sent us back
to the drawing board.
528
00:33:27,589 --> 00:33:29,500
They said, "You guys need to go
and rehearse some more."
529
00:33:29,674 --> 00:33:31,506
They said, "You know,
you need to write some songs.
530
00:33:31,676 --> 00:33:33,166
You're not really ready
to record yet."
531
00:33:36,181 --> 00:33:38,843
So, they packed us off
to Aspen, Colorado.
532
00:33:39,170 --> 00:33:40,132
It could have been worse.
533
00:33:40,310 --> 00:33:42,347
There were people
who were way higher
534
00:33:42,521 --> 00:33:44,182
than any of us had ever been.
535
00:33:46,274 --> 00:33:49,733
It was a Wild West
wide-open town at that point.
536
00:33:56,117 --> 00:33:57,903
We played at a club up there
called the Gallery,
537
00:33:58,780 --> 00:34:00,740
which was located right
at the foot of Aspen Mountain.
538
00:34:09,714 --> 00:34:12,297
We didn't have a big catalog
of our own tunes at that point.
539
00:34:12,467 --> 00:34:14,583
We were just getting started.
540
00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:19,721
We needed to learn how to play
together as a band, and we did.
541
00:34:35,310 --> 00:34:37,489
And then it was like,
"Okay, we need to make a record.
542
00:34:37,659 --> 00:34:38,899
Who are we gonna get
to produce it?"
543
00:34:39,770 --> 00:34:41,239
We wanted to shoot
as high as we could.
544
00:34:41,413 --> 00:34:44,750
Glenn Frey came up
with Glyn Johns as an idea.
545
00:34:44,249 --> 00:34:47,492
Glyn Johns was a name
that kept popping up
546
00:34:47,669 --> 00:34:50,206
on records we loved.
547
00:34:51,756 --> 00:34:54,339
The first time I heard them
was in Aspen.
548
00:34:54,509 --> 00:34:55,920
I was not at all impressed, really.
549
00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:03,678
I thought they were confused.
550
00:35:03,852 --> 00:35:07,436
Glenn Frey wanted to be
in a rock-'n'-roll band,
551
00:35:07,606 --> 00:35:09,597
and Bernie Leadon,
on the other side,
552
00:35:09,774 --> 00:35:12,106
was one of the greatest
acoustic players --
553
00:35:12,277 --> 00:35:13,688
country players, if you like.
554
00:35:13,862 --> 00:35:16,524
And there was a bit of a confusion.
555
00:35:16,698 --> 00:35:19,440
I didn't see what all the fuss
was about at all.
556
00:35:19,618 --> 00:35:21,200
So I passed.
557
00:35:21,369 --> 00:35:23,610
We're like, "God dang, what --"
558
00:35:23,788 --> 00:35:26,576
You know,
it's not what we expected.
559
00:35:26,750 --> 00:35:31,290
He had worked with Led Zeppelin,
the Who, the Stones,
560
00:35:31,463 --> 00:35:33,450
so he was coming from that,
561
00:35:33,214 --> 00:35:36,752
and he said flat-out,
"You're not that, man."
562
00:35:36,926 --> 00:35:42,120
it isn't always easy to spot
what's hot about an artist
563
00:35:42,182 --> 00:35:43,263
if you go and see them play.
564
00:35:43,433 --> 00:35:44,673
You can see them on a bad night.
565
00:35:44,851 --> 00:35:47,843
You know, it's not necessarily
the fairest way of doing it.
566
00:35:48,210 --> 00:35:50,763
So, I thought,
"Well, the best thing to do
567
00:35:50,940 --> 00:35:53,932
would be for me to see them
in a rehearsal situation
568
00:35:54,110 --> 00:35:56,477
where we could converse
and they could play new stuff
569
00:35:56,655 --> 00:35:57,816
and I could stop and start."
570
00:35:57,989 --> 00:36:01,323
And they played the stuff
that they played in Aspen,
571
00:36:01,493 --> 00:36:02,824
and it all sounded
pretty much the same.
572
00:36:02,994 --> 00:36:05,861
Well, I was thinking, "I don't get it.
I still don't get it."
573
00:36:07,165 --> 00:36:12,160
So, we decided
to take a break for lunch,
574
00:36:12,337 --> 00:36:13,793
and as we were leaving,
575
00:36:13,963 --> 00:36:17,501
somebody said, "Oh, why don't we
play Glyn that ballad?"
576
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:31,887
And it just completely
blew me off my feet.
577
00:36:32,650 --> 00:36:34,181
I mean, there it was.
That was the sound.
578
00:36:42,534 --> 00:36:46,653
Extraordinary blend of voices,
wonderful harmony sound.
579
00:36:46,830 --> 00:36:49,788
Just stunning.
And that was it.
580
00:36:49,958 --> 00:36:51,164
I was in with both feet.
581
00:36:59,426 --> 00:37:00,382
Except that Glyn Johns
582
00:37:00,552 --> 00:37:02,384
didn't want to come
to the United States and work.
583
00:37:02,554 --> 00:37:03,919
He wanted to work in London
584
00:37:04,970 --> 00:37:06,800
in the recording studios
that he was familiar with,
585
00:37:06,182 --> 00:37:07,638
and so they shipped us
off to England.
586
00:37:08,309 --> 00:37:09,845
I don't think that any of us
except Bernie
587
00:37:10,190 --> 00:37:11,635
had ever been out of the country,
588
00:37:11,813 --> 00:37:14,350
so it was a little bit like
going to the moon for us.
589
00:37:24,242 --> 00:37:25,573
And I'm stoked.
590
00:37:25,744 --> 00:37:26,654
You know, I'm thinking,
591
00:37:26,828 --> 00:37:29,695
"I'm gonna go to Beatle country
with Glyn Johns.
592
00:37:29,873 --> 00:37:31,580
I'm gonna record in the same studio
593
00:37:31,750 --> 00:37:34,208
where Led Zeppelin
did 'Rock and Roll'.
594
00:37:34,377 --> 00:37:36,459
Oh, my God, I can't wait."
595
00:37:36,629 --> 00:37:40,588
We were recorded
at the famous Olympic studios,
596
00:37:40,759 --> 00:37:43,251
where a lot of legendary records
had been made.
597
00:37:43,428 --> 00:37:45,590
Glyn Johns -- he had
a certain style of recording,
598
00:37:45,764 --> 00:37:47,380
which was very organic.
599
00:37:47,557 --> 00:37:49,764
He would simply place
a few mikes around the room,
600
00:37:49,934 --> 00:37:50,719
and off you go.
601
00:37:50,894 --> 00:37:53,100
You know, rather than, for example,
602
00:37:53,188 --> 00:37:55,179
placing a microphone
on each and every drum,
603
00:37:55,356 --> 00:37:57,438
he would just put
three microphones on the drum kit.
604
00:37:57,609 --> 00:37:58,895
He was accustomed
to recording people
605
00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:01,435
like John Bonham
with Led Zeppelin.
606
00:38:03,281 --> 00:38:05,670
And I said to Glyn,
"I want the bass drum to be louder."
607
00:38:05,241 --> 00:38:07,903
And he said, "if you want it louder,
hit it harder," you know?
608
00:38:08,770 --> 00:38:09,317
And I hit it as hard as I could,
609
00:38:09,496 --> 00:38:12,363
but I couldn't hit it
as hard as John Bonham.
610
00:38:12,540 --> 00:38:15,532
He had a bunch of rules
that really didn't suit me
611
00:38:15,710 --> 00:38:17,496
and some of the other guys, too.
612
00:38:17,670 --> 00:38:20,128
You know,
no getting high in the studio,
613
00:38:20,298 --> 00:38:21,788
no drinking in the studio.
614
00:38:21,966 --> 00:38:24,708
I agreed wholeheartedly
with Glyn Johns
615
00:38:24,886 --> 00:38:27,469
regarding drugs and alcohol
in the studio --
616
00:38:27,639 --> 00:38:30,506
that we'd get more work done
and that it would be better work.
617
00:38:32,185 --> 00:38:33,641
When I got the opportunity
to produce
618
00:38:33,812 --> 00:38:35,723
and therefore be in the chair,
619
00:38:35,897 --> 00:38:39,265
I decided that I would no longer
put up with that.
620
00:38:39,442 --> 00:38:40,648
Somebody said to me
the other night
621
00:38:40,819 --> 00:38:47,737
that I was the designated driver
in the '60s and early '70s.
622
00:38:47,909 --> 00:38:49,570
Glyn had worked
with the Rolling Stones
623
00:38:49,744 --> 00:38:51,826
at a time
when they went to the studio
624
00:38:51,996 --> 00:38:54,863
and did nothing
except wait for Keith, you know,
625
00:38:55,410 --> 00:38:57,829
to go down in the basement
and play his guitar
626
00:38:58,200 --> 00:38:59,288
until he came up with some riff.
627
00:38:59,462 --> 00:39:01,829
So, Glyn was impatient.
628
00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:05,624
The Stones had burned him out
on the, you know,
629
00:39:05,802 --> 00:39:08,900
"get high in the studio
and wait for something to happen"
630
00:39:08,179 --> 00:39:09,100
kind of thing.
631
00:39:09,180 --> 00:39:11,217
Let's go. We're rolling.
632
00:39:12,308 --> 00:39:13,389
One, two, three.
633
00:39:46,968 --> 00:39:49,551
There were three hit singles
on the first album.
634
00:39:49,721 --> 00:39:51,803
"Peaceful Easy Feeling"
was written by Jack Tempchin,
635
00:39:51,973 --> 00:39:54,214
who is our friend
and frequent collaborator.
636
00:40:00,648 --> 00:40:03,436
"Peaceful Easy Feeling"
captures the time,
637
00:40:03,610 --> 00:40:05,442
captures this attitude.
638
00:40:05,612 --> 00:40:08,400
You can feel the wind
blowing across the desert.
639
00:40:25,506 --> 00:40:28,419
The second hit was "Witchy Woman,"
which I wrote with Bernie.
640
00:40:30,178 --> 00:40:33,261
"Witchy Woman"
started as a guitar figure.
641
00:40:33,431 --> 00:40:36,469
Then we were jamming it one day,
and everybody was digging it.
642
00:40:36,643 --> 00:40:39,351
And then Henley came back
the next day with the lyrics.
643
00:41:21,521 --> 00:41:23,353
During the time that the Eagles
were on the road
644
00:41:23,523 --> 00:41:25,981
for the first album,
we had just come through the '60s --
645
00:41:26,150 --> 00:41:28,482
civil rights movement, '68 --
646
00:41:28,653 --> 00:41:31,771
all the assassinations,
all the rioting.
647
00:41:32,740 --> 00:41:34,947
The Vietnam War still winding up.
648
00:41:35,118 --> 00:41:36,950
Nixon, Watergate.
649
00:41:37,120 --> 00:41:38,326
I welcome this kind of examination.
650
00:41:38,496 --> 00:41:41,113
I really think that part of the reason
651
00:41:41,290 --> 00:41:43,201
that the Eagles succeeded
the way they did
652
00:41:43,376 --> 00:41:46,118
was because the country
and people and young people
653
00:41:46,295 --> 00:41:48,360
needed to feel
like things were okay.
654
00:41:49,340 --> 00:41:51,456
So, here comes this song
"Take It Easy."
655
00:42:44,353 --> 00:42:46,640
Jackson had this song
called "Take It Easy."
656
00:42:46,814 --> 00:42:47,929
He couldn't finish the song.
657
00:42:48,107 --> 00:42:50,980
He was stuck in the second verse.
658
00:42:50,276 --> 00:42:54,861
He had "I'm standing on a corner
in Winslow, Arizona."
659
00:42:55,310 --> 00:42:58,865
And so, I filled in,
"Such a fine sight to see.
660
00:42:59,350 --> 00:43:00,776
It's a girl, my Lord,
in a flatbed Ford
661
00:43:00,953 --> 00:43:02,159
slowing down to take a look at me."
662
00:43:15,927 --> 00:43:19,100
Girl, Lord, Ford -- I mean,
all the redemption, you know --
663
00:43:19,180 --> 00:43:22,218
girls and cars and redemption
all in this one line.
664
00:43:22,391 --> 00:43:24,473
I mean, he's very mercurical.
665
00:43:24,644 --> 00:43:27,762
You know... mercurial? Mercurial.
666
00:43:27,939 --> 00:43:30,351
And he's mercurical, too.
667
00:43:43,454 --> 00:43:45,365
All right!
668
00:43:51,546 --> 00:43:53,537
Someone once asked
Stephen Stills about the Eagles,
669
00:43:53,714 --> 00:43:57,200
and his response was,
"They just wanted to be us."
670
00:43:57,176 --> 00:43:59,588
But when it came time
to do our album covers,
671
00:43:59,762 --> 00:44:02,880
they suggested that we use
Gary Burden and Henry Diltz.
672
00:44:03,570 --> 00:44:05,640
They had done the first
Crosby, Stills, Nash cover
673
00:44:05,810 --> 00:44:07,266
and some stuff for Joni.
674
00:44:07,436 --> 00:44:09,643
The one I really remember
was the Mamas and Papas
675
00:44:09,814 --> 00:44:11,100
all sitting in the bathtub.
676
00:44:11,274 --> 00:44:13,811
That was one of their album covers.
677
00:44:13,985 --> 00:44:17,398
So, these were, like, the cool guys
to have work on your album.
678
00:44:17,572 --> 00:44:22,157
Gary Burden is about
40 years old, full beard,
679
00:44:22,326 --> 00:44:25,910
long, grayish, wavy hair,
crystal-blue eyes.
680
00:44:26,581 --> 00:44:32,247
Henry was sort of magical,
non-invasive photographer guy.
681
00:44:32,420 --> 00:44:35,378
For the Eagles,
it was the peyote spirits
682
00:44:35,548 --> 00:44:37,664
which the American Indians,
of course,
683
00:44:37,842 --> 00:44:41,176
ate peyote and had a very,
very spiritual experience,
684
00:44:41,345 --> 00:44:44,428
and they would maybe
meet their animal totem
685
00:44:44,599 --> 00:44:47,387
or they would get
their quest for life.
686
00:44:47,560 --> 00:44:51,770
My deal was always to take
the bands out of their comfort zone.
687
00:44:51,939 --> 00:44:55,273
Take them away from their girlfriends,
from telephones,
688
00:44:55,443 --> 00:44:59,610
from anything,
and have them under my control
689
00:44:59,238 --> 00:45:03,607
so that I could get things to happen
without any interference.
