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Thread: Glenn to be Guest at Songwriters Hall of Fame Master Session at NYU

  1. #61
    Stuck on the Border Henley Honey's Avatar
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    Default Re: Glenn to be Guest at Songwriters Hall of Fame Master Session at NYU

    OK -- last installment for tonight -- cause I'm going blind trying to decifer my notes.

    We are still on LITFL. They played the intro and Glenn said: "Makes you want to get high, doesn't it?" That got a laugh from the audience.
    They played it partway through and continued the discussion on its structure. How it only had a half chorus in the beginning and that was because they felt it was important to get back to the story and then include the entire chorus later on in the song. They discussed how in the beginning of the song the characters are described physically (brutally handsome/terminally pretty) rather than describing their situations which came later in the song. Glenn said: "part of telling the story is to make the characters look a little more glamorous and interesting." His point was you have to leave somewhere for the characters to go in the story.

    He added: "We used to have a saying in the Eagles, which was -- everything changes once Don starts singing -- and in a song like LITFL he is such a compelling vocalist that he becomes the center of the record. He is telling the story. He becomes the narrator and you want to listen to him." Glenn compared it to hearing Michael McDonald sing -- that you're just drawn in.

    "Starting with OOTN, personally, all I cared about was singing one song on an Eagles album and I just wanted to write a bunch of songs with Don for Don to sing because he was money. He was straight to the radio."

    Glenn was asked about any material that the Eagles may have done but never released. He said no, that if they felt a song wasn't good enough to be released they'd never have finished it. It was in the context of not using all their material where Glenn said Don Felder would bring them songs and 90% of them had so many guitar parts there was no room for vocals and therefore not used -- with one exception -- and that was Hotel California.

    (Soda, please double check your notes on the above Felder section as I don't want to misinterpret what Glenn said or what he meant!!!) He was in no way derogatory to Don Felder.

    Glenn and Don (Henley) really liked the synthesis of the Mexican/Raggae sound on Hotel California. Glenn said he likes songs with multiple influences. He said it makes them more interesting.

    More tomorrow -- or maybe Soda wants to pick it up from here?
    Last edited by Henley Honey; 10-27-2011 at 09:32 PM.

  2. #62
    Moderator Troubadour's Avatar
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    Default Re: Glenn to be Guest at Songwriters Hall of Fame Master Session at NYU

    I agree - your write-ups are superb, HH! I'm really enjoying them.


    you better put it all behind you, baby, 'cause life goes on
    you keep carrying that anger, it'll eat you up inside--



  3. #63
    Stuck on the Border
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    Default Re: Glenn to be Guest at Songwriters Hall of Fame Master Session at NYU

    The gushing about Don is admirable. There seems no point in saying that Glenn's narration of songs such as Lyin' Eyes & New Kid In Town is just as compelling.

    Both New Kid In Town & Heartache Tonight - songs GLENN sang - went to Number One & won Grammy awards. One of those was for the vocal performance.

    I know how humble he is & I know that he wishes to acknowledge Don's talent, but for heaven's sake, there were two of them in that partnership, and still are, and they both bring an equal amount of talent to the partnership & to the band.

    ETA: Don't get me wrong; I am grateful to hear these insights. I know very well that he isn't going to go to something like this & tell everyone how wonderful HE is. That isn't what he does. As I said; admirable & humble.
    Last edited by Freypower; 10-27-2011 at 07:53 PM.

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    Stuck on the Border Glennhoney's Avatar
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    Default Re: Glenn to be Guest at Songwriters Hall of Fame Master Session at NYU

    WOW...wish it had been video taped...I would've loved to seen him/listen to him talk about all this....did you guys take notes?..or tape him...or else you have an incredible memory....great job..

  5. #65
    Stuck on the Border Henley Honey's Avatar
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    Default Re: Glenn to be Guest at Songwriters Hall of Fame Master Session at NYU

    I took notes. I took stenography & typing about a thousand years ago and it's like riding a bike -- you never forget. I was a little rusty at first, but it kicked in and I managed to concentrate and get it down. The difficulty comes in getting the notes transcribed without misquoting.

    On a more frivolous note, Glenn looked HOT.

    I saw him outside the venue talking on his cell phone when he first arrived and he had on a dark, three-quarter length overcoat. He wore a two-piece suit that fit very well. He looked fit but cold. The theater was like a freezer. Betcha he wished he'd kept on the coat!
    Last edited by Henley Honey; 10-27-2011 at 09:19 PM.

  6. #66
    Stuck on the Border Topkat's Avatar
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    Default Re: Glenn to be Guest at Songwriters Hall of Fame Master Session at NYU

    Wow, HH you really got every detail on Glenn's appearance. I don't know how you got down all that info. It was great reading all about it!!
    Thanks so much for writing this up for us..... must have been a real thrill for those who attended.

  7. #67
    Stuck on the Border VAisForEagleLovers's Avatar
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    Default Re: Glenn to be Guest at Songwriters Hall of Fame Master Session at NYU

    Her pen was smokin'! So I kicked back and put mine away, then asked to copy her notes later. Or, better yet, get her to type them all in then just swipe them! I never did stuff like that as a student, but it's working for me now!

