EAGLES BOXSET REVIEW

Review by: The Joker

The Eagles - The Eagles Deluxe

One of the things that the universe has been quietly filing away under ‘Unresolved Cosmic Ironies’ since approximately 1971 is that The Eagles are simultaneously the most unavoidable band in American rock history and the band that a certain type of music critic—i.e., the type of music critic who owns a hand-me-down corduroy sport coat and has opinions about Gram Parsons—most wants to pretend to despise. Don't be that critic. He's a fool. Put down your corduroy and pick up your towel.

A towel, as any good interstellar hitchhiker will tell you, as outlined in the entry on the importance of being prepared in ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’, is "the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can be supplied with." A man who knows where his towel is is a man who possesses a certain look of confidence that causes passersby to assume that he knows where his car keys, dignity, and critical faculties are at any given time of day.

The Eagles always knew where their towel was. This is either a noble quality or the whole problem, depending on your feelings about a group that has reached a state of perfect excellence and then expects you to pay to sit around and watch it happen again, a little louder this time, with Dolby Atmos.

One Of These Nights, recorded in 1975 and exhumed half a century later in massive, three-disc form with Blu-ray player and Dolby Atmos enhancement in celebration of its own considerable ego, is a really good record.

 One Of These Nights has so much myth surrounding it in terms of polish and ego that at times it's hard to discern exactly what's going on under all those mountain ranges of platinum. Quadruple platinum. If you're interested. Which you aren't. But they're going to tell you anyway. They're going to tell you from a stadium. They're going to tell you from The Sphere. They're going to tell you from beyond the heat death of the universe if their schedule permits.

However, before we continue any further, I suppose it is only fair that we warn you that the text of the review will contain quite a number of references to the legal and business structure that The Eagles have, and it is done so with the remorseless and joyless efficiency of the Vogon bureaucracy. Vogons, as you may be aware, are not evil creatures.

Vogons simply refer to a species of alien that is so obsessed with procedure and procedure that they make sure that all the forms are filled out in triplicate before any music leaves the building. The same holds true for the Eagles. They have an infrastructure that is just as bureaucratic. They celebrate every new sale milestone. They celebrate every new remaster.

The RIAA appears to phone Don Henley up directly whenever they hear that they have achieved a new sales milestone. I suppose it is probably every forty-five minutes or so. The Eagles 'Greatest Hits' has now sold over 40 million copies. It was the first record to be given the Platinum award by the RIAA. It has since been given the Quadruple Diamond award.

The RIAA Awarding System would be the greatest Vogon poem ever written if only it were a Vogon poem. It would be physically painful to anyone who had to sit through its reading out at a press conference. It would take about forty-five minutes to read out in its entirety and conclude with the presentation of the press conference itself using a projector. Several music writers have already died inside from reading out the press release. They're, by and large, okay. The rest of us are forced to get on with our lives.

The original "One Of These Nights," as it is now presented in a new mix by Rob Jacobs, supervised by Don Henley, who has never stopped supervising things since the Ford administration, is, it must be said, a remarkably cohesive work. It is the sound of five men standing on the precipice of country-rock and whatever dark and strange thing lies over on the other side, looking out over the abyss and collectively deciding, "You know, rather than take the leap of death itself, we're just going to write a song about it."

It's a bit like the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, really – nicely decorated, with dishes of quite breathtaking skill, located in a point in space-time where everything is about to change irrevocably, and yet still manages to make the impending doom and destruction of all life on Earth sound like a nice night out.

The title track opens with a bass line that sounds as though it was beamed in from a parallel dimension in which everyone is just that little bit more attractive and, existentially, just that little bit less satisfied with their success. A useful dimension to visit, and one in which the Eagles resided for most of the 1970s. They knew exactly where their towel was, and were still miserable. Which, cosmically, is just the right place to be.

"Lyin' Eyes," fifty years after the fact, is arguably the most brutally effective country-pop construct in history. It is five and a half minutes long, and it has forty-seven years' worth of marital discontent delivered with harmonies so clean and shiny, they could be used in a surgical procedure. And it won a Grammy. Of course it did. The universe gets a few things right from time to time, but it's always by accident and in its attempts to get anything else right.

The secret to the success and efficiency of "Lyin' Eyes" is, like all the best secrets, 42. This means, naturally, that it has just the right number of chord changes, narrative twists, and falsetto sections to ensure that a reasonable and rational adult will be reduced to a state of emotional submission. Attempts to replicate this effect in a lab setting have failed, and scientists have given up in disgust.

"Take It To The Limit" is Randy Meisner, an individual who speaks into a microphone and sings his way into a vocal register that may very well require supplementary oxygen and possibly a Magellan and his necessary skills and equipment to get the atmospheric conditions just right. It is very touching, in a way that is slightly embarrassing to confess, like getting choked up in an airport or actually caring about a painting in a hotel lobby. You will have emotions. Try and fight them if you wish. You will fail. The universe has seen to it. The number of people who are able to resist the emotional peak of "Take It To The Limit" stands proudly at a whopping 42. All of them are liars.

