History of the Eagles Part One Page #9

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were going to be in the slammer.

It was dumb luck that

this guy bought my line

and didn't search them.

That was the day I decided, Irving Azoff

was the greatest manager in rock 'n' roll

and I would never do anything

without him by my side.

I had the only seat in a

major championship fight...

to be sitting there when, you

know, when a lyric was thrown out

and then hear a track.

My on my, you sure know

how to arrange things...

I've watched the creative

process with lots of people,

but I've never seen it the way

it fell in place with them.

I remember watching "Lyin' Eyes" written.

Glenn just had a way of coming

up with a phrase, you know?

He had written some kind of a tune,

and they were sitting in Tana's

one night and looking at some young

girl with an older guy at the bar,

and Glenn said, "Look at those lyin' eyes. "

And just... just like that,

wow, there's the song.

You can't hide your lyin' eyes

And your smile is a thin disguise

I thought by now you'd realise,

There ain't no way to

hide your lyin' eyes...

It was just about all these girls

who would come down to Dan Tana's

looking beautiful, and they'd be

there from 8:
00pm to midnight

and have dinner and drinks

with all of us rockers,

and then they'd go home

because they were kept women.

On the other side of

town, a boy is waiting

With fiery eyes and

dreams no one could steal

She drives on through

the night anticipating,

Cause he makes her feel the

way she used to feel...

You know, when we were doing the

"One of These Nights" album,

we'd gone through three albums,

and the only people who'd sung on any

hit records were Don and myself.

And Randy always felt like, you

know, he was a lead singer, too.

And I actually felt that way, too.

I liked his voice.

So, he brought in the beginnings

of 'Take It To the Limit',

and it became the Eagles'

first number-one single.

Take it to the limit, come on,

and take it to the limit,

One more time,

Take it to the limit...

The line 'Take It To the

Limit' was to keep trying

before you reach a point in your

life where you feel, you know,

you've done everything and seen

everything sort of feeling.

You know, a part of getting old,

and just to take it to the limit

one more time, like every day,

just keep punching away at it.

And that's all that I really...

that was the line,

and from there, the song took a

different, you know, course.

Take it to the limit,

AH,

(Take it to the limit)

I think everybody in the Eagles

did the level best we could.

You have to remember how young we were,

the fact that nobody had

anything when we started,

and you got all this stuff coming at you.

Meanwhile, you're touring all the time.

It's a lot.

To Bernie, success on any scale

was synonymous with selling out.

He wanted us to remain sort

of an underground band.

We had our problems with Bernie, and

Bernie had his problems with us.

Some of it was based on him being

able to have a voice in the Eagles

and record the songs he wanted

to, the way he wanted to.

We were getting more and more rocked out,

and I think Bernie was less

and less happy about that...

to the point that, one time, we

had worked on a track all night.

I mean, it was a rocked-out track,

and we're all sitting behind

the board the next day,

listening to the various takes

of it, trying to decide

which take we liked the best.

Bernie hadn't said a word.

So, I asked him over the board, I

said, "Bernie, what do you think?"

There's a long pause, and he

gets up, and he stretches,

and he says, "I think I'm going surfing. "

And he left.

I was caught in the middle a lot of times.

And sometimes I would agree with Bernie,

but most of the time, I

would agree with Glenn.

Glenn and I always wanted

the band to be a hybrid,

to encompass bluegrass and

country and rock 'n' roll.

There was a part of Bernie

that really resisted that.

After a while, it became a real problem,

particularly between Bernie and Glenn.

Finally, we were at the

Orange Bowl in Miami.

We were backstage, and we were

talking about what our next move

was going to be, what our

plans were supposed to be,

and I was animated and adamant

about what we needed to do next

here, there, and everywhere,

and Bernie comes over

and pours a beer on my head and

says, "You need to chill out, man. "

I have no idea. It was a spontaneous thing.

I mean, I take that incident

now quite seriously.

That was a very disrespectful thing to do.

Obviously, it was intended

to be humiliating to him,

I would say, and is something

I'm really not proud of.

It did illustrate a breaking point.

During that time, we got a couple shows

opening for the Rolling Stones, and

Irving was managing Joe Walsh.

Joe Walsh was a bona fide

rock 'n' roll guitar player.

So, for a couple of those

shows, just for our encores,

we'd put Joe Walsh in a road box,

and we'd come back to do an encore,

and we'd roll the road box out,

and just like the model

jumping out of a cake,

we'd open the guitar case,

and there would be Joe Walsh

with his Les Paul, and he'd climb

out of the box and plug in,

and the Eagles... We would

play 'Rocky Mountain Way. '

I loved the way he played.

I'd loved the James Gang when

I was growing up in Detroit.

Now I started thinking, "Joe

Walsh for Bernie Leadon. "

Spent the last year Rocky Mountain Way

Couldn't get much higher...

OK, maybe the vocals

won't be quite as good,

but, boy, are we going to kick some ass!

Time to open fire

And we don't need the ladies cryin'

'Cause the story's sad...

I think one of the things

that I brought into the band

that was good for the band was

to bring it up a notch when we played live.

Just keep kicking it in the

butt a little bit, you know?

All right, D.C., come on, give it up!

I went to a show, maybe eight months later,

and the band are interacting

with each other

exactly like we did with me

onstage, except instead of me,

Walsh was up there, and it just was,

like, really, really odd, you know,

to be watching it and not be part of it.

So, I actually left that show.

I was just like,

"This is, like, too weird. "

So, we got Joe Walsh in the band.

That's another adventure,

because Joe was an

interesting bunch of guys.

Hey, I tell you what. If

you got firecrackers,

just wait until you get home,

lock yourself in the closet,

and light everything you got, OK?

APPLAUSE:

Thank you, Joe.

He brought a lot of levity to just

about everything that happened,

which was needed at that time.

- Heads or tails?

- Heads.

Well, I could use a little head myself.

In those days, you didn't know

what he was going to do next.

It was fun most of the time,

although not all the time.

It was fun, depending on how

much you'd had to drink,

to see a television go sailing

off the 14th-floor balcony

and into the pool, as

long as nobody got hurt.

Joe Walsh was the American

King of room trash.

He had studied under some of the best.

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