Eagles, p.28
Eagles, page 28
Indeed, Geffen had arranged to have famed producer Glyn Johns sit in on their sets in Colorado. Johns, an engineer that Frey coveted, had produced records for heavyweights of rock like The Who, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. Geffen wanted him to produce their first record. But Johns, with a track record for working with bad boy English bands, would need to be convinced to take on an easy-going country rock band. He would get his first taste of them at Tulagi’s. And the “audition” did not go well. 1
1 [1] King, T. (2000). The Operator, New York, NY: Broadway Books
[460] Condon, S. (January 21, 2016). Frey had strong ties to Aspen ‘partytown’, The Aspen Times
[461] Oksenhorn, S. (September 3, 2010). The long run is not over for Eagles’ Frey, The Aspen Times
[462] San Francisco Weekly. (April 29, 1998). Fake It to the Limit.
[586] Cashbox. (May 13, 1972). Eagles Ink Asylum Deal.
[1152] Ellwood, A. (2013). History of the Eagles: The Story of an American Band, (Film/Video), Jigsaw Productions
[1392] Wenzel, J. (October 11, 2015). Don Henley dishes on Colorado past, new album, state of country music, Denver Post
[1393] Sebastian, M. (January 19, 2016). Glenn Frey and the Eagles a storied part of Boulder’s music history, The Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.)
The James Gang had a couple of personnel changes without warning and the audience at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium gave them a less-than-warm reception that they didn't really deserve. Lead guitarist-singer-songwriter Joe Walsh dropped out of the group and was replaced by a singer who came out like a Vegas lounge performer. —Cashbox
Joe Walsh played lead guitar and provided backing vocals for singles “Medley,” “Jessica Stone” and “California Fairy Tale” on Jimmie Haskill’s album California ‘99.
Glenn Frey (guitar, backing vocals), Don Henley (drums, backing vocals), Bernie Leadon (guitar, backing vocals), and Randy Meisner (bass guitar, backing vocals) provided musical support on Linda Ronstadt’s album Linda Ronstadt.
Glenn Frey played guitar, piano and provided backing vocals on J.D. Souther’s album John David Souther.
James Gang, with Joe Walsh: Jake Jones, Julia
Poco, with Timothy B. Schmit: Jerry Riopelle, Dr. John, Humble Pie, Alice Cooper
When Joe Walsh joined James Gang in April 1969, he was immediately thrust into the role of frontman, lead guitarist, and rhythm guitarist as well. The band played across the Midwest and had developed a name for themselves, fighting their up way from opening support band to becoming headliners in large clubs and arenas.
They were picked by The Who to join them on their European tour to support their concept album, Tommy. Along the way, the band welcomed producer Bill Szymczyk, who found them in a small Ohio club, signed them, and produced three albums, including two that went gold.
But Walsh was getting tired and felt musically unfulfilled. Through three albums, Walsh had written or co-written a majority of the songs and nearly all of the charting singles. Musically, other things were bothering Walsh. The group was becoming more complex in the studio where a reliance on overdubs had grown to the point where duplicating the sound on stage was challenging. Further, Walsh was growing as a writer and wanted to start incorporating piano, rhythm guitars, and harmonies, which wasn’t possible as a three-piece band.
“I was really frustrated with the James Gang,” Walsh said. “I wanted to expand the group and add some more people to it. I was beginning to get keyboard ideas. But I couldn’t get the others to go along with me. They didn’t want to change. Things got worse and worse. Finally, I had to leave. The money was good, but it got to the point that the money didn’t matter anymore.”
Another issue was that Walsh thought he was being typecast as a heavy guitarist. There was more to him than that, he felt, and he feared becoming synonymous with Blue Cheer, one of the first heavy metal bands known more for being loud than being talented. “I was scared I might have that label for life,” Walsh said. “I didn’t want to be a heavy metal flash lead guitar player. I didn’t want to be known for that, I wanted to be known to the public and to my peers as more of a songwriter, more of a musician, so at some point, I decided not to express myself in a three-piece very loud group anymore.”