The "Take It To The Limit" track features Randy Meisner standing in front of a microphone, singing away in a vocal register that may very well necessitate supplementary oxygen and possibly a Magellan and his necessary skills and equipment to get the atmospheric levels just right. It is very touching, in a way that is slightly embarrassing to confess, like getting choked up in an airport or actually caring about a painting in a hotel lobby. You will have emotions. Try and fight them if you wish. You will fail. The universe has seen to it. The number of people who are able to resist the emotional peak of "Take It To The Limit" stands proudly at a whopping 42. All of them, liars.

The "Journey Of The Sorcerer" track is a track that needs a paragraph of its own, a footnote of its own, and perhaps a section of its own within the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, placed nicely between ‘Magrathea’ and ‘Marvin (the Paranoid Android).’ Of course, this is the banjo-filled instrumental track that Mr. Adams shamelessly stole for his famous theme for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy franchise, the track of music that has possibly been exposed to as many meetings with the absurdity of existence itself as possibly any other track of music in the entire history of the world.

And here it is in its original context, nestled between a song about Hollywood melancholy and a song about deception related to eyes. And that is exactly where a song about sorcery and mystery should be located in a collection of space-themed music. The fact that a song about sorcery and mystery should be used as the theme to a song about towels and bureaucratic aliens and the meaninglessness of existence is probably a sign that the universe has a better sense of humor than it is letting on. It is the musical equivalent of knowing where your towel is. Profoundly reassuring. Quietly magnificent. Slightly bewildering if you think about it too hard.

"After The Thrill Is Gone" and "Hollywood Waltz" are the quiet devastators of this record—the ones that don't announce themselves, that you don't really notice have invaded your brain until you catch yourself humming them at 2 a.m. with a vague feeling that something has gone wrong somewhere and you're not really sure when. This is a lot like discovering that your world has been torn down to make way for a hyperspace bypass. The world is gone. The paperwork has been filed. There is nothing to be done.

The record concludes with "I Wish You Peace," a Bernie Leadon composition that is so benign and uncomplicated in its sincerity that it's almost like a rebellion, like a Dentrassi cook sneaking extra food to hitchhikers despite Vogon prohibition. The Dentrassi, you recall, are the Vogons' hired cooks, who take perverse delight in doing exactly those things which they know will most annoy the Vogons. Bernie Leadon, on his last studio effort with the Eagles, is like a Dentrassi cook who's decided to give the hitchhikers some food, despite what the Vogons have to say about it. He'd leave the band shortly after. Make of all this what you will.

The new Jacobs mix is, as I say, excellent. Fuller sound, warmer sound... The kind of mix that doesn't call attention to itself loudly, but instead makes you wonder, a bit uncomfortably, why it hasn't always been this way. Like finally finding your towel after years of making do with a hand towel. The feeling of relief is perfectly proportional.

Discs two and three contain an unreleased live show from the Sunshine Festival at Anaheim Stadium. Finally, we are out of Vogon territory and into a place that's worth your time, money, and the considerable shelf space it takes up.

The Hitchhiker's guide to this particular concert would presumably include such items as: DON'T PANIC. What you are about to hear is the sound of a band that does not yet know what it is about to become, playing with the relaxed air of people who know exactly where their towels are, and who have not yet been informed that they are about to board a very large, very fast, very gold vessel and nothing will ever quite be the same again.

This is an important historical document, and the press materials are right to draw attention to this fact. This is Bernie Leadon's last show with the band. Joe Walsh, who would shortly thereafter officially join the band with an electric guita style that can only be described as 'friendly chaos delivered at the velocity of a Vogon constructor fleet,' makes a guest appearance on the encore, plays “Rocky Mountain Way” with the relaxed brilliance that suggests he had no idea at the time how monumentally important the next decade of his life was about to become, and then presumably went out into the California night with his towel presumably in a pocket or somewhere on his person.

The project managers at Rhino Records, to their considerable credit, have not attempted to over-produce the recording into submission. It sounds like what it is, a very good band having a very good night, recorded by microphones which were doubtless doing the best they could in a stadium with a wonderful smell of late summer and the particular California atmosphere which the Eagles would go on to spend an entire decade of their lives trying to bottle, monetize, and sell back to the people who'd originally provided it. A very efficient economic model.

The band tears through the tracks with the air of having been on the road for so long, it's second nature to them, like they're as mad as Ford Prefect after having lived in Guildford for fifteen years and having forgotten it was all rather surreal. "Take It Easy" has the air of having always been meant to be a stadium filler, and it was, and rather proves the point. "Witchy Woman" has the creepy undertone it always had.

"Doolin-Dalton/Desperado" has The Eagles' country outlaw phase sounding rather stranger and more interesting than is perhaps admitted, within the strictures of nostalgia. The Vogons of musical history have filed it away under "Classic Rock, American, Category 7" and largely forgotten it ever existed.

The Chuck Berry tune "Carol," which appears to be previously unreleased by the band in any official capacity – an eventuality so unlikely that it defies the odds of a bowl of petunias in mid-air exclaiming "Oh no, not again!" – is quite the revelation. It is the Eagles as a bar band. Not that I wish to diminish the quality of their work – it is a transcendent and impossibly well-harmonized bar band – but it is a bar band nonetheless. Leadon is particularly fiery on it, which rather now that I think about it is rather like going out in style. He would leave the band shortly after.