690
00:45:03,784 --> 00:45:05,650
And so, we would take trips.
691
00:45:05,828 --> 00:45:08,490
Now, how this plan
came about exactly,
692
00:45:08,664 --> 00:45:13,625
today you have to scratch your head,
but this was the plan.
693
00:45:13,794 --> 00:45:15,376
Okay, we'll all go
to the Troubadour,
694
00:45:15,546 --> 00:45:18,334
and we'll stay there
till closing time.
695
00:45:18,507 --> 00:45:21,590
And then we'll drive to Joshua Tree.
696
00:45:24,388 --> 00:45:27,346
We had a bag of peyote buttons,
a bunch of trail mix,
697
00:45:27,516 --> 00:45:30,634
some tequila, and some water,
and some blankets.
698
00:45:30,811 --> 00:45:33,223
And the seven of us
set out for Joshua Tree.
699
00:45:33,898 --> 00:45:36,390
We got there probably
about 4:30 in the morning,
700
00:45:36,567 --> 00:45:38,230
parked in this special place
701
00:45:38,194 --> 00:45:40,606
that I don't know
how we found it in the dark.
702
00:45:45,660 --> 00:45:49,949
We all took one peyote button,
put it in our mouths,
703
00:45:50,122 --> 00:45:54,491
and started hiking up to the place
that we were supposed to go.
704
00:45:54,669 --> 00:45:58,333
So, right around the time
that we're getting to the campsite
705
00:45:58,506 --> 00:45:59,917
and we're starting to build the fire
706
00:46:00,910 --> 00:46:03,550
and starting to cook some peyote tea,
and the first buttons --
707
00:46:03,719 --> 00:46:06,177
everybody's chewing
the first button,
708
00:46:06,347 --> 00:46:10,557
and the drug starts coming on
just as the sun is rising.
709
00:46:26,701 --> 00:46:28,612
I think everybody got higher
710
00:46:28,786 --> 00:46:31,244
than they ever imagined
anybody could be,
711
00:46:31,414 --> 00:46:33,405
and it was a good thing.
712
00:46:33,582 --> 00:46:37,746
We were after getting
into life deeper and better
713
00:46:37,920 --> 00:46:39,581
and more and surrendering.
714
00:46:44,468 --> 00:46:49,963
I had to go to the bathroom,
so I left the campsite,
715
00:46:50,141 --> 00:46:54,760
and I hear the guys yelling
from the campfire, "Eagle! Eagle!"
716
00:46:54,937 --> 00:46:57,975
I look up, and it's soaring
right above me.
717
00:46:58,149 --> 00:46:59,639
Huge Wingspan.
718
00:46:59,817 --> 00:47:02,809
I'm, like, scuffling to get my pants
back up, and I'm slipping.
719
00:47:02,987 --> 00:47:06,400
I fall down, and the bird
just kind of goes,
720
00:47:06,574 --> 00:47:10,158
"Eagles, huh?
Yeah, I don't think so."
721
00:47:13,664 --> 00:47:16,310
The images of the first album cover,
722
00:47:16,208 --> 00:47:20,998
I think, really set the tone
for visually what Eagles are.
723
00:47:21,172 --> 00:47:22,958
Gary designed the album cover
724
00:47:23,132 --> 00:47:27,171
so that it would open up
into a whole poster,
725
00:47:27,345 --> 00:47:31,900
and at the bottom were
the Eagles around the campfire.
726
00:47:31,182 --> 00:47:33,139
And then, up at the top,
727
00:47:33,309 --> 00:47:36,973
it would go on up into the sky
and the eagle up in the sky.
728
00:47:37,146 --> 00:47:40,514
But David Geffen thought
that would be confusing,
729
00:47:40,691 --> 00:47:43,649
and without consulting us
or consulting Gary or the Eagles
730
00:47:43,819 --> 00:47:46,231
or anybody, he told them,
"Just glue it shut."
731
00:47:46,405 --> 00:47:49,488
And so, then, when they glued
it shut, you would get this --
732
00:47:49,658 --> 00:47:52,195
this album, front and back,
and you'd open it up,
733
00:47:52,370 --> 00:47:53,735
and it would be upside-down,
734
00:47:53,913 --> 00:47:56,120
which didn't make any sense
to anybody.
735
00:48:02,460 --> 00:48:04,370
The fact was that the success
of the first album
736
00:48:04,215 --> 00:48:05,705
scared the hell out of us.
737
00:48:05,883 --> 00:48:08,625
Why me instead of some guy
down the street, you know?
738
00:48:08,803 --> 00:48:10,339
Why me and some friends of mine
739
00:48:10,513 --> 00:48:12,800
who are just as good of musicians
as I am, you know,
740
00:48:12,973 --> 00:48:15,305
but it happened to me
and it didn't happen to them?
741
00:48:15,476 --> 00:48:16,682
I don't know.
742
00:48:16,852 --> 00:48:20,610
Success can sometimes be
just as disconcerting
743
00:48:20,231 --> 00:48:21,972
and frightening as failure,
744
00:48:22,149 --> 00:48:23,389
especially when you have questions
745
00:48:23,567 --> 00:48:26,590
about your own worthiness
and your abilities.
746
00:48:26,821 --> 00:48:29,279
It came time to do another album.
747
00:48:29,448 --> 00:48:32,691
Don and I decided we'd try
to write some songs together.
748
00:48:32,868 --> 00:48:34,859
I had been sitting over
on Aqua Vista.
749
00:48:35,370 --> 00:48:36,270
I was living on the couch,
750
00:48:36,205 --> 00:48:37,912
and I'm just laying there
playing the guitar,
751
00:48:38,820 --> 00:48:39,664
and I started going...
752
00:48:41,752 --> 00:48:43,663
You know, I'm thinking,
"Yeah, that's pretty cool,
753
00:48:43,838 --> 00:48:45,328
kind of Roy Orbison,
kind of Mexican.
754
00:48:45,506 --> 00:48:46,712
Yeah, I like that."
755
00:48:46,882 --> 00:48:49,670
So, I showed him,
you know, that guitar riff.
756
00:48:49,844 --> 00:48:51,551
I said, "Maybe we should
write something to this."
757
00:49:22,543 --> 00:49:25,100
Songs like "Desperado"
and "Tequila Sunrise" --
758
00:49:25,171 --> 00:49:27,253
that's when Glenn and I
began collaborating,
759
00:49:27,423 --> 00:49:29,835
and that's when we really became
a songwriting team.
760
00:49:46,400 --> 00:49:47,856
Earlier that year,
761
00:49:48,270 --> 00:49:52,487
someone had given Jackson Browne
the book of gunfighters.
762
00:49:52,656 --> 00:49:54,272
It had all the big outlaw groups --
763
00:49:54,450 --> 00:49:57,738
Frank and Jesse,
the Doolin-Dalton gang.
764
00:49:57,912 --> 00:50:00,280
We were all just fascinated
with those guys,
765
00:50:00,206 --> 00:50:02,413
and we thought it would make
a great analogy.
766
00:50:02,583 --> 00:50:06,121
Well, for example, we live
outside the laws of normality.
767
00:50:06,295 --> 00:50:09,629
Also, you usually -- because
of records or bank robberies,
768
00:50:09,798 --> 00:50:12,506
you usually heard about these guys
before you ever saw them.
769
00:50:13,552 --> 00:50:17,841
They had posters that were wanted
posters up for people.
770
00:50:21,685 --> 00:50:24,518
There just seemed to be
some parallels.
771
00:50:28,692 --> 00:50:30,933
It wasn't really like
we were outlaws,
772
00:50:31,111 --> 00:50:34,900
but I think they did have
their nobler characteristics.
773
00:50:43,207 --> 00:50:44,322
We started talking about it.
774
00:50:44,500 --> 00:50:46,116
Then we said,
"Well, maybe we should do, like,
775
00:50:46,293 --> 00:50:48,751
an album all about the rebels."
776
00:50:48,921 --> 00:50:50,377
We got to doing this outlaw album,
777
00:50:50,548 --> 00:50:54,382
and we had eight songs finished,
and we needed two more.
778
00:50:54,552 --> 00:50:58,637
An idea Randy came up with
was how the guy became an outlaw
779
00:50:58,806 --> 00:51:01,130
and how he became a guitar player.
780
00:51:34,925 --> 00:51:37,917
I kind of started it,
and that's what usually happened.
781
00:51:38,950 --> 00:51:40,336
I'd get a verse or two,
and then I'm done,
782
00:51:40,514 --> 00:51:42,596
and they would
help fill in the blanks.
783
00:51:53,861 --> 00:51:56,979
Nobody expected there
to be a concept album
784
00:51:57,156 --> 00:51:59,443
with Western cowboys music.
785
00:51:59,908 --> 00:52:03,276
Don Henley was from Texas.
He was a cowboy.
786
00:52:03,454 --> 00:52:06,617
Glenn was from Detroit.
He wanted to be a cowboy.
787
00:52:06,790 --> 00:52:10,624
Because I knew all these guys
had a little cowboy inside of them,
788
00:52:10,794 --> 00:52:12,626
I took them to Western costume
789
00:52:12,796 --> 00:52:15,788
and just said,
"Pick out your persona."
790
00:52:15,966 --> 00:52:19,834
Their premise was that,
if they had lived 100 years ago,
791
00:52:20,120 --> 00:52:23,880
in like 1872, they probably
would have been gunslingers.
792
00:52:24,580 --> 00:52:25,140
Everybody's gonna be firing
793
00:52:25,184 --> 00:52:26,640
in the direction
of this building right here.
794
00:52:26,810 --> 00:52:29,802
Jackson, J.D., Boyd, you all
got to be in the picture more.
795
00:52:29,980 --> 00:52:31,141
We're gonna be in there.
796
00:52:31,315 --> 00:52:34,478
You ready?
One, two, three!
797
00:52:40,407 --> 00:52:42,364
And we fired so many blanks
798
00:52:42,534 --> 00:52:45,947
that it was a cloud of smoke
hanging over this Western town,
799
00:52:46,121 --> 00:52:50,786
and the fire department came
'cause they thought it was a fire.
800
00:52:51,835 --> 00:52:54,760
Keep firing!
801
00:52:54,254 --> 00:52:55,870
We were just a bunch of kids.
We were just playing around.
802
00:53:04,181 --> 00:53:05,842
The picture
that's on the back of the album --
803
00:53:06,160 --> 00:53:07,256
there's a lot of reality in it.
804
00:53:07,434 --> 00:53:10,142
All of the agents and managers
and road managers,
805
00:53:10,312 --> 00:53:12,474
all the guys who didn't play
are standing up,
806
00:53:12,648 --> 00:53:14,685
alive with badges and guns,
807
00:53:14,858 --> 00:53:18,396
and the four Eagles at the time
and Jackson and I are all dead,
808
00:53:18,570 --> 00:53:20,356
bound up the way they used to do
809
00:53:20,531 --> 00:53:22,113
when they'd catch outlaws
in those days.
810
00:53:22,282 --> 00:53:23,568
They'd stand them up for display.
811
00:53:23,742 --> 00:53:27,736
People never tired of looking
at the corpse of a bad boy.
812
00:53:29,707 --> 00:53:32,790
We all felt, when we were doing it
and as it was delivered,
813
00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:36,169
that it was another
really remarkable record
814
00:53:36,338 --> 00:53:37,749
on the part of the band.
815
00:53:37,923 --> 00:53:39,380
I mean, it was pretty extraordinary.
816
00:53:39,216 --> 00:53:42,400
The band and I were
enormously thrilled with it.
817
00:53:42,177 --> 00:53:45,440
They literally carried me
out of the control room.
818
00:53:45,222 --> 00:53:47,634
They chaired me
out of the control room.
819
00:53:54,231 --> 00:53:56,222
"Desperado" comes out,
and it bombs.
820
00:53:57,901 --> 00:54:01,644
Jerry Greenberg was the Vice
President of Atlantic Records.
821
00:54:01,822 --> 00:54:04,735
They were excited
to get the second Eagles album.
822
00:54:04,908 --> 00:54:07,866
We played him "Desperado,"
and he said, "Hmm, that's, yeah,
823
00:54:08,360 --> 00:54:10,698
that's nice, that's good,
that's nice,"
824
00:54:10,873 --> 00:54:11,863
and turned around and said,
825
00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:15,749
"God, they made
a fuckin' cowboy record."
826
00:54:26,130 --> 00:54:29,256
I was extremely flattered
that Linda recorded "Desperado."
827
00:54:29,433 --> 00:54:32,950
It was really her
that popularized the song.
828
00:54:32,269 --> 00:54:35,512
Her version was very poignant
and beautiful.
829
00:54:50,788 --> 00:54:52,904
There have been
a lot of articles and things
830
00:54:53,810 --> 00:54:55,163
that identify me
with the L.A. sound.
831
00:54:55,334 --> 00:54:58,247
It's sort of, like, me and
Jackson Browne and the Eagles.
832
00:54:58,420 --> 00:55:00,502
All of us are reaching out
for other musical influences
833
00:55:00,672 --> 00:55:01,707
all the time.
834
00:55:01,882 --> 00:55:05,910
The so-called southern California
sound was developing.
835
00:55:05,260 --> 00:55:07,672
It was fresh, it was different,
it was unique.
836
00:55:07,846 --> 00:55:10,800
It was a melting pot,
people moving here
837
00:55:10,182 --> 00:55:12,423
from all over the United States
to pursue their dream --
838
00:55:12,601 --> 00:55:16,140
actors, musicians,
wannabe managers, agents,
839
00:55:16,188 --> 00:55:17,519
wannabe, you know, like me.
840
00:55:21,568 --> 00:55:25,106
I picked up the phone cold
and called David Geffen,
841
00:55:25,280 --> 00:55:26,987
who was just starting
Asylum Records.
842
00:55:27,157 --> 00:55:30,240
Long story short, I took a job
as a manager with Asylum.
843
00:55:32,329 --> 00:55:34,946
I was intrigued. I wanted to know
about the Eagles
844
00:55:35,123 --> 00:55:37,455
and meet the Eagles
'cause I was a fan.
845
00:55:38,100 --> 00:55:39,992
Emergency.
846
00:55:40,170 --> 00:55:42,662
I get a phone call.
Glenn Frey's on the phone.
847
00:55:42,840 --> 00:55:45,502
"We need money for Christmas.
Can you book dates?"
848
00:55:45,676 --> 00:55:46,632
I book some dates.
849
00:55:46,802 --> 00:55:49,510
So, I get on a plane
and go out to meet them.
