1 00:00:48,053 --> 00:00:49,513 - Pretty close. It's good. - Not too bad. 2 00:00:49,680 --> 00:00:51,640 It's gonna be about two minutes, so come on. 3 00:00:51,807 --> 00:00:52,808 Do what you got to do. 4 00:00:52,975 --> 00:00:55,018 We got to go. I need a wrist band. 5 00:00:55,185 --> 00:00:58,146 It's something that you can't do forever, you know? 6 00:00:58,313 --> 00:01:01,441 This is not a lifetime career that we can do, you know. 7 00:01:01,608 --> 00:01:03,443 - So -- - It's not? 8 00:01:09,324 --> 00:01:11,285 All right, let's go. 9 00:01:27,551 --> 00:01:30,012 Thank you, and good evening. 10 00:01:30,178 --> 00:01:32,139 We're the Eagles from Los Angeles. 11 00:01:35,934 --> 00:01:40,105 One, two, three, four. 12 00:02:04,087 --> 00:02:06,089 People are always saying things to me like, 13 00:02:06,256 --> 00:02:08,925 "You're just like a normal person." 14 00:02:09,092 --> 00:02:12,304 And I always say, "Of course." 15 00:02:14,806 --> 00:02:16,141 All right! 16 00:02:22,314 --> 00:02:24,024 We might be a little more world-wise, you know, 17 00:02:24,191 --> 00:02:25,275 than some of those kids, that's all. 18 00:02:25,442 --> 00:02:27,361 We just maybe have less innocence than they do, 19 00:02:27,527 --> 00:02:29,112 but, I mean, I eat, I sleep, I fall in love, 20 00:02:29,279 --> 00:02:30,781 I fall out of love, I work. 21 00:02:30,947 --> 00:02:32,741 You know, I do pretty much the same thing. 22 00:03:04,564 --> 00:03:08,485 We saw a poster of us when "On the Border" was made. 23 00:03:08,652 --> 00:03:11,279 Everybody looked like little kids, you know, 24 00:03:11,446 --> 00:03:13,156 like, early 20s and stuff. 25 00:03:13,323 --> 00:03:16,201 And everybody didn't have their wrinkles and their baggy eyes. 26 00:03:16,368 --> 00:03:18,662 Sort of like a president when he first takes office. 27 00:03:19,454 --> 00:03:21,707 And then, like four or five years later, 28 00:03:21,873 --> 00:03:24,793 you know, he just walks out, and his hair is gray, 29 00:03:24,960 --> 00:03:26,128 and his eyes are drooping, 30 00:03:26,294 --> 00:03:28,880 and he's just really, you know, real burned. 31 00:03:38,473 --> 00:03:41,393 The first thing that happens is you get some kind of label, 32 00:03:41,560 --> 00:03:43,103 and then you got to live up to it, 33 00:03:43,270 --> 00:03:45,397 and then you just get caught in that, 34 00:03:45,564 --> 00:03:49,276 and I forget what the second thing is. 35 00:04:02,998 --> 00:04:04,875 It's hard. It's like living two lives. 36 00:04:05,041 --> 00:04:07,544 You know, I have a family, three kids. 37 00:04:07,711 --> 00:04:10,756 And it's just hard to live in between that line, 38 00:04:10,922 --> 00:04:14,760 you know, of being out on the road and being away for a month. 39 00:04:39,701 --> 00:04:41,953 Maybe we wouldn't want to do this anymore, 40 00:04:42,120 --> 00:04:43,747 or maybe we can't do this anymore, 41 00:04:43,914 --> 00:04:46,416 or maybe nobody will give a shit if we do this anymore. 42 00:04:56,051 --> 00:04:57,093 Thank you. 43 00:05:08,396 --> 00:05:11,107 No, I insist. You first. 44 00:05:11,274 --> 00:05:13,109 Hi, there. 45 00:05:15,695 --> 00:05:17,948 Lock it up. A hearty bunch out there. 46 00:05:18,114 --> 00:05:19,407 Oh, he's not even here. Now... 47 00:05:19,574 --> 00:05:21,284 Hey, driver, lock 'em up for us tonight, okay? 48 00:05:21,451 --> 00:05:22,244 Out of sight. 49 00:05:22,410 --> 00:05:25,330 You just don't know what those kids will do. 50 00:05:25,497 --> 00:05:27,541 Doggone. 51 00:05:32,921 --> 00:05:33,797 How about a beer? 52 00:05:33,964 --> 00:05:35,340 - Is that what I heard? - You got it, brother. 53 00:05:35,507 --> 00:05:38,718 Don't hurt yourself, young America. 54 00:05:40,011 --> 00:05:41,012 Would you like one? 55 00:05:41,179 --> 00:05:43,181 Yeah, I would like one. I'm gonna drink tonight. 56 00:05:44,850 --> 00:05:47,727 I think they feel like they're up there, you know, 57 00:05:47,894 --> 00:05:49,855 like they're on the stage. 58 00:05:50,021 --> 00:05:52,482 'Cause we look like them. We dress like them. 59 00:05:52,649 --> 00:05:54,234 Part of it is that, and part of it's the records. 60 00:05:54,401 --> 00:05:55,443 I think they just relate to the songs. 61 00:05:55,610 --> 00:05:58,655 I think it's 50/50, I guess. 62 00:05:58,864 --> 00:06:00,240 The thing is now is to try to see 63 00:06:00,407 --> 00:06:02,450 how long we can stay up here at the top of the mountain. 64 00:06:02,617 --> 00:06:05,161 It's very narrow and windy up here. 65 00:06:05,328 --> 00:06:06,872 We can probably continue doing what we're doing 66 00:06:07,038 --> 00:06:09,082 as long as the songs keep coming. 67 00:06:09,249 --> 00:06:10,458 That's the only thing that frightens us 68 00:06:10,625 --> 00:06:12,878 is to not be able to do that anymore. 69 00:06:13,044 --> 00:06:15,005 If nothing comes up, we would be in trouble. 70 00:06:15,171 --> 00:06:16,214 So far, so good. 71 00:06:16,381 --> 00:06:19,551 I think we can maintain this for a few more years. 72 00:06:19,718 --> 00:06:21,261 I don't see why not. 73 00:06:21,428 --> 00:06:22,679 Other people have -- the Rolling Stones 74 00:06:22,846 --> 00:06:24,973 and the Who and the Led -- and Led Zeppelin -- 75 00:06:25,140 --> 00:06:28,977 I almost said the Led Zeppelin -- have done it. 76 00:06:29,144 --> 00:06:30,979 Chicago's done it. 77 00:06:32,731 --> 00:06:36,610 Groups last longer than they used to, you know. 78 00:06:40,405 --> 00:06:41,907 Shit don't float. 79 00:06:59,883 --> 00:07:04,512 90% of the time, being in the Eagles was a fucking blast. 80 00:07:04,679 --> 00:07:06,765 You know, I was living the dream. 81 00:07:12,270 --> 00:07:13,772 We never in our wildest dreams 82 00:07:13,939 --> 00:07:17,442 figured on being this successful and lasting this long. 83 00:07:18,902 --> 00:07:21,613 We were a bunch of guys out there touring the country. 84 00:07:21,780 --> 00:07:23,949 We had a little private plane. 85 00:07:24,115 --> 00:07:27,202 We had parties after the shows. We had a good time. 86 00:07:27,369 --> 00:07:29,371 We were starting to make some money. 87 00:07:32,958 --> 00:07:37,045 We had three guitar players finally, you know, so we could rock a bit. 88 00:07:37,212 --> 00:07:39,464 So, it was a good time, a good time for me, 89 00:07:39,631 --> 00:07:41,633 a good time for Don. 90 00:07:45,553 --> 00:07:47,097 Everybody was really happy... 91 00:07:48,890 --> 00:07:50,892 ...then. 92 00:07:56,064 --> 00:08:00,986 It was going really fast, and probably too fast. 93 00:08:07,826 --> 00:08:10,161 There was turmoil within the band. 94 00:08:10,328 --> 00:08:12,497 We put a lot of pressure on ourselves. 95 00:08:12,664 --> 00:08:16,167 As Glenn used to say, "We made it, and it ate us." 96 00:08:16,334 --> 00:08:18,169 It's hard to be in a group. 97 00:08:18,336 --> 00:08:19,587 It's a bit like being in a marriage, 98 00:08:19,754 --> 00:08:21,965 if you quadruple it or quintuple it, in our case. 99 00:08:23,925 --> 00:08:25,510 They asked Don when the Eagles broke up, 100 00:08:25,677 --> 00:08:27,679 "What was that like for you?" 101 00:08:27,846 --> 00:08:30,682 And he said it was a horrible relief. 102 00:08:31,599 --> 00:08:35,311 And I think that clocks it pretty well. 103 00:08:37,647 --> 00:08:39,816 You're a real pro, Don, all the way. 104 00:08:39,983 --> 00:08:41,693 Yeah, you are, too -- the way you handle people. 105 00:08:41,860 --> 00:08:43,945 Except the people you pay, nobody gives a shit about it. 106 00:08:44,112 --> 00:08:47,866 Fuck you. I've been paying you for seven years, you fuckhead. 107 00:08:48,033 --> 00:08:51,202 So much stuff just happened. 108 00:08:51,369 --> 00:08:56,249 You know, there's a philosopher who says, 109 00:08:56,416 --> 00:08:59,461 As you live your life... 110 00:09:00,879 --> 00:09:06,760 ...it appears to be anarchy and chaos 111 00:09:06,926 --> 00:09:09,721 and random events, 112 00:09:09,888 --> 00:09:14,350 non-related events smashing into each other 113 00:09:14,517 --> 00:09:16,853 and causing this situation," 114 00:09:17,020 --> 00:09:22,358 and then -- then this happens, and it's overwhelming, 115 00:09:22,525 --> 00:09:28,948 and it just looks like, "What in the world is going on?" 116 00:09:29,115 --> 00:09:35,288 And later, when you look back at it, 117 00:09:35,455 --> 00:09:40,001 it looks like a finely-crafted novel, 118 00:09:40,168 --> 00:09:44,089 but at the time, it don't. 119 00:09:45,215 --> 00:09:49,135 And a lot of the Eagles' story is like that. 120 00:09:50,428 --> 00:09:52,430 I'm gonna fuckin' kill you. 121 00:09:52,597 --> 00:09:56,518 I can't wait. I can't wait. 122 00:10:00,438 --> 00:10:02,482 We might as well start at the beginning. 123 00:10:06,945 --> 00:10:09,572 I grew up in Detroit, Michigan. 124 00:10:09,739 --> 00:10:10,824 My dad worked in a factory. 125 00:10:10,990 --> 00:10:13,576 My mother baked pies at General Motors. 126 00:10:13,743 --> 00:10:16,538 I started taking piano lessons when I was five years old. 127 00:10:16,704 --> 00:10:20,125 That alone could get you beat up after school in suburban Detroit. 128 00:10:28,258 --> 00:10:32,303 Detroit was Motown, and so they played all the Motown hits. 129 00:10:39,686 --> 00:10:42,814 And that was the kind of stuff that we would listen to. 130 00:10:43,648 --> 00:10:45,733 I stopped playing piano when I was 12. 131 00:10:45,900 --> 00:10:46,818 It was too much. 132 00:10:46,985 --> 00:10:48,319 I wanted to do other things, 133 00:10:48,486 --> 00:10:51,531 and I think the girl thing was starting to happen, as well. 134 00:10:54,159 --> 00:10:56,119 Then the Beatles came along, 135 00:10:56,286 --> 00:10:59,038 and my Aunt took me down to see the Beatles at the Olympia. 136 00:11:00,832 --> 00:11:01,749 It was crazy. 137 00:11:01,916 --> 00:11:03,376 I remember having a girl 138 00:11:03,543 --> 00:11:05,503 that was standing on her seat in front of me 139 00:11:05,670 --> 00:11:11,467 fall backwards into my arms, delirious, going, "Paul, Paul." 140 00:11:11,634 --> 00:11:14,304 You know, and I thought, "Oh, my God." 141 00:11:14,804 --> 00:11:17,682 I have a very vivid memory of seeing the Beatles 142 00:11:17,849 --> 00:11:19,934 with my parents on our old Admiral TV set. 143 00:11:20,101 --> 00:11:21,436 It was like a bolt of lightning. 144 00:11:21,603 --> 00:11:24,147 It had a huge impact on me. It was revolutionary. 145 00:11:24,314 --> 00:11:26,816 And it was an impact that would last a lifetime, 146 00:11:26,983 --> 00:11:29,110 and I know that had a huge impact on Glenn, too, 147 00:11:29,277 --> 00:11:31,279 even though we didn't know each other at the time. 148 00:11:35,116 --> 00:11:37,035 Linden, Texas, is my hometown. 149 00:11:37,202 --> 00:11:39,662 It's a small town in Northeastern Texas. 150 00:11:39,829 --> 00:11:41,080 When I was growing up, 151 00:11:41,247 --> 00:11:43,666 the population was about 2,500, 2,600. 152 00:11:47,962 --> 00:11:50,548 It's primarily an agricultural area. 153 00:11:50,715 --> 00:11:52,383 Some people worked at the steel mill. 154 00:11:52,550 --> 00:11:54,677 It's just a typical small Texas town. 155 00:11:54,844 --> 00:11:56,721 There's an old courthouse 156 00:11:56,888 --> 00:12:01,017 dating back to before the Civil War and one stoplight. 157 00:12:01,184 --> 00:12:04,479 It's kind of like "The Last Picture Show," you know? 158 00:12:05,897 --> 00:12:06,898 It was a great place musically 159 00:12:07,065 --> 00:12:09,400 because it was kind of a cultural crossroads. 160 00:12:09,567 --> 00:12:10,526 It's really located 161 00:12:10,693 --> 00:12:12,862 where the old South begins to meet the West. 162 00:12:14,572 --> 00:12:17,367 Linden, Texas, was the birthplace of Scott Joplin 163 00:12:17,533 --> 00:12:19,118 and T-Bone Walker. 164 00:12:22,330 --> 00:12:23,748 Both my parents loved music, 165 00:12:23,915 --> 00:12:26,501 so we had a lot of records in the house. 166 00:12:26,668 --> 00:12:31,047 I was exposed to music of all kinds from an early age -- 167 00:12:31,214 --> 00:12:32,382 you know, country-and-western music, 168 00:12:32,548 --> 00:12:35,260 Western swing music, gospel music, blues, 169 00:12:35,426 --> 00:12:38,805 Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and Patsy Cline. 170 00:12:45,687 --> 00:12:48,356 There was a 50,000-watt radio station in New Orleans, 171 00:12:48,523 --> 00:12:52,235 and I heard things on that station that I didn't hear anywhere else. 172 00:12:53,569 --> 00:12:55,947 So, I had a lot of radio coming in. 173 00:12:57,907 --> 00:12:59,534 And when I would go to work with my dad, 174 00:12:59,701 --> 00:13:04,038 he would listen to a station in Shreveport, Louisiana -- KWKH. 175 00:13:14,924 --> 00:13:17,677 And that station broadcast a radio show 176 00:13:17,844 --> 00:13:19,137 called the "Louisiana Hayride," 177 00:13:19,304 --> 00:13:23,224 where Elvis Presley made his first radio broadcast in 1954. 178 00:13:36,279 --> 00:13:40,408 The very first rock-'n'-roll record I bought was by Elvis Presley. 179 00:13:43,786 --> 00:13:46,289 My playing the drums was sort of an organic process. 180 00:13:46,456 --> 00:13:48,333 I began by beating on my school books 181 00:13:48,499 --> 00:13:51,669 with my fingers and with pencils. 182 00:13:51,836 --> 00:13:52,879 I would beat out little cadences, 183 00:13:53,046 --> 00:13:55,465 and I used to drive my classmates crazy doing that, 184 00:13:55,631 --> 00:13:57,300 until, I think, one day, somebody said to me -- 185 00:13:57,467 --> 00:13:58,760 I think it was my friend Richard Bowden -- 186 00:13:58,926 --> 00:14:01,012 he said, "Why don't you just start playing the drums?" 187 00:14:01,846 --> 00:14:05,058 I managed to cobble together a drum kit from old drums 188 00:14:05,224 --> 00:14:08,353 that I found stashed in the back of the band hall in high school. 189 00:14:08,519 --> 00:14:10,938 And then one day, my mom said, "Come on, get in the car." 190 00:14:11,105 --> 00:14:13,733 And she drove me to a town about an hour and a half away 191 00:14:13,900 --> 00:14:17,320 called Sulphur Springs, Texas, to McKay Music Company. 192 00:14:17,487 --> 00:14:19,030 Much to my surprise, 193 00:14:19,197 --> 00:14:21,824 she bought me a set of red-sparkle Slingerland drums 194 00:14:21,991 --> 00:14:24,369 that I still have today. 195 00:14:24,535 --> 00:14:26,704 So, I have to give my parents a lot of credit. 196 00:14:26,871 --> 00:14:28,206 They bought me that drum kit 197 00:14:28,373 --> 00:14:30,625 even though they couldn't really afford it. 198 00:14:34,212 --> 00:14:35,296 The first band I was in 199 00:14:35,463 --> 00:14:38,299 was a band with my high-school buddy Richard Bowden 200 00:14:38,466 --> 00:14:40,676 and another high-school friend, Jerry Surratt, 201 00:14:40,843 --> 00:14:42,553 and we played Dixieland jazz music. 202 00:14:42,720 --> 00:14:45,681 Nobody sang. We just played music. 203 00:14:52,438 --> 00:14:53,689 I went to a high-school party, 204 00:14:53,856 --> 00:14:55,441 and there were four kids who were freshmen in high school 205 00:14:55,608 --> 00:14:56,651 who were playing. 206 00:14:56,818 --> 00:14:59,278 I was a junior, and I had a couple beers that night 207 00:14:59,445 --> 00:15:01,906 and said, "Hey, you know, do you know 'Satisfaction'? 208 00:15:02,073 --> 00:15:03,199 'Cause I can sing it." 209 00:15:03,366 --> 00:15:06,411 So, I became the lead singer of the Subterraneans. 210 00:15:11,249 --> 00:15:13,126 I played in the Subterraneans for a while, 211 00:15:13,292 --> 00:15:15,753 and then I played in another band called the Mushrooms. 212 00:15:15,920 --> 00:15:17,922 The most important thing that happened to me 213 00:15:18,089 --> 00:15:20,007 when I was in Detroit was I met Bob Seger. 214 00:15:28,766 --> 00:15:30,351 He took me under his wing. 215 00:15:30,518 --> 00:15:33,563 He invited me to recording sessions that he was having, you know, 216 00:15:33,729 --> 00:15:35,898 so I could see how records were made. 217 00:15:36,065 --> 00:15:37,692 I was his mentor. 218 00:15:37,859 --> 00:15:39,110 He was just so young, 219 00:15:39,277 --> 00:15:41,904 and I liked him right away because he was so funny. 220 00:15:42,071 --> 00:15:44,031 He had a great sense of humor, 221 00:15:44,198 --> 00:15:47,994 and, like me, I could see he was really ambitious. 222 00:15:48,161 --> 00:15:50,163 He really wanted to be on the radio. 223 00:15:50,329 --> 00:15:52,999 He cut a song called "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man." 224 00:15:53,166 --> 00:15:55,793 He let me play acoustic guitar on the basic track 225 00:15:55,960 --> 00:15:57,837 and sing background vocals. 226 00:16:03,718 --> 00:16:06,387 You can really hear Glenn blurt out on the first chorus. 227 00:16:06,554 --> 00:16:08,639 He comes out really loud. 228 00:16:08,806 --> 00:16:10,099 Tremendous gusto. 229 00:16:10,266 --> 00:16:11,726 Of course, that was a national hit for us, 230 00:16:11,893 --> 00:16:14,145 so that was really cool. 231 00:16:14,312 --> 00:16:16,731 Bob was the first guy that wrote his own songs 232 00:16:16,898 --> 00:16:18,483 and recorded them that I had ever met. 233 00:16:18,649 --> 00:16:20,401 He said, "You know, if you want to make it, 234 00:16:20,568 --> 00:16:22,320 you're gonna have to write your own songs." 