The universe has a rather good sense of timing, as has been mentioned previously. The trouble is that it doesn't explain itself. "The Best Of My Love" closes the set with a suitable sense of closure and warm, golden-hour contentment that causes one to momentarily forget that statistically speaking, the world is comprised of approximately 99% problems and that, in fact, the answer to all of the biggest questions in existence can be found in a numerical value that poses far more questions than it even begins to attempt to answer. For five minutes or so, while standing in a stadium in Anaheim, CA in 1975 through the magic of high-resolution audio, all is right in the world. All has always been right in the world. The towel is precisely where one left it.

The Dolby Atmos mixes are great. Sound comes from places. You'll feel completely enveloped by the music of the Eagles, which is an utterly wonderful feeling or a slightly threatening feeling depending upon your assessment of The Eagles' entire back catalog and harmonies from above.

The Hitchhiker's Guide has the following to say about Dolby Atmos: ‘Mostly harmless.’ The expanded edition adds: "Though users should be sure that their towel is within easy reach before activating the surround sound capability, as the spatial mix of 'Take It To The Limit' has been known to elicit an involuntary emotional response in 7 out of 8 intelligent species. The Vogons, of course, are immune. The Vogons are immune to all emotional responses. This is also true."

No, there isn't any middle ground with this music. You'll be reminded of which side of the line you're on about forty-five seconds into "One Of These Nights," when the bass line drops in from some point behind your left ear and the harmonies come in from some point slightly above your head, as if in answer to a question you never knew you were asking. Which, of course, is 42. 42 is, in this context, the number of seconds it will take for all of your rational defense mechanisms to completely give up and for you to know, on some deep and inescapable level, that, no matter your complicated relationship with the mythology itself, this is, in fact, a very good piece of music indeed.

"One Of These Nights (Deluxe Edition)" is, at its heart, a very good album by very talented people who, at the precise moment they were creating it, were on the cusp of becoming the kind of wildly successful institution for which people are forced to have complicated feelings. They're about to sell 40 million copies of a collection of their greatest hits. They're about to make "Hotel California," and it's going to be huge. They're about to be the stuff of mythology, the sort of people who leave behind them a petrified legacy, a civilization that asked the wrong question of a planet-sized computer and has to wait another ten million years for the sequel.

But of course, the thing that the Vogon bureaucracy of rock criticism inevitably gets wrong, storing it in a filing cabinet drawer marked "Oversaturation, American, 1976-Present," is that the music is still there, underneath it all. The Atmos mix does not change "Journey Of The Sorcerer." "After The Thrill Is Gone" remains as effective a demolition no matter how many quadruple-platinum awards precede it. The press release, with its seventeen paragraphs of box office figures and RIAA awards – a text that in places reads like a particularly vitriolic Vogon poem of complaint – cannot affect the basic reality of Bernie Leadon playing his last show without a notion of what story he is in the middle of telling, Joe Walsh waiting in the wings without a notion of what story he is in the middle of telling either.

That, finally, is what this box set delivers: a moment before it was ever a legend. Five men on a stage in a stadium in Anaheim, one of whom is leaving, one of whom is arriving, all of whom are playing Chuck Berry covers and all of whom are yet unaware of how large and permanent and inevitable they are about to become.

They knew where their towels were. They always had. Whether or not that was a blessing or a curse was, of course, up to a figure in the universe who had long since determined but was, as it so liked to do, not telling.

Score 3.7 out of 5 Perfectly Pressed Linen Shirts

ONE OF THESE NIGHTS (DELUXE EDITION)

3CD/Blu-ray Track Listing

Disc One: One Of These Nights 

1. “One Of These Nights”

2. “Too Many Hands”

3. “Hollywood Waltz”

4. “Journey Of The Sorcerer”

5. “Lyin’ Eyes”

6. “Take It To The Limit”

7. “Visions”

8. “After The Thrill Is Gone”

9. “I Wish You Peace”

Disc Two: Live At Anaheim Stadium (9/28/75)

1. Intro * 

2. “Take It Easy” *

3. “Outlaw Man” *

4. “Doolin - Dalton/Desperado” *

5. “One Of These Nights” *

6. “Ol’ 55” *

7. “Lyin’ Eyes” *

8. “Take It To The Limit” *

Disc Three: Live At Anaheim Stadium (9/28/75)

1. “Blackberry Blossom” *

2. “Midnight Flyer” *

3. “Already Gone” *

4. “Too Many Hands” *

5. “James Dean” *

6. “Witchy Woman” *

7. “Rocky Mountain Way” – with Joe Walsh *

8. “Carol” *

9. “The Best Of My Love” *

Blu-Ray

One Of These Nights – Atmos

Live At Anaheim Stadium (9/28/75) – Atmos

One of These Nights (2025 Mix) – Hi-Res Stereo

Live At Anaheim Stadium (9/28/75) – Hi-Res Stereo

* Previously Unreleased