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| I'm too lazy to put the DVD on, so this will have to do. |
Well it finally happened. I should've known it would soon enough. Summer has ended. It is officially autumn/fall/pre-winter. I guess I should've known that in order to make a true Summer of Vinyl and play all my records, I would've needed about 2-3 records per day. I've fallen quite short of that mark, but have no fear, we will continue to bring you the best in reviews, and surely, I can offer a little more in my reviews than this: So Called Review. Well, lets kick off the Fall of Vinyl with something entertaining.
The Dude may have had a rough day, and man, he really hates the Eagles, but I didn't have a rough day, I had an awesome day. I also happen to like the Eagles, and I especially like the Eagles with Joe Walsh. After playing the roll of country/rock fusion artists, the Eagles decided to change things up for their 1976 album 'Hotel California.' This included bringing in Joe Walsh, a proven rock guitar veteran who really helped solidify the heavier side of things in the Eagles sound. I have nothing against the earlier Eagles, I have Greatest Hits 71-75, and its a great retrospective on what they'd accomplished to that point. I find it very interesting the Eagles released that greatest hits album in 1975. It was almost their way of saying, okay, we had some fun with that type music, here are the best songs from it, now lets move on. And move on they did. A somewhat concepty album, it uses California as the setting for its story about excess, lost love, environmental decline, and a missing rug that really tied the room together. Sorry Dude, PLAY!
The title track starts us off on this one and its one of the biggest FM radio hits ever made. Guitar wise, its basically perfect. Twelve string acoustic, regular acoustic, at least two electrics and many little fills thrown in for good measure. For example, right after the line "welcome to the Hotel California," you get a fantastic guitar riff played with expert precision to get the harmonics and very stressed sound. One song in, and you can already see the Joe Walsh influence on his new bandmates. Lyrically speaking, where is the Hotel California? Duh, California. No, metaphorically where is it? Trick question, also California. The song is about excess, so when you want to find excess, I'd say L.A. in the 1970's is a good place to start. When I think of L.A., I think of the Dude causing a little trouble in Malibu. The song concludes with a great dueling guitar solo. First, we get them one at a time, taking turns. By the time the end of the song comes around, they are both dueling on a great riff that fades into the last 30 or so seconds of the song. "New Kid In Town" uses a fantastic chord progression to acheive its sweet, then suddenly sour tone. In the verse, everything is quite nice and happy. Its main street USA and all is right with the world. Hell, I bet the high school team is undefeated this year. But wait, here's the chorus, the New Kid is here, and things are changing. Well fear not, we're back to the sweet side for the second verse, but this whole song now has that lingering feeling of trouble. What the band was going for with this song was the feeling that love (or a music career) doesn't always last forever. Its a very difficult thing to sustain for any meaningful amount of time. There's that cynical message, and those minor chords of the chorus just punctuate how you should feel. But wait! There's more! Now we have this descending distorted guitar riff just adding to the tone of the song. Just a drop down to...E? Maybe, it feels like an E. See, there's that new kid...everybodies talkin', and now, you hate him too as he steals your girl/career. Next its... Holy Telecaster! "Life in the Fast Lane," is another song about excess and living life at 100 miles per hour, but this one has a telecaster twangin' opening that speeds it up even more. The lyrics are framed around a couple who are trying to cram 30 years of partyin' in about 3 weeks of time. This couple is living life on the edge with cocaine, pills, all the right people, and fianlly what may or may not be a car wreck that ends it all. Since everyone needs a definitive ending to a story, I'll say, yes, they die in a car wreck. The main riff is one of those that every guitarist has to learn within at least the first two years of playing. I don't care if you believe what the Dude preaches, you must like this riff. You can thank Joe Walsh AGAIN for this amazing riff, who developed it just goofing around in the studio. The long outro of the song lets the guitarists once again go crazy in their very 70's excess way. Oh, one more thing, according to the credits for the song, it features a clavinet...so...there it is. Time to slow it down, here comes "Wasted Time," and Don Henley is firing on all cylinders for this vocal track. Its a very sad song. The end is here for a relationship, and now its time to embrace loneliness. Nobody likes that sensation, but there is something worse. The thought that this whole thing was nothing but wasted time. So was it wasted time? I will answer that: No. You try, you fail, you learn. I think Alanis had something to say about that a couple weeks ago. Some of us however don't learn as quickly, but fear not! Maybe someone else can learn from your misfortune. As a wise man once said, maybe the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others. Okay that wasn't a wise man, it was a poster I saw on some guys desk at work, but whatever, the message is solid. Musically, umm, I don't know, I've spent enough time talking about this song and obviously I don't want to waste anymore time for fear of offending Don Henley. Its got string arrangements and they're very nice. FLIP!
