I spent a pleasant evening Saturday listening to the music of the Eagles, as performed by a couple of well-liked cover bands from the St. Cloud area. The musicianship was fine, the crowd – in a sold-out theater that holds about 550 folks – was fired up, the company – long-time friends and a couple of spouses – was superb.
And, of course, I knew every one of the songs. I knew them fairly well, as it turned out, as I knew all the turns and twists, all the solos, and all the words. (Well, I was a bit short on words for “Funk 49,” the 1973 James Gang tune co-written by future Eagle Joe Walsh.)
So, when I saw down this morning to assess how I felt about the group – without question one of the most popular groups of the 1970s, a formative decade for me – I was surprised to find out that I don’t seem to have liked the Eagles all that much.
I didn’t dislike the group back then, and I don’t really dislike their work now. But of all the major groups and performers of my formative years, they seem to have left one of the slightest impressions on me.
How do I come to that conclusion? How does one measure disinterest?
Well, I turn to the music blog I wrote for fifteen years, Echoes In The Wind. Over the course of some 2,700 posts, I shared the music of the Eagles six times. Bob Dylan, with and without The Band, showed up ninety-one times. Bruce Springsteen, on his own and with the E Street Band and the Sessions Band, showed up sixty-nine times. Out of at least 5,000 selections (probably many more), I chose the Eagles six times.
Yes, I had a few of the Eagles’ albums among the 3,000 LPs I used to own, and I have a couple of CDs among the 1,500-or so that the Texas Gal and I have collected. I’ve got nine Eagles tracks among the 3,000 or so in my iPod. And the Eagles were abundantly present in the places I did my listening back in the long-ago days: the jukebox at the student union, AM and FM radio, on the turntable at my pal Rick’s house. (Rick and his brother Rob were among those with me Saturday evening.) But I didn’t – and don’t – really care about the band’s tunes. If I hear them, fine. If I don’t, that’s okay, too.
When I collated the list I called my Ultimate Jukebox, a 240-track exploration, I included one track by the Eagles, “Take It To The Limit,” the only track by the band that’s ever really touched me at all. (Springsteen got four tracks in that list, Dylan got two; I was being picky.)
I suppose I might change my mind if I do what I’ve done with other performers whose music has left me untouched: rip mp3s of their work as full albums and let those pop up on random as I putter at my computer and my desk. As I think I might have mentioned here before, that’s how I decided that except for two tracks, I don’t really like Roxy Music, and that method also helped me realize that Counting Crows’ stuff from the late 1990s was better than I’d thought.
If I do that, I might report the results here in a few months. And I was going to finish this post with a video of the only Eagles track that matters, “Take It To The Limit,” but the band seems to be pretty chintzy with its stuff at YouTube – a position that doesn’t surprise me – and the studio version isn’t available. So, here’s a lesser version, a live take from 1976. It’s better than nothing, I guess.
Which I kind of how I feel about the band.– whiteray
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