850
00:55:49,680 --> 00:55:51,842
First of all,
the show was fantastic.
851
00:55:52,150 --> 00:55:56,680
Crowd was nothing like I'd seen
a year, year and a half earlier.
852
00:55:56,854 --> 00:55:59,937
Good evening. Welcome
to the Portland version of --
853
00:56:00,107 --> 00:56:01,723
- Spread eagle.
-Spread eagle.
854
00:56:01,900 --> 00:56:04,267
Tonight, the promoter
gave us chopsticks.
855
00:56:04,444 --> 00:56:06,776
I don't think we ever
checked in a hotel.
856
00:56:06,947 --> 00:56:09,905
We went from there
to a party at a sorority house.
857
00:56:10,750 --> 00:56:11,736
One thing led to another,
858
00:56:11,910 --> 00:56:14,572
and I'd never seen
anything like this.
859
00:56:14,746 --> 00:56:15,986
They wouldn't give us any booze
in the bar.
860
00:56:16,164 --> 00:56:18,451
We tried to get some booze,
but they fucked up,
861
00:56:18,625 --> 00:56:19,865
so we may burn
the fucking place down.
862
00:56:20,430 --> 00:56:20,874
We're not sure.
863
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:24,662
I don't think we went to sleep.
It was Eagle mania.
864
00:56:27,426 --> 00:56:29,258
And then they went off to England
865
00:56:29,428 --> 00:56:31,635
to record "On the Border"
with Glyn Johns.
866
00:56:33,891 --> 00:56:36,383
They were quite open
to being produced.
867
00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:38,392
Understandably, that changed.
868
00:56:38,562 --> 00:56:43,898
They began to be more opinionated
and less insecure, perhaps.
869
00:56:44,670 --> 00:56:46,229
We wanted to play rock 'n' roll
870
00:56:46,403 --> 00:56:48,861
or at least a more rock-'n'-roll
version of country music,
871
00:56:49,310 --> 00:56:50,772
and Glyn Johns was of the opinion
872
00:56:50,949 --> 00:56:53,156
that we weren't
really capable of that.
873
00:56:53,327 --> 00:56:55,568
I think he had been bombarded
byloud,
874
00:56:55,746 --> 00:56:58,579
aggressive rock 'n' roll
for many, many years.
875
00:56:58,749 --> 00:56:59,864
At that point in his life,
876
00:57:00,420 --> 00:57:03,000
he wanted mellow people
and mellow music,
877
00:57:03,170 --> 00:57:07,585
and we weren't exactly
at the same stage in life.
878
00:57:07,758 --> 00:57:10,450
Frey sort of took over more.
879
00:57:10,218 --> 00:57:12,425
He had this desire to be something
880
00:57:12,596 --> 00:57:16,510
that I didn't really feel
that they were capable of doing.
881
00:57:16,683 --> 00:57:19,721
He and Glenn Frey
were like oil and water.
882
00:57:19,895 --> 00:57:22,262
They clashed frequently.
883
00:57:22,439 --> 00:57:25,727
In the studio, Glyn Johns
was pretty much a schoolmarm.
884
00:57:25,901 --> 00:57:28,438
He'd push, push, push, you know?
885
00:57:28,612 --> 00:57:29,773
And then he'd say, "That's it.
886
00:57:29,947 --> 00:57:31,529
That's good enough.
We're moving on.
887
00:57:31,698 --> 00:57:33,689
You're not a rock-'n'-roll band.
888
00:57:33,867 --> 00:57:37,781
The Who is a rock-'n'-roll band,
and you're not that."
889
00:57:37,955 --> 00:57:40,447
After each of those records,
890
00:57:40,624 --> 00:57:45,840
the band freaked out and said,
"We've made a huge mistake.
891
00:57:45,253 --> 00:57:47,850
Glyn Johns missed it."
892
00:57:47,255 --> 00:57:48,745
We actually had conversations.
893
00:57:48,924 --> 00:57:51,632
You know, "Desperado" hadn't done
as well as the first album.
894
00:57:51,802 --> 00:57:56,137
None of them were thrilled
with the way the record sounded.
895
00:57:56,306 --> 00:58:00,220
We wanted more input into
how our albums were being made.
896
00:58:00,394 --> 00:58:03,603
We wanted more input
into the recording process itself.
897
00:58:04,398 --> 00:58:07,106
Don and I thought
that the vocals were too wet.
898
00:58:07,275 --> 00:58:08,731
There was too much echo on them.
899
00:58:08,902 --> 00:58:11,985
And he definitely told us,
"Excuse me, that's my echo.
900
00:58:12,155 --> 00:58:14,442
It's my signature.
It's my bloody echo.
901
00:58:14,616 --> 00:58:16,323
It stays there.
You don't tell me what to do."
902
00:58:16,493 --> 00:58:18,609
We needed to make a change.
903
00:58:21,665 --> 00:58:24,828
I joined the Navy
at the height of the cold war.
904
00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:26,584
One of the main things
they were doing
905
00:58:26,753 --> 00:58:30,371
was looking for Russian submarines,
and you do that by using sonar.
906
00:58:31,675 --> 00:58:35,839
When I got out, I had a lot
of electronics education, obviously.
907
00:58:36,130 --> 00:58:39,927
And I got a job in a recording studio
here in New York.
908
00:58:40,100 --> 00:58:43,593
The first session I ever saw,
like day one, day two,
909
00:58:43,770 --> 00:58:45,260
was a Carole King demo.
910
00:58:45,439 --> 00:58:46,975
She sat down and played piano,
911
00:58:47,149 --> 00:58:52,315
and it was like, "Boy, this is fun.
These people are having fun here."
912
00:58:55,699 --> 00:58:57,485
I worked my way up
through the ranks,
913
00:58:57,659 --> 00:59:00,151
and then, of course, after
engineering for four or five years,
914
00:59:00,328 --> 00:59:01,739
I was like,
"Well, I can produce better
915
00:59:01,913 --> 00:59:04,701
than some of these guys
I'm working for."
916
00:59:05,375 --> 00:59:07,286
At the time,
I was managing Joe Walsh,
917
00:59:07,461 --> 00:59:09,543
so I played them Walsh music
918
00:59:09,713 --> 00:59:14,332
that I thought was an example
of how it could be edgier.
919
00:59:14,509 --> 00:59:16,450
Joe and I had just finished
an album called
920
00:59:16,219 --> 00:59:18,711
"The Smoker You Drink,
The Player You Get."
921
00:59:18,889 --> 00:59:22,257
And they heard that and said,
"That's what we want to sound like."
922
00:59:22,434 --> 00:59:23,890
So, Irving arranged for us
923
00:59:24,610 --> 00:59:25,722
to have a meeting
with Bill Szymczyk.
924
00:59:25,896 --> 00:59:28,513
We really only had two questions
that we wanted to ask him --
925
00:59:28,690 --> 00:59:30,727
Do you mind if we have some input
926
00:59:30,901 --> 00:59:32,608
about how much echo
is on the vocals?
927
00:59:32,778 --> 00:59:34,894
And we wanted somebody
who would put a microphone
928
00:59:35,720 --> 00:59:36,620
on each and every drum
929
00:59:36,239 --> 00:59:38,250
so we could have more control
over the mix.
930
00:59:38,200 --> 00:59:39,736
He said yes to every question,
931
00:59:39,910 --> 00:59:42,902
and so we knew
he was the guy for us.
932
00:59:43,800 --> 00:59:45,710
I said, "Okay, under one condition.
933
00:59:45,248 --> 00:59:48,240
I have to call Glyn
and make sure it's okay with him."
934
00:59:48,418 --> 00:59:50,125
So, I called him, and I said,
935
00:59:50,295 --> 00:59:53,583
you know, "Glyn, the Eagles
want me to produce them."
936
00:59:53,757 --> 00:59:55,418
"Better you than me, mate."
937
00:59:55,592 --> 00:59:58,175
That's pretty much how I felt.
938
00:59:58,345 --> 01:00:02,760
I mean, it had come
to a fairly unpleasant end.
939
01:00:02,933 --> 01:00:04,549
Well, okay, you know,
940
01:00:04,726 --> 01:00:08,139
so much for Beatle country
with Glyn Johns.
941
01:00:11,358 --> 01:00:15,647
Let's have a warm round of applause
on a hot afternoon for the Eagles.
942
01:00:31,503 --> 01:00:33,244
Along about the third album,
943
01:00:33,421 --> 01:00:37,506
I was having some difficulty
in communicating,
944
01:00:37,676 --> 01:00:38,837
I felt, in the band,
945
01:00:39,100 --> 01:00:41,798
and I was starting to think
maybe I should go at some point.
946
01:00:41,972 --> 01:00:44,805
They still had
this unfulfilled desire
947
01:00:44,975 --> 01:00:48,843
to be a mainstream rock band
and not just a vocal band,
948
01:00:49,200 --> 01:00:51,808
but I think they wanted to go
in a tougher direction.
949
01:00:54,484 --> 01:00:57,317
Bernie Leadon was
a country-based guitar player,
950
01:00:57,487 --> 01:01:00,570
but every time I wanted to do
a rock-'n'-roll song,
951
01:01:00,740 --> 01:01:02,481
he was the lead guitar player.
952
01:01:08,248 --> 01:01:10,910
Every time we wanted to do
something country that Bernie sang,
953
01:01:11,840 --> 01:01:13,291
I was supposed to be
the lead guitar player,
954
01:01:13,461 --> 01:01:16,249
and I wasn't a country musician
by any stretch.
955
01:01:16,423 --> 01:01:19,336
It always felt like we needed
a third guitar player.
956
01:01:21,178 --> 01:01:24,762
We had met this friend of Bernie's,
this guy named Don Felder.
957
01:01:24,931 --> 01:01:27,298
We were playing in Boston,
and he came back to visit Bernie,
958
01:01:27,475 --> 01:01:29,762
and we were jamming upstairs
in the dressing room,
959
01:01:29,936 --> 01:01:32,803
and this guy was all over the neck.
960
01:01:37,736 --> 01:01:39,602
What he brought was great chops.
961
01:01:39,779 --> 01:01:42,191
I mean, we called him Fingers --
Fingers Felder --
962
01:01:42,365 --> 01:01:43,821
because he was
an incredible player.
963
01:01:52,167 --> 01:01:54,204
We did that session.
I think it was like three hours.
964
01:01:54,377 --> 01:01:56,869
And then I packed up and went home,
965
01:01:57,470 --> 01:01:59,755
not thinking anything more about it
than it was just another session.
966
01:01:59,925 --> 01:02:01,711
And the next day, Glenn called me
967
01:02:01,885 --> 01:02:04,470
and asked me
if I would like to join the band.
968
01:02:04,638 --> 01:02:07,500
I said, "Absolutely."
969
01:02:08,558 --> 01:02:10,344
- All right, let's do --
-I'm in heaven.
970
01:02:10,518 --> 01:02:12,634
- Let's go another one.
-All right, do it right!
971
01:02:12,812 --> 01:02:16,601
The banter that would go on
in between takes was hysterical,
972
01:02:16,775 --> 01:02:21,815
and so I took to running a two-track
to pick up these silly things.
973
01:02:21,988 --> 01:02:23,899
We were young men
with raging hormones
974
01:02:24,740 --> 01:02:25,656
and something to prove.
975
01:02:25,825 --> 01:02:27,941
In the context of the times
and the profession,
976
01:02:28,119 --> 01:02:30,952
the way we behaved
wasn't really all that remarkable.
977
01:02:31,122 --> 01:02:32,203
The creative impulse
978
01:02:32,374 --> 01:02:34,741
comes from the dark side
of the personality,
979
01:02:34,918 --> 01:02:36,579
so we worked it good, you know.
980
01:02:36,753 --> 01:02:40,371
We did a lot of stupid things,
said a lot of stupid things.
981
01:02:40,548 --> 01:02:44,860
It was the '70s.
There were drugs everywhere.
982
01:02:44,261 --> 01:02:48,220
Cactus sunrise was in my face
983
01:02:48,390 --> 01:02:52,930
Everyone was dying,
everyone was lying and trying
984
01:02:53,103 --> 01:02:56,596
Well, rub your belly
in the linseed oil
985
01:02:56,773 --> 01:02:58,605
There you go.
986
01:03:00,360 --> 01:03:02,226
Well, the heartbreak of psoriasis
987
01:03:02,404 --> 01:03:05,817
has once again descended
upon the adolescent experience,
988
01:03:05,991 --> 01:03:07,356
and we'll see you later.
989
01:03:07,534 --> 01:03:09,775
See you at the show
later on tonight.
990
01:03:09,953 --> 01:03:12,866
The question was, you know,
who could handle it?
991
01:03:13,390 --> 01:03:15,497
Who could function?
Who could show up?
992
01:04:14,517 --> 01:04:15,803
There were always girls.
993
01:04:22,692 --> 01:04:25,684
There were a lot of opportunities
out on the road
994
01:04:25,862 --> 01:04:29,710
to entertain ourselves
with one thing or another.
995
01:04:29,240 --> 01:04:31,652
So, we started to perfect
after-show partying,
996
01:04:31,826 --> 01:04:34,568
and we invented a place
called the Third Encore.
997
01:04:34,746 --> 01:04:37,955
We did two encores in our show,
so the third encore was the party.
998
01:04:38,541 --> 01:04:40,703
Everybody in the band
and everybody in the crew
999
01:04:40,877 --> 01:04:43,840
was given a bunch of buttons,
and all we said was,
1000
01:04:43,254 --> 01:04:46,167
"No weirdos,
no strange people, okay?
1001
01:04:46,341 --> 01:04:48,378
If you're gonna give a button
to somebody,
1002
01:04:48,551 --> 01:04:50,410
you know, make it count."
1003
01:04:50,220 --> 01:04:51,210
Totally sick.
1004
01:04:51,388 --> 01:04:53,800
There's some real warped shit
coming on now, ladies and gentlemen.
1005
01:04:53,973 --> 01:04:56,385
A member of Andy Warthog's
pop-bowel movement
1006
01:04:56,559 --> 01:04:59,176
has just tried to crash our party.
1007
01:04:59,354 --> 01:05:00,185
What the --
1008
01:05:00,355 --> 01:05:04,223
Welcome to Pittsburgh Spread Eagle.
1009
01:05:04,401 --> 01:05:05,641
We want to just ask these girls
1010
01:05:05,819 --> 01:05:08,151
why they think they have to leave
now that it's 2:00.
1011
01:05:08,321 --> 01:05:10,653
One thing, he smells like beer.