Oh listen to this! We have another chance to talk about the musical side of 'Wasted Time!' The second side starts with a reprise version of the last song, this time in pure orchestral form. Wow, this ain't too bad, very passionate sounding. This reprise is quite majestic compared to the more pop friendly version we just finished, and I like the segue into the second half of the album. Ready for some more guitar? "Victim of Love," is the best guitar track on the album, and that says a lot on an album like this. Now, they claim Joe Walsh didn't contribute to writing this song. I call BS, this has Joe Walsh style all over it. The verse uses great hard stops between chords, and a great technique of hard strumming followed by sliding the fretting hand on down the neck. The Chorus is a great mix of slide guitar flying up and down and slow arpeggios under the chords. The solo uses the slide guitar that really sounds like Walsh again, I could be wrong, but I'm not. So now that the music is pretty well covered, what about the lyrics? Pretty cynical I would say. This is about a woman who's not so interested in settling down and starting a family. Unfortunately, whoever is writing the words probably misunderstood her intentions and now its just a case of crossed wires gone horribly wrong. Cut your loses man, move along. One interesting musical note for this song, if you look just inside the run out groove on side two you will see 'V.O.L. is Five Piece Live', pressed into the vinyl, which is the Eagles way of saying this song has no overdubbing and was played live in the studio. The run out groove on side one says 'is it six o'clock yet?' but that's not nearly as interesting. "Pretty Maids All In A Row" is only the second song with Joe Walsh on writing credits, but oddly, its one of the slower songs. See that, there's shenanigans here. I can't really say this is my favorite song on the album, which is a shame, because Walsh is my favorite Eagle. Like the last track that really sounded like Walsh, this one uses another slide guitar. Its used here for fills and the solo and not so much for overall sound of the song. The rest of the song is pretty simple, piano, bass, drums and the orchestra again. I guess its really not a terrible song, and this album did need a few breaks from the riff heavy guitars, I just wish that the band would've let Walsh pen a rocker instead of something slow.
"Try and Love Again" is another song that doesn't quite fit the mold for this album, but is still pretty good. The guitars are there, acoustic and dueling electrics. The difference maker here is the vocals. No Henley, no Frey, its Randy Meisner. Now, some of you right now are saying 'who the hell is that?' Yes, I was one of those people too. Randy is one of the on again off again Eagles who has stayed out of the mix for reunions, so he's really just a memory for early Eagles fans. When I listen to this song I really think to myself "What Would Henley Do?" How would he have sung this song? I'm really curious about that. In fact, someone go on YouTube and find a live version of it sung by Henley. Meisner's voice, interestingly enough is closer to Walsh's in tone, but doesn't have that entertaining quality like you hear on "Life's Been Good." Hey, its still a great song, and the Eagles play the instrumental side of things flawlessly. The album ends with the greatest song Don Henley has ever written. No, its not 'Boy's of Summer,' or 'Dirty Laundry,' but I like where your head is at. Henley, as some of you know, is an environmental nut, I mean...conservationist, and this song is all about his observations of how people really waste more than just time. The song caps off the two themes of the album, excess and loss. Beyond just making ourselves crazy with these two things, Henley points out that our ways also damage our environment. Okay, I'm not a big fan of rock stars with opinions but, I'll let this one slide, because the song is so well done and he raises some pretty good points. For example: When Europeans made it to the new world, things probably could've been handled a little better with the native people. Also, how the beautiful natural landscape of Southern California has turned into one giant pile of concrete filled with really strange people. You know, the man's got a point. Musically, the song stays fairly low key with piano and sparse instrumentation but eventually builds to a great epic sounding conclusion. That final climb of the orchestra is a perfect ending to this album, I have therefore dubbed this last minute of the album: the final excess, because I'm guessing some guy in the studio probably thought that was a clever name for it right before he was fired for being an idiot.
Before I started doing this blog and was stuck with the same ten records over and over, this was one of the ten. Its now been about four months since I've listened to it, which is some kind of record for me. As a guitarist, there's just too much on this album I can't resist, dueling guitars, live studio work, and Joe Walsh. After Hotel Cali, the Eagles attempted a big rock and roll no-no: a double album. As we learned on the Guns N Roses Use Your Illusion post, this is almost always a mistake. The process of making a double album almost always destroys the band. A quick reminder of bands that died shortly after double albums: Smashing Pumpkins, Guns N Roses, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin. The Eagles didn't survive either. "The Long Run" was so frustrating to make that they didn't even get enough songs for the double album, and gave up with only ten songs complete. I guess topping Hotel California was just too much for a band so rich with egos to overcome.
Strongest Song: Victim of Love
Weakest Song: Pretty Maids All in a Row
Song You Know: Hotel California
Why You Might Hate It: Your name is not Lebowski, but the Dude.
Buy It? Its a great one to have, easy to find used on Vinyl.
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