The Eagles, The #10 Artist of the Rock Era, Part Four

 

(Continued from Part Three)

The long feud between Felder and Frey finally reached a climax on July 31, 1980 in Long Beach, California.  The group had agreed to perform as a benefit for California Senator Alan Cranston in his bid for reelection.  When Cranston's wife thanked them prior to the show, Felder committed a major faux paus in reply saying, with the other members of the band present, "You're welcome....I guess."  

Frey and Felder spent the entire set threatening each other, and although they never made a public pronouncement, this was for all purposes the end of the group, at least for a very long time.  Frey left the Eagles and stayed in Los Angeles, while the rest of the group mixed the album Eagles Live in Miami, Florida, leading Szymczyk to remark, "We were fixing three-part harmonies courtesy of Federal Express."  

The group then did not release new material nor appear live in concert for years, although the members did not officially announce a breakup.  Several members recorded together for other artists, such as their work for Boz Scaggs on "Look What You've Done To Me", for Christopher Cross on his breakthrough single "Ride Like The Wind", and on Dan Fogelberg's excellent album The Innocent Age.

To this day, the members of the group call it a long hiatus rather than a breakup.  They all pursued solo careers, with Henley and Frey especially finding great success.  Walsh did well with the 1981 album There Goes the Neighborhood and worked on albums by Fogelberg, Steve Winwood, Richard Marx, Ringo Starr, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and others.  Henley, Walsh, Schmit, and Felder all recorded solo songs for the "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" Soundtrack.  

Schmit also sang backing vocals for Crosby, Stills & Nash on their album Daylight Again and Toto on their landmark Toto IV album and also toured with the latter group in Europe.  From 1983-1985, Schmidt was a member of Jimmy Buffett's backing band and joined Walsh and Meisner on Richard Marx's debut album.  In 1992, Walsh and Schmit toured as part of Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band.  Meisner enjoyed three Top 40 hits, including 'Hearts On Fire" from 1981.

Still, Henley said many times in interviews that the Eagles would get back together "when Hell freezes over".

Finally in 1994, after years of speculation, the Eagles (Frey, Henley, Walsh, Felder, and Schmit) performed for the first time since 1980 in April of 1994.  Glenn Frey issued what amounted to the official press release when he said before the crowd, "For the record, we never broke up, we just took a 14-year vacation."  Excited fans lined up to get precious tickets for the Hell Freezes Over tour.  The Beatles never got back together after their infamous breakup.  CCR never did.  The Eagles did, and their millions of fans were ecstatic.

 

The live album of performances called Hell Freezes Over, including the first new Eagles songs in 14 years, debuted at #1.   The lead single was "Get Over It", a #4 smash in Canada.  "'Get Over It' showed us that we could get together and write again," Frey said.  "For that reason it's an important song to me."

 

By failing to make Billboard's Top 40, the classic "Love Will Keep Us Alive" (played at thousands of weddings throughout the world) joined over a dozen Eagles songs to make The Top Unknown/Underrated Songs of the Rock Era*.

 

Hell Freezes Over has now sold over six million copies just in the United States.  Henley's great song "Learn To Be Still" (written with Stan Lynch, former drummer for Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers) is a Top Track* on the album.

Frey wrote and sang lead on "The Girl From Yesterday".

The tour was immensely successful, even with it being put on hold in September when Frey experienced serious diverticulitis, and as new legions and a new generation of Eagles fans demanded to see their beloved group, the tour was extended to two years.  

In 1998, the Eagles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with all seven former and current Eagles members on stage to perform "Take It Easy" and "Hotel California".  However, shows performed in Las Vegas, Nevada and in Los Angeles From December 28-31 of 1999 were the last to feature Felder.  The concerts were recorded and filmed, with the audio released on the four-disc Selected Works:  1972-1999 box set in 2000.  The DVD, however, was held up in court when Felder sued the other members of the group.  Selected Works, the finest collection of Eagles material released, went Platinum in 2002. 

On February 6, 2001, Felder was fired from the group.  Felder filed lawsuits against both the Eagles as a group and Henley and Frey individually.  The Eagles claimed they had every right to fire Felder as rock groups have done since day one, and filed their own lawsuit when Felder told his version of events in a book.  The Eagles went back on tour in 2001 without Felder.

All lawsuits were scheduled for trial in 2006, but were dismissed after being settled out of court.

 

In 2003, the group released the compilation The Very Best Of the Eagles.  It debuted at #3 and, though it is not near the collection of the four-disc box set, it has sold three million copies.  The album contains the new song "Hole In The World", written after and in response to the 9/11 murders.

Henley, Walsh, and Schmit helped on friend Warren Zevon's final album The Wind that year.

The Eagles released the two-DVD set Farewell 1 Tour-Live from Melbourne in 2005, which included two new songs.  This is Frey's "No More Cloudy Days", which was a #3 smash on the AC chart.

 

And we also want to feature this incredible share from Joe Walsh, who to his tremendous credit got help for his alcoholism.  "One Day At A Time".