235 00:16:22,487 --> 00:16:24,071 And I said, "Well, what if they're bad?" 236 00:16:24,238 --> 00:16:25,907 And he said, "Well, they're gonna be bad." 237 00:16:26,073 --> 00:16:27,992 He says, "You just keep writing and keep writing, 238 00:16:28,159 --> 00:16:29,827 and eventually, you'll write a good song." 239 00:16:32,079 --> 00:16:33,414 We were gonna have a band together. 240 00:16:33,581 --> 00:16:34,999 He was gonna get rid of his other guys, 241 00:16:35,166 --> 00:16:37,293 and I was gonna be his bass player. 242 00:16:37,460 --> 00:16:39,337 It didn't work out. 243 00:16:39,504 --> 00:16:41,964 My mom found me smoking pot with a friend of mine 244 00:16:42,131 --> 00:16:43,257 in somebody's basement, 245 00:16:43,424 --> 00:16:45,718 and she called up Seger's manager, Punch Andrews, 246 00:16:45,885 --> 00:16:49,639 and said, "Just a minute, not so fast." 247 00:16:52,391 --> 00:16:53,976 In the years leading up to the Great Depression, 248 00:16:54,143 --> 00:16:56,229 my dad had to quit school after the eighth grade. 249 00:16:56,395 --> 00:16:57,605 He had to go home and work in the fields 250 00:16:57,772 --> 00:17:00,024 with his brother and sister to help support the family. 251 00:17:00,191 --> 00:17:02,860 His fondest wish -- in fact, his life's goal 252 00:17:03,027 --> 00:17:04,862 was that I would go to college. 253 00:17:05,613 --> 00:17:08,783 Every Saturday night, he would bring home seven quarters, 254 00:17:08,950 --> 00:17:10,785 and we'd put them in a piggy bank, 255 00:17:10,952 --> 00:17:14,372 and when those quarters amounted to $100, 256 00:17:14,539 --> 00:17:17,083 he would take me to the bank and we would buy a savings bond, 257 00:17:17,250 --> 00:17:19,293 a United States savings bond, 258 00:17:19,460 --> 00:17:22,672 and put that away for my college education. 259 00:17:23,881 --> 00:17:25,675 So, between what my dad had saved 260 00:17:25,841 --> 00:17:28,177 and between what I was making doing gigs all over Texas 261 00:17:28,344 --> 00:17:29,971 and Arkansas and Louisiana on weekends, 262 00:17:30,137 --> 00:17:33,099 I paid for 3 1/2 years of college. 263 00:17:33,266 --> 00:17:35,643 They have a world-famous music department 264 00:17:35,810 --> 00:17:37,395 in which I did not excel. 265 00:17:37,562 --> 00:17:38,646 I took one music course. 266 00:17:38,813 --> 00:17:42,525 I think it was beginning theory, and I flunked. 267 00:17:42,692 --> 00:17:44,360 I made an "F." 268 00:17:44,527 --> 00:17:47,613 But I didn't really care because I was an English major. 269 00:17:54,328 --> 00:17:55,538 Well, after the Mushrooms, 270 00:17:55,705 --> 00:17:58,874 I got invited to join this band called the Four of Us. 271 00:17:59,041 --> 00:18:01,919 Started getting into some of the California bands -- 272 00:18:02,086 --> 00:18:04,672 the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, the Beach Boys. 273 00:18:04,839 --> 00:18:07,133 Always wanted to go to California. 274 00:18:07,300 --> 00:18:09,885 And I got out there, my mind was blown. 275 00:18:10,052 --> 00:18:12,096 The vegetation -- I'd never seen palm trees. 276 00:18:12,263 --> 00:18:14,390 You know, it was just like a dream come true. 277 00:18:23,691 --> 00:18:27,612 The first celebrity I saw was David Crosby. 278 00:18:33,951 --> 00:18:36,203 And he had on that flat-brimmed hat 279 00:18:36,370 --> 00:18:38,080 that he wore on the second Byrds album, 280 00:18:38,247 --> 00:18:39,498 and he had a little leather cape on, 281 00:18:39,665 --> 00:18:43,711 and I just looked and I thought, "My God, there's David Crosby." 282 00:18:43,878 --> 00:18:46,297 Zoom, and we went right by. 283 00:18:53,638 --> 00:18:56,307 And the first person I met was John David Souther. 284 00:18:56,474 --> 00:18:58,643 We wanted to get high and play music. 285 00:18:58,809 --> 00:19:00,561 There were two of us with guitars. 286 00:19:00,728 --> 00:19:03,314 We were listening to a lot of that sort of interface 287 00:19:03,481 --> 00:19:05,983 between rock 'n' roll and country-and-western music 288 00:19:06,150 --> 00:19:08,819 that was happening in Southern California at the time 289 00:19:08,986 --> 00:19:10,112 with the Byrds and Dillard and Clark 290 00:19:10,279 --> 00:19:12,948 and the Burrito Brothers and Poco. 291 00:19:24,168 --> 00:19:27,421 There was a lot of great music of that sort going around then. 292 00:19:27,588 --> 00:19:28,839 Longbranch Pennywhistle here. 293 00:19:29,006 --> 00:19:30,758 I suppose you wonder what that name meant, 294 00:19:30,925 --> 00:19:31,926 and John David and I -- 295 00:19:32,093 --> 00:19:34,553 It was a well-kept... funky women. 296 00:19:35,721 --> 00:19:37,139 The songs weren't very good. 297 00:19:37,306 --> 00:19:39,934 I don't think Glenn and I were very far along as songwriters then. 298 00:19:46,065 --> 00:19:48,067 We were a funny little group, but we got gigs. 299 00:19:48,234 --> 00:19:50,695 We, you know, managed to play in some of the folk clubs 300 00:19:50,861 --> 00:19:51,570 around L.A. -- 301 00:19:51,737 --> 00:19:56,534 the Golden Bear and the Ash Grove. 302 00:20:05,960 --> 00:20:08,504 We had a chance meeting with Kenny Rogers 303 00:20:08,671 --> 00:20:09,797 in Dallas, Texas, one day. 304 00:20:09,964 --> 00:20:11,924 He was coming through town with the First Edition. 305 00:20:12,091 --> 00:20:14,093 They were very hot at the time. 306 00:20:17,388 --> 00:20:19,056 I remember this like it was yesterday. 307 00:20:19,223 --> 00:20:22,059 This little kid came up and said, "Mr. Rogers," 308 00:20:22,226 --> 00:20:25,563 he said, "I'm Don Henley, and I'm with a group called Felicity, 309 00:20:25,730 --> 00:20:27,314 and we're doing a show tonight, 310 00:20:27,481 --> 00:20:29,650 and we'd love to have you come see us." 311 00:20:29,817 --> 00:20:32,236 And I said, "You know, I'm really sorry, but I don't do that. 312 00:20:32,403 --> 00:20:35,364 I don't just go to clubs and watch groups." 313 00:20:35,531 --> 00:20:38,242 He said, "I really think you'd like us." 314 00:20:38,409 --> 00:20:41,203 And I thought, "Well, that's pretty cool," so I did. 315 00:20:55,301 --> 00:20:58,929 Kenny is a Texas boy, and he was looking for groups to produce. 316 00:20:59,096 --> 00:21:00,139 So, I brought them to L.A., 317 00:21:00,306 --> 00:21:03,768 and they literally lived at my house for about four months. 318 00:21:05,352 --> 00:21:07,146 We changed their name to Shiloh. 319 00:21:07,313 --> 00:21:10,691 It was so much fun to take them into the studio. 320 00:21:22,036 --> 00:21:24,705 With Shiloh, we made one album, and it had a single called 321 00:21:24,872 --> 00:21:28,000 "Simple Little Down Home Rock and Roll Love Song for Rosie." 322 00:21:28,167 --> 00:21:30,127 Not exactly a short title. 323 00:21:35,966 --> 00:21:38,260 We didn't know much about the business at that point. 324 00:21:38,427 --> 00:21:39,637 We were pretty naive. 325 00:21:43,724 --> 00:21:46,060 We kicked around in the L.A. clubs for a while, 326 00:21:46,227 --> 00:21:47,394 played the Whisky, 327 00:21:47,561 --> 00:21:51,065 played some of the clubs down in the South Bay area, 328 00:21:51,232 --> 00:21:52,942 and nothing really happened for us. 329 00:21:55,820 --> 00:21:59,406 J.D. and I were looking for any place to play. 330 00:21:59,573 --> 00:22:01,283 We had heard about this guy Jackson Browne. 331 00:22:01,450 --> 00:22:03,244 He'd been playing the same clubs we had, 332 00:22:03,410 --> 00:22:05,913 but we never had seen him perform. 333 00:22:06,080 --> 00:22:08,249 This is California. Mr. Jackson Browne. 334 00:22:08,415 --> 00:22:09,500 Ah, thank you, thank you. 335 00:22:09,667 --> 00:22:11,335 Then there were a bunch of gigs that they had 336 00:22:11,502 --> 00:22:12,586 and some gigs that I had 337 00:22:12,753 --> 00:22:15,256 that they would show up at my gigs and me at their gigs, 338 00:22:15,422 --> 00:22:16,841 and we became really good friends. 339 00:22:17,007 --> 00:22:18,092 This is -- 340 00:22:18,259 --> 00:22:19,844 And we'd start talking about, 341 00:22:20,010 --> 00:22:21,762 "Where do you live, and what's going on?" 342 00:22:21,929 --> 00:22:25,474 And Jackson said, "You know, you should come down to Echo Park. 343 00:22:25,641 --> 00:22:27,685 Rent's real cheap." 344 00:22:27,852 --> 00:22:30,688 Glenn got the apartment next to my apartment, 345 00:22:30,855 --> 00:22:35,568 and this apartment cost like $125 or something a month, you know. 346 00:22:35,734 --> 00:22:36,986 And I needed to economize, 347 00:22:37,152 --> 00:22:39,738 so I moved into the basement underneath Glenn's place, 348 00:22:39,905 --> 00:22:42,241 which I could get into for $35 a month. 349 00:22:42,408 --> 00:22:43,659 It only had one door. 350 00:22:43,826 --> 00:22:47,371 It was really just kind of an illegal place, just a cubbyhole, 351 00:22:47,538 --> 00:22:51,083 and that's where Jackson lived, with J.D. and I above. 352 00:22:51,250 --> 00:22:52,209 You know, that was it. 353 00:22:52,376 --> 00:22:55,087 There was a stereo, a piano, a bed, a guitar, 354 00:22:55,254 --> 00:22:58,048 you know, a teapot. 355 00:23:00,718 --> 00:23:03,387 We slept late in those days, 356 00:23:03,554 --> 00:23:05,431 except around 9:00 in the morning, 357 00:23:05,598 --> 00:23:08,017 I'd hear Jackson Browne's teapot going off, 358 00:23:08,183 --> 00:23:10,394 this whistle in the distance. 359 00:23:10,561 --> 00:23:13,188 And then I'd hear him playing piano. 360 00:23:13,355 --> 00:23:15,566 I didn't really know how to write songs. 361 00:23:15,733 --> 00:23:20,070 I knew I wanted to write songs, but I didn't know exactly -- 362 00:23:20,237 --> 00:23:23,532 you just wait around for inspiration, what was the deal? 363 00:23:23,699 --> 00:23:28,746 Well, I learned through Jackson's ceiling and my floor 364 00:23:28,913 --> 00:23:31,332 exactly how to write songs 'cause Jackson would get up, 365 00:23:31,498 --> 00:23:34,752 and he'd play the first verse and first chorus, 366 00:23:34,919 --> 00:23:37,004 and he'd play it 20 times 367 00:23:37,171 --> 00:23:39,590 until he had it just the way he wanted. 368 00:23:39,757 --> 00:23:41,425 And then there'd be silence. 369 00:23:41,592 --> 00:23:44,053 And then I'd hear the teapot go off again. 370 00:23:44,219 --> 00:23:46,513 Then it'd be quiet for 10 or 20 minutes. 371 00:23:46,680 --> 00:23:48,933 Then I'd hear him start to play again, 372 00:23:49,099 --> 00:23:51,185 and there was the second verse. 373 00:23:51,352 --> 00:23:52,561 So, then he'd work on the second verse, 374 00:23:52,728 --> 00:23:53,896 and he'd play it 20 times. 375 00:23:54,063 --> 00:23:56,065 And then he'd go back to the top of the song, 376 00:23:56,231 --> 00:23:58,192 and he'd play the first verse, the first chorus, 377 00:23:58,359 --> 00:24:00,444 and the second verse another 20 times 378 00:24:00,611 --> 00:24:03,364 until he was really comfortable with it and, you know, 379 00:24:03,530 --> 00:24:07,034 change a word here or there, and I'm up there going, 380 00:24:07,201 --> 00:24:09,119 "So, that's how you do it -- 381 00:24:09,286 --> 00:24:15,417 elbow grease, you know, time, thought, persistence." 382 00:24:32,059 --> 00:24:33,811 I wanted to kill him sometimes. 383 00:24:33,978 --> 00:24:38,482 Jackson would play the same phrase, "Doctor, My Eyes" for six weeks. 384 00:24:38,649 --> 00:24:40,859 The same thing with "The Pretender." I just wanted to murder him. 385 00:24:46,073 --> 00:24:48,534 And it was during that period of time that I met Glenn Frey 386 00:24:48,701 --> 00:24:50,202 because we were on the same label 387 00:24:50,369 --> 00:24:51,495 called Amos records. 388 00:24:51,662 --> 00:24:53,872 Some of the things that struck me when I first met Glenn 389 00:24:54,039 --> 00:24:55,624 were things we had in common. 390 00:24:55,791 --> 00:24:59,336 Both of our dads made a living in the automotive industry. 391 00:24:59,503 --> 00:25:02,214 Glenn and I loved old cars, especially cars from the '50s. 392 00:25:02,381 --> 00:25:05,592 He had a '55 Chevy that he named Gladys. 393 00:25:05,759 --> 00:25:09,179 And we drove around Los Angeles in Gladys. 394 00:25:09,346 --> 00:25:10,389 Check out some of the new talent. 395 00:25:10,556 --> 00:25:11,515 There's no better place in town 396 00:25:11,682 --> 00:25:13,225 to catch those new singers and songwriters 397 00:25:13,392 --> 00:25:15,185 than down at the Monday night Hoot Night, 398 00:25:15,352 --> 00:25:17,938 Doug Weston's world-famous Troubadour, happening tonight. 399 00:25:18,105 --> 00:25:20,691 The Troubadour club was the center of the musical universe. 400 00:25:21,525 --> 00:25:22,818 It was a very seminal place. 401 00:25:22,985 --> 00:25:24,820 It was the place to see and be seen. 402 00:25:26,113 --> 00:25:28,282 Every Monday night they had an open stage. 403 00:25:28,449 --> 00:25:30,159 It was called Hoot Night. 404 00:25:33,370 --> 00:25:36,623 The Troubadour was the place to go if you were young and happening 405 00:25:36,790 --> 00:25:40,210 and trying to get involved in the music scene. 406 00:25:40,377 --> 00:25:42,296 It was happening there. 407 00:25:58,228 --> 00:25:59,980 I saw a lot of great acts at the Troubadour. 408 00:26:15,746 --> 00:26:19,958 I witnessed Elton John's American debut performance in 1970. 409 00:26:34,181 --> 00:26:36,558 Everybody who was anybody at the time played at the Troubadour. 410 00:26:38,769 --> 00:26:39,812 Of course, Linda -- 411 00:26:39,978 --> 00:26:44,191 And she still has one of my favorite voices in the business, ever. 412 00:26:53,742 --> 00:26:57,121 The Troubadour is really responsible for the entire music scene. 413 00:26:57,287 --> 00:26:58,580 I mean, everything I got, really, 414 00:26:58,747 --> 00:27:02,000 was virtually through either performing there onstage 415 00:27:02,167 --> 00:27:04,503 or in the bar, you know? 416 00:27:08,715 --> 00:27:11,051 I was just started managing Linda then, 417 00:27:11,218 --> 00:27:14,096 and Linda was gonna be a star -- that voice as big as a house. 418 00:27:14,847 --> 00:27:16,431 There wasn't anybody in the room 419 00:27:16,598 --> 00:27:18,475 that cared about anything but that voice. 420 00:27:22,229 --> 00:27:23,730 One night, we're down at the Troubadour, 421 00:27:23,897 --> 00:27:26,733 and John Boylan comes to me -- he's managing Linda Ronstadt -- 422 00:27:26,900 --> 00:27:29,486 and he says, "I'm taking Linda on the road. 423 00:27:29,653 --> 00:27:31,613 We need guys who can sing. 424 00:27:31,780 --> 00:27:33,448 You want to play rhythm guitar and sing?" 425 00:27:33,615 --> 00:27:36,410 I offered him $250 a week, and he took it. 426 00:27:39,830 --> 00:27:41,748 I went back to him, I said, 427 00:27:41,915 --> 00:27:44,418 "Can you give me some of that money right now?" 428 00:27:44,585 --> 00:27:46,628 I think he gave me 50 bucks. 429 00:27:46,795 --> 00:27:49,965 And then I found Don from this band called Shiloh. 430 00:27:50,132 --> 00:27:51,842 I heard him playing at the Troubadour. 431 00:27:56,430 --> 00:27:58,015 I was looking for a job. 432 00:27:58,182 --> 00:27:59,975 Glenn introduced me to John Boylan. 433 00:28:00,142 --> 00:28:02,352 I auditioned at this little house in Laurel Canyon. 434 00:28:02,519 --> 00:28:05,731 I had listened to her album hundreds of times, 435 00:28:05,898 --> 00:28:07,482 so I knew the songs backwards and forwards, 436 00:28:07,649 --> 00:28:11,069 and I guess I passed the audition because I got the job. 437 00:28:37,888 --> 00:28:39,264 I learned a lot from Linda. 438 00:28:39,431 --> 00:28:41,308 It was a very formative experience for me. 439 00:28:41,475 --> 00:28:44,019 And she could hang with the guys, you know. 440 00:28:44,186 --> 00:28:48,273 She could drink tequila with the rest of us and hold her own. 441 00:28:54,321 --> 00:28:56,114 It was really very ad hoc. 442 00:28:56,281 --> 00:28:58,700 We had a station wagon, put the gear in the back. 443 00:28:58,867 --> 00:29:01,912 We'd all get in it and drive to the college and play there. 444 00:29:02,746 --> 00:29:04,539 As a cost-cutting measure, 445 00:29:04,706 --> 00:29:06,416 band members had to share rooms in those days, 446 00:29:06,583 --> 00:29:08,669 so Glenn and I were roommates. 447 00:29:08,835 --> 00:29:11,421 - What did you guys eat? - I had a bowl of Rice Krispies. 448 00:29:11,588 --> 00:29:14,841 Ladies and gentlemen, Linda Ronstadt. 449 00:29:20,180 --> 00:29:21,139 It's funny. I seem to get people 450 00:29:21,306 --> 00:29:22,724 at a critical stage in their development, 451 00:29:22,891 --> 00:29:23,850 and they sort of build their chops. 452 00:29:24,017 --> 00:29:25,602 I mean, there's nothing that gets your chops up better 453 00:29:25,769 --> 00:29:27,104 than playing every single night. 