New Kid in Town returns to the more familiar form of the band's beginnings with a country lilt. Johnny come lately, there's a new kid in town. The second person figure has returned to miss out on the romance he thought was for life. It could be that or the status of the band who were rising and taking over the stadiums and airwaves. Led by electric piano and lush with harmonies and call and response vocals, this one provides a kind of false calm after the trauma of the opening track.
Joe Walsh rides again with the sinewy guitar riffs of Life in the Fast Lane. Just a guy and a gal getting zonked on coke and rampaging through the land in another cinematic outing. The bluesy riffing played through flangers and allowing a smidge of funk in the gaps is heavily reminiscent of the guitar sound Jimmy Page was getting in the same year's Presence. I'm not suggesting a ripoff as much as the band, known for its cowboy rock, venturing into a harder rock persona. It's a convincing step.
Having said that, Wasted Time chimes in as a country rock epic to end the side and spill over to open the next one. It's a lament for a passed relationship. All the love and visions of soul mate togetherness now look like futility. It's big with full band and orchestra and even some convincing choral work.
Victim of Love springs back to the kind of rock on Fast Lane with a more Bad Company approach to the big chordy verses and raspy vocals. Macho and forgettable.
Pretty Maids All in a Row is the kind of ballad that the Rolling Stones were doing at the time like Winter or Fool to Cry. Joe Walsh takes the mic with a reedy voice and a lament about passing time. Orchestral swells and the title as a parting line that does have a rueful resonance.
The only thing I can say for the mostly characterless Try and Love Again is that I like the prominence given to the electric 12 string.
The Last Resort is the one that surprised me on this listen decades after the first and onlyother hearing. I recalled it as a hamfisted protest against American imperialism but there's a lot more depth to the lyric and scope to the song as a whole. The final line, after the hymn-like vocal melody has returned in a higher register is, "call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye", has genuine poignancy.
I loved the intriguing nightmarish tale in the title track and would happily turn it up when it came on the radio. This is when I started reading music magazines and found out that there was a mystery around the meaning of the song, suggesting all kinds of intrigue and hugger mugger. The most that anyone reported, though, was that the ones in the band who wrote the song knew exactly what it was about. I had no trouble thinking it was an allegory for a decadent rock star lifestyle at the point where a participant came to and saw the depravity around them.
There was a video of a live performance I saw on late night tv when commercial tv used to fill spots with soft news or music videos. The band backstage sing a brief multipart harmony as a kind of warm up before going out and doing the song, all the way to the big guitar outro. By the time I saw this, I had long dimissed The Eagles as dag-rock but this was really invigorating. I've just failed to find it on YouTube which is a pity.
But that just reminds me of how I got into rock music at the wrong time to get into The Eagles. To this day, I brush them aside along with all the Steely Dans, Doobie Brothers, Alman Brothers, Aerosmiths etc. It's music that feels compounded into the early '70s like chewing gum under a school desk, never to be fresh again. (This doesn't apply to any of the '60s music I got into at this time as that was an active process of discovery rather than anything commonly on the radio.)
There are clearly riches here and probably in the other albums but whatever I did like this time is already fading. Part of this is the overly clean audio quality which serves only to advance how clean and unengaging the playing is. It sounds like a room full of session musicians taking direction. Apart from some impassioned vocal moments and fiery guitar solos, everything like seems to fall back to a level. Next track, same thing. This is not the effect I get from listening to the sounds that replaced all the preceded the following year when punk bloomed. Never Mind the Bollocks is all saturated compression and onslaught but still feels more dynamic.
So, it's not just The Eagles. If you read the wrong kind of mag (Rolling Stone) at the time you'd notice a lack of dissension against the big bland bands of country rock or jazz rock or barely developed blues rock, and you'd find a kind of unabashed admiration for the touring excesses that gave the punks to come so much anger against the wastage of it all. There is sincere exploration in the words of this record but it fails to reach out to me through music that cannot compel me.
Also, there is no nostalgia to it. I was not only alive when this was released and on radio, I was a voracious rock music fan. The big barrier for me wasn't just musical but cultural. Apart from the movies, I disdained American culture with its big, self serving bloat. My nostalgia from this year is more like ABBA or (I'm) Stranded. The Eagles were the kind of grownup stuff I hoped I'd never like. When a girlfriend of one of my brothers unironically called them country rock, my face squeezed into a rictus of disgust. That the yuckiest, old bod music could attach itself to rock 'n' roll revolted me.
I know people within a five year radius of my age whose starting points and tolerances are alien to mine. I also know some aged in the other direction who have a soft unquestioned ignorance of what came before.Rather than evaluated either of these positions or offer my own as preferrable, I do find it increasingly compelling that the line of pre and post punk (there are always exceptions) still feels like home, even as I've for decades nutured my own development in taste. It means, to me, that for all its apparent riches, Hotel California is forever floating in a void, recognisable but unlistenable.
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