 

In 2007, the Eagles took a song written by another of their friends, J.D. Souther, and released the single "How Long".  Souther co-wrote many of the group's big hits including "New Kid In Town", "Best Of My Love", "Heartache Tonight", and "Victim Of Love".  Despite the fact that "How Long" is a Rock & Roll song, the Eagles won the Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.  

What happened next is too incredible to believe.  In 2007, 28 years since their last studio album and 35 years since they released their debut, the Eagles released the double album Long Road Out of Eden, which included the single "How Long".  

Despite the facts that they were a 35-year veteran group and had not released new material in decades, the album debut at #1 in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and Norway and has sold over seven million copies.  That is unheard of for any group of their experience.  No one--not the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Bee Gees, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, Fleetwood Mac, Chicago, the Beach Boys--no one--has released an album of the caliber of Long Road Out of Eden that late in their career.

 

The Eagles have been ranked in and out of The Top 10 Artists of the Rock Era* but they would not be there today were it not for this album.  "a song the Stones could have done," Henley said in a Gold Radio interview with Nicky Horne.  "It was Don's (Felder) idea to use the phrase and the verse was his," Henley said.  "Glenn ran with it and even though Don didn't like it or think it was good enough, Glenn kept working on it and filling in the holes in the lyrics."  "Busy Being Fabulous" made it to #12 on the Adult Contemporary chart and even got a decent amount of airplay on the Country chart.

 

The Bellamy Brothers originally recorded "Guilty Of The Crime" on their 1997 album Over the Line.

 

"Last Good Time In Town" is one of two on the album that Walsh sang lead on.  He wrote the lyrics with Souther composing the music.

 According to Songfacts, this is an adaptation of a poem about lost love, nature and innocence.  Henley found the poem and was inspired to turn it into an a cappella song with minimal accompaniement.  Here is the wonderful "No More Walks In The Wood".

 

The great vocalist Paul Carrack (Ace, Squeeze, Mike + the Mechanics) wrote this one and gave it to Schmidt backstage at Twickenham in England.  Schmidt sings lead on "I Don't Want To Hear Any More".

 

Here is Frey's "I Dreamed There Was No War".

Frey also sang lead on this one, co-written by Jack Tempchin.  The song finds Glenn looking back on his life and stepping aside for the next generation.  Frey didn't have kids until the 90's (he had three), which gave him a new perspective.  According to Songfacts, the song in many ways is a message to his children, letting them know it will soon be their turn to shine.

 Henley told Billboard in 2007:

          Here I am, just turned 60.  I'm not

               complaining.  I'm thrilled and delighted. 

               None of us ever thought it would go on 

               this  long. But we are a determined bunch 

               of guys. We take our time. We are not

               afraid of the passage of time, necessarily,

               and we've been sitting one out for a long 

               time. That is kind of what "Waiting In The

               Weeds" implies. Again, on the surface,

               that's a love song, but it's also about this 

               band. We've just been sort of waiting for

               some of this bad music to die down, for 

               certain trends to go away, so that we can 

               get out there on the dance floor again.

               We are a band that knows how to bide its 

               time, and how to wait.

Here is "Waiting In The Weeds".

The Eagles began a tour of the world to support the album, performing in North America and Europe.  In 2013, the group released the documentary History of the Eagles and initially gave 11 arena concerts to support it.  Once again, demand forced the group to expand the tour for two more years.  

Founding guitarist Bernie Leadon joined the band for this tour, which fellow guitarist Joe Walsh welcomed with open arms:  "Bernie’s brilliant, I never really got a chance to play with him, but we've been in contact. We see him from time to time, and I'm really glad he's coming because it's going to take the show up a notch, and I'm really looking forward to playing with him, finally."

The Eagles were slated to receive Kennedy Center Honors in 2015 but the recognition was postponed due to Frey's continuing health problems.  On January 18, 2016, Frey, who had just had intestinal surgery, died at age 67 in New York City from acute ulcerative colitis, pneumonia, and rheumatoid arthritis while trying to recover from the surgery. At the Grammy Awards that spring, the Eagles, along with co-writer Jackson Browne, performed "Take It Easy" to honor their fallen star.   The surviving members finally received the Kennedy Center Honors later in the year. 

The Eagles headlined the Classic West and Classic East concert in 2017, with Frey's son Deacon performing in his place.  The group was also joined by Bob Seger and Vince Gill.   The Eagles recorded the song "Part Of The Plan" for the album A Tribute to Dan Fogelberg.  

The group toured again in 2018 with Gill and Deacon Fry and Henley's son Will on guitar.  In 2019, the Eagles gave performances of material on the Hotel California album and another set which included their greatest hits in three shows at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The group then embarked on a tour in 2020. 

The Eagles have won six Grammy Awards and five American Music Awards.  This supergroup charted 22 hits, with nearly half of those, 10, going Top 10 and 5 of those reaching #1.  Showing their mass appeal, the Eagles have scored 23 hits on the Adult Contemporary chart with 10 Top 10 songs and 2 #1's.  The Eagles have sold an estimated 200 million albums to rank in the Top 10 in that department.