454 00:29:33,944 --> 00:29:35,279 Linda and John Boylan 455 00:29:35,445 --> 00:29:37,239 really like the way Henley and I play, 456 00:29:37,406 --> 00:29:39,950 really like the way we sing with her, 457 00:29:40,117 --> 00:29:41,994 and they start to get a vision 458 00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:45,372 of putting together a super group to back up Linda -- 459 00:29:45,539 --> 00:29:48,750 the best of the new country-rock musicians, 460 00:29:48,917 --> 00:29:50,627 and we were gonna be part of it. 461 00:29:50,794 --> 00:29:53,171 I remember talking with Don, and Don said, 462 00:29:53,338 --> 00:29:57,259 "Well, you know, I'd rather, like, just be in a band with you." 463 00:29:58,260 --> 00:30:00,053 And I said, "Well, yeah, me too. 464 00:30:00,220 --> 00:30:03,640 You know, I'd rather just be in a band with you." 465 00:30:07,436 --> 00:30:09,646 So, we went to Linda and said, 466 00:30:09,813 --> 00:30:12,899 "You know, we really appreciate everything you've done for us, 467 00:30:13,066 --> 00:30:15,986 and it means a lot, and we love playing with you, 468 00:30:16,153 --> 00:30:18,780 but we'd like to have our own band." 469 00:30:27,331 --> 00:30:29,166 Now, you know, I think a lot of people, 470 00:30:29,333 --> 00:30:30,751 you know, could get miffed by that, 471 00:30:30,917 --> 00:30:33,045 say, "Well, wait a second. I brought you out here, you know. 472 00:30:33,211 --> 00:30:34,588 I gave you a paying job 473 00:30:34,755 --> 00:30:37,424 when you couldn't afford your own drinks at the Troubadour bar, 474 00:30:37,591 --> 00:30:39,760 and now you want to quit?" 475 00:30:43,638 --> 00:30:46,558 Linda was extremely gracious about the whole thing, 476 00:30:46,725 --> 00:30:47,934 as was John Boylan. 477 00:30:48,101 --> 00:30:51,021 They weren't resentful or bitter at all. 478 00:30:51,188 --> 00:30:52,356 They were great. 479 00:30:52,522 --> 00:30:53,857 They were supportive, as a matter of fact. 480 00:31:06,203 --> 00:31:08,288 They started talking about putting a band together, 481 00:31:08,455 --> 00:31:11,500 and we told them they should get Bernie Leadon. 482 00:31:11,666 --> 00:31:15,003 I was in several bands in L.A. Early on, I met Linda. 483 00:31:15,170 --> 00:31:16,797 Then I worked with Dillard and Clark -- 484 00:31:16,963 --> 00:31:20,801 Doug Dillard, banjo player, and Gene Clark from the Byrds. 485 00:31:20,967 --> 00:31:24,304 And so, now I'm in an offshoot of the Byrds world, 486 00:31:24,471 --> 00:31:26,890 and then that turned into an invitation 487 00:31:27,057 --> 00:31:28,892 from the Burrito Brothers from Chris Hillman 488 00:31:29,059 --> 00:31:32,479 to come join them for their second album on AandM. 489 00:31:39,778 --> 00:31:43,240 And I was still in the Burritos, but they had lost Gram Parsons, 490 00:31:43,407 --> 00:31:46,368 and it had changed, and I wasn't that interested anymore. 491 00:31:49,329 --> 00:31:51,331 Bernie was a very accomplished banjo player, 492 00:31:51,498 --> 00:31:52,791 and he could also play guitar 493 00:31:52,958 --> 00:31:54,835 in what we called the Bindi lick style. 494 00:31:55,001 --> 00:31:57,170 It was pioneered by a fellow named Clarence White. 495 00:31:57,879 --> 00:32:00,257 And then Glenn told me about this guy named Randy Meisner 496 00:32:00,424 --> 00:32:02,384 who had been in a band called Poco. 497 00:32:02,551 --> 00:32:05,804 Randy could sing really high, and he also played bass. 498 00:32:08,765 --> 00:32:10,684 So, Glenn just kind of asked me one day 499 00:32:10,851 --> 00:32:13,937 if I'd be interested in starting a group with him. 500 00:32:14,104 --> 00:32:17,399 And he had Henley and Bernie. 501 00:32:17,566 --> 00:32:20,694 That was the first Eagles. 502 00:32:20,861 --> 00:32:23,071 So, the plan was that Glenn and I 503 00:32:23,238 --> 00:32:25,407 would try to recruit Bernie and Randy, 504 00:32:25,574 --> 00:32:27,242 and then we would all go to David Geffen 505 00:32:27,409 --> 00:32:30,287 and see if he would give us a recording contract. 506 00:32:30,454 --> 00:32:33,915 In the '70s, Asylum Records was considered the L.A. sound -- 507 00:32:34,082 --> 00:32:38,044 Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Jackson Browne. 508 00:32:38,211 --> 00:32:42,424 David Geffen, who started Asylum, is our patron, you know. 509 00:32:42,591 --> 00:32:45,760 A medici, medici of rock 'n' roll. 510 00:32:46,636 --> 00:32:48,472 It's a very artist-oriented company, 511 00:32:48,638 --> 00:32:50,974 and whatever they want to do, we support them. 512 00:32:51,141 --> 00:32:52,350 If we believe in them, we'll stick with them, 513 00:32:52,517 --> 00:32:53,560 whether they make it or not. 514 00:32:54,311 --> 00:32:56,938 Jackson was our conduit to David Geffen. 515 00:32:57,105 --> 00:32:59,065 He was the first guy to get signed 516 00:32:59,232 --> 00:33:02,152 by Geffen's new Asylum Records label. 517 00:33:02,319 --> 00:33:04,154 So, we all walk in Geffen's office, 518 00:33:04,321 --> 00:33:06,281 and we basically said, "Here we are." 519 00:33:06,448 --> 00:33:09,576 Bernie Leadon just boldly says to Geffen, 520 00:33:09,743 --> 00:33:12,245 "Well, do you want us or not?" 521 00:33:12,412 --> 00:33:13,955 They were dying to sign with me. 522 00:33:14,122 --> 00:33:16,875 I think they were very ambitious, particularly Glenn. 523 00:33:17,042 --> 00:33:18,668 Glenn wanted to have a hit band. 524 00:33:18,835 --> 00:33:20,337 I loved the way Don sang. 525 00:33:20,504 --> 00:33:22,756 You know, we all had hopes for it. 526 00:33:22,923 --> 00:33:25,592 All of a sudden, we were signed to Geffen's new label. 527 00:33:25,759 --> 00:33:27,427 They sent us back to the drawing board. 528 00:33:27,594 --> 00:33:29,513 They said, "You guys need to go and rehearse some more." 529 00:33:29,679 --> 00:33:31,515 They said, "You know, you need to write some songs. 530 00:33:31,681 --> 00:33:33,183 You're not really ready to record yet." 531 00:33:36,186 --> 00:33:38,855 So, they packed us off to Aspen, Colorado. 532 00:33:39,022 --> 00:33:40,148 It could have been worse. 533 00:33:40,315 --> 00:33:42,359 There were people who were way higher 534 00:33:42,526 --> 00:33:44,194 than any of us had ever been. 535 00:33:46,279 --> 00:33:49,741 It was a Wild West wide-open town at that point. 536 00:33:56,122 --> 00:33:57,916 We played at a club up there called the Gallery, 537 00:33:58,083 --> 00:34:00,752 which was located right at the foot of Aspen Mountain. 538 00:34:09,719 --> 00:34:12,305 We didn't have a big catalog of our own tunes at that point. 539 00:34:12,472 --> 00:34:14,599 We were just getting started. 540 00:34:16,017 --> 00:34:19,729 We needed to learn how to play together as a band, and we did. 541 00:34:35,036 --> 00:34:37,497 And then it was like, "Okay, we need to make a record. 542 00:34:37,664 --> 00:34:38,915 Who are we gonna get to produce it?" 543 00:34:39,082 --> 00:34:41,251 We wanted to shoot as high as we could. 544 00:34:41,418 --> 00:34:44,087 Glenn Frey came up with Glyn Johns as an idea. 545 00:34:44,254 --> 00:34:47,507 Glyn Johns was a name that kept popping up 546 00:34:47,674 --> 00:34:50,218 on records we loved. 547 00:34:51,761 --> 00:34:54,347 The first time I heard them was in Aspen. 548 00:34:54,514 --> 00:34:55,932 I was not at all impressed, really. 549 00:35:01,021 --> 00:35:03,690 I thought they were confused. 550 00:35:03,857 --> 00:35:07,444 Glenn Frey wanted to be in a rock-'n'-roll band, 551 00:35:07,611 --> 00:35:09,613 and Bernie Leadon, on the other side, 552 00:35:09,779 --> 00:35:12,115 was one of the greatest acoustic players -- 553 00:35:12,282 --> 00:35:13,700 country players, if you like. 554 00:35:13,867 --> 00:35:16,536 And there was a bit of a confusion. 555 00:35:16,703 --> 00:35:19,456 I didn't see what all the fuss was about at all. 556 00:35:19,623 --> 00:35:21,207 So I passed. 557 00:35:21,374 --> 00:35:23,627 We're like, "God dang, what --" 558 00:35:23,793 --> 00:35:26,588 You know, it's not what we expected. 559 00:35:26,755 --> 00:35:31,301 He had worked with Led Zeppelin, the Who, the Stones, 560 00:35:31,468 --> 00:35:33,053 so he was coming from that, 561 00:35:33,219 --> 00:35:36,765 and he said flat-out, "You're not that, man." 562 00:35:36,931 --> 00:35:42,020 It isn't always easy to spot what's hot about an artist 563 00:35:42,187 --> 00:35:43,271 if you go and see them play. 564 00:35:43,438 --> 00:35:44,689 You can see them on a bad night. 565 00:35:44,856 --> 00:35:47,859 You know, it's not necessarily the fairest way of doing it. 566 00:35:48,026 --> 00:35:50,779 So, I thought, "Well, the best thing to do 567 00:35:50,945 --> 00:35:53,948 would be for me to see them in a rehearsal situation 568 00:35:54,115 --> 00:35:56,493 where we could converse and they could play new stuff 569 00:35:56,660 --> 00:35:57,827 and I could stop and start." 570 00:35:57,994 --> 00:36:01,331 And they played the stuff that they played in Aspen, 571 00:36:01,498 --> 00:36:02,832 and it all sounded pretty much the same. 572 00:36:02,999 --> 00:36:05,877 Well, I was thinking, "I don't get it. I still don't get it." 573 00:36:07,170 --> 00:36:12,175 So, we decided to take a break for lunch, 574 00:36:12,342 --> 00:36:13,802 and as we were leaving, 575 00:36:13,968 --> 00:36:17,514 somebody said, "Oh, why don't we play Glyn that ballad?" 576 00:36:29,025 --> 00:36:31,903 And it just completely blew me off my feet. 577 00:36:32,070 --> 00:36:34,197 I mean, there it was. That was the sound. 578 00:36:42,539 --> 00:36:46,668 Extraordinary blend of voices, wonderful harmony sound. 579 00:36:46,835 --> 00:36:49,796 Just stunning. And that was it. 580 00:36:49,963 --> 00:36:51,172 I was in with both feet. 581 00:36:59,431 --> 00:37:00,390 Except that Glyn Johns 582 00:37:00,557 --> 00:37:02,392 didn't want to come to the United States and work. 583 00:37:02,559 --> 00:37:03,935 He wanted to work in London 584 00:37:04,102 --> 00:37:06,020 in the recording studios that he was familiar with, 585 00:37:06,187 --> 00:37:07,647 and so they shipped us off to England. 586 00:37:08,314 --> 00:37:09,858 I don't think that any of us except Bernie 587 00:37:10,024 --> 00:37:11,651 had ever been out of the country, 588 00:37:11,818 --> 00:37:14,362 so it was a little bit like going to the moon for us. 589 00:37:24,247 --> 00:37:25,582 And I'm stoked. 590 00:37:25,749 --> 00:37:26,666 You know, I'm thinking, 591 00:37:26,833 --> 00:37:29,711 "I'm gonna go to Beatle country with Glyn Johns. 592 00:37:29,878 --> 00:37:31,588 I'm gonna record in the same studio 593 00:37:31,755 --> 00:37:34,215 where Led Zeppelin did 'Rock and Roll'. 594 00:37:34,382 --> 00:37:36,468 Oh, my God, I can't wait." 595 00:37:36,634 --> 00:37:40,597 We were recorded at the famous Olympic studios, 596 00:37:40,764 --> 00:37:43,266 where a lot of legendary records had been made. 597 00:37:43,433 --> 00:37:45,602 Glyn Johns -- he had a certain style of recording, 598 00:37:45,769 --> 00:37:47,395 which was very organic. 599 00:37:47,562 --> 00:37:49,773 He would simply place a few mikes around the room, 600 00:37:49,939 --> 00:37:50,732 and off you go. 601 00:37:50,899 --> 00:37:53,026 You know, rather than, for example, 602 00:37:53,193 --> 00:37:55,195 placing a microphone on each and every drum, 603 00:37:55,361 --> 00:37:57,447 he would just put three microphones on the drum kit. 604 00:37:57,614 --> 00:37:58,907 He was accustomed to recording people 605 00:37:59,073 --> 00:38:01,451 like John Bonham with Led Zeppelin. 606 00:38:03,286 --> 00:38:05,079 And I said to Glyn, "I want the bass drum to be louder." 607 00:38:05,246 --> 00:38:07,916 And he said, "If you want it louder, hit it harder," you know? 608 00:38:08,082 --> 00:38:09,334 And I hit it as hard as I could, 609 00:38:09,501 --> 00:38:12,378 but I couldn't hit it as hard as John Bonham. 610 00:38:12,545 --> 00:38:15,548 He had a bunch of rules that really didn't suit me 611 00:38:15,715 --> 00:38:17,509 and some of the other guys, too. 612 00:38:17,675 --> 00:38:20,136 You know, no getting high in the studio, 613 00:38:20,303 --> 00:38:21,805 no drinking in the studio. 614 00:38:21,971 --> 00:38:24,724 I agreed wholeheartedly with Glyn Johns 615 00:38:24,891 --> 00:38:27,477 regarding drugs and alcohol in the studio -- 616 00:38:27,644 --> 00:38:30,522 that we'd get more work done and that it would be better work. 617 00:38:32,190 --> 00:38:33,650 When I got the opportunity to produce 618 00:38:33,817 --> 00:38:35,735 and therefore be in the chair, 619 00:38:35,902 --> 00:38:39,280 I decided that I would no longer put up with that. 620 00:38:39,447 --> 00:38:40,657 Somebody said to me the other night 621 00:38:40,824 --> 00:38:47,747 that I was the designated driver in the '60s and early '70s. 622 00:38:47,914 --> 00:38:49,582 Glyn had worked with the Rolling Stones 623 00:38:49,749 --> 00:38:51,835 at a time when they went to the studio 624 00:38:52,001 --> 00:38:54,879 and did nothing except wait for Keith, you know, 625 00:38:55,046 --> 00:38:57,841 to go down in the basement and play his guitar 626 00:38:58,007 --> 00:38:59,300 until he came up with some riff. 627 00:38:59,467 --> 00:39:01,845 So, Glyn was impatient. 628 00:39:02,011 --> 00:39:05,640 The Stones had burned him out on the, you know, 629 00:39:05,807 --> 00:39:08,017 "get high in the studio and wait for something to happen" 630 00:39:08,184 --> 00:39:09,018 kind of thing. 631 00:39:09,185 --> 00:39:11,229 Let's go. We're rolling. 632 00:39:12,313 --> 00:39:13,398 One, two, three. 633 00:39:46,973 --> 00:39:49,559 There were three hit singles on the first album. 634 00:39:49,726 --> 00:39:51,811 "Peaceful Easy Feeling" was written by Jack Tempchin, 635 00:39:51,978 --> 00:39:54,230 who is our friend and frequent collaborator. 636 00:40:00,653 --> 00:40:03,448 "Peaceful Easy Feeling" captures the time, 637 00:40:03,615 --> 00:40:05,450 captures this attitude. 638 00:40:05,617 --> 00:40:08,411 You can feel the wind blowing across the desert. 639 00:40:25,511 --> 00:40:28,431 The second hit was "Witchy Woman," which I wrote with Bernie. 640 00:40:30,183 --> 00:40:33,269 "Witchy Woman" started as a guitar figure. 641 00:40:33,436 --> 00:40:36,481 Then we were jamming it one day, and everybody was digging it. 642 00:40:36,648 --> 00:40:39,359 And then Henley came back the next day with the lyrics. 643 00:41:21,526 --> 00:41:23,361 During the time that the Eagles were on the road 644 00:41:23,528 --> 00:41:25,989 for the first album, we had just come through the '60s -- 645 00:41:26,155 --> 00:41:28,491 civil rights movement, '68 -- 646 00:41:28,658 --> 00:41:31,786 all the assassinations, all the rioting. 647 00:41:32,745 --> 00:41:34,956 The Vietnam War still winding up. 648 00:41:35,123 --> 00:41:36,958 Nixon, Watergate. 649 00:41:37,125 --> 00:41:38,334 I welcome this kind of examination. 650 00:41:38,501 --> 00:41:41,129 I really think that part of the reason 651 00:41:41,295 --> 00:41:43,214 that the Eagles succeeded the way they did 652 00:41:43,381 --> 00:41:46,134 was because the country and people and young people 653 00:41:46,300 --> 00:41:48,052 needed to feel like things were okay. 654 00:41:49,345 --> 00:41:51,472 So, here comes this song "Take It Easy." 655 00:42:44,358 --> 00:42:46,652 Jackson had this song called "Take It Easy." 656 00:42:46,819 --> 00:42:47,945 He couldn't finish the song. 657 00:42:48,112 --> 00:42:50,114 He was stuck in the second verse. 658 00:42:50,281 --> 00:42:54,869 He had "I'm standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona." 659 00:42:55,036 --> 00:42:58,873 And so, I filled in, "Such a fine sight to see. 660 00:42:59,040 --> 00:43:00,792 It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford 661 00:43:00,958 --> 00:43:02,168 slowing down to take a look at me." 662 00:43:15,932 --> 00:43:19,018 Girl, Lord, Ford -- I mean, all the redemption, you know -- 663 00:43:19,185 --> 00:43:22,230 girls and cars and redemption all in this one line. 664 00:43:22,396 --> 00:43:24,482 I mean, he's very mercurical. 665 00:43:24,649 --> 00:43:27,777 You know... mercurial? Mercurial. 666 00:43:27,944 --> 00:43:30,363 And he's mercurical, too. 667 00:43:43,459 --> 00:43:45,378 All right! 668 00:43:51,551 --> 00:43:53,553 Someone once asked Stephen Stills about the Eagles, 669 00:43:53,719 --> 00:43:57,014 and his response was, "They just wanted to be us." 670 00:43:57,181 --> 00:43:59,600 But when it came time to do our album covers, 671 00:43:59,767 --> 00:44:02,895 they suggested that we use Gary Burden and Henry Diltz. 672 00:44:03,062 --> 00:44:05,648 They had done the first Crosby, Stills, Nash cover 673 00:44:05,815 --> 00:44:07,275 and some stuff for Joni. 674 00:44:07,441 --> 00:44:09,652 The one I really remember was the Mamas and Papas 675 00:44:09,819 --> 00:44:11,112 all sitting in the bathtub. 676 00:44:11,279 --> 00:44:13,823 That was one of their album covers. 677 00:44:13,990 --> 00:44:17,410 So, these were, like, the cool guys to have work on your album. 678 00:44:17,577 --> 00:44:22,165 Gary Burden is about 40 years old, full beard, 679 00:44:22,331 --> 00:44:25,918 long, grayish, wavy hair, crystal-blue eyes. 680 00:44:26,586 --> 00:44:32,258 Henry was sort of magical, non-invasive photographer guy. 681 00:44:32,425 --> 00:44:35,386 For the Eagles, it was the peyote spirits 682 00:44:35,553 --> 00:44:37,680 which the American Indians, of course, 683 00:44:37,847 --> 00:44:41,184 ate peyote and had a very, very spiritual experience, 684 00:44:41,350 --> 00:44:44,437 and they would maybe meet their animal totem 685 00:44:44,604 --> 00:44:47,398 or they would get their quest for life. 686 00:44:47,565 --> 00:44:51,777 My deal was always to take the bands out of their comfort zone. 687 00:44:51,944 --> 00:44:55,281 Take them away from their girlfriends, from telephones, 688 00:44:55,448 --> 00:44:59,076 from anything, and have them under my control 689 00:44:59,243 --> 00:45:03,623 so that I could get things to happen without any interference. 