The Batlord

A logical person might say, "Hm, I was jarred by all the switching styles, but perhaps a second listen might make me like it more since it won't be a surprise."

But Trollheart says...

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Trollheart

A logical person might say "Wow! Look at all these albums I have to review. Thirty discographies and more! And now, if I listen to every album twice...."
Get real, man.

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Trollheart

Suggested by The Identity Matrix, this is our first look into the discography of one of America's best-loved hard rock bands, and yet in ways they are also one of her biggest-kept secrets. If you mention the name Blue Oyster Cult to anyone who doesn't know their music, there's a pretty good chance that they will know “Don't fear the Reaper” or maybe “Godzilla”, but other than that they're really unknown outside of their fanbase and heavy metal/hard rock in general. Which is a little odd, when you consider they've sold over twenty-four million albums, and have released fourteen studio records.

If you want to get the full lowdown on them, check Unknown Soldier's http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...y-history.html where you will find all you need to know about BOC, seventies and eighties hard rock and heavy metal, and a whole lot more besides. He's done such a thorough job on BOC, and knows them so much better than I, that there's really little point in me trying to add my small contribution, so let's just move right along to their first self-titled album.

Album title: Blue Oyster Cult
Artiste: Blue Oyster Cult
Genre: Hard Rock
Year: 1971
Label: Columbia
Producer: Murray Krugman, Sandy Pearlman, David Lucas
Chronological position: Debut album
Notes: Yes I know there's an umlaut over the "O" in Oyster, but I'm a lazy ****er and anyway it was only added for effect. The word does not actually have any such accent, so for handiness' sake I'm leaving it off. Send your lawsuits to the usual address...
Album chart position: 172 (US)
Singles: “Cities on flame with rock and roll”
Lineup:
Eric Bloom: Lead vocals, “stun guitar”, keyboards
Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser: Lead guitar, lead vocals on two tracks
Allen Lanier: Rhythm guitar, keyboards
Joe Bouchard: Bass, lead vocals on one track
Albert Bouchard: Drums, lead vocals on one track

Review begins

And we're off and running with “Transmaniacon MC”, cool bass line and some sweet organ and piano. The vocal is pure rock and roll, delivered with power and grit, and a fine solo from “Buck Dharma”. I guess you'd call this a real road song! Like the descending riff in the chorus. Kind of more in the blues mode is “I'm on the lamb but I ain't no sheep” (lol) with a great driving riff and rolling percussion, while Buck tries out the mike for the first of two attempts with “Then came the first days of May”, a real laidback blues ballad which really showcases not only his voice but his skills on the softer side of the frets. A real standout (though if I'm honest, really the first one to impress me on the album so far) with some great vocal harmonies and backing vocals as well as a sweet little blues solo. I must admit, I far, far prefer Dharma's voice to that of Eric Bloom. It just has more of a musical quality to it, while the main vocalist sounds a little too rough and raspy for me.

Back to the stride blues for “Stairway to the stars”, as Bloom takes the vocal duties back. I remember this one: I think I featured it as a “Random Track of the Day” way back when. It's pretty good to be fair, and yeah, Bloom's voice suits this song. Some odd little handclaps and a smoking solo; we could be picking up the quality here. And some energetic piano too. Liking this more and more. Maybe the first two tracks were just a slowburning start to the album. The oddly named “Before the kiss, a redcap” (apparently a reference to, um, doing drugs) is another good one, rocking along on a boogie blues rhythm with a great little bass solo followed by what sounds like banjo but surely is not. Speeds up on the back of this into an almost bluegrass tune. Sweet. Yeah, this is picking up now. Love the sharp organ riffs at the end, and then we're into psych/blues territory with “Screams”, on which we get to hear another bandmember try out his lungs, this time bass player Joe Bouchard. He's not bad. Lovely rippling piano running along this but it's mostly driven on the fluid guitar lines of Dharma and Lanier. The oddly-phased vocal gives it a real dreamy, psychedelic quality.