Walsh planned his break from the group and planned to form another, but didn’t execute the plan immediately. Szymczyk, his James Gang producer and confidant, had moved out to Los Angeles when ABC Records absorbed Dunhill Records and he took over their West Coast operations. But he moved again to Denver in early 1971 to form his own label, Tumbleweed Records, with his partner Larry Ray. With a new group and a new album on his mind, he decided to go where his producer had set up a studio.
Walsh reached out to Joe Vitale, a veteran club circuit drummer he had befriended in Ohio, and asked him if he was interested in joining his new band. Vitale had just landed steady work touring in the summer and fall with Ted Nugent, but wanted to work with Walsh. He approached Nugent and explained, and he happily agreed, but asked Vitale to finish the tour, which he did. Then it was just a matter of waiting for Walsh to call to set things up.
Weeks passed and Vitale, who by then had no job, didn’t get a call. His girlfriend drove by Walsh’s house, and was surprised to find it empty. Walsh had already moved, and left no word or message for Vitale. Around Kent, Ohio, there was an expression called “Pulling a Walsh,” which happened when someone did something with no notice or explanation. Vitale said he was living it. In January 1972, Walsh finally called and asked Vitale if he was ready to come, and Vitale joined him in Colorado. 1
1 [135] Tobler, J. (1983). The Guitar Greats - The 1982 BBC Interviews, Buckinghamshire, UK: Northdown Publishing Ltd.
[358] Dayton Daily News. (September 24, 1972). Ex-Gangster Joe Walsh Man of Many Talents.
[1307] Hilburn, R. (December 1, 1973). Joe Walsh Will Wait and See, Los Angeles Times
[1326] di Perna, A. (June 5, 2012). Joe Walsh Discusses His Career, Gear and New Album, 'Analog Man', Guitar World
[1345] Vitale, J. (2008). Joe Vitale: Backstage Pass, Ashland, OH: Hit Records LLC
Joe Walsh was weary from life as the frontman for James Gang. He was writing all the songs, and there was no interest among the other band members in growing musically. He had a growing sense that the band was being pigeonholed as a heavy metal act, which he wanted no part of. So he quit.
About that time, a well-known English band, Humble Pie, was losing it’s talented lead guitarist and vocalist, Peter Frampton. The loss of Frampton came at an inopportune time for the band, which had released a new album in the spring of 1971 with Frampton, Rock On, that surged to #21 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. A&M Records was releasing a live album, Rockin’ the Fillmore, and both were getting strong reviews.
Band leader Steve Marriott reached out to Walsh to recruit him to the band. Walsh’s reputation had grown after James Gang was asked to open for The Who on their Tommy tour across Europe. It was a move that Walsh wanted to make too, but other commitments got in the way.
“That was something I really wanted to do, but I think the problem was that I had definite commitments, if not to the James Gang, at least to my management and to my record company.” Walsh said that those people weren’t friendly to the idea of moving to England and joining Humble Pie.
“I very much wanted to—I’ve always had a high amount of respect for Steve Marriott and Frampton,” Walsh told the BBC, and that was something that I really wanted to do, but I just couldn’t.” 1
1 [135] Tobler, J. (1983). The Guitar Greats - The 1982 BBC Interviews, Buckinghamshire, UK: Northdown Publishing Ltd.
[363] Crowe, C. (February 1, 1975). Joe Walsh Tends His Garden, Rolling Stone
A few weeks into their introduction to the rock world, the as-yet-unnamed Eagles were playing to sparse-but-growing crowds in Aspen, Colorado, to tune-up for their first album. Their manager, David Geffen, hoped to land Glyn Johns as their producer, but Johns would need to be convinced.
Geffen booked the band for a week of gigs in Boulder at Tulagi’s on Boulder University Hill in mid-December and arranged to have Johns flown in for what would be, in essence, an audition for the band. But Geffen’s choice of venues and timing for the performance was awful. The band’s preferred venue in Aspen, The Gallery, had become dependably packed for the band and were always a supportive crowd. The band hadn’t yet played in Boulder, which was nearly four hours away, and they certainly didn’t have a following there. To make matters worse, the University of Colorado at Boulder had final exams scheduled for that week, so crowds would be light, if non-existent.