690 00:45:03,789 --> 00:45:05,666 And so, we would take trips. 691 00:45:05,833 --> 00:45:08,502 Now, how this plan came about exactly, 692 00:45:08,669 --> 00:45:13,633 today you have to scratch your head, but this was the plan. 693 00:45:13,799 --> 00:45:15,384 Okay, we'll all go to the Troubadour, 694 00:45:15,551 --> 00:45:18,346 and we'll stay there till closing time. 695 00:45:18,512 --> 00:45:21,599 And then we'll drive to Joshua Tree. 696 00:45:24,393 --> 00:45:27,355 We had a bag of peyote buttons, a bunch of trail mix, 697 00:45:27,521 --> 00:45:30,650 some tequila, and some water, and some blankets. 698 00:45:30,816 --> 00:45:33,236 And the seven of us set out for Joshua Tree. 699 00:45:33,903 --> 00:45:36,405 We got there probably about 4:30 in the morning, 700 00:45:36,572 --> 00:45:38,032 parked in this special place 701 00:45:38,199 --> 00:45:40,618 that I don't know how we found it in the dark. 702 00:45:45,665 --> 00:45:49,961 We all took one peyote button, put it in our mouths, 703 00:45:50,127 --> 00:45:54,507 and started hiking up to the place that we were supposed to go. 704 00:45:54,674 --> 00:45:58,344 So, right around the time that we're getting to the campsite 705 00:45:58,511 --> 00:45:59,929 and we're starting to build the fire 706 00:46:00,096 --> 00:46:03,557 and starting to cook some peyote tea, and the first buttons -- 707 00:46:03,724 --> 00:46:06,185 everybody's chewing the first button, 708 00:46:06,352 --> 00:46:10,564 and the drug starts coming on just as the sun is rising. 709 00:46:26,706 --> 00:46:28,624 I think everybody got higher 710 00:46:28,791 --> 00:46:31,252 than they ever imagined anybody could be, 711 00:46:31,419 --> 00:46:33,421 and it was a good thing. 712 00:46:33,587 --> 00:46:37,758 We were after getting into life deeper and better 713 00:46:37,925 --> 00:46:39,593 and more and surrendering. 714 00:46:44,473 --> 00:46:49,979 I had to go to the bathroom, so I left the campsite, 715 00:46:50,146 --> 00:46:54,775 and I hear the guys yelling from the campfire, "Eagle! Eagle!" 716 00:46:54,942 --> 00:46:57,987 I look up, and it's soaring right above me. 717 00:46:58,154 --> 00:46:59,655 Huge wingspan. 718 00:46:59,822 --> 00:47:02,825 I'm, like, scuffling to get my pants back up, and I'm slipping. 719 00:47:02,992 --> 00:47:06,412 I fall down, and the bird just kind of goes, 720 00:47:06,579 --> 00:47:10,166 "Eagles, huh? Yeah, I don't think so." 721 00:47:13,669 --> 00:47:16,047 The images of the first album cover, 722 00:47:16,213 --> 00:47:21,010 I think, really set the tone for visually what Eagles are. 723 00:47:21,177 --> 00:47:22,970 Gary designed the album cover 724 00:47:23,137 --> 00:47:27,183 so that it would open up into a whole poster, 725 00:47:27,350 --> 00:47:31,020 and at the bottom were the Eagles around the campfire. 726 00:47:31,187 --> 00:47:33,147 And then, up at the top, 727 00:47:33,314 --> 00:47:36,984 it would go on up into the sky and the eagle up in the sky. 728 00:47:37,151 --> 00:47:40,529 But David Geffen thought that would be confusing, 729 00:47:40,696 --> 00:47:43,657 and without consulting us or consulting Gary or the Eagles 730 00:47:43,824 --> 00:47:46,243 or anybody, he told them, "Just glue it shut." 731 00:47:46,410 --> 00:47:49,497 And so, then, when they glued it shut, you would get this -- 732 00:47:49,663 --> 00:47:52,208 this album, front and back, and you'd open it up, 733 00:47:52,375 --> 00:47:53,751 and it would be upside-down, 734 00:47:53,918 --> 00:47:56,128 which didn't make any sense to anybody. 735 00:48:02,051 --> 00:48:04,053 The fact was that the success of the first album 736 00:48:04,220 --> 00:48:05,721 scared the hell out of us. 737 00:48:05,888 --> 00:48:08,641 Why me instead of some guy down the street, you know? 738 00:48:08,808 --> 00:48:10,351 Why me and some friends of mine 739 00:48:10,518 --> 00:48:12,812 who are just as good of musicians as I am, you know, 740 00:48:12,978 --> 00:48:15,314 but it happened to me and it didn't happen to them? 741 00:48:15,481 --> 00:48:16,690 I don't know. 742 00:48:16,857 --> 00:48:20,069 Success can sometimes be just as disconcerting 743 00:48:20,236 --> 00:48:21,987 and frightening as failure, 744 00:48:22,154 --> 00:48:23,406 especially when you have questions 745 00:48:23,572 --> 00:48:26,075 about your own worthiness and your abilities. 746 00:48:26,826 --> 00:48:29,286 It came time to do another album. 747 00:48:29,453 --> 00:48:32,706 Don and I decided we'd try to write some songs together. 748 00:48:32,873 --> 00:48:34,875 I had been sitting over on Aqua Vista. 749 00:48:35,042 --> 00:48:36,043 I was living on the couch, 750 00:48:36,210 --> 00:48:37,920 and I'm just laying there playing the guitar, 751 00:48:38,087 --> 00:48:39,672 and I started going... 752 00:48:41,757 --> 00:48:43,676 You know, I'm thinking, "Yeah, that's pretty cool, 753 00:48:43,843 --> 00:48:45,344 kind of Roy Orbison, kind of Mexican. 754 00:48:45,511 --> 00:48:46,720 Yeah, I like that." 755 00:48:46,887 --> 00:48:49,682 So, I showed him, you know, that guitar riff. 756 00:48:49,849 --> 00:48:51,559 I said, "Maybe we should write something to this." 757 00:49:22,548 --> 00:49:25,009 Songs like "Desperado" and "Tequila Sunrise" -- 758 00:49:25,176 --> 00:49:27,261 that's when Glenn and I began collaborating, 759 00:49:27,428 --> 00:49:29,847 and that's when we really became a songwriting team. 760 00:49:46,405 --> 00:49:47,865 Earlier that year, 761 00:49:48,032 --> 00:49:52,495 someone had given Jackson Browne the book of gunfighters. 762 00:49:52,661 --> 00:49:54,288 It had all the big outlaw groups -- 763 00:49:54,455 --> 00:49:57,750 Frank and Jesse, the Doolin-Dalton gang. 764 00:49:57,917 --> 00:50:00,044 We were all just fascinated with those guys, 765 00:50:00,211 --> 00:50:02,421 and we thought it would make a great analogy. 766 00:50:02,588 --> 00:50:06,133 Well, for example, we live outside the laws of normality. 767 00:50:06,300 --> 00:50:09,637 Also, you usually -- because of records or bank robberies, 768 00:50:09,803 --> 00:50:12,515 you usually heard about these guys before you ever saw them. 769 00:50:13,557 --> 00:50:17,853 They had posters that were wanted posters up for people. 770 00:50:21,690 --> 00:50:24,527 There just seemed to be some parallels. 771 00:50:28,697 --> 00:50:30,950 It wasn't really like we were outlaws, 772 00:50:31,116 --> 00:50:34,912 but I think they did have their nobler characteristics. 773 00:50:43,212 --> 00:50:44,338 We started talking about it. 774 00:50:44,505 --> 00:50:46,131 Then we said, "Well, maybe we should do, like, 775 00:50:46,298 --> 00:50:48,759 an album all about the rebels." 776 00:50:48,926 --> 00:50:50,386 We got to doing this outlaw album, 777 00:50:50,553 --> 00:50:54,390 and we had eight songs finished, and we needed two more. 778 00:50:54,557 --> 00:50:58,644 An idea Randy came up with was how the guy became an outlaw 779 00:50:58,811 --> 00:51:01,021 and how he became a guitar player. 780 00:51:34,930 --> 00:51:37,933 I kind of started it, and that's what usually happened. 781 00:51:38,100 --> 00:51:40,352 I'd get a verse or two, and then I'm done, 782 00:51:40,519 --> 00:51:42,605 and they would help fill in the blanks. 783 00:51:53,866 --> 00:51:56,994 Nobody expected there to be a concept album 784 00:51:57,161 --> 00:51:59,455 with Western cowboys music. 785 00:51:59,913 --> 00:52:03,292 Don Henley was from Texas. He was a cowboy. 786 00:52:03,459 --> 00:52:06,629 Glenn was from Detroit. He wanted to be a cowboy. 787 00:52:06,795 --> 00:52:10,633 Because I knew all these guys had a little cowboy inside of them, 788 00:52:10,799 --> 00:52:12,635 I took them to Western costume 789 00:52:12,801 --> 00:52:15,804 and just said, "Pick out your persona." 790 00:52:15,971 --> 00:52:19,850 Their premise was that, if they had lived 100 years ago, 791 00:52:20,017 --> 00:52:23,896 in like 1872, they probably would have been gunslingers. 792 00:52:24,063 --> 00:52:25,022 Everybody's gonna be firing 793 00:52:25,189 --> 00:52:26,649 in the direction of this building right here. 794 00:52:26,815 --> 00:52:29,818 Jackson, J.D., Boyd, you all got to be in the picture more. 795 00:52:29,985 --> 00:52:31,153 We're gonna be in there. 796 00:52:31,320 --> 00:52:34,490 You ready? One, two, three! 797 00:52:40,412 --> 00:52:42,373 And we fired so many blanks 798 00:52:42,539 --> 00:52:45,959 that it was a cloud of smoke hanging over this Western town, 799 00:52:46,126 --> 00:52:50,798 and the fire department came 'cause they thought it was a fire. 800 00:52:51,840 --> 00:52:54,093 Keep firing! 801 00:52:54,259 --> 00:52:55,886 We were just a bunch of kids. We were just playing around. 802 00:53:04,186 --> 00:53:05,854 The picture that's on the back of the album -- 803 00:53:06,021 --> 00:53:07,272 there's a lot of reality in it. 804 00:53:07,439 --> 00:53:10,150 All of the agents and managers and road managers, 805 00:53:10,317 --> 00:53:12,486 all the guys who didn't play are standing up, 806 00:53:12,653 --> 00:53:14,697 alive with badges and guns, 807 00:53:14,863 --> 00:53:18,409 and the four Eagles at the time and Jackson and I are all dead, 808 00:53:18,575 --> 00:53:20,369 bound up the way they used to do 809 00:53:20,536 --> 00:53:22,121 when they'd catch outlaws in those days. 810 00:53:22,287 --> 00:53:23,580 They'd stand them up for display. 811 00:53:23,747 --> 00:53:27,751 People never tired of looking at the corpse of a bad boy. 812 00:53:29,712 --> 00:53:32,798 We all felt, when we were doing it and as it was delivered, 813 00:53:32,965 --> 00:53:36,176 that it was another really remarkable record 814 00:53:36,343 --> 00:53:37,761 on the part of the band. 815 00:53:37,928 --> 00:53:39,054 I mean, it was pretty extraordinary. 816 00:53:39,221 --> 00:53:42,015 The band and I were enormously thrilled with it. 817 00:53:42,182 --> 00:53:45,060 They literally carried me out of the control room. 818 00:53:45,227 --> 00:53:47,646 They chaired me out of the control room. 819 00:53:54,236 --> 00:53:56,238 "Desperado" comes out, and it bombs. 820 00:53:57,906 --> 00:54:01,660 Jerry Greenberg was the Vice President of Atlantic Records. 821 00:54:01,827 --> 00:54:04,747 They were excited to get the second Eagles album. 822 00:54:04,913 --> 00:54:07,875 We played him "Desperado," and he said, "Hmm, that's, yeah, 823 00:54:08,041 --> 00:54:10,711 that's nice, that's good, that's nice," 824 00:54:10,878 --> 00:54:11,879 and turned around and said, 825 00:54:12,045 --> 00:54:15,758 "God, they made a fuckin' cowboy record." 826 00:54:26,018 --> 00:54:29,271 I was extremely flattered that Linda recorded "Desperado." 827 00:54:29,438 --> 00:54:32,107 It was really her that popularized the song. 828 00:54:32,274 --> 00:54:35,527 Her version was very poignant and beautiful. 829 00:54:50,793 --> 00:54:52,920 There have been a lot of articles and things 830 00:54:53,086 --> 00:54:55,172 that identify me with the L.A. sound. 831 00:54:55,339 --> 00:54:58,258 It's sort of, like, me and Jackson Browne and the Eagles. 832 00:54:58,425 --> 00:55:00,511 All of us are reaching out for other musical influences 833 00:55:00,677 --> 00:55:01,720 all the time. 834 00:55:01,887 --> 00:55:05,098 The so-called southern California sound was developing. 835 00:55:05,265 --> 00:55:07,684 It was fresh, it was different, it was unique. 836 00:55:07,851 --> 00:55:10,020 It was a melting pot, people moving here 837 00:55:10,187 --> 00:55:12,439 from all over the United States to pursue their dream -- 838 00:55:12,606 --> 00:55:16,026 actors, musicians, wannabe managers, agents, 839 00:55:16,193 --> 00:55:17,528 wannabe, you know, like me. 840 00:55:21,573 --> 00:55:25,118 I picked up the phone cold and called David Geffen, 841 00:55:25,285 --> 00:55:26,995 who was just starting Asylum Records. 842 00:55:27,162 --> 00:55:30,249 Long story short, I took a job as a manager with Asylum. 843 00:55:32,334 --> 00:55:34,962 I was intrigued. I wanted to know about the Eagles 844 00:55:35,128 --> 00:55:37,464 and meet the Eagles 'cause I was a fan. 845 00:55:38,006 --> 00:55:40,008 Emergency. 846 00:55:40,175 --> 00:55:42,678 I get a phone call. Glenn Frey's on the phone. 847 00:55:42,845 --> 00:55:45,514 "We need money for Christmas. Can you book dates?" 848 00:55:45,681 --> 00:55:46,640 I book some dates. 849 00:55:46,807 --> 00:55:49,518 So, I get on a plane and go out to meet them. 850 00:55:49,685 --> 00:55:51,854 First of all, the show was fantastic. 851 00:55:52,020 --> 00:55:56,692 Crowd was nothing like I'd seen a year, year and a half earlier. 852 00:55:56,859 --> 00:55:59,945 Good evening. Welcome to the Portland version of -- 853 00:56:00,112 --> 00:56:01,738 - Spread eagle. - Spread eagle. 854 00:56:01,905 --> 00:56:04,283 Tonight, the promoter gave us chopsticks. 855 00:56:04,449 --> 00:56:06,785 I don't think we ever checked in a hotel. 856 00:56:06,952 --> 00:56:09,913 We went from there to a party at a sorority house. 857 00:56:10,080 --> 00:56:11,748 One thing led to another, 858 00:56:11,915 --> 00:56:14,585 and I'd never seen anything like this. 859 00:56:14,751 --> 00:56:16,003 They wouldn't give us any booze in the bar. 860 00:56:16,169 --> 00:56:18,463 We tried to get some booze, but they fucked up, 861 00:56:18,630 --> 00:56:19,882 so we may burn the fucking place down. 862 00:56:20,048 --> 00:56:20,883 We're not sure. 863 00:56:21,049 --> 00:56:24,678 I don't think we went to sleep. It was Eagle mania. 864 00:56:27,431 --> 00:56:29,266 And then they went off to England 865 00:56:29,433 --> 00:56:31,643 to record "On the Border" with Glyn Johns. 866 00:56:33,896 --> 00:56:36,398 They were quite open to being produced. 867 00:56:36,565 --> 00:56:38,400 Understandably, that changed. 868 00:56:38,567 --> 00:56:43,906 They began to be more opinionated and less insecure, perhaps. 869 00:56:44,072 --> 00:56:46,241 We wanted to play rock 'n' roll 870 00:56:46,408 --> 00:56:48,869 or at least a more rock-'n'-roll version of country music, 871 00:56:49,036 --> 00:56:50,787 and Glyn Johns was of the opinion 872 00:56:50,954 --> 00:56:53,165 that we weren't really capable of that. 873 00:56:53,332 --> 00:56:55,584 I think he had been bombarded by loud, 874 00:56:55,751 --> 00:56:58,587 aggressive rock 'n' roll for many, many years. 875 00:56:58,754 --> 00:56:59,880 At that point in his life, 876 00:57:00,047 --> 00:57:03,008 he wanted mellow people and mellow music, 877 00:57:03,175 --> 00:57:07,596 and we weren't exactly at the same stage in life. 878 00:57:07,763 --> 00:57:10,057 Frey sort of took over more. 879 00:57:10,223 --> 00:57:12,434 He had this desire to be something 880 00:57:12,601 --> 00:57:16,521 that I didn't really feel that they were capable of doing. 881 00:57:16,688 --> 00:57:19,733 He and Glenn Frey were like oil and water. 882 00:57:19,900 --> 00:57:22,277 They clashed frequently. 883 00:57:22,444 --> 00:57:25,739 In the studio, Glyn Johns was pretty much a schoolmarm. 884 00:57:25,906 --> 00:57:28,450 He'd push, push, push, you know? 885 00:57:28,617 --> 00:57:29,785 And then he'd say, "That's it. 886 00:57:29,952 --> 00:57:31,536 That's good enough. We're moving on. 887 00:57:31,703 --> 00:57:33,705 You're not a rock-'n'-roll band. 888 00:57:33,872 --> 00:57:37,793 The Who is a rock-'n'-roll band, and you're not that." 889 00:57:37,960 --> 00:57:40,462 After each of those records, 890 00:57:40,629 --> 00:57:45,092 the band freaked out and said, "We've made a huge mistake. 891 00:57:45,258 --> 00:57:47,094 Glyn Johns missed it." 892 00:57:47,260 --> 00:57:48,762 We actually had conversations. 893 00:57:48,929 --> 00:57:51,640 You know, "Desperado" hadn't done as well as the first album. 894 00:57:51,807 --> 00:57:56,144 None of them were thrilled with the way the record sounded. 895 00:57:56,311 --> 00:58:00,232 We wanted more input into how our albums were being made. 896 00:58:00,399 --> 00:58:03,610 We wanted more input into the recording process itself. 897 00:58:04,403 --> 00:58:07,114 Don and I thought that the vocals were too wet. 898 00:58:07,280 --> 00:58:08,740 There was too much echo on them. 899 00:58:08,907 --> 00:58:11,994 And he definitely told us, "Excuse me, that's my echo. 900 00:58:12,160 --> 00:58:14,454 It's my signature. It's my bloody echo. 901 00:58:14,621 --> 00:58:16,331 It stays there. You don't tell me what to do." 902 00:58:16,498 --> 00:58:18,625 We needed to make a change. 903 00:58:21,670 --> 00:58:24,840 I joined the Navy at the height of the cold war. 904 00:58:25,007 --> 00:58:26,591 One of the main things they were doing 905 00:58:26,758 --> 00:58:30,387 was looking for Russian submarines, and you do that by using sonar. 