1012
01:05:10,824 --> 01:05:13,156
We'd fill the bathtubs up
with Budweiser,
1013
01:05:13,326 --> 01:05:15,567
and we'd have a party
after every show.
1014
01:05:15,745 --> 01:05:17,406
- Your name, please.
-Tammy Farley.
1015
01:05:17,580 --> 01:05:19,537
Tammy, Tammy, Tammy.
1016
01:05:19,707 --> 01:05:21,289
Here we have Karen.
Karen is 20 years old.
1017
01:05:21,459 --> 01:05:22,369
- Is that correct?
-Yeah.
1018
01:05:22,544 --> 01:05:23,909
What's your name, dear?
1019
01:05:24,870 --> 01:05:25,327
- Fuck it, man.
-Pardon?
1020
01:05:25,505 --> 01:05:27,371
Fuck it. Her name's fuck it, man.
1021
01:05:28,910 --> 01:05:31,334
I want to talk about sex and drugs.
1022
01:05:31,511 --> 01:05:32,876
Who wants to go first?
1023
01:05:33,540 --> 01:05:35,762
I'm not lost for words
on either subject.
1024
01:05:35,932 --> 01:05:39,500
Sex and drugs kind of came
as a big package in the '60s.
1025
01:05:39,227 --> 01:05:40,717
You know,
it seemed like everybody --
1026
01:05:40,895 --> 01:05:44,104
the sexual revolution
and the drug thing, I guess,
1027
01:05:44,274 --> 01:05:48,108
probably started out together.
1028
01:05:48,278 --> 01:05:49,985
Didn't they?
1029
01:05:52,365 --> 01:05:54,106
Don and I both tried
to have relationships
1030
01:05:54,284 --> 01:05:57,117
while we were members
of the Eagles,
1031
01:05:57,287 --> 01:06:01,827
but it was always like the Eagles
trumped everything.
1032
01:06:02,000 --> 01:06:04,116
When the Eagles
became successful,
1033
01:06:04,294 --> 01:06:06,501
we challenged all the rules.
1034
01:06:08,548 --> 01:06:10,789
Like when David Geffen
left Asylum Records
1035
01:06:10,967 --> 01:06:14,631
and sold everything to Warner Bros.
and started his new empire.
1036
01:06:15,540 --> 01:06:16,260
Let's be frank.
1037
01:06:16,431 --> 01:06:19,930
When we signed that contract,
we were idiots.
1038
01:06:19,267 --> 01:06:21,850
We knew nothing
about the business.
1039
01:06:22,200 --> 01:06:24,478
We had poor legal representation,
1040
01:06:24,647 --> 01:06:26,388
nobody looking out for us.
1041
01:06:26,566 --> 01:06:31,260
Remember, bands don't really get
record royalties usually ever.
1042
01:06:31,196 --> 01:06:35,611
So, they get money from touring,
but they get publishing money.
1043
01:06:35,783 --> 01:06:38,240
So, in the very beginning,
one thing that Geffen did
1044
01:06:38,203 --> 01:06:39,409
that I thought was great --
1045
01:06:39,579 --> 01:06:42,370
he had us form
a band publishing company.
1046
01:06:42,207 --> 01:06:44,164
All the band's publishing
went in that.
1047
01:06:44,334 --> 01:06:46,496
The problem
was Geffen had the other half.
1048
01:06:46,669 --> 01:06:48,501
Half the Eagles' publishing,
half of my publishing,
1049
01:06:48,671 --> 01:06:50,820
half of all the artists
that he signed
1050
01:06:50,256 --> 01:06:55,501
went to Warner Bros.,
but he got them to return mine.
1051
01:06:55,678 --> 01:06:58,100
Jackson turned me on to the Eagles.
1052
01:06:58,181 --> 01:07:00,920
He had turned me on
to a lot of artists,
1053
01:07:00,266 --> 01:07:02,678
and I felt I owed him something.
1054
01:07:02,852 --> 01:07:04,513
And that, not surprisingly,
1055
01:07:04,687 --> 01:07:07,475
was not acceptable rationale
to the Eagles.
1056
01:07:07,649 --> 01:07:10,186
There's a certain amount of ire,
1057
01:07:10,360 --> 01:07:14,240
like, real, you know,
like, "What the fuck?
1058
01:07:14,197 --> 01:07:16,655
I mean, we didn't get
our publishing back."
1059
01:07:16,824 --> 01:07:18,640
So, it was the publishing issue
1060
01:07:18,243 --> 01:07:19,950
and the fact that
the business managers
1061
01:07:20,119 --> 01:07:22,300
and the lawyers
were all shared common guys,
1062
01:07:22,205 --> 01:07:25,869
and did they have a conflict
when an issue came up
1063
01:07:26,420 --> 01:07:27,248
and which side to take?
1064
01:07:27,418 --> 01:07:29,455
Well, it just makes you feel
like meat, you know?
1065
01:07:29,629 --> 01:07:32,462
It started out as such a personal,
nurturing endeavor,
1066
01:07:32,632 --> 01:07:34,999
you know, with Mr. Geffen saying,
"Oh, I'm going to protect you guys.
1067
01:07:35,176 --> 01:07:37,167
"That's why I'm calling
my new label 'Asylum'.
1068
01:07:37,345 --> 01:07:40,838
It's going to be a sanctuary
for real artists."
1069
01:07:41,150 --> 01:07:44,178
He once said to Irving Azoff,
"You know, Irving,
1070
01:07:44,352 --> 01:07:46,639
this would be a great business
if there weren't artists."
1071
01:07:49,650 --> 01:07:51,773
Irving was the one guy
who really believed in us,
1072
01:07:51,943 --> 01:07:54,810
that I thought could do something
to help us.
1073
01:07:54,988 --> 01:07:56,570
I basically hired a lawyer
and went in
1074
01:07:56,739 --> 01:07:59,902
after I said the Eagles would like
their publishing back,
1075
01:08:00,760 --> 01:08:02,238
to which the obvious response
was "No".
1076
01:08:02,412 --> 01:08:05,825
He sort of drew a line in the sand
and declared war,
1077
01:08:05,999 --> 01:08:08,957
so I felt, for my survival
as their manager,
1078
01:08:09,127 --> 01:08:12,586
I needed to prove to them
that I wasn't afraid of Geffen
1079
01:08:12,755 --> 01:08:14,541
and would stand up and, you know.
1080
01:08:14,716 --> 01:08:16,332
The lawsuit was filed
as a last resort.
1081
01:08:17,510 --> 01:08:20,260
I don't think David liked
reading his name in the lawsuit.
1082
01:08:20,430 --> 01:08:22,842
I thought
it was incredibly ungrateful
1083
01:08:23,160 --> 01:08:27,100
and they misrepresented the facts,
but so be it.
1084
01:08:27,186 --> 01:08:28,802
Ultimately, we settled out of court,
1085
01:08:28,980 --> 01:08:30,687
and I don't believe
it took very long.
1086
01:08:30,857 --> 01:08:32,564
He just wanted to get rid of us.
1087
01:08:32,734 --> 01:08:34,850
This is our new record contract.
1088
01:08:37,614 --> 01:08:39,355
Just paper.
1089
01:08:39,532 --> 01:08:41,694
So, then we headed off
for parts unknown
1090
01:08:41,868 --> 01:08:44,750
with Irving Azoff at the helm.
1091
01:08:52,754 --> 01:08:54,995
This card game
is called Eagle Poker.
1092
01:08:55,173 --> 01:08:57,210
It's a bastardization of Red Dog.
1093
01:08:57,383 --> 01:09:01,672
I invented it
in Detroit, Michigan, in 1947,
1094
01:09:01,846 --> 01:09:04,508
one year before I was born.
1095
01:09:04,682 --> 01:09:07,595
We were big gamblers.
We played poker all the time.
1096
01:09:07,769 --> 01:09:13,139
Oh, boy. They should have
never given me money.
1097
01:09:13,316 --> 01:09:17,310
So, we decided we'd go
to the Bahamas to gamble.
1098
01:09:17,487 --> 01:09:19,774
Everybody but Don was holding.
1099
01:09:19,947 --> 01:09:22,814
I had like fourjoints in a baggie,
1100
01:09:22,992 --> 01:09:24,448
stuffed down my sock
in my cowboy boot.
1101
01:09:24,619 --> 01:09:26,701
Durkin, the pilot, has a joint.
1102
01:09:26,871 --> 01:09:30,340
Irving had about 30 valiums
in a sugar pack.
1103
01:09:30,208 --> 01:09:33,951
There was a couple
of customs officials there
1104
01:09:34,128 --> 01:09:36,620
that asked us to collect
all our luggage and come over,
1105
01:09:36,798 --> 01:09:39,335
and they wanted to search us
'cause we looked terrible.
1106
01:09:39,509 --> 01:09:41,671
We had really long hair
and patches on ourjeans
1107
01:09:41,844 --> 01:09:44,506
and a beard and not slept.
1108
01:09:44,681 --> 01:09:47,764
Now, I'm freaking out.
Bernie's freaking out.
1109
01:09:47,934 --> 01:09:50,676
Irving's freaking out.
Henley's pissed off.
1110
01:09:51,813 --> 01:09:53,190
Don't touch me.
1111
01:09:53,189 --> 01:09:55,210
Well, the guy proceeds
to put us all in a room together,
1112
01:09:55,191 --> 01:09:58,309
and they start searching us
one by one.
1113
01:09:58,486 --> 01:10:02,980
My greatest fear is that
I'm gonna be locked in a jail cell
1114
01:10:03,157 --> 01:10:05,524
with Bernie Leadon.
1115
01:10:05,702 --> 01:10:07,363
So, at this point, Irving steps in
1116
01:10:07,537 --> 01:10:10,120
and takes one
of the Bahamian customs guys
1117
01:10:10,289 --> 01:10:12,826
over to the side
and has a chat with him.
1118
01:10:13,000 --> 01:10:16,163
I'm not sure, to this day,
what Irving said to him.
1119
01:10:19,549 --> 01:10:23,383
The next thing I knew,
they let us pass with no problem.
1120
01:10:23,553 --> 01:10:25,260
It was sort of miraculous,
really, it was,
1121
01:10:25,430 --> 01:10:28,468
because I thought for sure
we were gonna be in the slammer.
1122
01:10:28,641 --> 01:10:30,598
It was dumb luck
that this guy bought my line
1123
01:10:30,768 --> 01:10:31,724
and didn't search them.
1124
01:10:31,894 --> 01:10:33,601
That was the day
I decided Irving Azoff
1125
01:10:33,771 --> 01:10:36,120
was the greatest manager
in rock 'n' roll
1126
01:10:36,190 --> 01:10:39,570
and I would never do anything
without him by my side.
1127
01:10:40,903 --> 01:10:43,816
I had the only seat
in a major championship fight --
1128
01:10:43,990 --> 01:10:46,607
to be sitting there when,
you know,
1129
01:10:46,784 --> 01:10:50,118
when a lyric was thrown out
and then hear a track.
1130
01:10:55,418 --> 01:10:58,350
And I've watched the creative process
with lots of other people,
1131
01:10:58,212 --> 01:11:01,705
but I've never seen it
the way it fell in place with them.
1132
01:11:01,883 --> 01:11:04,591
I remember watching
"Lyin' Eyes" written.
1133
01:11:04,761 --> 01:11:07,253
Glenn just had a way of coming up
with a phrase, you know?
1134
01:11:07,430 --> 01:11:09,120
He had written some kind of a tune,
1135
01:11:09,182 --> 01:11:11,140
and they were sitting
in Tana's one night
1136
01:11:11,184 --> 01:11:14,802
and looking at some young girl
with an older guy at the bar,
1137
01:11:14,979 --> 01:11:17,812
and Glenn said,
"Look at those lyin' eyes."
1138
01:11:17,982 --> 01:11:19,939
And just -- just like that,
wow, there's the song.
1139
01:11:46,719 --> 01:11:48,175
It was just about all these girls
1140
01:11:48,346 --> 01:11:50,337
who would come down
to Dan Tana's looking beautiful,
1141
01:11:50,515 --> 01:11:52,631
and they'd be there
from 8:00 to midnight
1142
01:11:52,809 --> 01:11:55,301
and have dinner and drinks
with all of us rockers,
1143
01:11:55,478 --> 01:11:58,812
and then they'd go home
because they were kept women.
1144
01:12:24,382 --> 01:12:26,669
You know, when we were doing
the "One of These Nights" album,
1145
01:12:26,843 --> 01:12:28,425
we'd gone through three albums,
1146
01:12:28,594 --> 01:12:30,926
and the only people
who'd sung on any hit records
1147
01:12:31,970 --> 01:12:32,713
were Don and myself.
1148
01:12:32,890 --> 01:12:36,554
And Randy always felt like,
you know, he was a lead singer, too.
1149
01:12:36,727 --> 01:12:39,344
And I actually felt that way, too.
I liked his voice.
1150
01:12:39,522 --> 01:12:42,435
So, he brought in the beginnings
of "Take It To the Limit,"
1151
01:12:42,608 --> 01:12:46,670
and it became the Eagles'
first number-one single.
1152
01:12:59,876 --> 01:13:01,116
The line "Take It To the Limit"
1153
01:13:01,294 --> 01:13:06,710
was to keep trying
before you reach a point in your life
1154
01:13:06,883 --> 01:13:09,295
where you feel, you know,
you've done everything
1155
01:13:09,468 --> 01:13:11,675
and seen everything sort of feeling.
1156
01:13:11,846 --> 01:13:13,632
You know, a part of getting old,
1157
01:13:13,806 --> 01:13:16,130
and just to take it to the limit
one more time,
1158
01:13:16,183 --> 01:13:19,221
like every day,
just keep punching away at it.
1159
01:13:19,395 --> 01:13:21,887
And that's all that I really --
that was the line,
1160
01:13:22,640 --> 01:13:26,308
and from there, the song took
a different, you know, course.
1161
01:13:37,496 --> 01:13:42,810
I think everybody in the Eagles
did the level best we could.
1162
01:13:42,251 --> 01:13:44,458
You have to remember
how young we were,
1163
01:13:44,629 --> 01:13:47,371
the fact that nobody
had anything when we started,
1164
01:13:47,548 --> 01:13:49,789
and you got all this stuff
coming at you.
1165
01:13:49,967 --> 01:13:52,174
Meanwhile,
you're touring all the time.
1166
01:13:52,345 --> 01:13:54,177
It's a lot.
