History of the Eagles Part One Page #12

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... One more time.

- Thank you.

- Randy Meisner.

He'd call the road manager and say,

"Tell Glenn I don't want to do

Take It To The Limit any more.

"Take it out of the set. " I

confronted him about this.

I called him up, and I said,

"Randy, there's thousands of people

waiting to hear you sing that song.

"You just can't say, 'F*** them.

I don't feel like it. '

"Do you think I like singing Take It Easy

"and Peaceful Easy Feeling every night?

"I'm tired of those songs,

"but there's people in the

audience who've been waiting

"years to see us do those songs. "

We just got fed up with that and

just said, "OK, don't sing it.

"Why don't you just quit? You

say you are unhappy, quit. "

Randy never knew how great he was.

He wasn't alpha.

Confrontations were really hard for him.

All I want to see is five guys

happy playing together, you know,

and that's what makes the music.

We were backstage and the

crowd was going wild.

And our encore number was

Take It To The Limit.

People loved that song, they went crazy

when Randy hit those high notes.

But Randy didn't want to

do the song that night.

He'd been up partying all

night with a couple of girls

and a bottle of vodka, and Glenn

kept trying to talk him into it.

He said, "Man, the people want to hear that song.

You've got to do it. "

And Randy kept saying no.

So after about the third or fourth

time that Randy refused, Glenn

just backed up a couple of steps

and said, "Well, f*** you then!"

There were police officers standing

backstage and when they saw us

about to go at it, they started to move in

and Henley turned right to the

cops and said, "Stay out of this!

"This is personal and it is

private, real f***ing private!"

The writing was on the wall

and Randy was going to leave.

There was only one person to ever

replace Randy Meisner in the Eagles

and in my mind it was Timothy B Schmit.

He replaced him in Poco, and plugged

in and sang the same parts.

And I remember sitting with Irving

and saying, "Irving, I think

"we should get Timothy Schmit. " He

said, "Well, I just saw Timothy.

"I was out on the road when the

guys in Poco were in the hotel bar

"and Timothy was smashed out

of his mind, he was jacked up.

"You sure about this?"

I said, "Irving, if you had

been in a band for 11 years

"and you were still making 250 a

week working 40 weeks a year,

"maybe you would be a little

smashed up yourself. "

They asked me to join their

band before I had even played

a note of music with them.

I just said, you know,

"Where do you want me? When?

"I am definitely in. "

We want to introduce you to the

newest member of our band.

He is our new bass player and we got

him from a really fine band, Poco.

Please give a nice Houston, Texas

welcome to Timothy Schmidt.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I went on the road with them

in 1978 as the new guy.

.. Your smile is a thin disguise...

And I heard a few, "Where is

Randy?" From the audience.

But I knew it was a good

move for them and me.

There were a lot of decisions

business-wise that needed to be made

in a secret session, Glenn and Don

and Irving in the back of the plane.

I didn't like that I wasn't part of that,

but I knew that it was good for the Eagles.

Don Felder REALLY did not like it.

Glenn and I saw ourselves

as the leaders of the band

but other people saw us dictators.

You just cannot have five leaders in a band.

It does not work.

People have to do what they do best.

There is all this undercurrent

and resentment and plotting

and complaining and I'm sure Timothy

thought, "What have I got myself into?"

I was just really happy to be there

and all these tensions, it is

not that I did not feel it, but

I had no idea how deep it was.

In my experience, all rock 'n'

roll bands are on the verge of

breaking up at all times.

The band at that point had begun

to split up into factions.

Don Felder, in an effort to gain more

control, had co-opted Joe Walsh,

so much of the time it was Felder

and Walsh against me and Glenn.

And at that point, even Glenn and I

were beginning to have our differences.

It was tearing the band apart.

The magic ingredient that

made the band successful was

the relationship between Don and Glenn.

Through years of touring, years

in the studio, all of that

friction really started driving a

wedge in between that relationship.

It reached a point where we

were just tired of each other.

Tired of the hoopla, tired of touring,

tired of pretty much everything.

At that point, song-writing

was becoming very difficult.

How much sleep did you guys get? When

did you get finished loading up?

- Two o'clock? - 5.30. - 530

this morning? - Yeah. - OK.

After the success of Hotel California

- Grammy winner, mega sales -

top that, and we show up at the

studio and nobody has one song done.

I don't know what we will do first but...

I had enough of a piece where

they both went "That's great.

"Let's develop that," and I was

really pleased that they wanted to

develop that one because it

came out more as an R&B song.

And it is very simple.

Very simple instrumentation,

very simple arrangement.

There's a lot of air in it.

That's why it works.

Look at us baby Up all night

Tearing our love apart

Aren't we the same two

people who live...

About halfway through, Don comes up

to me and says, "There's your hit. "

.. Every time I try to walk away

Something makes me turn around and stay

And I can't tell you why...

We are on top of the world. We are young.

We were overdoing everything.

There was a lot of chemical

dependency going on within

the band and that was rough.

During all of that time of writing

and recording The Long Run,

and all the time on the road

that we were on the road doing

The Long Run, we were all using cocaine.

When we first started snorting

coke it was like a writing tool.

Do a couple of bumps and kind of

get started talking about stuff,

get yourself going and launch into

some sort of idea for a song.

But in the end, cocaine brought

out the worst in everybody.

Yes, this half hour of the show

is brought to you by cocaine,

the makers of hits.

.. In the long run

Ooh I want to tell you

it's a long run...

Making that album was excruciating.

We were just completely burned out.

We had driven ourselves really

hard for almost a decade

and we were just fried.

It was long too. I mean, the days

and hours would drag on, it would

feel like we were not

getting anything done.

It was more painful than Hotel California.

It was more of a painful birth,

because all the stuff was going on

and we were getting pretty frazzled.

And the record company didn't

care if we farted and burped.

They would put that out. They didn't care.

"When can we have it?" Because that

was their whole corporate quarter.

Who can go the distance?

We will find out in the long run

In the long run...

At that point, we inked in

The Long Run as the title.

I think Henley said, "I know what

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