Touches of an embryonic “Don't fear the Reaper” there for a few moments; wonder if that's where the riff began? No time to ponder that, as we're into “She's as beautiful as a foot” (what?) which continues the psych weirdness (as if the title wasn't evidence of that already) and slows things down nicely before we hit “Cities on flame with rock and roll”, the only single, with vocals taken by (I assume) Joe's brother Albert, who usually bashes the skins. I've heard this one too, and it's a stone cold rocker, Bouchard doing a pretty good job on the vox, which just goes to prove I suppose that not only were all the members of BOC great at their chosen instrument, they could all sing, some better than others. “Workshop of the telescopes” reminds me of something early Uriah Heep might have tried, very psych again, quite acoustic in its way. Not mad about it to be honest, bit strange. The album closes then on “Redeemed”, which sort of re-establishes order, but you can hear it's not a song written by the guys, though they had some imput into it. Very folk/Country with a splash of blues thrown in. Not the worst closer, but far from the best I've heard.

TRACKLISTING AND RATINGS

Transmaniacon MC
I'm on the lamb but I ain't no sheep
Then came the last days of May
Stairway to the stars
Before the kiss, a redcap
Screams
She's as beautiful as a foot
Cities on flame with rock and roll
Workshop of the telescopes
Redeemed

Again, it's a debut and you have to allow some leeway, but this still doesn't impress me as much as I had hoped it would. True, it improves in leaps and bounds once the first two tracks are past, but for me it stumbles a little on its way out the door too, and though there are some good, even great tracks here, there aren't enough for me to pronounce this a great debut album. I know they polished up their sound and am looking forward to future albums such as Secret Treaties and Agents of Fortune, but for me, right now, this isn't doing it.

Rating:

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Plankton

^I listened to that album about 2-3 times per week when I was in high school. Not by choice either. My older brother and me shared a bedroom, and he'd put it on before school. It wasn't until later in life that I'd learn to love it. 'Last days' is one of my favorites, as it tells the tale of a drug deal gone bad, and showcases some incredible guitar from Buck. A lot of those riffs permeated my brain before I ever considered even picking a guitar up.

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Unknown Soldier

Thanks for the mention and yes I covered them pretty extensively in the 1970s section of my journal.

But your opening paragraph on them pretty much sums them up 'as one of rock's best kept secrets' that somehow managed to sell 20 odd million albums with their oddball sound.

I like them because they sound like American oddballs and there's nothing British sounding about them

I'll be interested to see how you do, as I just can't imagine you liking this kind of band.

Both Tyranny and Mutation and Secret Treaties are two of my favourite albums from the 1970s.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

Then you just might turn into a real boy.

No, I think you're just gonna find seventies and eighties hard rock and heavy metal.

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The Batlord

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Trollheart

With the passing of its co-founder earlier this week, it seems only fair that, as we did with Bowie, we concentrate for a short while on the band that gave us Glenn Frey (1948 – 2016), so all haters can take a little break from this journal for a few days, as I give you the first few albums from the discography of the

And I'll tell you what: this is a discography project, not an information project about each band, so in future rather than write up a little about the band I'm gonna concentrate on the discog, and you can have one of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagles_(band) if you want to read more about the band.


Album title: Eagles
Artiste: Eagles
Genre: Country/Folk
Year: 1972
Label: Asylum
Producer: Glyn Johns
Chronological position: Debut album
Notes:
Album chart position: 22 (US)
Singles: “Take it easy”, “Witchy woman”, “Peaceful easy feeling”
Lineup:
Glenn Frey: Vocals, guitars
Don Henley: Vocals, drums
Bernie Leadon: Vocals, guitar, banjo
Randy Meisner: Vocals, bass

Review begins

Seldom does a debut album have such an immediate impact. Well, nowadays, sure, but back in the seventies it was not that often that an artiste's first album would yield two hit singles and lift them just short of the top twenty. But the multi-harmony vocal talents of the Eagles, and their crossover from country and folk to rock of a sort, with mixed in pop overtones, was something if not unique at the time then certainly unusual. The sharing out of the vocal duties on this and other albums also meant that, though people would come to know Glenn Frey and Don Henley as the singers behind most of the big hits (kind of in the same way Roger Hodgson would be known to the uninitiated as the voice of Supertramp) they would also hear Bernie Leadon sing and Randy Meisner would take the vocals on one of their big hits, so that probably not since the days of CSNY really had a band so varied a vocal load. You can hear it on this album: everyone sings, and not just the once for those who would become other than the usual singers, ie Henley and Frey.