1167
01:13:54,347 --> 01:13:58,306
To Bernie, success on any scale
was synonymous with selling out.
1168
01:13:58,476 --> 01:14:01,218
He wanted us to remain
sort of an underground band.
1169
01:14:01,395 --> 01:14:03,682
We had our problems with Bernie,
1170
01:14:03,856 --> 01:14:06,180
and Bernie
had his problems with us.
1171
01:14:06,192 --> 01:14:08,934
Some of it was based
on him being able to have a voice
1172
01:14:09,111 --> 01:14:10,272
in the Eagles
1173
01:14:10,446 --> 01:14:14,155
and record the songs he wanted to
the way he wanted to.
1174
01:14:14,325 --> 01:14:16,316
We were getting
more and more rocked out,
1175
01:14:16,494 --> 01:14:19,828
and I think Bernie was
less and less happy about that...
1176
01:14:21,707 --> 01:14:24,790
...to the point that, one time,
we had worked on a track all night.
1177
01:14:24,961 --> 01:14:26,247
I mean, it was a rocked-out track,
1178
01:14:26,420 --> 01:14:28,832
and we're all sitting
behind the board the next day,
1179
01:14:29,600 --> 01:14:30,417
listening to the various takes of it,
1180
01:14:30,591 --> 01:14:32,798
trying to decide
which take we like the best.
1181
01:14:32,969 --> 01:14:34,459
Bernie hadn't said a word.
1182
01:14:34,637 --> 01:14:35,968
So, I asked him over the board,
1183
01:14:36,138 --> 01:14:37,970
I said, "Bernie, what do you think?"
1184
01:14:38,140 --> 01:14:39,676
There's a long pause,
and he gets up,
1185
01:14:39,850 --> 01:14:43,844
and he stretches, and he says,
"I think I'm going surfing."
1186
01:14:44,210 --> 01:14:46,103
And he left.
1187
01:14:53,823 --> 01:14:55,689
I was caught in the middle
a lot of times.
1188
01:14:55,866 --> 01:14:57,732
And sometimes I would agree
with Bernie,
1189
01:14:57,910 --> 01:15:00,720
but most of the time,
I would agree with Glenn.
1190
01:15:00,246 --> 01:15:02,988
Glenn and I always wanted
the band to be a hybrid,
1191
01:15:03,165 --> 01:15:05,998
to encompass bluegrass
and country and rock 'n' roll.
1192
01:15:06,168 --> 01:15:09,350
There was a part of Bernie
that really resisted that.
1193
01:15:09,213 --> 01:15:11,454
After a while,
it became a real problem,
1194
01:15:11,632 --> 01:15:14,920
particularly between
Bernie and Glenn.
1195
01:15:15,940 --> 01:15:17,586
Finally, we were
at the Orange Bowl in Miami.
1196
01:15:17,763 --> 01:15:18,878
We were backstage,
1197
01:15:19,560 --> 01:15:22,515
and we were talking about
what our next move was gonna be,
1198
01:15:22,685 --> 01:15:23,925
what our plans were supposed to be,
1199
01:15:24,103 --> 01:15:29,519
and I was animated and adamant
about what we needed to do next
1200
01:15:29,692 --> 01:15:30,978
here, there, and everywhere,
1201
01:15:31,152 --> 01:15:34,440
and Bernie comes over
and pours a beer on my head
1202
01:15:34,613 --> 01:15:37,731
and says,
"You need to chill out, man."
1203
01:15:37,908 --> 01:15:41,276
I have no idea.
It was a spontaneous thing.
1204
01:15:41,454 --> 01:15:45,322
I mean, I take that incident now
quite seriously.
1205
01:15:45,499 --> 01:15:48,820
That was a very disrespectful thing
to do.
1206
01:15:48,252 --> 01:15:53,463
Obviously, it was intended to be
humiliating to him, I would say,
1207
01:15:53,632 --> 01:15:57,546
and is something
I'm really not proud of.
1208
01:15:57,720 --> 01:16:00,678
It did illustrate a breaking point.
1209
01:16:07,813 --> 01:16:10,726
During that time,
we got a couple shows
1210
01:16:10,900 --> 01:16:12,390
opening for the Rolling Stones,
1211
01:16:12,568 --> 01:16:15,310
and Irving was managing Joe Walsh.
1212
01:16:15,488 --> 01:16:20,358
Joe Walsh was a bona fide
rock-'n'-roll guitar player.
1213
01:16:24,663 --> 01:16:27,826
So, for a couple of those shows,
just for our encores,
1214
01:16:28,000 --> 01:16:29,991
we'd put Joe Walsh in a road box,
1215
01:16:30,169 --> 01:16:34,163
and we'd come back to do an encore,
and we'd roll the road box out,
1216
01:16:34,340 --> 01:16:37,458
and just like the model
jumping out of a cake,
1217
01:16:37,635 --> 01:16:39,672
we'd open the guitar case,
1218
01:16:39,845 --> 01:16:42,758
and there would be Joe Walsh
with his Les Paul,
1219
01:16:42,932 --> 01:16:45,970
and he'd climb out of the box
and plug in, and the Eagles --
1220
01:16:46,143 --> 01:16:49,560
We would play
"Rocky Mountain Way."
1221
01:16:56,695 --> 01:16:58,185
I loved the way he played.
1222
01:16:58,364 --> 01:17:01,607
I'd loved the James gang
when I was growing up in Detroit.
1223
01:17:01,784 --> 01:17:06,574
Now I started thinking,
"Joe Walsh for Bernie Leadon."
1224
01:17:18,884 --> 01:17:21,842
Okay, maybe the vocals
won't be quite as good,
1225
01:17:22,120 --> 01:17:24,470
but, boy, are we gonna
kick some ass.
1226
01:17:37,611 --> 01:17:40,319
I think one of the things
that I brought into the band
1227
01:17:40,489 --> 01:17:42,446
that was good for the band
1228
01:17:42,616 --> 01:17:46,200
was to bring it up a notch
when we played live.
1229
01:17:46,370 --> 01:17:50,580
Just keep kicking it in the butt
a little bit, you know?
1230
01:18:18,944 --> 01:18:22,528
All right, D.C.,
come on, give it up.
1231
01:18:23,782 --> 01:18:27,250
I went to a show
maybe eight months later,
1232
01:18:27,203 --> 01:18:29,786
and the band
are interacting with each other
1233
01:18:29,955 --> 01:18:32,413
exactly like we did
with me onstage,
1234
01:18:32,583 --> 01:18:35,166
except instead of me,
Walsh was up there,
1235
01:18:35,336 --> 01:18:38,545
and it just was, like,
really, really odd, you know,
1236
01:18:38,714 --> 01:18:41,547
to be watching it
and not be part of it.
1237
01:18:41,717 --> 01:18:43,458
So, I actually left that show.
1238
01:18:43,636 --> 01:18:46,344
I was just like,
"This is, like, too weird."
1239
01:18:46,513 --> 01:18:48,504
So, we got Joe Walsh in the band.
1240
01:18:48,682 --> 01:18:50,514
That's another adventure
1241
01:18:50,684 --> 01:18:52,641
because Joe was
an interesting bunch of guys.
1242
01:18:52,811 --> 01:18:53,596
Hey, I tell you what.
1243
01:18:53,771 --> 01:18:56,638
If you got firecrackers,
just wait until you get home,
1244
01:18:56,815 --> 01:19:01,184
lock yourself in the closet,
and light everything you got, okay?
1245
01:19:03,720 --> 01:19:04,403
Thank you, Joe.
1246
01:19:04,573 --> 01:19:05,688
He brought a lot of levity
1247
01:19:05,866 --> 01:19:08,324
to just about everything
that happened,
1248
01:19:08,494 --> 01:19:10,826
which was needed at that time.
1249
01:19:10,996 --> 01:19:12,407
Heads or tails?
1250
01:19:12,581 --> 01:19:14,710
Heads.
1251
01:19:14,250 --> 01:19:17,830
Well, I could use
a little head myself.
1252
01:19:17,253 --> 01:19:19,711
In those days, you didn't know
what he was gonna do next.
1253
01:19:19,880 --> 01:19:23,339
It was fun most of the time,
although not all the time.
1254
01:19:23,509 --> 01:19:25,841
It was fun, depending
on how much you'd had to drink,
1255
01:19:26,110 --> 01:19:28,548
to see a television go sailing
off the 14th-floor balcony
1256
01:19:28,722 --> 01:19:32,431
and into the pool,
as long as nobody got hurt.
1257
01:19:38,565 --> 01:19:41,523
Joe Walsh was
the American King of room trash.
1258
01:19:41,694 --> 01:19:44,277
He had studied under
some of the best.
1259
01:19:44,446 --> 01:19:47,359
One of the most terrifying things
that ever happened to me
1260
01:19:47,533 --> 01:19:50,946
was that Keith Moon
decided he liked me.
1261
01:19:51,120 --> 01:19:53,532
All those Keith Moon stories
are true.
1262
01:19:55,374 --> 01:19:58,332
This guy was full-blown nuts,
1263
01:19:58,502 --> 01:20:02,336
and you never knew
what was coming next.
1264
01:20:08,721 --> 01:20:11,930
Keith was my mentor at chaos,
1265
01:20:12,990 --> 01:20:16,434
getting arrested, practical jokes,
pranks, room damage.
1266
01:20:38,167 --> 01:20:41,501
One year, we gave him a chain saw
for his birthday as a joke.
1267
01:20:50,120 --> 01:20:53,130
By this time, we were eating
in nice restaurants
1268
01:20:53,307 --> 01:20:57,972
and buying expensive wine
and staying in great hotel rooms.
1269
01:20:58,145 --> 01:21:00,603
There were a lot of hotels that
we weren't allowed to go back to.
1270
01:21:00,773 --> 01:21:02,130
We were in Chicago,
1271
01:21:02,191 --> 01:21:04,102
and we were staying
at the Astor Towers.
1272
01:21:04,276 --> 01:21:07,109
In Chicago, here's what happened.
1273
01:21:07,279 --> 01:21:10,943
There was a knock on the door,
and in walked John Belushi.
1274
01:21:12,284 --> 01:21:17,154
John wanted to show me
the finer restaurants of Chicago.
1275
01:21:18,207 --> 01:21:19,914
So, we went to the restaurant,
1276
01:21:20,840 --> 01:21:21,870
and they wouldn't let us in
'cause we had jeans,
1277
01:21:22,440 --> 01:21:26,830
and he got the maTtre d'
up to like $300 bribe,
1278
01:21:26,256 --> 01:21:28,463
and still they would not let us in.
1279
01:21:28,634 --> 01:21:31,547
And John said, "I know what to do.
I know what to do."
1280
01:21:32,471 --> 01:21:36,465
And the next thing I knew,
we were standing in the alley,
1281
01:21:36,642 --> 01:21:41,227
and he spray-painted my jeans black
and made me do his,
1282
01:21:41,397 --> 01:21:44,139
and we went back, and we got in.
1283
01:21:46,151 --> 01:21:49,394
We were sitting
in these Queen Anne-period chairs
1284
01:21:49,571 --> 01:21:50,902
that had needlepoint,
1285
01:21:51,730 --> 01:21:53,861
and when we stood up,
that was all black,
1286
01:21:54,340 --> 01:21:56,776
and the butts of our pants
were jeans again.
1287
01:21:56,954 --> 01:22:01,730
So, we had to kind of back out
of there and leave fast.
1288
01:22:02,420 --> 01:22:04,500
But that was the beginning of it.
1289
01:22:04,670 --> 01:22:08,584
And so that night, with much glee,
1290
01:22:08,757 --> 01:22:12,500
Joe set about to set
the world record for room trash.
1291
01:22:14,430 --> 01:22:18,674
John and I did $28,000
of room damage.
1292
01:22:22,104 --> 01:22:24,766
Glenn and Don
didn't really ever approve
1293
01:22:24,940 --> 01:22:27,181
of the room trashing,
but they understood it.
1294
01:22:27,359 --> 01:22:29,691
They wanted respect
as rock 'n' rollers,
1295
01:22:29,862 --> 01:22:32,103
and Joe brought that respect.
1296
01:22:32,281 --> 01:22:36,700
I was insecure always and afraid,
1297
01:22:36,243 --> 01:22:42,340
so I hid behind all of my hang-ups
with humor.
1298
01:22:42,207 --> 01:22:47,452
I was totally in awe
of Don and Glenn.
1299
01:22:47,629 --> 01:22:50,963
I was intimidated by Don and Glenn
1300
01:22:51,133 --> 01:22:56,128
because they sang so good
and they were writing stuff
1301
01:22:56,305 --> 01:23:00,424
I could never come close to writing.
1302
01:23:01,393 --> 01:23:03,760
After we just had
a bunch of hit records
1303
01:23:03,937 --> 01:23:06,679
on "One of These Nights,"
we were under the microscope.
1304
01:23:06,857 --> 01:23:09,440
Everybody was gonna look
at the next record we made
1305
01:23:09,610 --> 01:23:10,771
and pass judgment.
1306
01:23:10,944 --> 01:23:14,187
Don and I were going,
"Man, this better be good."
1307
01:23:15,949 --> 01:23:17,235
Look at that.
1308
01:23:17,409 --> 01:23:19,491
It's gonna be quite a nice guitar.
1309
01:23:19,661 --> 01:23:21,618
Fewer, you see 'Ms'?
1310
01:23:22,581 --> 01:23:23,946
Who, uh, who tuned this?
1311
01:23:24,124 --> 01:23:25,285
Well, it has no nut.
1312
01:23:25,459 --> 01:23:29,168
With Joe in the band with me,
I wanted to write something,
1313
01:23:29,338 --> 01:23:32,956
musically, that would fit
two guitar players,
1314
01:23:33,133 --> 01:23:35,170
that we could
play off of each other.
1315
01:23:35,344 --> 01:23:37,631
So, I was sitting on a sofa in Malibu
1316
01:23:37,804 --> 01:23:40,110
at this rental house
that I had on the beach,
1317
01:23:40,182 --> 01:23:42,219
and I was playing
this acoustic guitar,
1318
01:23:42,392 --> 01:23:44,850
and this introduction came out,
that progression.
1319
01:23:45,200 --> 01:23:47,853
I kept playing it
three or four times.
