I just read a great book I got for Christmas. A book I’d recommend for any Eagles fan. It starts out describing where each member of the Eagles are from and their backgrounds: Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Randy Meisner, Bernie Leadon, Don Felder, Joe Walsh, and Timothy B. Schmidt.
It explains how Don Henley and Glenn Frey first met, played for Linda Ronstadt, played at the Troubadour (a famous club in Los Angelas), and how the band came to be. It goes on to explain Don Henley’s run-ins with David Geffen (the founder of Asylum Records and Geffen Records) and Glenn Frey, and how David Geffen sold Asylum Records to Warner Brothers, and how Geffen Records was sold to some Chinese corporation and how it screwed Henley over twice – once with The Eagles and once as a solo artist.
It talks about the fights between Don Henley and Glenn Frey which lead to the untimely break-up of The Eagles, and how the band was forced to put out albums when they weren’t “creatively ready” to put out new albums because it’s what the record company wanted because they were their #1 artist. The book goes on to explain how Don Henley was the most successful as far as their solo careers are concerned, and how the “Hell Freezes Over” tour came to be, which was Irving Azoff’s idea. Irving Azoff was the manager for The Eagles, and pestered Glenn Frey and Don Henley since the band’s break-up in 1980 to get them back together, after all without Don Henley and Glenn Frey to be friends again, the band’s re-union would never ever happen. It took Irving 14 years to finally get them to agree to get back together, and ever since 1994 they have did the “Hell Freezes Over” tour, put out a complete greatest hits package that was to the band’s liking (the band had nothing to do with the “Their Greatest Hits 1971-1976” and “Their Greatest Hits Volume 2” albums), went on tour again to promote the greatest hits album called the “Farewell I Tour”, and put out a new CD called “Long Road Out Of Eden” and are still on tour now promoting that CD.
The band has been around for 30 years, and they are still as great today as they were back in the 1970s. They are most definitely to the 1970s what The Beatles are to the 1960s. If you are an Eagles fan I would suggest you to go out and get “To The Limit” by Marc Eliot. It is a very entertaining 380 page book and is worth the read!
