History of the Eagles Part One Page #11

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song would affect as many

people on the planet as it did.

Thank you.

The rest of the album kind of

developed around that song.

The album, you could loosely say, is

a thematic album, a concept album.

Not unlike Desperado, Hotel California

was our reaction to what

was happening to us.

On just about every album we

made, there was some kind of a

commentary on the music business and

on American culture in general.

The hotel itself could be

taken as a metaphor not

only for the myth-making

of Southern California,

but for the myth-making that is

the American dream because it's a

fine line between the American

dream and the American nightmare.

When you're out there on your

own Where your memories...

All the songs we write for this

album can fit inside this concept.

.. You were lost until you found

out what it all comes down to...

Once the rest of the guys in the

band understood what the song

Hotel California was about,

it became kind of a theme,

and they started to customise

their writing to fit in with it.

.. Day by day It's only fair to wait...

I think that the Eagles started breaking up

during the recording of Hotel California.

There were creative tensions, but

there was always tension tensions.

By the time we got to

recording Hotel California,

if the song wasn't good enough

to survive the amount of time

we were working on the record,

it didn't make it on the record.

Perfection is not an accident.

'Our goal was just to be

the best we could be.

'We wanted to get better as songwriters'

and as performers, and we worked on it.

Don and I felt like there was

no space now for filler, and

Don Felder, for all of his talents

as a guitar player, is not a singer.

Felder wanted to write more, sing

more, and Felder had kind of

demanded that, "I'm going to sing

two songs on Hotel California. "

We were all alphas,

and we were all very assertive

and powerful in our own way.

You could bring in a great

track to Don and Glenn

and be really excited about it.

This happened to Felder.

I wrote the track for Victim Of Love.

It was going to be a follow-up

song on the Hotel California

record for me to sing.

.. Victim of love...

I have no recollection of anybody

being promised anything.

Victim Of Love was not brought

to the band as a complete song.

It was simply another chord progression

that Don Felder brought in.

It had no title, no lyrics, and no melody.

Glenn and I and JD Souther

all sat down and hammered

out the rest of it.

We did let Mr Felder sing it.

He sang it dozens of times over

the span of a week, over and over

and over again.

It simply didn't come up to band standards.

Victim Of Love had been recorded

with Felder as the lead vocalist,

and my job was to take Don

Felder out to lunch or dinner

while they went in the studio

and put Henley's vocal on it.

.. What kind of love have you got?

Irving took me out and said

that everybody in the band

thought that it was

better if Don sang that.

And it was a little bit of

a bitter pill to swallow.

I felt like Don was

taking that song from me.

I'd been promised a song

on the next record.

But there was no real way to

argue with my vocal versus

Don Henley's vocal.

There was no way to argue with

anybody's vocal in the band

compared to Don Henley.

Felder demanding to sing that song

would be the equivalent of me

demanding to play lead

guitar on Hotel California.

It just didn't make sense.

If you look at my vocal

participation in the Eagles

over the course of the

1970s, I sang less and less.

It was intentional. We had Don Henley.

Don and Glenn's position was, "This

is the best thing for the Eagles. "

And Don Felder never forgot that.

.. What kind of love have you got?

Get it! Get it! Run! Run! Run!

Sh*t!

This is a real healthy thing.

It promotes good feelings,

you know, among... the guys,

and it keeps us from killing each other.

Where's my glove? Who's got my glove?

If we can yell at each

other on a baseball field,

then we don't have to yell at

each other when we're working.

- Get all my frustrations out.

- What frustrations?

I haven't been getting laid.

We try to get out and play softball

with the crew if we have a day off.

- Swing, batter!

- Oh, it's gone, it's gone. It's gone.

'Something to help release the tension. '

That's really what I do

to keep from going crazy.

How do you keep from going crazy, Joe?

Well...

I tell you, I just, uh...

'In the press and the media,

it was presented that we were

'constantly at war, and I can't

say that's exactly the case.

'We were interacting and

we were all intense.

'Glenn said to me one time, '

"I get nuts sometimes and I'm sorry. "

Hey, Joe.

'But that tension had a lot to do with'

fanning the artistic fire.

Having that dynamic was

important in making the music.

Well, we're rehearsing now,

and before we're even playing

and guys are just noodling around

and getting their amps going

and stuff, we hear Joe go...

.. Do-do-do-do-do.

You know, and everyone would

kind of go, "What did you play?

"Play that again. "

That was an exercise I was doing

because it's a coordination thing.

You know, it's like one of these deals.

So, I was doing that to warm up, and

they said, "Well, what is that?"

And I said, "Well, that's just

something I have, you know?

There you go.

That's the lick.

That's what we should

build the song around.

I was riding shotgun in a Corvette

with a drug dealer on the way

to a poker game, and the next thing I knew,

we were going about 90 miles

an hour, holding big time.

I was like, "Hey, man. What are you doing?"

You know, and he looked

at me, and he grinned.

He goes, "Life in the fast lane. "

And I thought, immediately,

"Now, there's a song title. "

Life in the fast lane Surely

make you lose your mind

Life in the fast lane...

Then they put out the greatest hits.

There was a period where

we sold a million records

a month for 18 months.

It's a little-known fact that the

Eagles had the biggest-selling

album of the 20th century.

But the music business never ever

got honest of its own volition.

No record company ever went

to an artist and said,

"You've done a great job.

"We're going to increase your royalties. "

So we created our own promotion company.

We created our own management company.

We had our own booking agency.

Stop any time.

Take it to the limit...

We achieved an amount of success

beyond our wildest imagination,

and Randy really had trouble with it.

Bam! Bam!

'Randy used to have trouble singing the high

note at the end of Take It To The Limit. '

.. Come on and take it to the limit

One more time

Take it to the limit...

Oh, yeah, I was always

kind of scared, basically.

"What if I don't hit it right?"

It was a pretty high note.

And in the middle of the fade, you

crank the volume knob and go, "What?!"

Randy could do it, but if you made

him do it, "Oh, no, man, I, uh... "

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