1320
01:23:48,230 --> 01:23:50,140
I had an old reel-to-reel
tape recorder,
1321
01:23:50,192 --> 01:23:53,560
so I went back and recorded
that introduction to that song
1322
01:23:53,737 --> 01:23:56,604
and laid down that progression,
made a mix of it,
1323
01:23:56,782 --> 01:23:59,365
and put it on a cassette
with, I don't know,
1324
01:23:59,535 --> 01:24:02,744
the other 14 or 15 pieces of music
that I had assembled,
1325
01:24:02,913 --> 01:24:06,281
and I gave a copy of the cassette
to Don, one to Glenn.
1326
01:24:06,458 --> 01:24:11,578
Don Felder used to send
Henley and I instrumental tapes,
1327
01:24:11,755 --> 01:24:12,790
song ideas.
1328
01:24:12,965 --> 01:24:15,753
95% of them were cluttered
with guitar licks,
1329
01:24:15,926 --> 01:24:18,588
and we would
listen to these things and go,
1330
01:24:18,762 --> 01:24:19,968
"Well, where do you sing?"
1331
01:24:20,681 --> 01:24:23,514
As Don and I were listening
through one of the Felder cassettes
1332
01:24:23,684 --> 01:24:26,142
and this song came up,
we both sort of said,
1333
01:24:26,311 --> 01:24:28,598
"Hmm, now, this is interesting."
1334
01:24:30,357 --> 01:24:32,689
The music sounded to me
like some sort of a cross
1335
01:24:32,859 --> 01:24:35,692
between Spanish music
and reggae music,
1336
01:24:35,862 --> 01:24:37,478
and that one
reallyjumped out at me.
1337
01:24:37,656 --> 01:24:41,775
So, we set out to write
a song to that progression.
1338
01:24:43,620 --> 01:24:45,907
I'm pretty sure
it was Henley's idea
1339
01:24:46,810 --> 01:24:49,119
to have a song
called "Hotel California."
1340
01:24:52,713 --> 01:24:56,707
I think Henley's and Glenn's
lyric writing really came to a head.
1341
01:24:56,883 --> 01:24:59,545
They became real honest-to-God
songwriters then.
1342
01:25:03,682 --> 01:25:04,638
During the recording of it,
1343
01:25:04,808 --> 01:25:06,344
I thought that we were on
to something.
1344
01:25:06,518 --> 01:25:07,883
I knew we were on to something.
1345
01:25:09,855 --> 01:25:13,519
We were in a really creative phase,
1346
01:25:13,692 --> 01:25:19,187
and it just so happened
that Bill Szymczyk pushed record.
1347
01:25:20,365 --> 01:25:22,402
Thank God.
1348
01:26:30,352 --> 01:26:34,311
We've been asked a million times,
"What does that song mean?"
1349
01:26:34,481 --> 01:26:36,973
Don and I were big fans
of hidden, deeper meaning.
1350
01:26:37,693 --> 01:26:38,933
You know, you write songs,
1351
01:26:39,111 --> 01:26:41,853
and you send them out
to the world...
1352
01:26:54,209 --> 01:26:57,998
And maybe somewhere in that song
is some stuff that's just yours
1353
01:26:58,171 --> 01:27:00,162
that they're never
gonna figure out.
1354
01:27:06,638 --> 01:27:09,300
There has been a great deal
of ridiculous speculation
1355
01:27:09,474 --> 01:27:10,839
about that song over the years.
1356
01:27:11,170 --> 01:27:13,805
I mean, it's really taken on a life
or a mythology of its own.
1357
01:27:13,979 --> 01:27:15,686
You know, it's sort of like
the "Paul is dead" thing
1358
01:27:15,856 --> 01:27:17,472
or who was the walrus?
1359
01:27:21,778 --> 01:27:24,566
It's been denounced by evangelicals.
1360
01:27:24,740 --> 01:27:26,947
We've been accused
of all kinds of wacky things,
1361
01:27:27,117 --> 01:27:29,154
like being members
of the Church of Satan.
1362
01:27:29,327 --> 01:27:32,410
People see images
on the album cover that aren't there.
1363
01:27:32,581 --> 01:27:33,912
Just lunatic stuff.
1364
01:28:00,442 --> 01:28:01,682
My simple explanation is
1365
01:28:01,860 --> 01:28:05,603
it's a song about a journey
from innocence to experience.
1366
01:28:05,781 --> 01:28:07,670
That's all.
1367
01:28:31,348 --> 01:28:34,306
Whereas Felder was technically
very, very good,
1368
01:28:34,476 --> 01:28:38,600
Walsh brought spontaneity to it,
1369
01:28:38,230 --> 01:28:41,939
and the two of them playing off
each other was just brilliant.
1370
01:29:00,100 --> 01:29:01,912
Out of great respect for each other,
1371
01:29:02,870 --> 01:29:04,249
there was always
a little competition
1372
01:29:04,422 --> 01:29:06,504
between Felder and I.
1373
01:29:06,675 --> 01:29:10,509
We always tried to kind of
one-up each other, you know?
1374
01:29:14,391 --> 01:29:17,179
And that's really healthy.
1375
01:29:17,352 --> 01:29:20,765
It always made the song better
1376
01:29:20,939 --> 01:29:24,773
when we were kind of,
"Oh, yeah? Listen to this."
1377
01:29:32,534 --> 01:29:33,569
We got to the end,
1378
01:29:33,743 --> 01:29:36,861
where now is the harmony guitars
that are playing together,
1379
01:29:37,380 --> 01:29:40,121
and Joe said, "We should
do something that's like...
1380
01:29:58,894 --> 01:30:00,601
The ending of "Hotel California" --
1381
01:30:00,770 --> 01:30:05,936
that's one of my high points
of my entire recording career.
1382
01:30:13,158 --> 01:30:16,321
To have a seven-minute single
be number one --
1383
01:30:16,494 --> 01:30:17,575
that was unheard of.
1384
01:30:17,746 --> 01:30:19,320
The record company said,
"You got to do an edit.
1385
01:30:19,205 --> 01:30:20,240
You got to do an edit."
1386
01:30:20,415 --> 01:30:23,770
And we all said,
"No. Take it or leave it."
1387
01:30:23,251 --> 01:30:24,412
And they took it.
1388
01:30:26,463 --> 01:30:28,704
We had no idea that that song
1389
01:30:28,882 --> 01:30:32,295
would affect as many people
on the planet as it did.
1390
01:30:34,679 --> 01:30:37,460
Thank you.
1391
01:30:37,223 --> 01:30:41,217
The rest of the album kind of
developed around that song.
1392
01:30:41,394 --> 01:30:43,180
The album, you could loosely say,
1393
01:30:43,355 --> 01:30:46,564
is a thematic album,
a concept album.
1394
01:30:47,567 --> 01:30:49,274
Not unlike "Desperado,"
1395
01:30:49,444 --> 01:30:54,314
"Hotel California" was our reaction
to what was happening to us.
1396
01:30:56,159 --> 01:31:00,244
On just about every album we made,
there was some kind of a commentary
1397
01:31:00,413 --> 01:31:03,280
on the music business
and on American culture in general.
1398
01:31:03,458 --> 01:31:05,995
The hotel itself
could be taken as a metaphor
1399
01:31:06,169 --> 01:31:09,200
not only for the mythmaking
of Southern California
1400
01:31:09,172 --> 01:31:11,960
but for the mythmaking
that is the American dream
1401
01:31:12,133 --> 01:31:15,000
because it's a fine line
between the American dream
1402
01:31:15,178 --> 01:31:16,634
and the American nightmare.
1403
01:31:23,520 --> 01:31:25,636
All the songs
we write for this album
1404
01:31:25,814 --> 01:31:28,476
can fit inside this concept.
1405
01:31:36,866 --> 01:31:38,231
Once the rest of the guys
in the band
1406
01:31:38,410 --> 01:31:41,493
understood what the song
"Hotel California" was about,
1407
01:31:41,663 --> 01:31:42,994
it became kind of a theme,
1408
01:31:43,164 --> 01:31:45,997
and they started to customize
their writing to fit in with it.
1409
01:31:55,100 --> 01:31:57,502
I think that the Eagles
started breaking up
1410
01:31:57,679 --> 01:31:59,386
during the recording
of "Hotel California."
1411
01:31:59,556 --> 01:32:01,120
There were creative tensions,
1412
01:32:01,182 --> 01:32:03,139
but there was always
tension tensions.
1413
01:32:04,190 --> 01:32:06,932
By the time we got to recording
"Hotel California,"
1414
01:32:07,105 --> 01:32:08,311
if the song wasn't good enough
1415
01:32:08,481 --> 01:32:10,939
to survive the amount of time
we were working on the record,
1416
01:32:11,109 --> 01:32:12,349
it didn't make it on the record.
1417
01:32:12,527 --> 01:32:14,234
Perfection is not an accident.
1418
01:32:14,404 --> 01:32:17,317
Our goal was just to be
the best we could be.
1419
01:32:17,490 --> 01:32:20,323
We wanted to get better
as songwriters and as performers,
1420
01:32:20,493 --> 01:32:21,824
and we worked on it.
1421
01:32:23,496 --> 01:32:27,785
Don and I felt like there was
no space now for filler,
1422
01:32:27,959 --> 01:32:31,577
and Don Felder, for all
of his talents as a guitar player,
1423
01:32:31,755 --> 01:32:32,870
is not a singer.
1424
01:32:34,507 --> 01:32:37,124
Felder wanted to write more,
sing more,
1425
01:32:37,302 --> 01:32:39,900
and Felder had kind of demanded
1426
01:32:39,179 --> 01:32:42,672
that "I'm gonna sing two songs
on 'Hotel California."'
1427
01:32:48,210 --> 01:32:50,979
We were all Alphas,
1428
01:32:51,149 --> 01:32:56,110
and we were all very assertive
and powerful in our own way.
1429
01:32:56,279 --> 01:33:01,690
You could bring in a great track
to Don and Glenn
1430
01:33:01,242 --> 01:33:03,324
and be really excited about it.
1431
01:33:03,495 --> 01:33:05,907
This happened to Felder.
1432
01:33:09,709 --> 01:33:12,201
I wrote the track
for "Victim of Love."
1433
01:33:12,378 --> 01:33:14,915
It was gonna be a follow-up song
1434
01:33:15,900 --> 01:33:18,424
on the "Hotel California" record
for me to sing.
1435
01:33:21,429 --> 01:33:24,171
I have no recollection of anybody
being promised anything.
1436
01:33:24,349 --> 01:33:27,717
"Victim of Love" was not brought
to the band as a complete song.
1437
01:33:27,894 --> 01:33:30,560
It was simply
another chord progression
1438
01:33:30,230 --> 01:33:31,595
that Don Fewer brought tn.
1439
01:33:31,773 --> 01:33:34,731
It had no title,
no lyrics, and no melody.
1440
01:33:34,901 --> 01:33:38,144
Glenn and I and J.D. Souther
all sat down
1441
01:33:38,321 --> 01:33:40,688
and hammered out the rest of it.
1442
01:33:40,865 --> 01:33:42,196
We did let Mr. Felder sing it.
1443
01:33:42,367 --> 01:33:44,779
He sang it dozens of times
over the span of a week,
1444
01:33:44,953 --> 01:33:46,239
over and over and over again.
1445
01:33:46,412 --> 01:33:49,325
It simply didn't come up
to band standards.
1446
01:33:51,709 --> 01:33:55,202
"Victim of Love" had been recorded
with Felder as the lead vocalist,
1447
01:33:55,380 --> 01:33:58,543
and my job was to take Don Felder
out to lunch or dinner
1448
01:33:58,716 --> 01:34:02,400
while they went in the studio
and put Henley's vocal on it.
1449
01:34:07,809 --> 01:34:13,200
Irving took me out and said
that everybody in the band thought
1450
01:34:13,189 --> 01:34:14,896
that it was better if Don sang that.
1451
01:34:15,660 --> 01:34:17,649
And it was a little bit
of a bitter pill to swallow.
1452
01:34:17,819 --> 01:34:21,437
I felt like Don was taking
that song from me.
1453
01:34:21,614 --> 01:34:24,447
I'd been promised a song
on the next record.
1454
01:34:24,617 --> 01:34:26,233
But there was no real way to argue
1455
01:34:26,411 --> 01:34:28,493
with my vocal
versus Don Henley's vocal.
1456
01:34:28,663 --> 01:34:31,530
There was no way to argue
with anybody's vocal in the band
1457
01:34:31,708 --> 01:34:32,823
compared to Don Henley.
1458
01:34:40,758 --> 01:34:42,840
Felder demanding to sing that song
1459
01:34:43,110 --> 01:34:45,673
would be the equivalent of me
demanding to play lead guitar
1460
01:34:45,847 --> 01:34:46,837
on "Hotel California."
1461
01:34:47,150 --> 01:34:48,301
It just didn't make sense.
1462
01:34:52,645 --> 01:34:55,637
If you look at my vocal participation
in the Eagles
1463
01:34:55,815 --> 01:35:01,106
over the course of the 1970s,
I sang less and less.
1464
01:35:01,279 --> 01:35:04,988
It was intentional.
We had Don Henley.
1465
01:35:09,579 --> 01:35:12,162
Don and Glenn's position was,
1466
01:35:12,332 --> 01:35:16,792
"This is the best thing
for the Eagles."
1467
01:35:16,961 --> 01:35:19,794
And Don Felder never forgot that.
1468
01:35:31,726 --> 01:35:33,683
Get it! Get it!
Run! Run! Run!
1469
01:35:34,812 --> 01:35:35,893
Shit.
1470
01:35:38,660 --> 01:35:39,807
This is a real healthy thing.
1471
01:35:39,984 --> 01:35:42,692
It promotes good feelings,
you know, among the guys,
1472
01:35:42,862 --> 01:35:45,103
and it keeps us
from killing each other.
1473
01:35:46,241 --> 01:35:48,573
Where's my glove?
Who's got my glove?
1474
01:35:48,743 --> 01:35:50,859
We can yell at each other
on a baseball field,
1475
01:35:51,370 --> 01:35:53,324
then we don't have to yell
at each other when we're working.
1476
01:35:54,457 --> 01:35:56,323
Get all my frustrations out.
1477
01:35:56,501 --> 01:35:58,370
What frustrations?
1478
01:35:58,211 --> 01:35:59,667
I haven't been getting laid.
1479
01:35:59,837 --> 01:36:02,579
We try to get out
and play softball with the crew
1480
01:36:02,757 --> 01:36:03,872
if we have a day off.
1481
01:36:04,500 --> 01:36:05,131
Swing, batter!
1482
01:36:05,301 --> 01:36:07,338
Oh, it's gone, it's gone.
It's gone.
1483
01:36:07,512 --> 01:36:10,220
Something to help
release the tension.