906 00:58:31,680 --> 00:58:35,851 When I got out, I had a lot of electronics education, obviously. 907 00:58:36,018 --> 00:58:39,938 And I got a job in a recording studio here in New York. 908 00:58:40,105 --> 00:58:43,608 The first session I ever saw, like day one, day two, 909 00:58:43,775 --> 00:58:45,277 was a Carole King demo. 910 00:58:45,444 --> 00:58:46,987 She sat down and played piano, 911 00:58:47,154 --> 00:58:52,325 and it was like, "Boy, this is fun. These people are having fun here." 912 00:58:55,704 --> 00:58:57,497 I worked my way up through the ranks, 913 00:58:57,664 --> 00:59:00,167 and then, of course, after engineering for four or five years, 914 00:59:00,333 --> 00:59:01,752 I was like, "Well, I can produce better 915 00:59:01,918 --> 00:59:04,713 than some of these guys I'm working for." 916 00:59:05,380 --> 00:59:07,299 At the time, I was managing Joe Walsh, 917 00:59:07,466 --> 00:59:09,551 so I played them Walsh music 918 00:59:09,718 --> 00:59:14,347 that I thought was an example of how it could be edgier. 919 00:59:14,514 --> 00:59:16,058 Joe and I had just finished an album called 920 00:59:16,224 --> 00:59:18,727 "The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get." 921 00:59:18,894 --> 00:59:22,272 And they heard that and said, "That's what we want to sound like." 922 00:59:22,439 --> 00:59:23,899 So, Irving arranged for us 923 00:59:24,066 --> 00:59:25,734 to have a meeting with Bill Szymczyk. 924 00:59:25,901 --> 00:59:28,528 We really only had two questions that we wanted to ask him -- 925 00:59:28,695 --> 00:59:30,739 Do you mind if we have some input 926 00:59:30,906 --> 00:59:32,616 about how much echo is on the vocals? 927 00:59:32,783 --> 00:59:34,910 And we wanted somebody who would put a microphone 928 00:59:35,077 --> 00:59:36,078 on each and every drum 929 00:59:36,244 --> 00:59:38,038 so we could have more control over the mix. 930 00:59:38,205 --> 00:59:39,748 He said yes to every question, 931 00:59:39,915 --> 00:59:42,918 and so we knew he was the guy for us. 932 00:59:43,085 --> 00:59:45,087 I said, "Okay, under one condition. 933 00:59:45,253 --> 00:59:48,256 I have to call Glyn and make sure it's okay with him." 934 00:59:48,423 --> 00:59:50,133 So, I called him, and I said, 935 00:59:50,300 --> 00:59:53,595 you know, "Glyn, the Eagles want me to produce them." 936 00:59:53,762 --> 00:59:55,430 "Better you than me, mate." 937 00:59:55,597 --> 00:59:58,183 That's pretty much how I felt. 938 00:59:58,350 --> 01:00:02,771 I mean, it had come to a fairly unpleasant end. 939 01:00:02,938 --> 01:00:04,564 Well, okay, you know, 940 01:00:04,731 --> 01:00:08,151 so much for Beatle country with Glyn Johns. 941 01:00:11,363 --> 01:00:15,659 Let's have a warm round of applause on a hot afternoon for the Eagles. 942 01:00:31,508 --> 01:00:33,260 Along about the third album, 943 01:00:33,426 --> 01:00:37,514 I was having some difficulty in communicating, 944 01:00:37,681 --> 01:00:38,849 I felt, in the band, 945 01:00:39,015 --> 01:00:41,810 and I was starting to think maybe I should go at some point. 946 01:00:41,977 --> 01:00:44,813 They still had this unfulfilled desire 947 01:00:44,980 --> 01:00:48,859 to be a mainstream rock band and not just a vocal band, 948 01:00:49,025 --> 01:00:51,820 but I think they wanted to go in a tougher direction. 949 01:00:54,489 --> 01:00:57,325 Bernie Leadon was a country-based guitar player, 950 01:00:57,492 --> 01:01:00,579 but every time I wanted to do a rock-'n'-roll song, 951 01:01:00,745 --> 01:01:02,497 he was the lead guitar player. 952 01:01:08,253 --> 01:01:10,922 Every time we wanted to do something country that Bernie sang, 953 01:01:11,089 --> 01:01:13,300 I was supposed to be the lead guitar player, 954 01:01:13,466 --> 01:01:16,261 and I wasn't a country musician by any stretch. 955 01:01:16,428 --> 01:01:19,347 It always felt like we needed a third guitar player. 956 01:01:21,183 --> 01:01:24,769 We had met this friend of Bernie's, this guy named Don Felder. 957 01:01:24,936 --> 01:01:27,314 We were playing in Boston, and he came back to visit Bernie, 958 01:01:27,480 --> 01:01:29,774 and we were jamming upstairs in the dressing room, 959 01:01:29,941 --> 01:01:32,819 and this guy was all over the neck. 960 01:01:37,741 --> 01:01:39,618 What he brought was great chops. 961 01:01:39,784 --> 01:01:42,204 I mean, we called him Fingers -- Fingers Felder -- 962 01:01:42,370 --> 01:01:43,830 because he was an incredible player. 963 01:01:52,172 --> 01:01:54,216 We did that session. I think it was like three hours. 964 01:01:54,382 --> 01:01:56,885 And then I packed up and went home, 965 01:01:57,052 --> 01:01:59,763 not thinking anything more about it than it was just another session. 966 01:01:59,930 --> 01:02:01,723 And the next day, Glenn called me 967 01:02:01,890 --> 01:02:04,059 and asked me if I would like to join the band. 968 01:02:04,643 --> 01:02:07,020 I said, "Absolutely." 969 01:02:08,563 --> 01:02:10,357 - All right, let's do -- - I'm in heaven. 970 01:02:10,523 --> 01:02:12,651 - Let's go another one. - All right, do it right! 971 01:02:12,817 --> 01:02:16,613 The banter that would go on in between takes was hysterical, 972 01:02:16,780 --> 01:02:21,826 and so I took to running a two-track to pick up these silly things. 973 01:02:21,993 --> 01:02:23,912 We were young men with raging hormones 974 01:02:24,079 --> 01:02:25,664 and something to prove. 975 01:02:25,830 --> 01:02:27,958 In the context of the times and the profession, 976 01:02:28,124 --> 01:02:30,961 the way we behaved wasn't really all that remarkable. 977 01:02:31,127 --> 01:02:32,212 The creative impulse 978 01:02:32,379 --> 01:02:34,756 comes from the dark side of the personality, 979 01:02:34,923 --> 01:02:36,591 so we worked it good, you know. 980 01:02:36,758 --> 01:02:40,387 We did a lot of stupid things, said a lot of stupid things. 981 01:02:40,553 --> 01:02:44,099 It was the '70s. There were drugs everywhere. 982 01:02:44,266 --> 01:02:48,228 Cactus sunrise was in my face 983 01:02:48,395 --> 01:02:52,941 Everyone was dying, everyone was lying and trying 984 01:02:53,108 --> 01:02:56,611 Well, rub your belly in the linseed oil 985 01:02:56,778 --> 01:02:58,613 There you go. 986 01:03:00,365 --> 01:03:02,242 Well, the heartbreak of psoriasis 987 01:03:02,409 --> 01:03:05,829 has once again descended upon the adolescent experience, 988 01:03:05,996 --> 01:03:07,372 and we'll see you later. 989 01:03:07,539 --> 01:03:09,791 See you at the show later on tonight. 990 01:03:09,958 --> 01:03:12,877 The question was, you know, who could handle it? 991 01:03:13,044 --> 01:03:15,505 Who could function? Who could show up? 992 01:04:14,522 --> 01:04:15,815 There were always girls. 993 01:04:22,697 --> 01:04:25,700 There were a lot of opportunities out on the road 994 01:04:25,867 --> 01:04:29,079 to entertain ourselves with one thing or another. 995 01:04:29,245 --> 01:04:31,664 So, we started to perfect after-show partying, 996 01:04:31,831 --> 01:04:34,584 and we invented a place called the Third Encore. 997 01:04:34,751 --> 01:04:37,962 We did two encores in our show, so the third encore was the party. 998 01:04:38,546 --> 01:04:40,715 Everybody in the band and everybody in the crew 999 01:04:40,882 --> 01:04:43,093 was given a bunch of buttons, and all we said was, 1000 01:04:43,259 --> 01:04:46,179 "No weirdos, no strange people, okay? 1001 01:04:46,346 --> 01:04:48,390 If you're gonna give a button to somebody, 1002 01:04:48,556 --> 01:04:50,058 you know, make it count." 1003 01:04:50,225 --> 01:04:51,226 Totally sick. 1004 01:04:51,393 --> 01:04:53,812 There's some real warped shit coming on now, ladies and gentlemen. 1005 01:04:53,978 --> 01:04:56,398 A member of Andy Warthog's pop-bowel movement 1006 01:04:56,564 --> 01:04:59,192 has just tried to crash our party. 1007 01:04:59,359 --> 01:05:00,193 What the -- 1008 01:05:00,360 --> 01:05:04,239 Welcome to Pittsburgh Spread Eagle. 1009 01:05:04,406 --> 01:05:05,657 We want to just ask these girls 1010 01:05:05,824 --> 01:05:08,159 why they think they have to leave now that it's 2:00. 1011 01:05:08,326 --> 01:05:10,662 One thing, he smells like beer. 1012 01:05:10,829 --> 01:05:13,164 We'd fill the bathtubs up with Budweiser, 1013 01:05:13,331 --> 01:05:15,583 and we'd have a party after every show. 1014 01:05:15,750 --> 01:05:17,419 - Your name, please. - Tammy Farley. 1015 01:05:17,585 --> 01:05:19,546 Tammy, Tammy, Tammy. 1016 01:05:19,712 --> 01:05:21,297 Here we have Karen. Karen is 20 years old. 1017 01:05:21,464 --> 01:05:22,382 - Is that correct? - Yeah. 1018 01:05:22,549 --> 01:05:23,925 What's your name, dear? 1019 01:05:24,092 --> 01:05:25,343 - Fuck it, man. - Pardon? 1020 01:05:25,510 --> 01:05:27,387 Fuck it. Her name's fuck it, man. 1021 01:05:28,096 --> 01:05:31,349 I want to talk about sex and drugs. 1022 01:05:31,516 --> 01:05:32,892 Who wants to go first? 1023 01:05:33,059 --> 01:05:35,770 I'm not lost for words on either subject. 1024 01:05:35,937 --> 01:05:39,065 Sex and drugs kind of came as a big package in the '60s. 1025 01:05:39,232 --> 01:05:40,733 You know, it seemed like everybody -- 1026 01:05:40,900 --> 01:05:44,112 the sexual revolution and the drug thing, I guess, 1027 01:05:44,279 --> 01:05:48,116 probably started out together. 1028 01:05:48,283 --> 01:05:49,993 Didn't they? 1029 01:05:52,370 --> 01:05:54,122 Don and I both tried to have relationships 1030 01:05:54,289 --> 01:05:57,125 while we were members of the Eagles, 1031 01:05:57,292 --> 01:06:01,838 but it was always like the Eagles trumped everything. 1032 01:06:02,005 --> 01:06:04,132 When the Eagles became successful, 1033 01:06:04,299 --> 01:06:06,509 we challenged all the rules. 1034 01:06:08,553 --> 01:06:10,805 Like when David Geffen left Asylum Records 1035 01:06:10,972 --> 01:06:14,642 and sold everything to Warner Bros. and started his new empire. 1036 01:06:15,059 --> 01:06:16,269 Let's be frank. 1037 01:06:16,436 --> 01:06:19,105 When we signed that contract, we were idiots. 1038 01:06:19,272 --> 01:06:21,858 We knew nothing about the business. 1039 01:06:22,025 --> 01:06:24,486 We had poor legal representation, 1040 01:06:24,652 --> 01:06:26,404 nobody looking out for us. 1041 01:06:26,571 --> 01:06:31,034 Remember, bands don't really get record royalties usually ever. 1042 01:06:31,201 --> 01:06:35,622 So, they get money from touring, but they get publishing money. 1043 01:06:35,788 --> 01:06:38,041 So, in the very beginning, one thing that Geffen did 1044 01:06:38,208 --> 01:06:39,417 that I thought was great -- 1045 01:06:39,584 --> 01:06:42,045 he had us form a band publishing company. 1046 01:06:42,212 --> 01:06:44,172 All the band's publishing went in that. 1047 01:06:44,339 --> 01:06:46,508 The problem was Geffen had the other half. 1048 01:06:46,674 --> 01:06:48,510 Half the Eagles' publishing, half of my publishing, 1049 01:06:48,676 --> 01:06:50,094 half of all the artists that he signed 1050 01:06:50,261 --> 01:06:55,517 went to Warner Bros., but he got them to return mine. 1051 01:06:55,683 --> 01:06:58,019 Jackson turned me on to the Eagles. 1052 01:06:58,186 --> 01:07:00,104 He had turned me on to a lot of artists, 1053 01:07:00,271 --> 01:07:02,690 and I felt I owed him something. 1054 01:07:02,857 --> 01:07:04,526 And that, not surprisingly, 1055 01:07:04,692 --> 01:07:07,487 was not acceptable rationale to the Eagles. 1056 01:07:07,654 --> 01:07:10,198 There's a certain amount of ire, 1057 01:07:10,365 --> 01:07:14,035 like, real, you know, like, "What the fuck? 1058 01:07:14,202 --> 01:07:16,663 I mean, we didn't get our publishing back." 1059 01:07:16,829 --> 01:07:18,081 So, it was the publishing issue 1060 01:07:18,248 --> 01:07:19,958 and the fact that the business managers 1061 01:07:20,124 --> 01:07:22,043 and the lawyers were all shared common guys, 1062 01:07:22,210 --> 01:07:25,880 and did they have a conflict when an issue came up 1063 01:07:26,047 --> 01:07:27,257 and which side to take? 1064 01:07:27,423 --> 01:07:29,467 Well, it just makes you feel like meat, you know? 1065 01:07:29,634 --> 01:07:32,470 It started out as such a personal, nurturing endeavor, 1066 01:07:32,637 --> 01:07:35,014 you know, with Mr. Geffen saying, "Oh, I'm going to protect you guys. 1067 01:07:35,181 --> 01:07:37,183 "That's why I'm calling my new label 'Asylum'. 1068 01:07:37,350 --> 01:07:40,853 It's going to be a sanctuary for real artists." 1069 01:07:41,020 --> 01:07:44,190 He once said to Irving Azoff, "You know, Irving, 1070 01:07:44,357 --> 01:07:46,651 this would be a great business if there weren't artists." 1071 01:07:49,070 --> 01:07:51,781 Irving was the one guy who really believed in us, 1072 01:07:51,948 --> 01:07:54,826 that I thought could do something to help us. 1073 01:07:54,993 --> 01:07:56,578 I basically hired a lawyer and went in 1074 01:07:56,744 --> 01:07:59,914 after I said the Eagles would like their publishing back, 1075 01:08:00,081 --> 01:08:02,250 to which the obvious response was "No". 1076 01:08:02,417 --> 01:08:05,837 He sort of drew a line in the sand and declared war, 1077 01:08:06,004 --> 01:08:08,965 so I felt, for my survival as their manager, 1078 01:08:09,132 --> 01:08:12,594 I needed to prove to them that I wasn't afraid of Geffen 1079 01:08:12,760 --> 01:08:14,554 and would stand up and, you know. 1080 01:08:14,721 --> 01:08:16,347 The lawsuit was filed as a last resort. 1081 01:08:17,056 --> 01:08:20,268 I don't think David liked reading his name in the lawsuit. 1082 01:08:20,435 --> 01:08:22,854 I thought it was incredibly ungrateful 1083 01:08:23,021 --> 01:08:27,025 and they misrepresented the facts, but so be it. 1084 01:08:27,191 --> 01:08:28,818 Ultimately, we settled out of court, 1085 01:08:28,985 --> 01:08:30,695 and I don't believe it took very long. 1086 01:08:30,862 --> 01:08:32,572 He just wanted to get rid of us. 1087 01:08:32,739 --> 01:08:34,866 This is our new record contract. 1088 01:08:37,619 --> 01:08:39,370 Just paper. 1089 01:08:39,537 --> 01:08:41,706 So, then we headed off for parts unknown 1090 01:08:41,873 --> 01:08:44,083 with Irving Azoff at the helm. 1091 01:08:52,759 --> 01:08:55,011 This card game is called Eagle Poker. 1092 01:08:55,178 --> 01:08:57,221 It's a bastardization of Red Dog. 1093 01:08:57,388 --> 01:09:01,684 I invented it in Detroit, Michigan, in 1947, 1094 01:09:01,851 --> 01:09:04,520 one year before I was born. 1095 01:09:04,687 --> 01:09:07,607 We were big gamblers. We played poker all the time. 1096 01:09:07,774 --> 01:09:13,154 Oh, boy. They should have never given me money. 1097 01:09:13,321 --> 01:09:17,325 So, we decided we'd go to the Bahamas to gamble. 1098 01:09:17,492 --> 01:09:19,786 Everybody but Don was holding. 1099 01:09:19,952 --> 01:09:22,830 I had like four joints in a baggie, 1100 01:09:22,997 --> 01:09:24,457 stuffed down my sock in my cowboy boot. 1101 01:09:24,624 --> 01:09:26,709 Durkin, the pilot, has a joint. 1102 01:09:26,876 --> 01:09:30,046 Irving had about 30 valiums in a sugar pack. 1103 01:09:30,213 --> 01:09:33,966 There was a couple of customs officials there 1104 01:09:34,133 --> 01:09:36,636 that asked us to collect all our luggage and come over, 1105 01:09:36,803 --> 01:09:39,347 and they wanted to search us 'cause we looked terrible. 1106 01:09:39,514 --> 01:09:41,683 We had really long hair and patches on our jeans 1107 01:09:41,849 --> 01:09:44,519 and a beard and not slept. 1108 01:09:44,686 --> 01:09:47,772 Now, I'm freaking out. Bernie's freaking out. 1109 01:09:47,939 --> 01:09:50,692 Irving's freaking out. Henley's pissed off. 1110 01:09:51,818 --> 01:09:53,027 Don't touch me. 1111 01:09:53,194 --> 01:09:55,029 Well, the guy proceeds to put us all in a room together, 1112 01:09:55,196 --> 01:09:58,324 and they start searching us one by one. 1113 01:09:58,491 --> 01:10:02,995 My greatest fear is that I'm gonna be locked in a jail cell 1114 01:10:03,162 --> 01:10:05,540 with Bernie Leadon. 1115 01:10:05,707 --> 01:10:07,375 So, at this point, Irving steps in 1116 01:10:07,542 --> 01:10:10,128 and takes one of the Bahamian customs guys 1117 01:10:10,294 --> 01:10:12,839 over to the side and has a chat with him. 1118 01:10:13,005 --> 01:10:16,175 I'm not sure, to this day, what Irving said to him. 1119 01:10:19,554 --> 01:10:23,391 The next thing I knew, they let us pass with no problem. 1120 01:10:23,558 --> 01:10:25,268 It was sort of miraculous, really, it was, 1121 01:10:25,435 --> 01:10:28,479 because I thought for sure we were gonna be in the slammer. 1122 01:10:28,646 --> 01:10:30,606 It was dumb luck that this guy bought my line 1123 01:10:30,773 --> 01:10:31,733 and didn't search them. 1124 01:10:31,899 --> 01:10:33,609 That was the day I decided Irving Azoff 1125 01:10:33,776 --> 01:10:36,028 was the greatest manager in rock 'n' roll 1126 01:10:36,195 --> 01:10:39,073 and I would never do anything without him by my side. 1127 01:10:40,908 --> 01:10:43,828 I had the only seat in a major championship fight -- 1128 01:10:43,995 --> 01:10:46,622 to be sitting there when, you know, 1129 01:10:46,789 --> 01:10:50,126 when a lyric was thrown out and then hear a track. 