God bless Don Kirschner and Wolfman Jack! I loved the Midnight Special, too. I was so impressed when they did Doolin' Dalton on DK.
God bless Don Kirschner and Wolfman Jack! I loved the Midnight Special, too. I was so impressed when they did Doolin' Dalton on DK.
Thanks Soda! It's been a long time since I've seen that. I love the way Bernie dies and then Glenn looks around, then runs.
I love your avatar. I'll have to learn how to do that stuff after spring semester. You all are creative around here.
Thanks, Judy! I got it from the Desperado sequence in Under the Covers.
There are some Don animated avatars you can use if you like: https://www.eaglesonlinecentral.com/...ead.php?t=1640
awww,love those videos! Thanks
"For the record, we never broke up, we just took a 14-year vacation!"
(Glenn Frey)
At 2:25 in Twenty-One you can see Felder accompanying on mandolin!
MikeA
I realize I'm a bit late to this discussion/celebration of the album Desperado, but I'm new here, and feel that I just have to add something, late or not, because Desperado is not only my favorite Eagles album, by far, but one of my favorite albums of all-time (this is one of those desert island discs, that I would most want to have with me always). I'll try to keep it brief here, although I could talk about this album all day, as much has already been said in praise of it.
I do think this is one of the best albums, start to finish, ever made, and one of the greatest achievements in rock music. It also stands as one of the best 'concept' albums ever. It is true and consistent to its concept, telling it's story from start to finish with remarkable sonic and narrative floursishes. It contains some of the Eagles greatest songs (Desperado, Bitter Creek, Tequila Sunrise, Doolin-Dalton, Twenty-One, etc), but the way that the songs have wildly different styles, yet all fit together so well to tell the story is what is most amazing. To think that his was the Eagles poorest selling (and charting) album is just outrageous. Although I certainly understand the very real (although now seemingly so silly) 'country' vs. 'rock' obstacles that it had to overcome (and the Eagles were still much more successful than most other bands tagged with a similar 'country-rock' label, such as Flying Burrito Brothers, Poco, SHF, Manassas, etc.), it is still inconceivable that this would not have been recognized as the masterpiece it is, right from the start. It certainly contained both harder-rocking songs (like Outlaw Man, Out of Control) and more outright 'country' songs (Twenty-One, Saturday Night) than their debut album, but the greatness of the album was apparent throughout, regardless of genre. I was there at the time, and I know it was an immediate sensation with me.
I know that even here at this forum, the majority opinion appears to be that the later Eagles, and particularly Hotel California, was their best. But for me, as much as I still like everything that the Eagles have done since, the best lineup was the original quartet, and Desperado was their masterpiece. Although certainly their replacements were top-notch, the eagles still lost something magical (particularly the versatility of Bernie Leadon) when Bernie Leadon, and later Randy Meisner left the group.
And for those that claim Hotel California as the Eagles best and true masterpiece, all I can say is that, in essence, Hotel California is a virtual remake of Desperado, recycling all the same themes and concepts (with song-for-song parallels) that wre brought out in Desperado, just with the wild west background, and country music influence replaced with modern American (and California) culture, and straight-up rock music. It's still a great album, but Desperado was more original, did it first and better.
Long Live Desperado!
Last edited by BBKron; 05-03-2011 at 01:19 PM.
You make some interesting comments. However I disagree that Hotel California is a 'virtual remake' of Desperado. Desperado specifically references the Doolin-Dalton gang. The palette of the HC album is far wider.
I tried to come up with parallels for each song & I just couldn't. Perhaps you could enlighten us. At a guess Out Of Contol might be parallel with Life In The Fast Lane & Certain Kind Of Fool might be parallel with New Kid In Town. After that I think you're stretching it. There is nothing on Desperado which has anywhere near the conceptual scope of either Hotel California or The Last Resort. On the other hand I don't see any equivalent of the title track of Desperado on the HC album (and no, not Wasted Time just because it is a Henley dominated piano ballad)!
Last edited by Freypower; 05-03-2011 at 07:20 PM.
I don't know about the parallels between songs the two albums. I honestly had never thought about that aspect and haven't gone back in and listened to them with that in mind.
I DEARLY LOVE "Hotel California" and "Desperado".
But as far as "concept", "Desperado" was written with the specific goal of producing an album in which each song represented a portion of a "story" and in total, they gave a description of not only the history of the Doolin/Dalton Gang from rise to demise, but also some personal insight into the characters that made up the legend (or reality actually).