1484
01:36:10,390 --> 01:36:14,800
That's really what I do
to keep from going crazy.
1485
01:36:14,185 --> 01:36:16,722
How do you keep
from going crazy, Joe?
1486
01:36:19,315 --> 01:36:21,272
Well...
1487
01:36:23,945 --> 01:36:27,233
I tell you, I just, uh...
1488
01:36:27,407 --> 01:36:29,990
In the press and the media,
1489
01:36:30,159 --> 01:36:34,653
it was presented
that we were constantly at war,
1490
01:36:34,831 --> 01:36:37,698
and I can't say
that's exactly the case.
1491
01:36:42,460 --> 01:36:46,290
We were interacting,
and we were all intense.
1492
01:36:46,467 --> 01:36:48,708
Glenn said to me one time,
1493
01:36:48,886 --> 01:36:53,221
"I get nuts sometimes,
and I'm sorry."
1494
01:36:53,391 --> 01:36:54,677
Hey, Joe.
1495
01:36:54,851 --> 01:37:02,315
But that tension had a lot to do
with fanning the artistic fire.
1496
01:37:02,483 --> 01:37:08,946
Having that dynamic was important
in making the music.
1497
01:37:11,159 --> 01:37:13,651
Well, we're rehearsing now,
and before we're even playing
1498
01:37:13,828 --> 01:37:15,614
and guys are just noodling around
1499
01:37:15,788 --> 01:37:18,290
and getting their amps going
and stuff, we hear Joe go...
1500
01:37:23,671 --> 01:37:27,500
You know, and everyone would
kind of go, "What did you play?
1501
01:37:27,175 --> 01:37:28,850
Play that again."
1502
01:37:28,760 --> 01:37:33,400
That was an exercise I was doing
because it's a coordination thing.
1503
01:37:33,181 --> 01:37:36,480
You know,
it's like one of these deals.
1504
01:37:36,225 --> 01:37:38,110
So, I was doing that to warm up,
1505
01:37:38,186 --> 01:37:40,223
and they said,
"Well, what is that?"
1506
01:37:40,396 --> 01:37:45,610
And I said, "Well, that's just
something I have, you know?
1507
01:37:45,234 --> 01:37:46,440
There you go."
1508
01:37:46,611 --> 01:37:47,646
That's the lick.
1509
01:37:47,820 --> 01:37:50,482
That's what we should
build the song around.
1510
01:37:57,663 --> 01:38:00,621
I was riding shotgun in a corvette
with a drug dealer
1511
01:38:00,792 --> 01:38:03,534
on the way to a poker game,
and the next thing I knew,
1512
01:38:03,711 --> 01:38:07,329
we were going about 90 miles
an hour, holding big time.
1513
01:38:07,507 --> 01:38:10,670
I was like, "Hey, man.
What are you doing?"
1514
01:38:10,843 --> 01:38:12,550
You know, and he looked at me,
and he grinned.
1515
01:38:12,720 --> 01:38:15,587
He goes, "Life in the fast lane."
1516
01:38:15,765 --> 01:38:20,225
And I thought immediately,
"Now, there's a song title."
1517
01:38:31,781 --> 01:38:33,772
Then they put out the greatest hits.
1518
01:38:33,950 --> 01:38:35,156
There was a period
1519
01:38:35,326 --> 01:38:38,489
where we sold a million records
a month for 18 months.
1520
01:38:38,663 --> 01:38:41,750
It's a little-known fact
that the Eagles
1521
01:38:41,249 --> 01:38:44,913
had the biggest-selling album
of the 20th century.
1522
01:38:45,860 --> 01:38:51,549
But the music business never ever
got honest of its own volition.
1523
01:38:51,717 --> 01:38:54,425
No record company ever went
to an artist and said,
1524
01:38:54,595 --> 01:38:55,881
"You've done a great job.
1525
01:38:56,550 --> 01:38:58,920
We're gonna increase
your royalties."
1526
01:38:58,266 --> 01:39:01,540
So we created
our own promotion company.
1527
01:39:01,227 --> 01:39:03,889
We created
our own management company.
1528
01:39:04,630 --> 01:39:05,519
We had our own booking agency.
1529
01:39:05,690 --> 01:39:08,478
Stop any time.
1530
01:39:13,489 --> 01:39:20,236
We achieved an amount of success
beyond our wildest imagination,
1531
01:39:20,413 --> 01:39:24,122
and Randy really had trouble with it.
1532
01:39:24,292 --> 01:39:25,953
Bam! Bam!
1533
01:39:26,127 --> 01:39:28,539
Randy used to have trouble
singing the high note
1534
01:39:28,713 --> 01:39:29,919
at the end
of "Take It To the Limit."
1535
01:39:41,580 --> 01:39:44,596
Oh, yeah, I was always
kind of scared, basically.
1536
01:39:44,770 --> 01:39:45,760
"What if I don't hit it right?"
1537
01:39:45,938 --> 01:39:48,200
it was a pretty high note.
1538
01:39:53,571 --> 01:39:55,610
And in the middle of the fade,
1539
01:39:55,239 --> 01:39:57,981
you crank the volume knob
and go, "What?!"
1540
01:39:58,159 --> 01:40:03,245
Randy could do it,
but if you made him do it,
1541
01:40:03,414 --> 01:40:06,406
"Oh, no, man, I, uh..."
1542
01:40:12,882 --> 01:40:14,168
Thank you.
1543
01:40:14,342 --> 01:40:16,300
Randy Meisner.
1544
01:40:17,940 --> 01:40:18,926
He'd call the road manager and say,
1545
01:40:19,960 --> 01:40:21,258
"Tell Glenn I don't want to do
'Take It To the Limit' anymore.
1546
01:40:21,432 --> 01:40:22,422
Take it out of the set."
1547
01:40:22,600 --> 01:40:23,931
I confronted him about this.
1548
01:40:24,101 --> 01:40:25,432
I called him up,
and I said, "Randy,
1549
01:40:25,603 --> 01:40:29,437
there's thousands of people
waiting to hear you sing that song.
1550
01:40:29,607 --> 01:40:31,689
"You just can't say,
'Fuck them. I don't feel like it.'
1551
01:40:31,859 --> 01:40:33,725
Do you think I like singing
'Take It Easy'
1552
01:40:33,903 --> 01:40:35,393
and 'Peaceful Easy Feeling'
every night?
1553
01:40:35,571 --> 01:40:38,689
I'm tired of those songs,
but there's people in the audience
1554
01:40:38,866 --> 01:40:42,234
who've been waiting years
to see us do those songs."
1555
01:40:42,411 --> 01:40:46,530
We just got fed up with that
and just said, "Okay, don't sing it.
1556
01:40:46,707 --> 01:40:51,201
Why don't you just quit?
You say you're unhappy. Quit."
1557
01:40:51,379 --> 01:40:54,792
Randy never knew
how great he was.
1558
01:40:54,966 --> 01:40:57,128
He wasn't Alpha.
1559
01:40:57,969 --> 01:41:01,462
Confrontations were
really hard for him.
1560
01:41:01,639 --> 01:41:05,553
All I want to see is five guys
happy playing together, you know?
1561
01:41:05,726 --> 01:41:07,683
And that's what makes the music.
1562
01:41:12,358 --> 01:41:14,816
We were backstage,
and the crowd was going wild.
1563
01:41:14,986 --> 01:41:17,193
And our encore number
was "Take It To the Limit."
1564
01:41:17,363 --> 01:41:18,444
People loved that song.
1565
01:41:18,614 --> 01:41:20,651
They went crazy when Randy
hit those high notes.
1566
01:41:20,825 --> 01:41:22,987
But Randy didn't want
to do the song that night.
1567
01:41:23,160 --> 01:41:24,400
He'd been up partying all night
1568
01:41:24,579 --> 01:41:26,445
with a couple of girls
and a bottle of vodka.
1569
01:41:26,622 --> 01:41:28,454
And Glenn kept trying
to talk him into it.
1570
01:41:28,624 --> 01:41:30,706
He said, "Man, the people
want to hear that song.
1571
01:41:30,876 --> 01:41:32,116
You got to do it."
1572
01:41:32,295 --> 01:41:34,161
And Randy kept saying, "No."
1573
01:41:34,338 --> 01:41:36,204
So after about the third or fourth
time that Randy refused,
1574
01:41:36,382 --> 01:41:37,918
Glenn just backed up
a couple of steps and said,
1575
01:41:38,920 --> 01:41:39,253
"Well, fuck you, then!"
1576
01:41:42,263 --> 01:41:44,379
There were police officers
standing backstage,
1577
01:41:44,557 --> 01:41:47,800
and when they saw us about to go
at it, they started to move in.
1578
01:41:47,977 --> 01:41:50,594
And Henley turned
right to the cops and said,
1579
01:41:50,771 --> 01:41:51,932
"Stay out of this.
1580
01:41:52,106 --> 01:41:54,564
This is personal,
and it's private --
1581
01:41:54,734 --> 01:41:56,145
real fucking private."
1582
01:41:57,987 --> 01:42:01,355
The writing was on the wall
that Randy was gonna leave.
1583
01:42:04,869 --> 01:42:08,988
There was only person
to ever replace Randy Meisner
1584
01:42:09,165 --> 01:42:12,203
in the Eagles in my mind,
and it was Timothy B. Schmit.
1585
01:42:14,378 --> 01:42:16,494
He replaced him in Poco
1586
01:42:16,672 --> 01:42:19,755
and plugged in
and sang the same parts.
1587
01:42:21,100 --> 01:42:23,297
And I remember sitting with Irving
and saying,
1588
01:42:23,471 --> 01:42:26,213
"lrving, I think we should
get Timothy Schmit."
1589
01:42:26,390 --> 01:42:29,223
He said, "Well, I just saw Timothy.
I was out on the road
1590
01:42:29,393 --> 01:42:31,225
when the guys in Poco
were in the hotel bar,
1591
01:42:31,395 --> 01:42:33,636
and Timothy was smashed
out of his mind.
1592
01:42:33,814 --> 01:42:35,896
He was gacked up.
Are you sure about this?"
1593
01:42:36,670 --> 01:42:38,809
I said, "Irving," I said,
"If you'd been in a band
1594
01:42:38,986 --> 01:42:41,728
for 11 years and you were still
making $250 a week
1595
01:42:41,906 --> 01:42:43,192
working 40 weeks a year,
1596
01:42:43,366 --> 01:42:46,484
maybe you'd be a little smashed
and gacked-up yourself."
1597
01:42:48,120 --> 01:42:49,906
They asked me to join their band
1598
01:42:50,810 --> 01:42:52,914
before I even played
a note of music with them.
1599
01:42:53,840 --> 01:42:56,293
I just said, "You know,
where do you want me? When?
1600
01:42:56,462 --> 01:42:58,169
I'm definitely in."
1601
01:42:58,339 --> 01:43:01,502
We want to introduce you
to the newest member of our band.
1602
01:43:01,676 --> 01:43:02,882
He's our new bass player,
1603
01:43:03,520 --> 01:43:05,669
and we got him
from a really fine band -- Poco.
1604
01:43:05,846 --> 01:43:08,884
Please give a nice Houston, Texas,
welcome to Timothy Schmit.
1605
01:43:14,105 --> 01:43:17,348
I went on the road with them
in 1978 as the new guy.
1606
01:43:24,310 --> 01:43:26,773
And I heard a few, "Where's Randy's"
from the audience, you know?
1607
01:43:27,702 --> 01:43:30,490
But I knew it was a good move
for them and me.
1608
01:43:36,961 --> 01:43:39,544
There were a lot of decisions,
business-wise,
1609
01:43:39,714 --> 01:43:43,127
that needed to be made
in a secret session --
1610
01:43:43,300 --> 01:43:46,420
Glenn and Don and Irving
in the back of the plane.
1611
01:43:46,220 --> 01:43:48,507
I didn't like
that I wasn't part of that,
1612
01:43:48,681 --> 01:43:53,391
but I knew that it was good
for the Eagles.
1613
01:43:53,561 --> 01:43:57,725
Don Felder really didn't like it.
1614
01:43:59,400 --> 01:44:01,562
Glenn and I saw ourselves
as the leaders of the band,
1615
01:44:01,736 --> 01:44:03,226
but other people saw us
as dictators.
1616
01:44:03,404 --> 01:44:07,193
You just cannot have
five leaders in a band.
1617
01:44:07,366 --> 01:44:10,825
It doesn't work. People have to do
what they do best.
1618
01:44:10,995 --> 01:44:14,659
There was all this undercurrent
and resentment
1619
01:44:14,832 --> 01:44:17,870
and, you know,
plotting and complaining.
1620
01:44:18,430 --> 01:44:21,536
And I'm sure Timothy thought,
"What have I gotten myself into?"
1621
01:44:21,714 --> 01:44:23,751
I was just really happy to be there,
1622
01:44:23,924 --> 01:44:27,258
and all these tensions --
it's not that I didn't feel it,
1623
01:44:27,428 --> 01:44:29,339
but I had no idea how deep it was.
1624
01:44:29,513 --> 01:44:31,971
In my experience,
all rock-'n'-roll bands
1625
01:44:32,141 --> 01:44:34,974
are on the verge of breaking up
at all times.
1626
01:44:37,521 --> 01:44:40,604
The band at that point
had begun to split up into factions.
1627
01:44:40,775 --> 01:44:42,857
Don Felder, in an effort
to gain more control,
1628
01:44:43,270 --> 01:44:44,392
had co-opted Joe Walsh.
1629
01:44:44,570 --> 01:44:45,731
So much of the time,
1630
01:44:45,905 --> 01:44:48,613
it was Felder and Walsh
against me and Glenn.
1631
01:44:48,783 --> 01:44:50,490
At that point, even Glenn and I
1632
01:44:50,659 --> 01:44:53,260
were beginning
to have our differences.
1633
01:44:53,204 --> 01:44:55,571
And it was tearing the band apart.
1634
01:44:56,665 --> 01:44:59,770
The magic ingredient
that made the band successful
1635
01:44:59,251 --> 01:45:01,367
was the relationship
between Don and Glenn.
1636
01:45:01,545 --> 01:45:04,708
Through years of touring,
years in the studio --
1637
01:45:04,882 --> 01:45:07,749
all of that friction
really started driving a wedge
1638
01:45:07,927 --> 01:45:09,884
in between that relationship.
