Hotel California Heading To Showtime!
The Eagles have a huge documentary coming up on Showtime!
The Eagles are one of my favorite bands – and of course, one of the greatest musical groups of all time!
The eagles were formed in Los Angeles in 1971 by Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner.
In their career, the eagles have had five number one singles, six Grammys and six number one albums – and have endured for decades. Two of their albums, Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) and the classic “Hotel California”, ranked among the 20 best-selling albums of all time.
They have the best-selling album in the U.S. with Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975), which sold approximately 42 million copies worldwide. They have sold over 120 million albums worldwide, and 100 million in the U.S. alone.
They are the fifth-highest-selling music act and highest-selling American band in U.S. history. No other American band sold more records than the Eagles during the 1970s.
The Eagles released their self-titled debut album in 1972 which spawned three Top 40 singles, “Take It Easy”, “Witchy Woman”, and “Peaceful Easy Feeling”. They followed up the success of their debut album with Desperado in 1973.
The album was less successful than the first, reaching only No. 41 on the charts and neither of its two singles reached the Top 40. However, the album contained two of the band’s most popular tracks, “Desperado” and “Tequila Sunrise”.
They released On the Border in 1974 and added guitarist Don Felder midway through the recording of the album. The album generated two Top 40 singles: “Already Gone” and their first Number One, “Best of My Love”.
It was not until 1975’s One of These Nights that the Eagles became America’s biggest band.
The album released three Top 10 singles: “One of These Nights”, “Lyin’ Eyes”, and “Take It to the Limit”. They continued with that success in late 1976 with the release of “Hotel California”, which would go on to sell over 16 million copies in the U.S. alone.
The album yielded three Top 20 singles, “New Kid in Town”, “Hotel California”, and “Life in the Fast Lane”. They released their last studio album for nearly 28 years in 1979 with The Long Run, which spawned three Top 10 singles: “Heartache Tonight”, “The Long Run”, and “I Can’t Tell You Why”.
The Eagles broke up in July 1980 but reunited in 1994 for Hell Freezes Over, a mix of live and new studio tracks. They have toured intermittently since then and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
In 2007, the Eagles released Long Road Out of Eden, their first full studio album in 28 years. The album would top the album charts, release five singles on the Adult Contemporary Charts and win the band two Grammys. The next year they launched the Long Road Out of Eden Tour in support of the album.
With all of this success, you’d have to think everything was “happy happy happy” behind the scenes, right? Well, if it was you wouldn’t be reading this, would you?
Heaven and Hell: My Life in the Eagles (1974-2001) by Don Felder, with contributions by Wendy Holden – published in 2008
Don Felder joined the eagles right before the “On The Border” album – and Felder WROTE the music for the iconic song “Hotel California”…and has written his story about how it all went wrong…
“Heaven and Hell” is a terrific insider’s look at life inside the eagles – how they became superstars, broke up, re-formed for their “Hell Freezes Over” tour – and how Don Felder was forced out of the band he helped make stars.
DON FELDER, SECOND FROM LEFT…
When guitarist Don “Fingers” Felder was invited to join the already platinum-selling Eagles in 1974, he had no idea what sort of rock-and-roll heaven and show-business hell he was about to enter— -or how hard it would become to tell one from the other. For the next twenty-seven years, Felder found himself deeply involved in a musical career that was musically thrilling, emotionally exhausting, and surprisingly dangerous.
In Heaven and Hell, Felder shares this remarkable journey with a firsthand look at his tempestuous years with the Eagles. Even as he, Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Randy Meisner, Bernie Leadon, and, later, Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit became America’s most popular and successful rock band, selling tens of millions of records, Felder reveals that greed, jealousy, and creative differences constantly threatened to tear the Eagles apart.
From one sold-out arena to the next, some members of the Eagles blazed a trail of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll that became as legendary as their music. Felder explains how the famous E3 (third encore) parties, which began as spontaneous, raucous backstage binges, evolved into highly organized orgies, with roadies recruiting gorgeous women from the audience to be chauffeured to lavish hotel suites, where nothing was off limits.
Felder also offers a rare glimpse into the creative melting pot that produced such great Eagles hits as “Life in the Fast Lane,” “Hotel California,” “Victim of Love,” and many others. The writing of these songs often involved the entire band, as well as non-band members, such as well-known Eagles collaborator J. D. Souther, Bob Seger, and others. Frequently beginning as a simple guitar lick or a vague idea, these songs took shape through a fascinating process of free association and collaboration, yet, says Felder, even these exciting moments led to friction and bickering.
TODAY’S EAGLES LINEUP: TIMOTHY B. SCHMIDT, DON HENLEY, GLENN FREY AND JOE WALSH
This is an honest, open look at one of America’s most endearing bands – and the issues that led to an ugly breakup and financial battle that tore apart the band.
The eagles were part of a great renaissance in music in Southern California, and here is a book that tells the whole inside story!
Hotel California: The True-Life Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and Their Many Friends by Barney Hoskyns – published in 2006
If you want to know how the southern California sounds began in the 60’s, and the many unique musicians who were part of it, this is the book for you!
CROSBY, STILL, NASH & YOUNG!
Here is the writeup from Publishers Weekly: As musical scenes go, it would be hard to come up with a less dramatic one than that of the singer/songwriters who dominated Southern California from the mid-1960s through the mid-’70s.
Nevertheless, British music journalist Hoskyns gamely tries to make the “denim navel-gazers and cheesecloth millionaires of the Los Angeles canyons” exciting in his no-nonsense account of those musicians’ rise and fall.
JACKSON BROWNE!
The Author captures the mid-to-late 60’s in Southern California’s burgeoning music scene that drew sensitive musicians west from Greenwich Village. He articulates the differences between those who lived in Topanga and Laurel Canyon, who they wrote with, performed with, slept with….he also captures how this idyllic world was torn apart by the Manson murders, and a music scene suddenly financially lucrative – all leading up to the cash-register mentality that formed the Eagles.
Both books offer a great inside look at the music industry, and lucky for us, the eagles are still recording…here is the video of their latest single, which evokes the greatness of the first album…long live the eagles!
The Latest eagles – How Long!
Categories: 70's Cinema, Books / Media, documentary films, Movies, Music, Talent/Celebrities, Travel, TV Show, Uncategorized
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