I don't believe that the Eagles composed the entire Hotel California album with describing the futility of the pursuit of Life In The Fast Lane in Southern California as being a "theme" or "concept" . I certainly never came away from listening to that album with the conviction that I'd just been informed of some event or condition that had or is taking place. Certainly there are songs there that would describe that (definitely the song Hotel California and LITFL and possibly even Joe's song Pretty Maids) but my point was that they didn't produce HC as a "concept album".
Last Resort was more a statement about what Don Henley perceived and I suppose it can be taken a lot of ways, but I get from it the Waste of resources and the gullibility of humanity, particularly the latter.
Wasted Time, Victim Of Love, Try And Love Again, and New Kid In Town are all "busted love" songs....not about Southern California specifically. Those songs were not "geographic" at all.
What I'm trying to say and not doing a very good job of it, is that Hotel California really can't be said to be a "conceptual album" in the sense that "Desperado" was even though it did have a couple of songs on it that could and almost certainly be "conceptual" about life in Southern California.
I'll go on to say that without ANY reservations, I think that "Desperado" was the Crown Jewel of the Early line-up of the Eagles and that "Hotel California" was the Crown Jewel of the later rock-oriented incarnation of the Eagles.
I would have an impossible time of choosing which one to unconditionally proclaim as my favorite. But by that same token, I can also say that those two phenomenal works of art are far and away better than anything else they have done.
And I further go along with BBK in stating my inability to understand why "Desperado" didn't sell better than it did there at the first. The only rationalization I can come up with is that it was (1) Country-Rock which was a rather new genre and hadn't drawn in masses of converts yet and (2) it was a theme based album with only a couple of songs that stood alone enough to be played on radio.
MikeA
Sorry, didn't mean to stir up controversy here, but to me the parallels are quite apparent and consistent throughout, and almost certainly, quite intentional. In fact, I am surprised this topic hasn't been discussed in these forums before, as these are the Eagles' two most famous and acclaimed works, and, although the music itself is quite different between them, the concepts and themes are very much the same.
And yes, I would love to go through this song-by song, and will when I have the chance (I don't have the time right now, as I am writing this 'at work', and can't take too much time). But just let me say first, to mikeA and Freypower, thanks for your comments, but I would contend that you are looking at both albums far too literally. To suggest that Desperado is simply about the old west and the rise and fall of the Doolin-Dalton gang is missing all the deeper significance of everything it represents. Yes, this is the framework that Henley and Frey used to tell their story, a story that is much more personal and universal than the actual saga of western outlaws. Same with Hotel California, it is far more than about California or any 'geographic area'.
Both albums deal with the rise and fall of the American Dream, or perhaps even beyond America to the whole world. They also deal with the dark side of the american dream, materialism and decadence, and the ultimate destruction of the lives involved when things go wrong. the main difference between the two albums (thematically, that is), is that Desperado is told on a very personal level, dealing with personal decisions, regrets, triumphs and loss. The development of a young man attracted and seduced by the romanticized notions and potential rewards of being a famous outlaw, at the cost of everything else in his life (love, friends, etc.), and the ultimate tragic consequences of all those decisions. Hotel California takes these same themes even further, elevating the stage to a grander level, more to the societal level of America and the world (the dark underbelly of the American dream, decline of into materialism and decadence, etc.). Just as Desperado culminates these concepts (on a personal level) with the album ending Doolin-Dalton/Desperado reprise, HC culminates with the Last Resort, a more epic presentation of the demise of society and the destruction of paradises, but still very similar themes, just on a grander scale.
BTW, MikeA, Hotel California is very much a concept album, through and through, and it was intended to be. I am quite astonished that anyone here (that is, serious Eagles fans) would not have realized that. Henley himself, in an interview with Dutch magazine ZigZag in 1976 said about HC, "This is a concept album, there's no way to hide it, but it's not set in the old West, the cowboy thing, you know. It's more urban this time." In the same interview, he also said they were making a "statement using California as a microcosm of the whole United States, or the whole world, if you will, and to try to wake people up..." About the song HC, Henley said "It's basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American Dream, and about excess in America, which was something we knew about."
OK, I've gone on far too long already, but, anyway, you get the idea. It's on these deeper meaning levels that the themes are very much the same throughout both albums, not on the setting, or structural framework. If I get some time in the next couple days, I'll go through the songs themselves to show the parallels. Perhaps with these concepts and themes in mind, you can discover some new aspects to the music next time you listen to these albums. or at least something to think about. Gotta go.