Now, there's no getting away from the elephant in the room: it'll crush you if you ignore it, so let's not do that. Let's stand and face it, and hope we don't get squashed. The Eagles never really were Country, not in the sense that your Townes Van Zandts, your Willie Nelsons or your Hank Williamses were. This was a new kind of Country, perhaps the first real Pop Country (it couldn't quite be called Country Rock, though on occasions it does certainly rock, but I don't think it's fair to describe it as such) and certainly some sort of crossover between folk, Country and popular music, which in itself I guess allowed a new (at the time) generation of listeners “get into “ Country, or think they were. No doubt, if they had mentioned it down the Starving Goose or the Bear and Wolf, they would have been laughed out of the pub by those who listened to “real Country music”. We have to be honest about this: very little if any of the Eagles' lyrics address what you would think of as staple Country themes --- farms being repossessed, cheatin' lovers (well, maybe that, but then, that's ubiquitous in all music, isn't it?) or goin' out huntin'. There were no songs referencing the Civil War, nothing about gold mines or moonshine, and nary a song to be had about banks or foreclosures. Not that I know much about Country music, but it seems these subjects do tend to crop up in a lot of that genre's music.

So this would probably be the music the young 'uns were listening to as they cruised the boulevards of San Francisco and LA, hundreds of miles from anything vaguely rural, and maybe wore Stetsons and shouted “Yee-hah!” and thought they were cowboys. While the older generation shook their heads sadly and derided this as being nothing like Country music. Even my hero, Tom Waits, once remarked of them caustically “The Eagles ain't Country. They don't have shit on their boots!” How right he was. None of these guys were brought up singing the old ballads of Merle or Hank; they played in rock bands, though Henley was associated with Country luminary Kenny Rogers at one point. But then again, what does that say, really?

Anyhoo, that's the elephant shooed out of the room. Nobody should think that I mistakenly believe the Eagles to be Country, not real Country. At best, they could possibly be described as Country-Lite, but that didn't stop them tapping into the zeitgeist and creating a slew of hits that endure even today, more than forty years after they were formed. A lot of people hate the Eagles, and it's easy to see why: it's like they pretend to be something they're not. But if you can get past that, there's a whole lot of really good music just a-waitin' over the border, or something.

Love them or hate them, it's highly likely you know the opener, one of their big hit singles, and “Take it easy” gets things going in a real breezy, uptempo groove with just maximum cool factor (for the time) as the guitars ramp up and the first voice we hear is that of the late Glenn Frey, the song co-written by Jackson Browne, one of two he contributes to the album, although I don't know if “Nightingale” is a cover of one of his or one he wrote for the Eagles. The spirit of freedom is invoked in the first lines of “Take it easy” as Frey sings “I'm runnin' down the road, tryin' to loosen my load, I got seven women on my mind...” Yeah. Veiled misogyny or at least a healthy disrespect for women would come through in a lot of these guys' songs, like “Lyin' eyes”, “Best of my love”, “Already gone” and of course “New kid in town”. There's no getting away from that, and again it's something we have to face: the Eagles, an all-male band, had little if anything good to say about women.

But this was the seventies, and such sentiments were almost expected from a rock band, so I doubt anyone at the time gave it much attention. In latter years, no doubt several studies have been made and theses written about the overt mistreatment of the distaff side in the songs of the Eagles. The woman is always a temptress, a cheat, in some cases even a killer and just plain crazy, like in “Hotel California”. There are love songs, sure, but not too many of them. So “Take it easy” became something of an anthem and a mission statement for “poor guys” pursued by vengeful or too-clingy or just plain inconvenient girlfriends, wives and mistresses, and we all sang out hearts out to the lines “We may lose, and we may win, but we will never be here again!” The powerful multi-vocal comes into effect here already, particularly in the end, where the song goes a little bluegrass, thanks to Bernie Leadon's banjo, and on we go into the similarly misogynistic “Witchy woman”.

