Eagles, Hotel California
Featured Album
Wasting no time on the heels of their "Greatest Hits"
For their fifth studio album, the Eagles replaced Bernie Leadon with Joe Walsh, the former James Gang leader — fitting, given that the Eagles had once envisioned themselves as the rock 'n' roll equivalent of the Dalton Gang.
Despite the presence of "Wasted Time," Don Henley's Tom Waits-style tearjerker, on the heels of their "Greatest Hits" the band was apparently wasting none. The album's first three songs — the faux-reggae lilt of the famous title track, Glenn Frey's undeniably catchy "New Kid in Town" (featuring Walsh, the rowdy guitar wrangler, incongruously playing electric piano fit for a Holiday Inn) and Walsh's funky "Life in the Fast Lane" (with Frey on clavinet) — reached No. 1, No. 1 and No. 11 respectively.
Walsh and Don Felder, shredding together on the wickedly unsubtle "Victim of Love," made it clear the Eagles were scarcely the country-rock band they'd been with Leadon's banjos and mandolins. Walsh's soggy slow-dance "Pretty Maids All in a Row" is a low point, but Randy Meisner's final featured vocal with the band, "Try and Love Again," could have been a crack Jayhawks tune in another era. Henley's album closer, "The Last Resort" — often cited as Frey's favorite song by his chief rival in the Eagles' power struggle — took on the environmental concerns that would become the solo Henley's cause.
"You call someplace paradise," he sings, never more soulfully, "kiss it goodbye."
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mindigrlon December 31, 2012 at 5:33 pm said: this album was,& is,the soundtrack of "My" life!!! Thank's guy's ...