“Why they chose Tulagi’s in Boulder on a snowy December night is still a mystery to me,” Don Henley told the Denver Post in 2015. “But Johns duly arrived at the Denver airport and I picked him up in a rental car and drove him to the club in Boulder. The roads were icy and snow was falling.” Henley said there were about six or seven people in the club, and the band played a “lackluster set, with which Mr. Johns was not impressed.”
Henley said the entire plan was wrong from the outset—the place, the timing, everything. “I know that the circumstances and the atmosphere in general were bleak,” he said. “Our managers just didn’t have a clue what they were doing and neither did we. The simple fact is that, no matter where we had performed that showcase, it was premature; we simply weren’t ready to make an album. We didn’t have enough original material or enough experience playing together as a band.”
“[They] were at least playing with a few members of the public along,” Johns said. “They were not that impressive. They played a selection of covers. Chuck Berry rock and roll kind of thing.” The dynamic between Bernie Leadon, who Johns called a “great country picker” and Frey, an “average rock and roll guitar player” was confusing, and they pulled bass player Randy Meisner in two different directions. “I didn’t see what all of the fuss was about at all.”
Johns added that the sound was not great, and that, combined with a fairly bland, somewhat awkward stage presence, convinced him that “they were not worth pursuing, and I returned to London.”
It was a dispiriting turn of events. Years later, Leadon said in exasperation, “God damn. It’s not what we expected.”
Discouraging as it was, Geffen was not ready to give up on Johns. After their gigs in Boulder, the band returned to L.A. and continued to rehearse. Geffen would ask a reluctant Johns to give the group another try, and he eventually relented. And this time he heard something he had not heard before. 1
1 [19] Johns, G. (2014). Glyn Johns: Sound Man, New York, NY: Plume/Penguin-Randon House
[36] Holloway, D. (March 10, 1973). The Eagles: Takin' It Easy, New Musical Express
[79] Gilbert, J. (March 10, 1973). Eagles Make It Easy, Sounds
[83] Nolan, T. (June 1, 1975). The Eagles: California Dreamin', Phonograph Record
[1152] Ellwood, A. (2013). History of the Eagles: The Story of an American Band, (Film/Video), Jigsaw Productions
[1392] Wenzel, J. (October 11, 2015). Don Henley dishes on Colorado past, new album, state of country music, Denver Post
[1394] Brown, G. (2004). Colorado Rocks! A Helf-Century of Music in Colorado, Boulder, CO: Pruett Publishing Company
Linda Ronstadt’s star was on the rise as the country turned the corner into 1972. She already had a Top 20 hits with “Different Drum” as part of the Stone Poneys and “Long, Long Time” as a solo artist, and she had a Grammy nomination as well. had She was spending considerable time on television and was becoming one of the nation’s strongest pop-country crossover artists. And she was ready to take the next step as she started work on her third album, Linda Ronstadt.
She picked a backing band for the record from an impressive collection of strong session musicians like legendary steel pedal guitar players Buddy Emmons and Sneaky Pete Kleinow, along with fiddle player Gib Guilbeau. She also tapped players who she had grown recently familiar with, including J.D. Souther, Richard Bowden, and the four original Eagles.
Glenn Frey, Don Henley, and Bernie Leadon were already well acquainted with her musical style, with each having accompanied her on tour at some point over the previous two years. Randy Meisner, too, had joined her for a few sets at her week-long Disneyland gig in the summer of 1971. So she naturally invited them to the studio to record what would be her last LP on Capitol Records.
Early on, the record was envisioned as a live album, and while two live cuts did make the final product, producer John Boylan brought the remaining eight cuts into the studio. The album was an eclectic mix of country-rock, and included songs written by Johnny Cash, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, and Livingston Taylor. Ronstadt led off the LP with the Browne’s “Rock Me on the Water,” which offered a more up-tempo arrangement than the original courtesy of “lone arranger” Glenn Frey, who also played electric guitar on the cut. Frey also provided guitar and backing vocal support for “Birds,” “I Fall to Pieces,” “Faithful,” and “Rescue Me.”