With a sort of Native American rhythm (perhaps suggesting the guy in the song is singing about an “Injun girl”?) it's much slower, darker --- whereas you could, if you wanted, take the opener as a lighthearted snook being cocked at relationships that try to tie you down (“Four that wanna own me, two that wanna stone me, one says she's a friend of mine”), this is a harsher indictment of womankind --- and basically about a witch. Or if not an actual witch, a woman who has, shall we say, powers? “See how high she flies” sings Don Henley, on his first vocal performance, “she got the moon in her eyes.” Sure, Cliff Richard would sing about a “Devil woman” a few years later, and Country legend Marty Robbins had already done so (same title but not the same song) in the sixties, but these people were not almost synonymous with songs that put down women.

It's a moody, brooding song, and in it the man is warned of the devilment the woman can work on him --- “Sparks fly from her fingertips” --- and it's clear that she's a figure to be avoided. Salem, huh? That said, it's not a bad song and after “Take it easy” was the second single, though I believe there are far better tracks here that would have served as well, or better. It does at least give Randy Meisner a chance to bring his sultry bass to the fore, and it drives the rhythm well. Frey is back then behind the mike for the abysmal “Chug all night”, which is basically a good old boys, rabble-rousin' drinkin' song, and sounds like it. I ran this album previously in “Bitesize” (much smaller review of course) and there was nothing good I could say about this track then. That hasn't changed. This is garbage. Moving on. Randy Meisner exercises his vocal talents for the first time on the album, and it's a beautiful little ballad which quickly erases the memory of the banality of the previous track, and shows us a glimpse of what the Eagles would be like in their more laidback moments. With echoes of “Best of my love, “Take it to the limit” and “The last resort”, the song features the close harmony singing of all the quartet, and it has to be said, it's moving and beautiful, and “Most of us are sad” gets us right back on track.

That Jackson Browne song then kicks things back up a gear, and we're back in “Take it easy” territory with “Nightingale”, rocking along nicely but to be honest it's nothing terribly special. In fairness, I guess it's one track on which there's a positive view of women, even if it is just “Here comes my baby”. I've checked and I see Browne's solo career began the same year as the Eagles', so I have to assume this was written for them, as it's not on his debut solo album and I haven't seen it on any others up to about 1980. I know Henley and Browne were flatmates or at least lived in the same building, so maybe he couldn't use the song, or didn't want to, and gave it to him for use in his band. Whatever, it's not worth exploring too deeply because as I say it's not a great song. What is a great song --- almost the standout as far as I'm concerned --- is the cover of Dillard and Clark's “Train leaves here this morning”, which gives an idea of how the Eagles' music should have been developing if they wanted to be taken as serious Country performers. Course, I'm sure they were much more interested in becoming famous and rich, and who can blame them, so they went more the popular West Coast route. But this is a lovely glimpse into what they could have been.

It lopes along at an unhurried pace and has a real western feel to it, the vocal harmonies really coming into their own on the chorus, and gives Bernie Leadon his first chance to sing lead, which he does extremely well. There wasn't, it would seem, one of these guys who couldn't sing, and sing well. Of course, for those who don't know, Leadon was with Clark in that band and played on as well as co-wrote the song, so it's not so much a cover as one of his own songs brought over to the new band. Great track though. “Take the devil” brings Meisner back into the spotlight, and it's a sharp, tough song on which the guitars really speak and a feeling of desperation permeates the song. It's a mile away from “Take it easy”, the last two songs perhaps categorisable as “serious” Eagles songs, and it also presages the likes of “Bitter Creek” from Desperado. Very powerful, and much more rock than pop, or even Country. It's also one of two songs on the album written by Meisner.

“Earlybird” then has him collaborating with Leadon, with the latter taking the vocal this time, and they work well as a team, even if the song is a lightweight bluegrass tune with overtones of the West Coast sound and silly birdsong effects. Great banjo from Leadon gives it an authentic feel, and to be fair it rocks along at a good lick. Probably everyone knows “Peaceful easy feeling”, but did you know it was not written by them? No? And you don't care? Well, why are you reading this then? Fuck off and come back when we're doing Fugazi or something. Jack Tempchin, a struggling songwriter and performer, gave the song to Glenn Frey when they met up and he asked if he could develop it further. It subsequently became a big hit for the Eagles. Its easy, finger-clicking beat harks back to the likes of “Take it easy” but with a slower, more laconic, even lazy beat, and it has a really nice guitar solo in the midsection. Frey sings it of course, and it became another iconic song for the band. Which leaves us with the closer, another Randy Meisner effort, simply called “Tryin'”.

