8. EaglesEagles
I don’t really need to make a case for the defence when it comes to the Eagles because they’ve been doing it themselves. But the Laurel Canyon scene of which I was talking did become kind of bloated and commercialised, and a lot of that was due to what the Eagles did. Now I don’t fault them for this, but obviously a lot of people do. What they basically did was take a form of music that was very home-brewed and turned it into stadium rock. But one of the reasons I think that people should be interested in reading the history of the Eagles is because it explains that before about 1975 there were some key members of the band who were bringing that old-time acoustic music and country flair to the band. So if you listen to any of their first three albums you’ll hear that apparent on there. The album I’ve chosen has that song ‘Take It Easy’, which was a huge hit for them, and that’s basically a country tune; it’s got banjos, it’s got acoustic guitars. And there is nothing on this album that precludes it from being acceptable to anyone who likes good music. Even their commercial albums are masterpieces in many ways, in terms of the production and the songwriting. So it’s very hard for me to understand anyone who’s against the Eagles. As a punk rocker obviously it was easy to use them as a target because they used something that then became commercial. But then people could quickly could turn their fire on any band in the 1990s who became successful.