In his review of her album for Creem in April 1972, Ben Edmunds credited “I Fall to Pieces,” “Birds,” and “Rescue Me” as the albums strongest cuts. Each song was recorded live, he wrote, and her backing band makes her performance more forceful. “Her supporting group on these three cuts contained most (or all) of a damn fine band called the Eagles,” he said, “which you’ll undoubtedly be hearing more of the next time you turn around.”
Indisputably, the Eagles made their presence felt on the album. Henley appeared on six of the ten tracks, playing drums and providing backing vocals, while Leadon and Meisner appeared on three tracks each. While all four Eagles did perform on the album, they did not appear as a single unit on any of them, although Frey, Henley, and Meisner all participated in “Birds” and “Rescue Me.” Ronstadt valued Meisner’s high backing vocals, but wasn’t fond of his bass playing, so she relied on Henley’s former Shiloh bandmate, Mike Bowden, for those duties, though Meisner did playcbass on “In My Reply.”
Even with the all-star cast, the album wasn’t earth shaking for Ronstadt. Her fourth album, which was her first with David Geffen’s Asylum Records, became her true breakthrough album in 1973. In a bit of cross marketing, Capitol even released a second issue of the album in 1971 rebranding the album Linda Ronstadt and Friends, and giving top billing to the Eagles among those also appearing with her on the album on the cover. 1
1 [55] Ronstadt, L. (1972). Album Credits/Liner Notes: Linda Ronstadt
[534] Ronstadt, L. (2013). Linda Ronstadt: Simple Dreams, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster
[1399] Cashbox. (October 9, 1971). Linda Ronstatdt: I Fall to Pieces (Capitol 3210).
[1400] Edmonds, B. (April 1, 1972). Linda Ronstadt: Linda Ronstadt, Creem
When Glyn Johns left Boulder, Colorado, in December 1971, the Eagles were flummoxed. Johns had traveled halfway across the world at David Geffen’s enthusiastic behest to watch the Eagles perform live in a freezing cold club in front of an uninspiring crowd of just eight. Johns, unabashedly honest, said he was not impressed with their musicianship, calling them “confused,” and offered that he “didn’t know what the fuss was all about.”
Don Henley would explain to the Denver Post in 2015 that he thought the performance, and Johns’ subsequent rejection, would have happened regardless of the venue because the band wasn’t ready to cut an album yet. But Geffen was not ready to give in. Johns was scheduled to be in Los Angeles in March 1972 to produce Rita Coolidge and David Anderle at Elektra Studios, so Geffen made another entreaty.
“Geffen would not let it go,” Johns said, “insisting that I had not seen the Eagles in the best circumstances. He pestered me until I agreed to go back to L.A. and see the band in rehearsal, and thank God he did.”
Johns said that he arrived in L.A. and spent the morning in a rehearsal hall and the band played through the set he had already seen in Boulder. The result, he said, was “pretty much the same.” Unmoved, Johns and everyone in the hall decided to break for lunch when someone suggested they play Johns one more song, a Randy Meisner cut called “Take the Devil.” Frey and Bernie Leadon grabbed acoustic guitars and they sang the song around the piano without bass or drums. They then cut into the Frey ballad “Most of Us Are Sad.”
“All of us were standing in a group near the door of the building, and there it was,” Johns said. “The harmony blend from heaven. It knocked me clean off my feet. In effect, the band had four great lead singers all with completely different voices. When they sang together it created the most wonderful sound.” At that instant, lunch was scrapped and Johns had changed his mind about producing the band. They spent the rest of the day reviewing the material the band had compiled and he begun to realize they were a much better combination of musicians than he had given them credit for.
“The contrast of Bernie’s and Glenn’s guitars was refreshing, with Randy and Don providing a solid and versatile rhythm section for it to all sit on. Their writing was fairly obvious, and I liked them as people,” Johns said, “which was the main thing that made me go back, and it wasn’t until I saw them in rehearsal, without a PA and without all the bad sound, that I realized their quality.”
Johns said he was converted and excited to make the record, and was even sheepish in admitting that he hadn’t spotted their potential earlier. He stayed with them for a few more days, helping them iron out tracks for the album, and then headed back to London the next day to begin recording their debut album. 1