1130 01:10:55,423 --> 01:10:58,050 And I've watched the creative process with lots of other people, 1131 01:10:58,217 --> 01:11:01,721 but I've never seen it the way it fell in place with them. 1132 01:11:01,888 --> 01:11:04,599 I remember watching "Lyin' Eyes" written. 1133 01:11:04,766 --> 01:11:07,268 Glenn just had a way of coming up with a phrase, you know? 1134 01:11:07,435 --> 01:11:09,020 He had written some kind of a tune, 1135 01:11:09,187 --> 01:11:11,022 and they were sitting in Tana's one night 1136 01:11:11,189 --> 01:11:14,817 and looking at some young girl with an older guy at the bar, 1137 01:11:14,984 --> 01:11:17,820 and Glenn said, "Look at those lyin' eyes." 1138 01:11:17,987 --> 01:11:19,947 And just -- just like that, wow, there's the song. 1139 01:11:46,724 --> 01:11:48,184 It was just about all these girls 1140 01:11:48,351 --> 01:11:50,353 who would come down to Dan Tana's looking beautiful, 1141 01:11:50,520 --> 01:11:52,647 and they'd be there from 8:00 to midnight 1142 01:11:52,814 --> 01:11:55,316 and have dinner and drinks with all of us rockers, 1143 01:11:55,483 --> 01:11:58,820 and then they'd go home because they were kept women. 1144 01:12:24,387 --> 01:12:26,681 You know, when we were doing the "One of These Nights" album, 1145 01:12:26,848 --> 01:12:28,432 we'd gone through three albums, 1146 01:12:28,599 --> 01:12:30,935 and the only people who'd sung on any hit records 1147 01:12:31,102 --> 01:12:32,728 were Don and myself. 1148 01:12:32,895 --> 01:12:36,566 And Randy always felt like, you know, he was a lead singer, too. 1149 01:12:36,732 --> 01:12:39,360 And I actually felt that way, too. I liked his voice. 1150 01:12:39,527 --> 01:12:42,446 So, he brought in the beginnings of "Take It To the Limit," 1151 01:12:42,613 --> 01:12:46,075 and it became the Eagles' first number-one single. 1152 01:12:59,881 --> 01:13:01,132 The line "Take It To the Limit" 1153 01:13:01,299 --> 01:13:06,721 was to keep trying before you reach a point in your life 1154 01:13:06,888 --> 01:13:09,307 where you feel, you know, you've done everything 1155 01:13:09,473 --> 01:13:11,684 and seen everything sort of feeling. 1156 01:13:11,851 --> 01:13:13,644 You know, a part of getting old, 1157 01:13:13,811 --> 01:13:16,022 and just to take it to the limit one more time, 1158 01:13:16,188 --> 01:13:19,233 like every day, just keep punching away at it. 1159 01:13:19,400 --> 01:13:21,903 And that's all that I really -- that was the line, 1160 01:13:22,069 --> 01:13:26,324 and from there, the song took a different, you know, course. 1161 01:13:37,501 --> 01:13:42,089 I think everybody in the Eagles did the level best we could. 1162 01:13:42,256 --> 01:13:44,467 You have to remember how young we were, 1163 01:13:44,634 --> 01:13:47,386 the fact that nobody had anything when we started, 1164 01:13:47,553 --> 01:13:49,805 and you got all this stuff coming at you. 1165 01:13:49,972 --> 01:13:52,183 Meanwhile, you're touring all the time. 1166 01:13:52,350 --> 01:13:54,185 It's a lot. 1167 01:13:54,352 --> 01:13:58,314 To Bernie, success on any scale was synonymous with selling out. 1168 01:13:58,481 --> 01:14:01,233 He wanted us to remain sort of an underground band. 1169 01:14:01,400 --> 01:14:03,694 We had our problems with Bernie, 1170 01:14:03,861 --> 01:14:06,030 and Bernie had his problems with us. 1171 01:14:06,197 --> 01:14:08,950 Some of it was based on him being able to have a voice 1172 01:14:09,116 --> 01:14:10,284 in the Eagles 1173 01:14:10,451 --> 01:14:14,163 and record the songs he wanted to the way he wanted to. 1174 01:14:14,330 --> 01:14:16,332 We were getting more and more rocked out, 1175 01:14:16,499 --> 01:14:19,835 and I think Bernie was less and less happy about that... 1176 01:14:21,712 --> 01:14:24,799 ...to the point that, one time, we had worked on a track all night. 1177 01:14:24,966 --> 01:14:26,258 I mean, it was a rocked-out track, 1178 01:14:26,425 --> 01:14:28,844 and we're all sitting behind the board the next day, 1179 01:14:29,011 --> 01:14:30,429 listening to the various takes of it, 1180 01:14:30,596 --> 01:14:32,807 trying to decide which take we like the best. 1181 01:14:32,974 --> 01:14:34,475 Bernie hadn't said a word. 1182 01:14:34,642 --> 01:14:35,977 So, I asked him over the board, 1183 01:14:36,143 --> 01:14:37,979 I said, "Bernie, what do you think?" 1184 01:14:38,145 --> 01:14:39,689 There's a long pause, and he gets up, 1185 01:14:39,855 --> 01:14:43,859 and he stretches, and he says, "I think I'm going surfing." 1186 01:14:44,026 --> 01:14:46,112 And he left. 1187 01:14:53,828 --> 01:14:55,705 I was caught in the middle a lot of times. 1188 01:14:55,871 --> 01:14:57,748 And sometimes I would agree with Bernie, 1189 01:14:57,915 --> 01:15:00,084 but most of the time, I would agree with Glenn. 1190 01:15:00,251 --> 01:15:03,004 Glenn and I always wanted the band to be a hybrid, 1191 01:15:03,170 --> 01:15:06,007 to encompass bluegrass and country and rock 'n' roll. 1192 01:15:06,173 --> 01:15:09,051 There was a part of Bernie that really resisted that. 1193 01:15:09,218 --> 01:15:11,470 After a while, it became a real problem, 1194 01:15:11,637 --> 01:15:14,932 particularly between Bernie and Glenn. 1195 01:15:15,099 --> 01:15:17,601 Finally, we were at the Orange Bowl in Miami. 1196 01:15:17,768 --> 01:15:18,894 We were backstage, 1197 01:15:19,061 --> 01:15:22,523 and we were talking about what our next move was gonna be, 1198 01:15:22,690 --> 01:15:23,941 what our plans were supposed to be, 1199 01:15:24,108 --> 01:15:29,530 and I was animated and adamant about what we needed to do next 1200 01:15:29,697 --> 01:15:30,990 here, there, and everywhere, 1201 01:15:31,157 --> 01:15:34,452 and Bernie comes over and pours a beer on my head 1202 01:15:34,618 --> 01:15:37,747 and says, "You need to chill out, man." 1203 01:15:37,913 --> 01:15:41,292 I have no idea. It was a spontaneous thing. 1204 01:15:41,459 --> 01:15:45,337 I mean, I take that incident now quite seriously. 1205 01:15:45,504 --> 01:15:48,090 That was a very disrespectful thing to do. 1206 01:15:48,257 --> 01:15:53,471 Obviously, it was intended to be humiliating to him, I would say, 1207 01:15:53,637 --> 01:15:57,558 and is something I'm really not proud of. 1208 01:15:57,725 --> 01:16:00,686 It did illustrate a breaking point. 1209 01:16:07,818 --> 01:16:10,738 During that time, we got a couple shows 1210 01:16:10,905 --> 01:16:12,406 opening for the Rolling Stones, 1211 01:16:12,573 --> 01:16:15,326 and Irving was managing Joe Walsh. 1212 01:16:15,493 --> 01:16:20,372 Joe Walsh was a bona fide rock-'n'-roll guitar player. 1213 01:16:24,668 --> 01:16:27,838 So, for a couple of those shows, just for our encores, 1214 01:16:28,005 --> 01:16:30,007 we'd put Joe Walsh in a road box, 1215 01:16:30,174 --> 01:16:34,178 and we'd come back to do an encore, and we'd roll the road box out, 1216 01:16:34,345 --> 01:16:37,473 and just like the model jumping out of a cake, 1217 01:16:37,640 --> 01:16:39,683 we'd open the guitar case, 1218 01:16:39,850 --> 01:16:42,770 and there would be Joe Walsh with his Les Paul, 1219 01:16:42,937 --> 01:16:45,981 and he'd climb out of the box and plug in, and the Eagles -- 1220 01:16:46,148 --> 01:16:49,068 We would play "Rocky Mountain Way." 1221 01:16:56,700 --> 01:16:58,202 I loved the way he played. 1222 01:16:58,369 --> 01:17:01,622 I'd loved the James gang when I was growing up in Detroit. 1223 01:17:01,789 --> 01:17:06,585 Now I started thinking, "Joe Walsh for Bernie Leadon." 1224 01:17:18,889 --> 01:17:21,851 Okay, maybe the vocals won't be quite as good, 1225 01:17:22,017 --> 01:17:24,478 but, boy, are we gonna kick some ass. 1226 01:17:37,616 --> 01:17:40,327 I think one of the things that I brought into the band 1227 01:17:40,494 --> 01:17:42,454 that was good for the band 1228 01:17:42,621 --> 01:17:46,208 was to bring it up a notch when we played live. 1229 01:17:46,375 --> 01:17:50,588 Just keep kicking it in the butt a little bit, you know? 1230 01:18:18,949 --> 01:18:22,536 All right, D.C., come on, give it up. 1231 01:18:23,787 --> 01:18:27,041 I went to a show maybe eight months later, 1232 01:18:27,208 --> 01:18:29,793 and the band are interacting with each other 1233 01:18:29,960 --> 01:18:32,421 exactly like we did with me onstage, 1234 01:18:32,588 --> 01:18:35,174 except instead of me, Walsh was up there, 1235 01:18:35,341 --> 01:18:38,552 and it just was, like, really, really odd, you know, 1236 01:18:38,719 --> 01:18:41,555 to be watching it and not be part of it. 1237 01:18:41,722 --> 01:18:43,474 So, I actually left that show. 1238 01:18:43,641 --> 01:18:46,352 I was just like, "This is, like, too weird." 1239 01:18:46,518 --> 01:18:48,520 So, we got Joe Walsh in the band. 1240 01:18:48,687 --> 01:18:50,522 That's another adventure 1241 01:18:50,689 --> 01:18:52,650 because Joe was an interesting bunch of guys. 1242 01:18:52,816 --> 01:18:53,609 Hey, I tell you what. 1243 01:18:53,776 --> 01:18:56,654 If you got firecrackers, just wait until you get home, 1244 01:18:56,820 --> 01:19:01,200 lock yourself in the closet, and light everything you got, okay? 1245 01:19:03,077 --> 01:19:04,411 Thank you, Joe. 1246 01:19:04,578 --> 01:19:05,704 He brought a lot of levity 1247 01:19:05,871 --> 01:19:08,332 to just about everything that happened, 1248 01:19:08,499 --> 01:19:10,834 which was needed at that time. 1249 01:19:11,001 --> 01:19:12,419 Heads or tails? 1250 01:19:12,586 --> 01:19:14,088 Heads. 1251 01:19:14,255 --> 01:19:17,091 Well, I could use a little head myself. 1252 01:19:17,258 --> 01:19:19,718 In those days, you didn't know what he was gonna do next. 1253 01:19:19,885 --> 01:19:23,347 It was fun most of the time, although not all the time. 1254 01:19:23,514 --> 01:19:25,849 It was fun, depending on how much you'd had to drink, 1255 01:19:26,016 --> 01:19:28,560 to see a television go sailing off the 14th-floor balcony 1256 01:19:28,727 --> 01:19:32,439 and into the pool, as long as nobody got hurt. 1257 01:19:38,570 --> 01:19:41,532 Joe Walsh was the American King of room trash. 1258 01:19:41,699 --> 01:19:44,285 He had studied under some of the best. 1259 01:19:44,451 --> 01:19:47,371 One of the most terrifying things that ever happened to me 1260 01:19:47,538 --> 01:19:50,958 was that Keith Moon decided he liked me. 1261 01:19:51,125 --> 01:19:53,544 All those Keith Moon stories are true. 1262 01:19:55,379 --> 01:19:58,340 This guy was full-blown nuts, 1263 01:19:58,507 --> 01:20:02,344 and you never knew what was coming next. 1264 01:20:08,726 --> 01:20:11,937 Keith was my mentor at chaos, 1265 01:20:12,104 --> 01:20:16,442 getting arrested, practical jokes, pranks, room damage. 1266 01:20:38,172 --> 01:20:41,508 One year, we gave him a chain saw for his birthday as a joke. 1267 01:20:50,017 --> 01:20:53,145 By this time, we were eating in nice restaurants 1268 01:20:53,312 --> 01:20:57,983 and buying expensive wine and staying in great hotel rooms. 1269 01:20:58,150 --> 01:21:00,611 There were a lot of hotels that we weren't allowed to go back to. 1270 01:21:00,778 --> 01:21:02,029 We were in Chicago, 1271 01:21:02,196 --> 01:21:04,114 and we were staying at the Astor Towers. 1272 01:21:04,281 --> 01:21:07,117 In Chicago, here's what happened. 1273 01:21:07,284 --> 01:21:10,954 There was a knock on the door, and in walked John Belushi. 1274 01:21:12,289 --> 01:21:17,169 John wanted to show me the finer restaurants of Chicago. 1275 01:21:18,212 --> 01:21:19,922 So, we went to the restaurant, 1276 01:21:20,089 --> 01:21:21,882 and they wouldn't let us in 'cause we had jeans, 1277 01:21:22,049 --> 01:21:26,095 and he got the maître d' up to like $300 bribe, 1278 01:21:26,261 --> 01:21:28,472 and still they would not let us in. 1279 01:21:28,639 --> 01:21:31,558 And John said, "I know what to do. I know what to do." 1280 01:21:32,476 --> 01:21:36,480 And the next thing I knew, we were standing in the alley, 1281 01:21:36,647 --> 01:21:41,235 and he spray-painted my jeans black and made me do his, 1282 01:21:41,402 --> 01:21:44,154 and we went back, and we got in. 1283 01:21:46,156 --> 01:21:49,410 We were sitting in these Queen Anne-period chairs 1284 01:21:49,576 --> 01:21:50,911 that had needlepoint, 1285 01:21:51,078 --> 01:21:53,872 and when we stood up, that was all black, 1286 01:21:54,039 --> 01:21:56,792 and the butts of our pants were jeans again. 1287 01:21:56,959 --> 01:22:01,088 So, we had to kind of back out of there and leave fast. 1288 01:22:02,047 --> 01:22:04,508 But that was the beginning of it. 1289 01:22:04,675 --> 01:22:08,595 And so that night, with much glee, 1290 01:22:08,762 --> 01:22:12,516 Joe set about to set the world record for room trash. 1291 01:22:14,435 --> 01:22:18,689 John and I did $28,000 of room damage. 1292 01:22:22,109 --> 01:22:24,778 Glenn and Don didn't really ever approve 1293 01:22:24,945 --> 01:22:27,197 of the room trashing, but they understood it. 1294 01:22:27,364 --> 01:22:29,700 They wanted respect as rock 'n' rollers, 1295 01:22:29,867 --> 01:22:32,119 and Joe brought that respect. 1296 01:22:32,286 --> 01:22:36,081 I was insecure always and afraid, 1297 01:22:36,248 --> 01:22:42,045 so I hid behind all of my hang-ups with humor. 1298 01:22:42,212 --> 01:22:47,468 I was totally in awe of Don and Glenn. 1299 01:22:47,634 --> 01:22:50,971 I was intimidated by Don and Glenn 1300 01:22:51,138 --> 01:22:56,143 because they sang so good and they were writing stuff 1301 01:22:56,310 --> 01:23:00,439 I could never come close to writing. 1302 01:23:01,398 --> 01:23:03,775 After we just had a bunch of hit records 1303 01:23:03,942 --> 01:23:06,695 on "One of These Nights," we were under the microscope. 1304 01:23:06,862 --> 01:23:09,448 Everybody was gonna look at the next record we made 1305 01:23:09,615 --> 01:23:10,782 and pass judgment. 1306 01:23:10,949 --> 01:23:14,203 Don and I were going, "Man, this better be good." 1307 01:23:15,954 --> 01:23:17,247 Look at that. 1308 01:23:17,414 --> 01:23:19,500 It's gonna be quite a nice guitar. 1309 01:23:19,666 --> 01:23:21,627 Felder, you see this? 1310 01:23:22,586 --> 01:23:23,962 Who, uh, who tuned this? 1311 01:23:24,129 --> 01:23:25,297 Well, it has no nut. 1312 01:23:25,464 --> 01:23:29,176 With Joe in the band with me, I wanted to write something, 1313 01:23:29,343 --> 01:23:32,971 musically, that would fit two guitar players, 1314 01:23:33,138 --> 01:23:35,182 that we could play off of each other. 1315 01:23:35,349 --> 01:23:37,643 So, I was sitting on a sofa in Malibu 1316 01:23:37,809 --> 01:23:40,020 at this rental house that I had on the beach, 1317 01:23:40,187 --> 01:23:42,231 and I was playing this acoustic guitar, 1318 01:23:42,397 --> 01:23:44,858 and this introduction came out, that progression. 1319 01:23:45,025 --> 01:23:47,861 I kept playing it three or four times. 1320 01:23:48,028 --> 01:23:50,030 I had an old reel-to-reel tape recorder, 1321 01:23:50,197 --> 01:23:53,575 so I went back and recorded that introduction to that song 1322 01:23:53,742 --> 01:23:56,620 and laid down that progression, made a mix of it, 1323 01:23:56,787 --> 01:23:59,373 and put it on a cassette with, I don't know, 1324 01:23:59,540 --> 01:24:02,751 the other 14 or 15 pieces of music that I had assembled, 1325 01:24:02,918 --> 01:24:06,296 and I gave a copy of the cassette to Don, one to Glenn. 1326 01:24:06,463 --> 01:24:11,593 Don Felder used to send Henley and I instrumental tapes, 1327 01:24:11,760 --> 01:24:12,803 song ideas. 1328 01:24:12,970 --> 01:24:15,764 95oo of them were cluttered with guitar licks, 1329 01:24:15,931 --> 01:24:18,600 and we would listen to these things and go, 1330 01:24:18,767 --> 01:24:19,977 "Well, where do you sing?" 1331 01:24:20,686 --> 01:24:23,522 As Don and I were listening through one of the Felder cassettes 1332 01:24:23,689 --> 01:24:26,149 and this song came up, we both sort of said, 1333 01:24:26,316 --> 01:24:28,610 "Hmm, now, this is interesting." 1334 01:24:30,362 --> 01:24:32,698 The music sounded to me like some sort of a cross 1335 01:24:32,864 --> 01:24:35,701 between Spanish music and reggae music, 1336 01:24:35,867 --> 01:24:37,494 and that one really jumped out at me. 1337 01:24:37,661 --> 01:24:41,790 So, we set out to write a song to that progression. 1338 01:24:43,625 --> 01:24:45,919 I'm pretty sure it was Henley's idea 1339 01:24:46,086 --> 01:24:49,131 to have a song called "Hotel California." 1340 01:24:52,718 --> 01:24:56,722 I think Henley's and Glenn's lyric writing really came to a head. 1341 01:24:56,888 --> 01:24:59,558 They became real honest-to-God songwriters then. 1342 01:25:03,687 --> 01:25:04,646 During the recording of it, 1343 01:25:04,813 --> 01:25:06,356 I thought that we were on to something. 1344 01:25:06,523 --> 01:25:07,899 I knew we were on to something. 1345 01:25:09,860 --> 01:25:13,530 We were in a really creative phase, 1346 01:25:13,697 --> 01:25:19,202 and it just so happened that Bill Szymczyk pushed record. 1347 01:25:20,370 --> 01:25:22,414 Thank God. 1348 01:26:30,357 --> 01:26:34,319 We've been asked a million times, "What does that song mean?" 1349 01:26:34,486 --> 01:26:36,988 Don and I were big fans of hidden, deeper meaning. 