Written and sung by him, it's a fitting closer for a pretty impressive debut album. It's quite short --- the shortest track on the album, in fact --- but it brings the rock back and almost bookends the album with “Take it easy”, the basic melody rather similar but more uptempo and with the guitars sharper. It's perhaps a little touching when he sings “I'm gonna make it with my friends.” And he did, of course.

TRACKLISTING AND RATINGS

Take it easy
Witchy woman
Chug all night
Most of us are sad
Nightingale
Train leaves here this morning
Take the devil
Earlybird
Peaceful easy feeling
Tryin'

Afterword: Up to now I've been pretty constant in my damning debut albums with faint praise. I know you can't expect gold too often on your first outing, and I'm prepared to give a band or artiste time to settle in as it were. But here, though it's not gold all the way, this album gets it right far more than it gets it wrong. Three hit singles and a top twenty (nearly) album on your first outing? That's not tryin': that succeedin'!

Rating:

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Trollheart

Album title: Desperado
Artiste: Eagles
Genre: Country/Rock
Year: 1973
Label: Asylum
Producer: Glyn Johns
Chronological position: Second album
Notes: Already reviewed; see link below
Album chart position: 41 (US) 39 (UK)
Singles: “Tequila sunrise” and “Outlaw man”
Lineup:
Glenn Frey: Vocals, guitars
Don Henley: Vocals, drums
Bernie Leadon: Vocals, guitar, banjo
Randy Meisner: Vocals, bass

Review begins

Desperado

TRACKLISTING AND RATINGS

Doolin-Dalton
Twenty-one
Out of control
Tequila sunrise
Desperado
Certain kind of fool
Doolin-Dalton (instrumental)
Outlaw man
Saturday night
Bitter Creek
Doolin-Dalton/Desperado (Reprise)

Afterword: I was always amazed that the title track was never released from this album as a single, and yet has gone on to become one of the Eagles' best known and best loved ballads. Weird. Someone in Asylum needed to be committed to one if they couldn't hear the potential in that song!

Rating:


Album title: On the Border
Artiste: Eagles
Genre: Country/Rock
Year: 1974
Label: Asylum
Producer: Bill Szymczyk, Glyn Johns
Chronological position: Third album
Notes: Surely that producer's name is the hardest ever to spell! I had to check it three times!
Album chart position: 17 (US) 28 (UK)
Singles: “James Dean”, “Already gone”, “Best of my love”
Lineup:
Glenn Frey: Vocals, guitars, piano
Don Henley: Vocals, drums
Bernie Leadon: Vocals, guitar, banjo, pedal steel
Randy Meisner: Vocals, bass
Don Felder: Lead and slide guitar (two tracks)
Al Perkins: Pedal steel

Review begins

Opening on what would become another hit, “Already gone”is pretty much “Take it easy part II” really. It's quite similar in construction, and yes, again, it's a song in which the woman is to blame. Sigh. Another Tempchin song, it has some fine biting guitar in it and I guess it's got to be seen as a “so long getting out of this relationship” song, another of which features later. There's definitely a sense of triumph and emancipation about it. Not surprisingly, it's Frey who takes the vocal again, as he and Tempchin, as already mentioned, were friends and it's a song the writer sent to him in the hope he might popularise it with his band, as he did. I do like the line “So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key.” There's a certain sense of taking control of your life here, so I guess you can't be too critical.