    Thanks, HH!
    VK

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  8. #68
    Administrator sodascouts's Avatar
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    Default Re: Glenn to be Guest at Songwriters Hall of Fame Master Session at NYU

    Ok, I'll pick up at the Felder section above since HH asked me to double check, and go on from there for a little bit! I may not have the following word for word, but it's pretty close.

    "Don Felder, the guitar player for the Eagles from 1974... 'cause he joined in 1974... every time we made an album, Felder would give Henley and I a 90-minute cassette full of instrumentals for us to write songs to and, 90% of the time, he had played so many guitar parts that there was no room to even sing.. and we would say that to him. 'Hey, where do we sing? First this guitar plays this, then this guitar plays that....' The one exception was 'Hotel California.' He gave us this instrumental demo and Don and I were listening to it and we said, 'mmm. This is really a nice synthesis. It's Mexican Reggae. We think this is really good.' And I like songs that are a synthesis, where there's multiple influences.... it's not just one way or another. I think it makes things more interesting..."

    He continued:

    "So, we had this chord progression. Now, at the time, Don and I were big fans of Steely Dan. I think we'd met them a couple times, maybe, and we were especially impressed with how brave Steely Dan was with their lyrics. They said things in their songs that Don and I would never even dream of saying. I mean, they got the Steely Dan t-shirts.... just things that they said. We were very impressed.

    "So, we started thinking that maybe we should be a little braver in our lyrics, and 'Hotel California' was the perfect song. So, we're sitting there and I said to Don, 'This song should be like an episode of the Twilight Zone. Start out, the guy's driving in his car. He takes a hit off a joint, he comes over the rise, he sees a place in the distance with some lights, he drives over there, someone opens the door, there's a bunch of weird people....and what does it mean? It means nothing! Now, later on in the song, we're talking about tarnished elegance, we're talking about how man continues to soil everything that's good, once he finds something really nice he goes there and wrecks it... there are certain elements of that tarnished elegance sort of thing... there's meaning in Hotel California... but a lot of it was just movie-making.... just pictures.

    "And of course, we started writing songs before there were videos. Your mind - the back of your eyelids - was the screen for the songs you listened to. I would drive around in the car listening to 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' and dreaming it up. Sometimes I'm thinking about what it must have been like at the Beatles session, who was playing what and where they were sitting... and other times, I'm just having this movie going on in my head along with the lyrics that somebody's written. So that's really what we were trying to do. We've always been very visual writers.

    "I have this theory: don't tell me how you feel. Tell me a story; paint me a picture. That's what's important. I want to be entertained. Other stuff can filter in... all your hidden meanings... your message... that can be included, but first and foremost, you have to entertain.

    "'Hotel California' goes there. There's a lot to like about 'Hotel California.' There's the cricle of fifths chord progression, there's the reggae beat, Don and I wrote these lyrics, it's got a story that moves and continues to be like an episode of the Twilight Zone, the guitar parts, and how we went to the end of the song and built these guitar parts... Felder's solo first, then Joe's solo second, then split one for the third, then they play the triplets twice through... we had this whole thing, and we thought it was very interesting; it never got dull. 'Hotel California' never got dull. And then we put it out there...

    "But back to Steely Dan. Walter Becker of Steely Dan had a girlfriend who loved the Eagles, and she's playing Eagles all the time. It probably drove him nuts. So, there was a song on a Steely Dan album called "Tell Me Everything You Did," and there's a line that says... they were having an argument, and the line in the song is, 'Turn up the Eagles; the neighbors are listening.'"

    [We audience members all laughed at that!]

    "So, we wanted to send a message back to Steely Dan. My idea was 'They stab it with their Steely knives.' Now, we couldn't say 'Steely Dans' because a 'Steely Dan' was a dildo, was slang for it."

    [At that, I (Nancy) am like "Whhaaaa???" I had no idea that group named themselves after a dildo!]

    Glenn added, "The other thing that happened... another line in that song.... we were always trying to put things in the song that meant a little something to us that maybe nobody else would get. Back a few years before we recorded Hotel California, a friend of ours... I won't say who he is... he had left his wife, and his wife became suicidal. She didn't wanna go on. And she would call Don. And Don would go over to her house and talk her off the ledge... I'm using a figure of speech. But she used to always say, 'I just don't really see any reason for going on. I'll just check out.' And that's what she called dying. So, now we've got this metaphor. So when we say 'check out of the hotel,' now we know that it means a little something more to us. So, we would look for things like that to include."

    Always in our hearts, Never forgotten

  9. #69
    Stuck on the Border Koala's Avatar
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    Default Re: Glenn to be Guest at Songwriters Hall of Fame Master Session at NYU

    Again, Thanks a so much everyone for your detailed summaries!I have enjoyed reading it very much !
    "For the record, we never broke up, we just took a 14-year vacation!"
    (Glenn Frey)


  10. #70
    Stuck on the Border
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    Default Re: Glenn to be Guest at Songwriters Hall of Fame Master Session at NYU

    I knew about the Steely Dan name origin.

    That was very detailed & interesting.

    I do wonder why he & Henley didn't feel they could rework or write extra parts/melodies for some of Felder's 'guitar parts' submissions. You can understand a bit better why Felder felt somewhat rejected by them.

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