1350 01:26:37,698 --> 01:26:38,949 You know, you write songs, 1351 01:26:39,116 --> 01:26:41,868 and you send them out to the world... 1352 01:26:54,214 --> 01:26:58,009 And maybe somewhere in that song is some stuff that's just yours 1353 01:26:58,176 --> 01:27:00,178 that they're never gonna figure out. 1354 01:27:06,643 --> 01:27:09,312 There has been a great deal of ridiculous speculation 1355 01:27:09,479 --> 01:27:10,856 about that song over the years. 1356 01:27:11,022 --> 01:27:13,817 I mean, it's really taken on a life or a mythology of its own. 1357 01:27:13,984 --> 01:27:15,694 You know, it's sort of like the "Paul is dead" thing 1358 01:27:15,861 --> 01:27:17,487 or who was the walrus? 1359 01:27:21,783 --> 01:27:24,578 It's been denounced by evangelicals. 1360 01:27:24,745 --> 01:27:26,955 We've been accused of all kinds of wacky things, 1361 01:27:27,122 --> 01:27:29,166 like being members of the Church of Satan. 1362 01:27:29,332 --> 01:27:32,419 People see images on the album cover that aren't there. 1363 01:27:32,586 --> 01:27:33,920 Just lunatic stuff. 1364 01:28:00,447 --> 01:28:01,698 My simple explanation is 1365 01:28:01,865 --> 01:28:05,619 it's a song about a journey from innocence to experience. 1366 01:28:05,786 --> 01:28:07,078 That's all. 1367 01:28:31,353 --> 01:28:34,314 Whereas Felder was technically very, very good, 1368 01:28:34,481 --> 01:28:38,068 Walsh brought spontaneity to it, 1369 01:28:38,235 --> 01:28:41,947 and the two of them playing off each other was just brilliant. 1370 01:29:00,006 --> 01:29:01,925 Out of great respect for each other, 1371 01:29:02,092 --> 01:29:04,261 there was always a little competition 1372 01:29:04,427 --> 01:29:06,513 between Felder and I. 1373 01:29:06,680 --> 01:29:10,517 We always tried to kind of one-up each other, you know? 1374 01:29:14,396 --> 01:29:17,190 And that's really healthy. 1375 01:29:17,357 --> 01:29:20,777 It always made the song better 1376 01:29:20,944 --> 01:29:24,781 when we were kind of, "Oh, yeah? Listen to this." 1377 01:29:32,539 --> 01:29:33,582 We got to the end, 1378 01:29:33,748 --> 01:29:36,877 where now is the harmony guitars that are playing together, 1379 01:29:37,043 --> 01:29:40,130 and Joe said, "We should do something that's like... 1380 01:29:58,899 --> 01:30:00,609 The ending of "Hotel California" -- 1381 01:30:00,775 --> 01:30:05,947 that's one of my high points of my entire recording career. 1382 01:30:13,163 --> 01:30:16,333 To have a seven-minute single be number one -- 1383 01:30:16,499 --> 01:30:17,584 that was unheard of. 1384 01:30:17,751 --> 01:30:19,044 The record company said, "You got to do an edit. 1385 01:30:19,210 --> 01:30:20,253 You got to do an edit." 1386 01:30:20,420 --> 01:30:23,089 And we all said, "No. Take it or leave it." 1387 01:30:23,256 --> 01:30:24,424 And they took it. 1388 01:30:26,468 --> 01:30:28,720 We had no idea that that song 1389 01:30:28,887 --> 01:30:32,307 would affect as many people on the planet as it did. 1390 01:30:34,684 --> 01:30:37,062 Thank you. 1391 01:30:37,228 --> 01:30:41,232 The rest of the album kind of developed around that song. 1392 01:30:41,399 --> 01:30:43,193 The album, you could loosely say, 1393 01:30:43,360 --> 01:30:46,571 is a thematic album, a concept album. 1394 01:30:47,572 --> 01:30:49,282 Not unlike "Desperado," 1395 01:30:49,449 --> 01:30:54,329 "Hotel California" was our reaction to what was happening to us. 1396 01:30:56,164 --> 01:31:00,251 On just about every album we made, there was some kind of a commentary 1397 01:31:00,418 --> 01:31:03,296 on the music business and on American culture in general. 1398 01:31:03,463 --> 01:31:06,007 The hotel itself could be taken as a metaphor 1399 01:31:06,174 --> 01:31:09,010 not only for the myth making of Southern California 1400 01:31:09,177 --> 01:31:11,972 but for the myth making that is the American dream 1401 01:31:12,138 --> 01:31:15,016 because it's a fine line between the American dream 1402 01:31:15,183 --> 01:31:16,643 and the American nightmare. 1403 01:31:23,525 --> 01:31:25,652 All the songs we write for this album 1404 01:31:25,819 --> 01:31:28,488 can fit inside this concept. 1405 01:31:36,871 --> 01:31:38,248 Once the rest of the guys in the band 1406 01:31:38,415 --> 01:31:41,501 understood what the song "Hotel California" was about, 1407 01:31:41,668 --> 01:31:43,003 it became kind of a theme, 1408 01:31:43,169 --> 01:31:46,006 and they started to customize their writing to fit in with it. 1409 01:31:55,015 --> 01:31:57,517 I think that the Eagles started breaking up 1410 01:31:57,684 --> 01:31:59,394 during the recording of "Hotel California." 1411 01:31:59,561 --> 01:32:01,021 There were creative tensions, 1412 01:32:01,187 --> 01:32:03,148 but there was always tension tensions. 1413 01:32:04,024 --> 01:32:06,943 By the time we got to recording "Hotel California," 1414 01:32:07,110 --> 01:32:08,319 if the song wasn't good enough 1415 01:32:08,486 --> 01:32:10,947 to survive the amount of time we were working on the record, 1416 01:32:11,114 --> 01:32:12,365 it didn't make it on the record. 1417 01:32:12,532 --> 01:32:14,242 Perfection is not an accident. 1418 01:32:14,409 --> 01:32:17,328 Our goal was just to be the best we could be. 1419 01:32:17,495 --> 01:32:20,331 We wanted to get better as songwriters and as performers, 1420 01:32:20,498 --> 01:32:21,833 and we worked on it. 1421 01:32:23,501 --> 01:32:27,797 Don and I felt like there was no space now for filler, 1422 01:32:27,964 --> 01:32:31,593 and Don Felder, for all of his talents as a guitar player, 1423 01:32:31,760 --> 01:32:32,886 is not a singer. 1424 01:32:34,512 --> 01:32:37,140 Felder wanted to write more, sing more, 1425 01:32:37,307 --> 01:32:39,017 and Felder had kind of demanded 1426 01:32:39,184 --> 01:32:42,687 that "I'm gonna sing two songs on 'Hotel California."' 1427 01:32:48,026 --> 01:32:50,987 We were all Alphas, 1428 01:32:51,154 --> 01:32:56,117 and we were all very assertive and powerful in our own way. 1429 01:32:56,284 --> 01:33:01,081 You could bring in a great track to Don and Glenn 1430 01:33:01,247 --> 01:33:03,333 and be really excited about it. 1431 01:33:03,500 --> 01:33:05,919 This happened to Felder. 1432 01:33:09,714 --> 01:33:12,217 I wrote the track for "Victim of Love." 1433 01:33:12,383 --> 01:33:14,928 It was gonna be a follow-up song 1434 01:33:15,095 --> 01:33:18,431 on the "Hotel California" record for me to sing. 1435 01:33:21,434 --> 01:33:24,187 I have no recollection of anybody being promised anything. 1436 01:33:24,354 --> 01:33:27,732 "Victim of Love" was not brought to the band as a complete song. 1437 01:33:27,899 --> 01:33:30,068 It was simply another chord progression 1438 01:33:30,235 --> 01:33:31,611 that Don Felder brought in. 1439 01:33:31,778 --> 01:33:34,739 It had no title, no lyrics, and no melody. 1440 01:33:34,906 --> 01:33:38,159 Glenn and I and J.D. Souther all sat down 1441 01:33:38,326 --> 01:33:40,703 and hammered out the rest of it. 1442 01:33:40,870 --> 01:33:42,205 We did let Mr. Felder sing it. 1443 01:33:42,372 --> 01:33:44,791 He sang it dozens of times over the span of a week, 1444 01:33:44,958 --> 01:33:46,251 over and over and over again. 1445 01:33:46,417 --> 01:33:49,337 It simply didn't come up to band standards. 1446 01:33:51,714 --> 01:33:55,218 "Victim of Love" had been recorded with Felder as the lead vocalist, 1447 01:33:55,385 --> 01:33:58,555 and my job was to take Don Felder out to lunch or dinner 1448 01:33:58,721 --> 01:34:02,016 while they went in the studio and put Henley's vocal on it. 1449 01:34:07,814 --> 01:34:13,027 Irving took me out and said that everybody in the band thought 1450 01:34:13,194 --> 01:34:14,904 that it was better if Don sang that. 1451 01:34:15,071 --> 01:34:17,657 And it was a little bit of a bitter pill to swallow. 1452 01:34:17,824 --> 01:34:21,452 I felt like Don was taking that song from me. 1453 01:34:21,619 --> 01:34:24,455 I'd been promised a song on the next record. 1454 01:34:24,622 --> 01:34:26,249 But there was no real way to argue 1455 01:34:26,416 --> 01:34:28,501 with my vocal versus Don Henley's vocal. 1456 01:34:28,668 --> 01:34:31,546 There was no way to argue with anybody's vocal in the band 1457 01:34:31,713 --> 01:34:32,839 compared to Don Henley. 1458 01:34:40,763 --> 01:34:42,849 Felder demanding to sing that song 1459 01:34:43,016 --> 01:34:45,685 would be the equivalent of me demanding to play lead guitar 1460 01:34:45,852 --> 01:34:46,853 on "Hotel California." 1461 01:34:47,020 --> 01:34:48,313 It just didn't make sense. 1462 01:34:52,650 --> 01:34:55,653 If you look at my vocal participation in the Eagles 1463 01:34:55,820 --> 01:35:01,117 over the course of the 1970s, I sang less and less. 1464 01:35:01,284 --> 01:35:04,996 It was intentional. We had Don Henley. 1465 01:35:09,584 --> 01:35:12,170 Don and Glenn's position was, 1466 01:35:12,337 --> 01:35:16,799 "This is the best thing for the Eagles." 1467 01:35:16,966 --> 01:35:19,802 And Don Felder never forgot that. 1468 01:35:31,731 --> 01:35:33,691 Get it! Get it! Run! Run! Run! 1469 01:35:34,817 --> 01:35:35,902 Shit. 1470 01:35:38,071 --> 01:35:39,822 This is a real healthy thing. 1471 01:35:39,989 --> 01:35:42,700 It promotes good feelings, you know, among the guys, 1472 01:35:42,867 --> 01:35:45,119 and it keeps us from killing each other. 1473 01:35:46,246 --> 01:35:48,581 Where's my glove? Who's got my glove? 1474 01:35:48,748 --> 01:35:50,875 We can yell at each other on a baseball field, 1475 01:35:51,042 --> 01:35:53,336 then we don't have to yell at each other when we're working. 1476 01:35:54,462 --> 01:35:56,339 Get all my frustrations out. 1477 01:35:56,506 --> 01:35:58,049 What frustrations? 1478 01:35:58,216 --> 01:35:59,676 I haven't been getting laid. 1479 01:35:59,842 --> 01:36:02,595 We try to get out and play softball with the crew 1480 01:36:02,762 --> 01:36:03,888 if we have a day off. 1481 01:36:04,055 --> 01:36:05,139 Swing, batter! 1482 01:36:05,306 --> 01:36:07,350 Oh, it's gone, it's gone. It's gone. 1483 01:36:07,517 --> 01:36:10,228 Something to help release the tension. 1484 01:36:10,395 --> 01:36:14,023 That's really what I do to keep from going crazy. 1485 01:36:14,190 --> 01:36:16,734 How do you keep from going crazy, Joe? 1486 01:36:19,320 --> 01:36:21,281 Well... 1487 01:36:23,950 --> 01:36:27,245 I tell you, I just, uh... 1488 01:36:27,412 --> 01:36:29,998 In the press and the media, 1489 01:36:30,164 --> 01:36:34,669 it was presented that we were constantly at war, 1490 01:36:34,836 --> 01:36:37,714 and I can't say that's exactly the case. 1491 01:36:42,051 --> 01:36:46,306 We were interacting, and we were all intense. 1492 01:36:46,472 --> 01:36:48,725 Glenn said to me one time, 1493 01:36:48,891 --> 01:36:53,229 "I get nuts sometimes, and I'm sorry." 1494 01:36:53,396 --> 01:36:54,689 Hey, Joe. 1495 01:36:54,856 --> 01:37:02,322 But that tension had a lot to do with fanning the artistic fire. 1496 01:37:02,488 --> 01:37:08,953 Having that dynamic was important in making the music. 1497 01:37:11,164 --> 01:37:13,666 Well, we're rehearsing now, and before we're even playing 1498 01:37:13,833 --> 01:37:15,626 and guys are just noodling around 1499 01:37:15,793 --> 01:37:18,046 and getting their amps going and stuff, we hear Joe go... 1500 01:37:23,676 --> 01:37:27,013 You know, and everyone would kind of go, "What did you play? 1501 01:37:27,180 --> 01:37:28,097 Play that again." 1502 01:37:28,765 --> 01:37:33,019 That was an exercise I was doing because it's a coordination thing. 1503 01:37:33,186 --> 01:37:36,064 You know, it's like one of these deals. 1504 01:37:36,230 --> 01:37:38,024 So, I was doing that to warm up, 1505 01:37:38,191 --> 01:37:40,234 and they said, "Well, what is that?" 1506 01:37:40,401 --> 01:37:45,073 And I said, "Well, that's just something I have, you know? 1507 01:37:45,239 --> 01:37:46,449 There you go." 1508 01:37:46,616 --> 01:37:47,658 That's the lick. 1509 01:37:47,825 --> 01:37:50,495 That's what we should build the song around. 1510 01:37:57,668 --> 01:38:00,630 I was riding shotgun in a corvette with a drug dealer 1511 01:38:00,797 --> 01:38:03,549 on the way to a poker game, and the next thing I knew, 1512 01:38:03,716 --> 01:38:07,345 we were going about 90 miles an hour, holding big time. 1513 01:38:07,512 --> 01:38:10,681 I was like, "Hey, man. What are you doing?" 1514 01:38:10,848 --> 01:38:12,558 You know, and he looked at me, and he grinned. 1515 01:38:12,725 --> 01:38:15,603 He goes, "Life in the fast lane." 1516 01:38:15,770 --> 01:38:20,233 And I thought immediately, "Now, there's a song title." 1517 01:38:31,786 --> 01:38:33,788 Then they put out the greatest hits. 1518 01:38:33,955 --> 01:38:35,164 There was a period 1519 01:38:35,331 --> 01:38:38,501 where we sold a million records a month for 18 months. 1520 01:38:38,668 --> 01:38:41,087 It's a little-known fact that the Eagles 1521 01:38:41,254 --> 01:38:44,924 had the biggest-selling album of the 20th century. 1522 01:38:45,091 --> 01:38:51,556 But the music business never ever got honest of its own volition. 1523 01:38:51,722 --> 01:38:54,434 No record company ever went to an artist and said, 1524 01:38:54,600 --> 01:38:55,893 "You've done a great job. 1525 01:38:56,060 --> 01:38:58,104 We're gonna increase your royalties." 1526 01:38:58,271 --> 01:39:01,065 So we created our own promotion company. 1527 01:39:01,232 --> 01:39:03,901 We created our own management company. 1528 01:39:04,068 --> 01:39:05,528 We had our own booking agency. 1529 01:39:05,695 --> 01:39:08,489 Stop any time. 1530 01:39:13,494 --> 01:39:20,251 We achieved an amount of success beyond our wildest imagination, 1531 01:39:20,418 --> 01:39:24,130 and Randy really had trouble with it. 1532 01:39:24,297 --> 01:39:25,965 Bam! Bam! 1533 01:39:26,132 --> 01:39:28,551 Randy used to have trouble singing the high note 1534 01:39:28,718 --> 01:39:29,927 at the end of "Take It To the Limit." 1535 01:39:41,063 --> 01:39:44,609 Oh, yeah, I was always kind of scared, basically. 1536 01:39:44,775 --> 01:39:45,776 "What if I don't hit it right?" 1537 01:39:45,943 --> 01:39:48,029 It was a pretty high note. 1538 01:39:53,576 --> 01:39:55,077 And in the middle of the fade, 1539 01:39:55,244 --> 01:39:57,997 you crank the volume knob and go, "What?!" 1540 01:39:58,164 --> 01:40:03,252 Randy could do it, but if you made him do it, 1541 01:40:03,419 --> 01:40:06,422 "Oh, no, man, I, uh..." 1542 01:40:12,887 --> 01:40:14,180 Thank you. 1543 01:40:14,347 --> 01:40:16,015 Randy Meisner. 1544 01:40:17,099 --> 01:40:18,935 He'd call the road manager and say, 1545 01:40:19,101 --> 01:40:21,270 "Tell Glenn I don't want to do 'Take It To the Limit' anymore. 1546 01:40:21,437 --> 01:40:22,438 Take it out of the set." 1547 01:40:22,605 --> 01:40:23,940 I confronted him about this. 1548 01:40:24,106 --> 01:40:25,441 I called him up, and I said, "Randy, 1549 01:40:25,608 --> 01:40:29,445 there's thousands of people waiting to hear you sing that song. 1550 01:40:29,612 --> 01:40:31,697 "You just can't say, 'Fuck them. I don't feel like it.' 1551 01:40:31,864 --> 01:40:33,741 Do you think I like singing 'Take It Easy' 1552 01:40:33,908 --> 01:40:35,409 and 'Peaceful Easy Feeling' every night? 1553 01:40:35,576 --> 01:40:38,704 I'm tired of those songs, but there's people in the audience 1554 01:40:38,871 --> 01:40:42,250 who've been waiting years to see us do those songs." 1555 01:40:42,416 --> 01:40:46,546 We just got fed up with that and just said, "Okay, don't sing it. 1556 01:40:46,712 --> 01:40:51,217 Why don't you just quit? You say you're unhappy. Quit." 1557 01:40:51,384 --> 01:40:54,804 Randy never knew how great he was. 1558 01:40:54,971 --> 01:40:57,139 He wasn't Alpha. 1559 01:40:57,974 --> 01:41:01,477 Confrontations were really hard for him. 1560 01:41:01,644 --> 01:41:05,565 All I want to see is five guys happy playing together, you know? 1561 01:41:05,731 --> 01:41:07,692 And that's what makes the music. 1562 01:41:12,363 --> 01:41:14,824 We were backstage, and the crowd was going wild. 1563 01:41:14,991 --> 01:41:17,201 And our encore number was "Take It To the Limit." 1564 01:41:17,368 --> 01:41:18,452 People loved that song. 1565 01:41:18,619 --> 01:41:20,663 They went crazy when Randy hit those high notes. 1566 01:41:20,830 --> 01:41:22,999 But Randy didn't want to do the song that night. 1567 01:41:23,165 --> 01:41:24,417 He'd been up partying all night 1568 01:41:24,584 --> 01:41:26,460 with a couple of girls and a bottle of vodka. 1569 01:41:26,627 --> 01:41:28,462 And Glenn kept trying to talk him into it. 1570 01:41:28,629 --> 01:41:30,715 He said, "Man, the people want to hear that song. 1571 01:41:30,881 --> 01:41:32,133 You got to do it." 1572 01:41:32,300 --> 01:41:34,176 And Randy kept saying, "No." 1573 01:41:34,343 --> 01:41:36,220 So after about the third or fourth time that Randy refused, 1574 01:41:36,387 --> 01:41:37,930 Glenn just backed up a couple of steps and said, 1575 01:41:38,097 --> 01:41:39,265 "Well, fuck you, then!" 1576 01:41:42,268 --> 01:41:44,395 There were police officers standing backstage, 1577 01:41:44,562 --> 01:41:47,815 and when they saw us about to go at it, they started to move in. 1578 01:41:47,982 --> 01:41:50,610 And Henley turned right to the cops and said, 1579 01:41:50,776 --> 01:41:51,944 "Stay out of this. 1580 01:41:52,111 --> 01:41:54,572 This is personal, and it's private -- 1581 01:41:54,739 --> 01:41:56,157 real fucking private." 