The next track sounds like a complaint a man would make, maybe, but it's a bit odd. “You never cry like a lover” features some beautiful piano from Frey, but the vocal is taken by Henley, and it's a really nice ballad, even given the somewhat perhaps insulting theme. The melody sounds slightly familiar, but as so often is the case, I can't remember where I heard it, or even if I did. “Midnight flyer” kicks out the bluegrass jams, and it's the first song on the album not written or at least co-written by an Eagle. It takes the old Country idea of the railroad and pumps along on Bernie Leadon's sprightly banjo as Randy Meisner gets his first shot at vocals this time around. One of the standouts next in the Bernie Leadon show, where he writes, sings, plays lead guitar and pedal steel on “My man”, a tribute to the late Gram Parsons, with whom he used to play. It's another ballad, but tinged with real bittersweetness as Leadon remembers his fallen comrade. Again great harmony vocals make the song. It's touching when he sings “We who must remain go on living just the same” and you can really feel the hurt in his voice.

The title track brings in handclaps that would later surface on one of their last hits, with what sounds like jew's harp and has a very doo-wop style chorus, some very nasty guitar; the basic melody would be robbed decades later for Henley's solo album Inside job. There's quite a bit of funk about the guitar too mixed in with a sense of the blues. Good song and a very good title track. Rocking out then like good things with “James Dean”, one of the songs originally written for the project which ended up becoming the Desperado album, with input from Jackson Browne again. It's a good song, but a little one-dimensional, though the vocal harmonies rescue it from being too run of the mill. They then (probably) infuriate Waits by tackling his “Ol' 55”, and to be fair they do an okay job, but also to be fair, they don't change it much so what was the point really? It's a great song, and it fits in with the general “You screwed up my life and now I'm leaving you” mini-theme that runs through the album, and I guess they wanted to pay homage to the great man, but still, do something with the song if you're going to cover it. Still, once again the amazing vocal harmonies save it.

Meisner is back with his other song (written by him too; seems any solo-penned song gets sung by the writer. Must be an agreement they came to) “Is it true?” which is really not too bad, and features some of the slide guitar that would later become famous on “Life in the fast lane”, then some powerful and dirty gee-tar (it's got to be written that way: this is not guitar, it's gee-tar! Boy) opens “Good day in Hell”, which once again casts the woman in the worst light possible. With both Frey and Henley on vocals though it works really effectively and you catch yourself singing along when they sing “Oh well, it's been a good day in Hell.” Indeed. And we end on another classic, the beautiful ballad “Best of my love”, which sees Henley back on vox to complete the album. Sadly, once again, it's the woman's fault: “I know you were trying to give me the best of your love”, and later he sings “Every night and day you get the best of my love.” So he can give her the best of his love, but not vice versa? Man, when you start thinking, really thinking about this lyrics you can get really annoyed. Still, beautiful pedal steel from Bernie and a gorgeous acoustic guitar kind of make you forget about all that.

And of course, there's always the sublime vocal harmonies. Never forget the sublime vocal harmonies. Hold on to the sublime vocal....

TRACKLISTING AND RATINGS

Already gone
You never cry like a lover
Midnight flyer
My man
On the border
James Dean
Ol' 55
Is it true?
Good day in Hell
Best of my love

Afterword: This album sees the Eagles building on their already pretty amazing success. While Desperado was not the hit they might have hoped after the debut did so well, this album took them into the top twenty and gave them a number one hit single. You can see how their songwriting craft was developing, as well as their sound, and soon they would no longer need covers or songs written by other songwriters. Did they but know it, immortal fame and complete commercial success was only two albums away. Of course, after that, it was all downhill.

Rating:

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Trollheart

Album title: One of These Nights
Artiste: Eagles
Genre: Country/Folk Rock
Year: 1975
Label: Asylum
Producer: Bill Szymzczyk
Chronological position: Fourth album
Notes:
Album chart position: 1 (US)
Singles: “Lyin' eyes”, “Take it to the limit” and “One of these nights”
Lineup:
Glenn Frey: Vocals, guitars, piano, harmonium
Don Henley: Vocals, drums
Bernie Leadon: Vocals, guitar, banjo, pedal steel, mandolin
Randy Meisner: Vocals, bass
Don Felder: Lead and slide guitar

