Glenn Frey

 
In the worldview of the Eagles, the scope of femininity divides into roughly two categories: The women who give the Eagles cocaine and the women who will give anything - anything - to snort the Eagles' cocaine. The former are demons (with the moon in their eyes; their lyin' eyes, their terminal prettiness, their Tiffany twistedness, et. al) the latter just sort of sad and pathetic (they should be home but they're not; they wonder how it ever got so crazy, they're afraid it's all just wasted time, their need to either own or stone the Eagles, with the single exception who is just a friend).

Which would feel a lot more like the warm smell of misogyny rising up through the air were it not for the contempt the Eagles have for other men, what with their brutal handsomeness, their thirst for the blood of certain heroic gunfighter/guitarists; their inaibility to buy the love of the lyin' eyes woman, their mass production of ugly little homes in the once-sylvan hills surounding the Eagles' luxe aeries, and on and on).

The Eagles, in short, are handsome, harmonizing, lushly melodic buzz-kills. Suntanned fingers wagging in your face; golden heads shaking; aryan chins turned up as they stalk off to the bathroom to blow their noses.Or nose their blow. Or something.

Odious. Except for the fact that a lot of those bitter, pissy songs also turn out to be so well-constructed, and so well-performed (in the recordings anyway) that it requires vast stores of intellectual discinpline to dislike them. And when it comes to  "Hotel California," the 1976 apotheosis of their creative careers, I can only say one thing: It's a great record. Each song a gem in its own particular way, the playing and singing all but flawless, one of those concept albums whose central idea (upscale SoCal showbiz society turns out to be one fucking decadent place) flows from its individual parts, and not the other way round (as per, say, "Desperado")

Just a smidge of context: "HC" featured three out of four founding Eagles from their earliest country-rock days, (Henley, Frey and bassist Randy Meisner. Guitarist/pedal steelist, mandoliner, etc., Bernie Leadon had already departed), lead guitarist Don Felder (in place since "On the Border" in 1974) and the unlikely, yet catalytic debut of the already-famous midwest rocker Joe Walsh as uber-lead guitarist. As musical mergers go, adding the slide guitar-wielding goofball among the sleek SoCal hipster cowboys was not just successful but actually catalytic. More than just a truly distinctive guitar player, Walsh (with his hangdog face and joker's timing) also added an element of soulfulness into the band. A parodist rather than a scold; a wiseass with a heart of gold. And on "Hotel California" all of that served as a kind of tonic, taking the edge off of the Henley/Frey nastiness, while also goading them to rock a little harder maybe even reveal a little of themselves in the process.

Whatever, it worked magnificently. "Hotel California" was a smash, and a pleasure to listen to, more or less nonstop, on the radio for months, years, decades.

"Hotel California": Cinematic in scope; epic in length; the "Citizen Kane" of decadence songs, "HC" kicks off the album with a puzzling, even maddening puzzle. What the hell is colitas? The image jumps out from the lyric's third line ("warm smell of colitas rising up through the air..."), clearly a central part of the narrator's experience of the elegant, awful world he (and we) are about to experience. So you wonder: Are we really talking about the same wild species of buckwheat known variously as James' buckwheat and Antelope Sage? Not quite. "During the writing of the song 'Hotel California' by Messrs, Henley, and Frey, the word `colitas' was translated for them by their Mexican-American road manager as 'little buds'," Eagles manager Irving Azoff wrote to whomever composed the Wikipedia entry for 'colitas.' "You have obviously already done the necessary extrapolation. Thank you for your inquiry."

The road and sky collide, with drums

A songwriter comes up with a brilliant idea, comes up with half a dozen striking new ways to capture the sounds. And yet the most haunting parts of "Running on Empty" turn out to be the ones that contain no music at all.

I keep thinking about the first 30 seconds before the start of the opening (title) track. Bear in mind that "Running" is a fantastic song, certainly the best rocker JB ever wrote, both thoughtful and fiery, captured in a performance that is both stripped down and simply blazing. Holy shit. But it's that silence that sticks with me.

Actually, it's not silent at all. The band is onstage, gearing up to play a new tune. You can sense that the lights are low, you can hear the crowd get restless. Voices bellow song titles. "The Road and the Sky!" a woman shouts. "Ready or Not!" a guy honks. Other voices form a kind of wordless chorus - the sound of expectancy, of demand. Finally another guy finds the bridge between impatience and resignation. "Play what you want!" It's like a signal. A foot stomps, a hand chunks a rhythm on tamped guitar strings.  Then.......Boom.

A two-chord riff for piano and guitars, a simple bass line, David Lindley's jet-engine slide guitar. The drums pounding a hard stutter rhythm. Blazing and roaring.

"Lookin'' out at the road rushing under my wheels. . . .I don't know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels..."

Remember the place where the road and the sky collide? This is it. And the point of "Running on Empty," the album, is to find a way to tell everyone else how it feels to be the man on the road. The poet as object of desire. The troubadour on the run. JB came up with a brillliant way to do just that: by recording an entire album of new songs on the road - onstage; offstage; in the hotel; on the bus. The whole experience, from the good (the glow of the stage) to the bad (cooped in the bus on an all-night ride) to the hideous (wired so tight on coke that even the stupidest ideas seem brilliant).

Brilliant in concept, less so in execution, "Running on Empty" is both a huge step forward and a lurch toward self-destruction. Funny how those two things can happen at the same time.