1582 01:41:57,992 --> 01:42:01,370 The writing was on the wall that Randy was gonna leave. 1583 01:42:04,874 --> 01:42:09,003 There was only person to ever replace Randy Meisner 1584 01:42:09,170 --> 01:42:12,214 in the Eagles in my mind, and it was Timothy B. Schmit. 1585 01:42:14,383 --> 01:42:16,510 He replaced him in Poco 1586 01:42:16,677 --> 01:42:19,764 and plugged in and sang the same parts. 1587 01:42:21,015 --> 01:42:23,309 And I remember sitting with Irving and saying, 1588 01:42:23,476 --> 01:42:26,228 "Irving, I think we should get Timothy Schmit." 1589 01:42:26,395 --> 01:42:29,231 He said, "Well, I just saw Timothy. I was out on the road 1590 01:42:29,398 --> 01:42:31,233 when the guys in Poco were in the hotel bar, 1591 01:42:31,400 --> 01:42:33,653 and Timothy was smashed out of his mind. 1592 01:42:33,819 --> 01:42:35,905 He was gacked up. Are you sure about this?" 1593 01:42:36,072 --> 01:42:38,824 I said, "Irving," I said, "If you'd been in a band 1594 01:42:38,991 --> 01:42:41,744 for 11 years and you were still making $250 a week 1595 01:42:41,911 --> 01:42:43,204 working 40 weeks a year, 1596 01:42:43,371 --> 01:42:46,499 maybe you'd be a little smashed and gacked-up yourself." 1597 01:42:48,125 --> 01:42:49,919 They asked me to join their band 1598 01:42:50,086 --> 01:42:52,922 before I even played a note of music with them. 1599 01:42:53,089 --> 01:42:56,300 I just said, "You know, where do you want me? When? 1600 01:42:56,467 --> 01:42:58,177 I'm definitely in." 1601 01:42:58,344 --> 01:43:01,514 We want to introduce you to the newest member of our band. 1602 01:43:01,681 --> 01:43:02,890 He's our new bass player, 1603 01:43:03,057 --> 01:43:05,685 and we got him from a really fine band -- Poco. 1604 01:43:05,851 --> 01:43:08,896 Please give a nice Houston, Texas, welcome to Timothy Schmit. 1605 01:43:14,110 --> 01:43:17,363 I went on the road with them in 1978 as the new guy. 1606 01:43:24,036 --> 01:43:26,789 And I heard a few, "Where's Randy's" from the audience, you know? 1607 01:43:27,707 --> 01:43:30,501 But I knew it was a good move for them and me. 1608 01:43:36,966 --> 01:43:39,552 There were a lot of decisions, business-wise, 1609 01:43:39,719 --> 01:43:43,139 that needed to be made in a secret session -- 1610 01:43:43,305 --> 01:43:46,058 Glenn and Don and Irving in the back of the plane. 1611 01:43:46,225 --> 01:43:48,519 I didn't like that I wasn't part of that, 1612 01:43:48,686 --> 01:43:53,399 but I knew that it was good for the Eagles. 1613 01:43:53,566 --> 01:43:57,737 Don Felder really didn't like it. 1614 01:43:59,405 --> 01:44:01,574 Glenn and I saw ourselves as the leaders of the band, 1615 01:44:01,741 --> 01:44:03,242 but other people saw us as dictators. 1616 01:44:03,409 --> 01:44:07,204 You just cannot have five leaders in a band. 1617 01:44:07,371 --> 01:44:10,833 It doesn't work. People have to do what they do best. 1618 01:44:11,000 --> 01:44:14,670 There was all this undercurrent and resentment 1619 01:44:14,837 --> 01:44:17,882 and, you know, plotting and complaining. 1620 01:44:18,048 --> 01:44:21,552 And I'm sure Timothy thought, "What have I gotten myself into?" 1621 01:44:21,719 --> 01:44:23,763 I was just really happy to be there, 1622 01:44:23,929 --> 01:44:27,266 and all these tensions -- it's not that I didn't feel it, 1623 01:44:27,433 --> 01:44:29,351 but I had no idea how deep it was. 1624 01:44:29,518 --> 01:44:31,979 In my experience, all rock-'n'-roll bands 1625 01:44:32,146 --> 01:44:34,982 are on the verge of breaking up at all times. 1626 01:44:37,526 --> 01:44:40,613 The band at that point had begun to split up into factions. 1627 01:44:40,780 --> 01:44:42,865 Don Felder, in an effort to gain more control, 1628 01:44:43,032 --> 01:44:44,408 had co-opted Joe Walsh. 1629 01:44:44,575 --> 01:44:45,743 So much of the time, 1630 01:44:45,910 --> 01:44:48,621 it was Felder and Walsh against me and Glenn. 1631 01:44:48,788 --> 01:44:50,498 At that point, even Glenn and I 1632 01:44:50,664 --> 01:44:53,042 were beginning to have our differences. 1633 01:44:53,209 --> 01:44:55,586 And it was tearing the band apart. 1634 01:44:56,670 --> 01:44:59,089 The magic ingredient that made the band successful 1635 01:44:59,256 --> 01:45:01,383 was the relationship between Don and Glenn. 1636 01:45:01,550 --> 01:45:04,720 Through years of touring, years in the studio -- 1637 01:45:04,887 --> 01:45:07,765 all of that friction really started driving a wedge 1638 01:45:07,932 --> 01:45:09,892 in between that relationship. 1639 01:45:12,978 --> 01:45:15,856 It reached a point where we were just tired of each other -- 1640 01:45:16,023 --> 01:45:18,609 tired of the hoopla, tired of touring, 1641 01:45:18,776 --> 01:45:20,736 tired of pretty much everything. 1642 01:45:20,903 --> 01:45:24,448 At that point, songwriting was becoming very difficult. 1643 01:45:25,115 --> 01:45:26,659 How much sleep did you guys get? 1644 01:45:26,826 --> 01:45:28,118 When did you get finished loading out? 1645 01:45:28,285 --> 01:45:29,537 -2:00? -5:30. 1646 01:45:29,703 --> 01:45:30,996 -5:30 this morning? - Yeah. 1647 01:45:31,163 --> 01:45:32,248 Okay. 1648 01:45:32,414 --> 01:45:34,917 After the success of "Hotel California" -- 1649 01:45:35,084 --> 01:45:38,963 Grammy winner, mega sales -- top that. 1650 01:45:39,129 --> 01:45:43,300 And we show up at the studio, and nobody has one song done. 1651 01:45:46,220 --> 01:45:48,681 I don't know what we'll do first, but... 1652 01:45:49,974 --> 01:45:53,227 I had enough of a piece where they both went, 1653 01:45:53,394 --> 01:45:55,563 "That's great. Let's develop that." 1654 01:45:55,729 --> 01:45:58,440 And I was really pleased that they wanted to develop that one 1655 01:45:58,607 --> 01:46:01,694 because it came out more as an RandB song. 1656 01:46:04,530 --> 01:46:06,365 And it's very simple. 1657 01:46:06,532 --> 01:46:09,577 Very simple instrumentation. 1658 01:46:09,743 --> 01:46:12,246 Very simple arrangement. 1659 01:46:15,541 --> 01:46:17,251 There's a lot of air in it. 1660 01:46:20,588 --> 01:46:22,840 That's why it works. 1661 01:46:40,065 --> 01:46:43,569 About halfway through, Don comes up to me and says, 1662 01:46:43,736 --> 01:46:46,196 "There's your hit." 1663 01:47:04,423 --> 01:47:08,427 We're on top of the world. We're young. 1664 01:47:08,594 --> 01:47:11,430 We were overdoing everything. 1665 01:47:19,396 --> 01:47:23,192 There was a lot of chemical dependency going on within the band. 1666 01:47:23,359 --> 01:47:24,944 And that was rough. 1667 01:47:26,862 --> 01:47:28,948 During all of that time of writing and recording 1668 01:47:29,114 --> 01:47:31,492 "The Long Run" and all the time on the road -- 1669 01:47:31,659 --> 01:47:33,285 we were on the road during "The Long Run," 1670 01:47:33,452 --> 01:47:35,913 we were all using cocaine. 1671 01:47:36,580 --> 01:47:40,042 When we first started snorting coke, it was like a writing tool. 1672 01:47:40,209 --> 01:47:43,337 Do a couple bumps and kind of get started talking about stuff, 1673 01:47:43,504 --> 01:47:45,089 get yourself going 1674 01:47:45,255 --> 01:47:48,759 and launch into some sort of idea for a song. 1675 01:47:48,926 --> 01:47:53,389 But in the end, cocaine brought out the worst in everybody. 1676 01:47:54,473 --> 01:47:58,102 Yes, this half-hour of the show is brought to you by cocaine -- 1677 01:47:58,268 --> 01:48:00,521 the makers of hits. 1678 01:48:09,363 --> 01:48:11,782 Making that album was excruciating. 1679 01:48:11,949 --> 01:48:13,659 We were just completely burned out. 1680 01:48:13,826 --> 01:48:17,246 We had driven ourselves really hard for almost a decade, 1681 01:48:17,413 --> 01:48:18,747 and we were just fried. 1682 01:48:19,581 --> 01:48:20,833 It was long, too. 1683 01:48:21,000 --> 01:48:22,876 I mean, the days and hours would drag on, 1684 01:48:23,043 --> 01:48:24,962 and it would feel like we weren't getting anything done. 1685 01:48:33,262 --> 01:48:36,015 It was more painful than "Hotel California." 1686 01:48:36,181 --> 01:48:37,683 It was more of a painful birth 1687 01:48:37,850 --> 01:48:39,518 because all of this stuff was going on, 1688 01:48:39,685 --> 01:48:42,146 and we were getting pretty frazzled. 1689 01:48:44,940 --> 01:48:50,904 And the record company didn't care if we farted and burped. 1690 01:48:52,281 --> 01:48:55,784 They would put that out. They didn't care. 1691 01:48:55,951 --> 01:48:58,287 "When can we have it?" 1692 01:48:58,454 --> 01:49:01,623 Because that was their whole corporate quarter. 1693 01:49:10,966 --> 01:49:15,888 At that point, we inked in "The Long Run" as the title. 1694 01:49:16,055 --> 01:49:19,558 I think Henley said, "Well, I know what to call this one. 1695 01:49:19,725 --> 01:49:20,976 Look at us." 1696 01:49:25,314 --> 01:49:27,733 Hold it. Stop. 1697 01:49:27,900 --> 01:49:29,401 That's it! 1698 01:49:31,236 --> 01:49:32,279 Song two. 1699 01:49:32,446 --> 01:49:34,740 Eagles -- "The Long Run" -- song two take one. 1700 01:49:34,907 --> 01:49:38,202 It was a struggle -- an endless start-stop-start-stop. 1701 01:49:38,368 --> 01:49:41,080 We called it "The Long One." 1702 01:49:41,914 --> 01:49:43,999 It was the beginning of the end, 1703 01:49:44,166 --> 01:49:47,211 even though I don't think I saw it right then. 1704 01:49:51,340 --> 01:49:53,217 There were a lot of things building up 1705 01:49:53,383 --> 01:49:56,220 and a lot of things I tried to overlook for the good of the band. 1706 01:49:56,386 --> 01:50:00,557 And ultimately, I just couldn't look past some of this anymore. 1707 01:50:00,724 --> 01:50:04,103 And it festered because we didn't talk about these things. 1708 01:50:05,145 --> 01:50:07,064 It finally came to a head in Long Beach. 1709 01:50:07,231 --> 01:50:10,609 We were doing a benefit for Senator Alan Cranston. 1710 01:50:10,776 --> 01:50:13,237 He was concerned about a lot of the same issues 1711 01:50:13,403 --> 01:50:14,571 we were concerned about, 1712 01:50:14,738 --> 01:50:17,407 including environmental destruction and the war, 1713 01:50:17,574 --> 01:50:19,034 so we wanted to support him. 1714 01:50:19,201 --> 01:50:20,869 Now, Felder didn't like us doing benefits. 1715 01:50:21,036 --> 01:50:23,539 He just thought that was money that should be going into his pocket. 1716 01:50:23,705 --> 01:50:27,835 Why were we doing it for Jerry Brown or anti-nukes? 1717 01:50:33,549 --> 01:50:36,426 Alan Cranston and his wife are coming around 1718 01:50:36,593 --> 01:50:40,139 to personally thank every member of the Eagles for doing this. 1719 01:50:40,305 --> 01:50:44,226 I was very uninformed about politics. 1720 01:50:44,393 --> 01:50:46,436 I could care less about politics. 1721 01:50:46,603 --> 01:50:48,981 I didn't even know or care who Alan Cranston was. 1722 01:50:49,773 --> 01:50:51,942 And Senator Cranston went up to Felder and said, 1723 01:50:52,109 --> 01:50:53,318 "I want to thank you." 1724 01:50:53,485 --> 01:50:55,737 And Felder looked at the Senator and said, "You're welcome." 1725 01:50:55,904 --> 01:50:58,907 Then as he was turning away, he said, "I guess." 1726 01:50:59,074 --> 01:51:00,159 "I guess." 1727 01:51:00,325 --> 01:51:03,287 "I guess." And Glenn heard it. 1728 01:51:03,453 --> 01:51:06,957 And I just got really mad. 1729 01:51:07,124 --> 01:51:09,668 I was drinking a longneck Bud and then walked into the tuning room 1730 01:51:09,835 --> 01:51:12,004 where Walsh and Felder was and took the beer bottle 1731 01:51:12,171 --> 01:51:14,173 and threw it against the wall and smashed it. 1732 01:51:16,133 --> 01:51:17,509 I stormed out. 1733 01:51:17,676 --> 01:51:20,679 I got more mad and more mad. 1734 01:51:20,846 --> 01:51:23,974 By the time we went onstage, I was seething. 1735 01:51:24,141 --> 01:51:25,767 I wanted to kill Felder. 1736 01:51:25,934 --> 01:51:28,270 Thank you again very much from all the Eagles 1737 01:51:28,437 --> 01:51:30,105 and from Senator Cranston 1738 01:51:30,272 --> 01:51:33,150 for coming out here and checking it out. 1739 01:51:33,317 --> 01:51:34,860 One, two, three, four. 1740 01:51:40,199 --> 01:51:44,328 A lot of tensions between Glenn and Felder, 1741 01:51:44,494 --> 01:51:50,209 and the real manifestation of it came that night. 1742 01:51:57,257 --> 01:51:58,300 So now we're playing the show 1743 01:51:58,467 --> 01:52:00,510 and trying to act like everything's okay, 1744 01:52:00,677 --> 01:52:02,387 and we'll get through a few songs. 1745 01:52:02,554 --> 01:52:04,681 And I just keep looking over at him. 1746 01:52:04,848 --> 01:52:07,309 "You ungrateful son of a bitch." 1747 01:52:14,066 --> 01:52:15,525 The scene there -- 1748 01:52:15,692 --> 01:52:17,986 I really saw how serious it was at that show. 1749 01:52:18,153 --> 01:52:19,655 They were fighting onstage. 1750 01:52:19,821 --> 01:52:21,281 Szymczyk's got audio of it. 1751 01:52:32,876 --> 01:52:35,045 So we started getting towards the end of the set, 1752 01:52:35,212 --> 01:52:38,257 and I'm looking at him going, "Three more songs, asshole." 1753 01:52:38,423 --> 01:52:41,093 You know, and I'm looking at him, and I am ready to go. 1754 01:52:41,260 --> 01:52:45,097 I can't wait to get my hands on him. 1755 01:52:45,264 --> 01:52:48,558 "When we get off the stage, I'm gonna kick your ass." 1756 01:52:54,273 --> 01:52:56,775 Whoa. When that kind of stuff is onstage 1757 01:52:56,942 --> 01:53:01,238 and you're in front of people, you got problems. 1758 01:53:05,617 --> 01:53:08,203 Thank you very much. 1759 01:53:08,370 --> 01:53:10,956 We got through the show, and it just -- 1760 01:53:11,123 --> 01:53:13,041 all hell broke loose backstage. 1761 01:53:13,959 --> 01:53:16,878 When the set ended, he was out ahead of me, 1762 01:53:17,045 --> 01:53:18,463 took his cheapest guitar... 1763 01:53:24,928 --> 01:53:26,972 ...busted it in a million pieces 1764 01:53:27,139 --> 01:53:29,182 and jumped in his limousine and drove off. 1765 01:53:31,268 --> 01:53:32,728 And that was it. 1766 01:53:32,894 --> 01:53:35,105 That was really the straw that broke the camel's back. 1767 01:53:44,614 --> 01:53:48,660 Someone wrote, "The Eagles went out with a whimper, not a bang," 1768 01:53:48,827 --> 01:53:50,454 which was true. 1769 01:53:58,295 --> 01:53:59,421 I didn't want to hear it. 1770 01:53:59,588 --> 01:54:02,674 This was, like, my super dream had come true. 1771 01:54:07,512 --> 01:54:10,849 So I called Glenn, and I said, "What is the status? 1772 01:54:11,016 --> 01:54:13,101 What's going on? Is this thing really broken up?" 1773 01:54:13,268 --> 01:54:14,895 He said, "Yeah, it's over." 1774 01:54:16,938 --> 01:54:18,774 We were beat, 1775 01:54:18,940 --> 01:54:22,819 and it was really affecting the foundational core -- 1776 01:54:22,986 --> 01:54:24,529 the soul of the band. 1777 01:54:24,696 --> 01:54:26,823 We hit the wall. 1778 01:54:26,990 --> 01:54:28,158 You work, work, work, work, work. 1779 01:54:28,325 --> 01:54:33,038 You get up to a peak, and then it's almost, you know, 1780 01:54:33,205 --> 01:54:37,626 invariably people head-butt and, "Whose band is it?" 1781 01:54:37,793 --> 01:54:41,338 And, "I'm in charge," and, "No, you're not," and there you go. 1782 01:54:49,721 --> 01:54:51,848 We had always said that we wanted to step off the wave 1783 01:54:52,015 --> 01:54:53,975 just before it crashed into the beach. 1784 01:54:54,559 --> 01:54:56,645 And we did. 1785 01:55:15,831 --> 01:55:18,083 The Beatle guys say they never thought -- 1786 01:55:18,250 --> 01:55:20,001 McCartney never thought that band was gonna last 1787 01:55:20,168 --> 01:55:22,879 more than two years because no pop band did. 1788 01:55:23,672 --> 01:55:25,257 I think it's part of it. 1789 01:55:25,424 --> 01:55:26,133 It comes together. 1790 01:55:26,299 --> 01:55:28,427 It's magic, and it falls apart, you know? 1791 01:55:28,593 --> 01:55:34,015 But, you know, how cool that it even happens at all. 1792 01:55:38,270 --> 01:55:39,521 It was magical. 1793 01:55:42,357 --> 01:55:44,151 They wrote a lot of great, great songs 1794 01:55:44,317 --> 01:55:46,570 that will be celebrated and listened to 1795 01:55:46,736 --> 01:55:47,946 and loved for a long time. 1796 01:55:49,823 --> 01:55:56,746 We managed to represent that period of time in the '70s, 1797 01:55:56,913 --> 01:56:03,170 Southern California, which was very artistically creative. 1798 01:56:03,336 --> 01:56:10,177 I hope that's remembered like the Roaring '20s are, you know -- 1799 01:56:10,343 --> 01:56:12,596 our generation and what we did. 1800 01:56:44,586 --> 01:56:48,173 We set out to become a band for our time, 1801 01:56:48,340 --> 01:56:51,301 but sometimes if you do a good enough job, 1802 01:56:51,468 --> 01:56:53,887 you become a band for all time.