1639
01:45:12,973 --> 01:45:15,840
It reached a point where we were
just tired of each other --
1640
01:45:16,180 --> 01:45:18,601
tired of the hoopla,
tired of touring,
1641
01:45:18,771 --> 01:45:20,728
tired of pretty much everything.
1642
01:45:20,898 --> 01:45:24,436
At that point, songwriting
was becoming very difficult.
1643
01:45:25,110 --> 01:45:26,646
How much sleep did you guys get?
1644
01:45:26,821 --> 01:45:28,107
When did you get finished
loading out?
1645
01:45:28,280 --> 01:45:29,520
-2:00?
-5:30.
1646
01:45:29,698 --> 01:45:30,984
-5:30 this morning?
-Yeah.
1647
01:45:31,158 --> 01:45:32,239
Okay.
1648
01:45:32,409 --> 01:45:34,901
After the success
of "Hotel California" --
1649
01:45:35,790 --> 01:45:38,947
Grammy winner, mega sales --
top that.
1650
01:45:39,124 --> 01:45:43,288
And we show up at the studio,
and nobody has one song done.
1651
01:45:46,215 --> 01:45:48,673
I don't know
what we'll do first, but...
1652
01:45:49,969 --> 01:45:53,212
I had enough of a piece
where they both went,
1653
01:45:53,389 --> 01:45:55,551
"That's great.
Let's develop that."
1654
01:45:55,724 --> 01:45:58,432
And I was really pleased
that they wanted to develop that one
1655
01:45:58,602 --> 01:46:01,685
because it came out more
as an R&B song.
1656
01:46:04,525 --> 01:46:06,357
And it's very simple.
1657
01:46:06,527 --> 01:46:09,565
Very simple instrumentation.
1658
01:46:09,738 --> 01:46:12,230
Very simple arrangement.
1659
01:46:15,536 --> 01:46:17,243
There's a lot of air in it.
1660
01:46:20,583 --> 01:46:22,824
That's why it works.
1661
01:46:40,600 --> 01:46:43,553
About halfway through,
Don comes up to me and says,
1662
01:46:43,731 --> 01:46:46,189
"There's your hit."
1663
01:47:04,418 --> 01:47:08,412
We're on top of the world.
We're young.
1664
01:47:08,589 --> 01:47:11,422
We were overdoing everything.
1665
01:47:19,391 --> 01:47:23,180
There was a lot of chemical
dependency going on within the band.
1666
01:47:23,354 --> 01:47:24,936
And that was rough.
1667
01:47:26,857 --> 01:47:28,939
During all of that time
of writing and recording
1668
01:47:29,109 --> 01:47:31,476
"The Long Run"
and all the time on the road --
1669
01:47:31,654 --> 01:47:33,270
we were on the road
during "The Long Run,"
1670
01:47:33,447 --> 01:47:35,905
we were all using cocaine.
1671
01:47:36,575 --> 01:47:40,340
When we first started snorting coke,
it was like a writing tool.
1672
01:47:40,204 --> 01:47:43,322
Do a couple bumps and kind of
get started talking about stuff,
1673
01:47:43,499 --> 01:47:45,810
get yourself going
1674
01:47:45,250 --> 01:47:48,743
and launch into some sort
of idea for a song.
1675
01:47:48,921 --> 01:47:53,381
But in the end, cocaine brought out
the worst in everybody.
1676
01:47:54,468 --> 01:47:58,860
Yes, this half-hour of the show
is brought to you by cocaine --
1677
01:47:58,263 --> 01:48:00,504
the makers of hits.
1678
01:48:09,358 --> 01:48:11,770
Making that album was excruciating.
1679
01:48:11,944 --> 01:48:13,651
We were just completely burned out.
1680
01:48:13,821 --> 01:48:17,234
We had driven ourselves really hard
for almost a decade,
1681
01:48:17,408 --> 01:48:18,739
and we were just fried.
1682
01:48:19,576 --> 01:48:20,816
It was long, too.
1683
01:48:20,995 --> 01:48:22,861
I mean, the days and hours
would drag on,
1684
01:48:23,380 --> 01:48:24,949
and it would feel like
we weren't getting anything done.
1685
01:48:33,257 --> 01:48:35,999
It was more painful
than "Hotel California."
1686
01:48:36,176 --> 01:48:37,666
It was more of a painful birth
1687
01:48:37,845 --> 01:48:39,506
because all of this stuff
was going on,
1688
01:48:39,680 --> 01:48:42,138
and we were getting
pretty frazzled.
1689
01:48:44,935 --> 01:48:50,897
And the record company didn't care
if we farted and burped.
1690
01:48:52,276 --> 01:48:55,769
They would put that out.
They didn't care.
1691
01:48:55,946 --> 01:48:58,278
"When can we have it?"
1692
01:48:58,449 --> 01:49:01,612
Because that was
their whole corporate quarter.
1693
01:49:10,961 --> 01:49:15,876
At that point, we inked in
"The Long Run" as the title.
1694
01:49:16,500 --> 01:49:19,543
I think Henley said,
"Well, I know what to call this one.
1695
01:49:19,720 --> 01:49:20,960
Look at us."
1696
01:49:25,309 --> 01:49:27,721
Hold it. Stop.
1697
01:49:27,895 --> 01:49:29,385
That's it!
1698
01:49:31,231 --> 01:49:32,266
Song two.
1699
01:49:32,441 --> 01:49:34,728
Eagles -- "The Long Run" --
song two take one.
1700
01:49:34,902 --> 01:49:38,190
It was a struggle --
an endless start-stop-start-stop.
1701
01:49:38,363 --> 01:49:41,710
We called it "The Long One."
1702
01:49:41,909 --> 01:49:43,991
It was the beginning of the end,
1703
01:49:44,161 --> 01:49:47,199
even though I don't think
I saw it right then.
1704
01:49:51,335 --> 01:49:53,201
There were a lot of things
building up
1705
01:49:53,378 --> 01:49:56,211
and a lot of things I tried
to overlook for the good of the band.
1706
01:49:56,381 --> 01:50:00,545
And ultimately, I just couldn't
look past some of this anymore.
1707
01:50:00,719 --> 01:50:04,870
And it festered because
we didn't talk about these things.
1708
01:50:05,140 --> 01:50:07,510
It finally came to a head
in Long Beach.
1709
01:50:07,226 --> 01:50:10,594
We were doing a benefit
for Senator Alan Cranston.
1710
01:50:10,771 --> 01:50:13,229
He was concerned
about a lot of the same issues
1711
01:50:13,398 --> 01:50:14,559
we were concerned about,
1712
01:50:14,733 --> 01:50:17,395
including environmental destruction
and the war,
1713
01:50:17,569 --> 01:50:19,250
so we wanted to support him.
1714
01:50:19,196 --> 01:50:20,857
Now, Felder didn't like us
doing benefits.
1715
01:50:21,310 --> 01:50:23,523
He just thought that was money
that should be going into his pocket.
1716
01:50:23,700 --> 01:50:27,819
Why were we doing it
for Jerry Brown or anti-nukes?
1717
01:50:33,544 --> 01:50:36,411
Alan Cranston and his wife
are coming around
1718
01:50:36,588 --> 01:50:40,126
to personally thank every member
of the Eagles for doing this.
1719
01:50:40,300 --> 01:50:44,214
I was very uninformed
about politics.
1720
01:50:44,388 --> 01:50:46,425
I could care less about politics.
1721
01:50:46,598 --> 01:50:48,965
I didn't even know or care
who Alan Cranston was.
1722
01:50:49,768 --> 01:50:51,930
And Senator Cranston
went up to Felder and said,
1723
01:50:52,104 --> 01:50:53,310
"I want to thank you."
1724
01:50:53,480 --> 01:50:55,721
And Felder looked at the Senator
and said, "You're welcome."
1725
01:50:55,899 --> 01:50:58,891
Then as he was turning away,
he said, "I guess."
1726
01:50:59,690 --> 01:51:00,150
"lguessP
1727
01:51:00,320 --> 01:51:03,278
"I guess." And Glenn heard it.
1728
01:51:03,448 --> 01:51:06,941
And I just got really mad.
1729
01:51:07,119 --> 01:51:09,656
I was drinking a longneck Bud
and then walked into the tuning room
1730
01:51:09,830 --> 01:51:11,992
where Walsh and Felder was
and took the beer bottle
1731
01:51:12,166 --> 01:51:14,157
and threw it against the wall
and smashed it.
1732
01:51:16,128 --> 01:51:17,493
I stormed out.
1733
01:51:17,671 --> 01:51:20,663
I got more mad and more mad.
1734
01:51:20,841 --> 01:51:23,959
By the time we went onstage,
I was seething.
1735
01:51:24,136 --> 01:51:25,752
I wanted to kill Felder.
1736
01:51:25,929 --> 01:51:28,261
Thank you again very much
from all the Eagles
1737
01:51:28,432 --> 01:51:30,930
and from Senator Cranston
1738
01:51:30,267 --> 01:51:33,134
for coming out here
and checking it out.
1739
01:51:33,312 --> 01:51:34,848
One, two, three, four.
1740
01:51:40,194 --> 01:51:44,313
A lot of tensions
between Glenn and Felder,
1741
01:51:44,489 --> 01:51:50,201
and the real manifestation of it
came that night.
1742
01:51:57,252 --> 01:51:58,287
So now we're playing the show
1743
01:51:58,462 --> 01:52:00,499
and trying to act
like everything's okay,
1744
01:52:00,672 --> 01:52:02,379
and we'll get through a few songs.
1745
01:52:02,549 --> 01:52:04,665
And I just keep
looking over at him.
1746
01:52:04,843 --> 01:52:07,301
"You ungrateful son of a bitch."
1747
01:52:14,610 --> 01:52:15,517
The scene there --
1748
01:52:15,687 --> 01:52:17,974
I really saw how serious it was
at that show.
1749
01:52:18,148 --> 01:52:19,638
They were fighting onstage.
1750
01:52:19,816 --> 01:52:21,272
Szymczyk's got audio of it.
1751
01:52:32,871 --> 01:52:35,330
So we started getting
towards the end of the set,
1752
01:52:35,207 --> 01:52:38,245
and I'm looking at him going,
"Three more songs, asshole."
1753
01:52:38,418 --> 01:52:41,800
You know, and I'm looking at him,
and I am ready to go.
1754
01:52:41,255 --> 01:52:45,890
I can't wait
to get my hands on him.
1755
01:52:45,259 --> 01:52:48,547
"When we get off the stage,
I'm gonna kick your ass."
1756
01:52:54,268 --> 01:52:56,760
Whoa. When that kind of stuff
is onstage
1757
01:52:56,937 --> 01:53:01,226
and you're in front of people,
you got problems.
1758
01:53:05,612 --> 01:53:08,195
Thank you very much.
1759
01:53:08,365 --> 01:53:10,948
We got through the show,
and it just --
1760
01:53:11,118 --> 01:53:13,290
all hell broke loose backstage.
1761
01:53:13,954 --> 01:53:16,867
When the set ended,
he was out ahead of me,
1762
01:53:17,400 --> 01:53:18,451
took his cheapest guitar...
1763
01:53:24,923 --> 01:53:26,960
...busted it in a million pieces
1764
01:53:27,134 --> 01:53:29,171
and jumped in his limousine
and drove off.
1765
01:53:31,263 --> 01:53:32,719
And that was it.
1766
01:53:32,889 --> 01:53:35,960
That was really the straw
that broke the camel's back.
1767
01:53:44,609 --> 01:53:48,648
Someone wrote, "The Eagles went out
with a whimper, not a bang,"
1768
01:53:48,822 --> 01:53:50,438
which was true.
1769
01:53:58,290 --> 01:53:59,405
I didn't want to hear it.
1770
01:53:59,583 --> 01:54:02,666
This was, like,
my super dream had come true.
1771
01:54:07,507 --> 01:54:10,841
So I called Glenn, and I said,
"What is the status?
1772
01:54:11,110 --> 01:54:13,930
What's going on?
Is this thing really broken up?"
1773
01:54:13,263 --> 01:54:14,879
He said, "Yeah, it's over."
1774
01:54:16,933 --> 01:54:18,765
We were beat,
1775
01:54:18,935 --> 01:54:22,803
and it was really affecting
the foundational core --
1776
01:54:22,981 --> 01:54:24,517
the soul of the band.
1777
01:54:24,691 --> 01:54:26,807
We hit the wall.
1778
01:54:26,985 --> 01:54:28,146
You work, work, work, work, work.
1779
01:54:28,320 --> 01:54:33,300
You get up to a peak,
and then it's almost, you know,
1780
01:54:33,200 --> 01:54:37,615
invariably people head-butt
and, "Whose band is it?"
1781
01:54:37,788 --> 01:54:41,326
And, "I'm in charge," and,
"No, you're not," and there you go.
1782
01:54:49,716 --> 01:54:51,832
We had always said
that we wanted to step off the wave
1783
01:54:52,100 --> 01:54:53,967
just before it crashed
into the beach.
1784
01:54:54,554 --> 01:54:56,636
And we did.
1785
01:55:15,826 --> 01:55:18,670
The Beatle guys say
they never thought --
1786
01:55:18,245 --> 01:55:19,986
McCartney never thought
that band was gonna last
1787
01:55:20,163 --> 01:55:22,871
more than two years
because no pop band did.
1788
01:55:23,667 --> 01:55:25,249
I think it's part of it.
1789
01:55:25,419 --> 01:55:26,124
It comes together.
1790
01:55:26,294 --> 01:55:28,410
It's magic,
and it falls apart, you know?
1791
01:55:28,588 --> 01:55:34,400
But, you know, how cool
that it even happens at all.
1792
01:55:38,265 --> 01:55:39,505
It was magical.
1793
01:55:42,352 --> 01:55:44,138
They wrote
a lot of great, great songs
1794
01:55:44,312 --> 01:55:46,553
that will be celebrated
and listened to
1795
01:55:46,731 --> 01:55:47,937
and loved for a long time.
1796
01:55:49,818 --> 01:55:56,736
We managed to represent
that period of time in the '70s,
1797
01:55:56,908 --> 01:56:03,154
Southern California,
which was very artistically creative.
1798
01:56:03,331 --> 01:56:10,169
I hope that's remembered
like the Roaring '20s are, you know --
1799
01:56:10,338 --> 01:56:12,579
our generation and what we did.
1800
01:56:44,581 --> 01:56:48,165
We set out to become
a band for our time,
1801
01:56:48,335 --> 01:56:51,293
but sometimes
if you do a good enough job,
1802
01:56:51,463 --> 01:56:53,875
you become a band for all time.
139568
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