Review begins

At this point, there really was no stopping the Eagles. This, their fourth album, gave them their first number one slot and three hit singles, one of which also got to number one, the other two all making it inside the top four. This would be the farewell album for Bernie Leadon, who leaves a nice legacy in yet another self-penned song, this time an instrumental that would be resurrected some years later in circumstances he certainly could not have been expect to have been able to predict. Don Felder has a little more input to the album this time out, playing lead and slide guitar on all tracks (alongside Glenn Frey) and even getting to sing one song, the only Eagles song he ever provided vocals for. But it's Don Henley who kicks things off, with a sliding bass from Randy Meisner to take in the title track which opens the album, and there's a certain feel of “Witchy woman” about its beat and its mood, though it's slighly more upbeat. The Eagles were always a band to make use of multiple guitars, and here they put them to good use as Felder and Frey trade licks. The wonderful close harmony vocal takes the chorus and it's a great opening song, leading into one of two Meisner songs, “Too many hands”, where there's harder, rockier guitar, and more a folk feel to this, moving away from the gentle rock of the opener. Much darker, much more mature and for once sounds as if they're casting a woman in a positive light. Maybe.

“Hollywood waltz” is, well, a waltz, with some lovely moaning pedal steel thanks to Bernie Leadon, and it's, as Batty would probably say, Country as fuck. First ballad, and it's pretty much a hit for me at any rate. Some really beautiful mandolin too. That instrumental from Bernie is next, and for anyone who recognises it but doesn't remember from where, it became the theme music to the series (radio and TV) of Douglas Adams' The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's played mostly on his trusty banjo, with strings addition from The Royal Martian Orchestra (?) and it kind of goes through movements, even though it's only six and a half minutes in total. Some really nice bass from Randy adds to it, but it really is the combination of strings and banjo (which you would not think would naturally go together) that makes the piece.

After that we're in familiar territory, with two hit singles coming one after the other. “Lyin' eyes” is probably known by about everyone, and yes, once again the woman is the villain, although there is a hint that the man may be to blame in part. The idea of marrying an old man who has plenty of money in order to secure her future backfires on the woman in the song, as she realises that “It breaks her heart to think that her love is only given to a man with hands as cold as ice”, so she cheats on him. A familiar story surely, and the song is driven on a nice midpaced tempo with a great soulful vocal from Frey, some fine vocal harmonies as ever, and a nice bit of piano courtesy of Jim Ed Norman. This is followed by the slower, dreamier “Take it to the limit”, a song that really suits Meisner's higher voice, and surely the most famous Eagles song he has sung on. Along with the title track, these two singles would break the Eagles commercially across the world, establishing them forever as legends in the music business. Lovely orchestration on this too.

That Don Felder song is up next, the only one he ever sang on (the only one they let him?) and “Visions” is a foretaste of the faster, uptempo almost rocky guitar that would characterise the likes of “Life in the fast lane” the next year. In fact, it's pretty close to the melody at times. To be fair, it's a pretty poor song and Felder is, I have to say, a pretty abysmal singer, most of his vocals supplemented by those of the other guys in the band. Poorest track so far, but its sour taste is soon forgotten as we hit “After the thrill is gone”, a really lovely ballad yearning for the days of the first blush of love, now long behind and hard to even remember. The opening lines say it all: “Same dancers in the same shoes, old habits you just can't lose” and later when Frey sings “Don't care about winning but you don't wanna lose.” Superb pedal steel from Bernie and a great emotional solo from Glenn.

Oddly enough, after a bitter ballad like that, the album closes on another ballad. It's Bernie's last hurrah, written by him and his girlfriend, and though Don Henley would later disown the song as “smarmy cocktail music”, it's a nice little closer, with some lovely piano and a very simple acoustic guitar line, and indeed a message of hope and love to finish up what would become their first number one album.

TRACKLISTING AND RATINGS

One of these nights
Too many hands
Hollywood waltz
Journey of the sorcerer
Lyin' eyes
Take it to the limit
Visions
After the thrill is gone
I wish you peace

Afterword: Another great Eagles album and one that consolidated their hold over American music at the time. A number one album and a number one single will do that for you. For all that, though, there is still the ghost of what might be termed individualism in the Bernie Leadon instrumental, which, although I love it, seems out of place in an album of mostly soft rock hit singles masquerading as Country music, and ballads mixed with rock songs. The next album though, love it or hate it, would turn them into global superstars, and signal both their zenith and the beginnings of their fall from grace.

Rating:

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