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Eagles

The Eagles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1971 by Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner. From 1975, they were joined by Joe Walsh, who left in 1980 but joined the reunion and is in the band today. With five number-one singles, six Grammy Awards, five American Music Awards, and six number one albums, the Eagles were one of the most successful musical acts of the 1970s. At the end of the 20th century, two of their albums, Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) and Hotel California, were ranked among the 20 best-selling albums in the United States according to the Recording Industry Association of America. Hotel California is ranked 37th in Rolling Stone's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" and the band was ranked number 75 on the magazine's 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

The Eagles are one of the world's best-selling bands of all time, having sold more than 150 million records—100 million in the U.S. alone—including 42 million copies of Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) and 32 million copies of Hotel California. "Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975)" was the best selling album of the 20th century in the U.S. They are the fifth-highest-selling music act and the highest-selling American band in U.S. history.

On January 18, 2016, Frey died in New York City at the age of 67. According to the band's website, the causes of his death were rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis and pneumonia while recovering from intestinal surgery....(Read more)

Links to Peel[]

Peel's attitude to the band appears to have been somewhat ambivalent. In his summary of the US album charts of 1975, originally appearing in the Christmas/New Year edition of The Listener and reprinted in the Olivetti Chronicles, they feature in a list of successful artists who he saw as illustrating the "blandness" of the American scene and its "wholesome and non-nutritious product" (p.176). Yet he played them with reasonable frequency up to and including Hotel California, declaring that he liked to sing along with Last Resort. [1] Simon Mayo stated many years later that his first-ever listening to a track from Hotel California by the Eagles was on a Peel show in 1978. Looking back at the period, John Walters noted that "you were still playing things like – well, the Eagles of all people, ZZ Top, Bob Seger, a lot of the old folk musicians and so on." [2]

Peel had made his name playing "West Coast" music of various kinds, and the Eagles seemed to derive from that tradition; from country-influenced groups like the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield in particular. Yet there was little that was experimental, counter-cultural or "alternative" in their immaculately-crafted records. At some point, JP seems to have mentally bracketed them with other AOR acts and ceased playing their tracks: this didn't disadvantage the Eagles too much, because by that time they could rely on Bob Harris, Johnnie Walker and a host of other album-oriented DJs on BBC local radio and ILR stations to give them plenty of airplay. On 14 February 1979, Peel read a list of acts students wanted to see in college in America, concluding with the Eagles, and added, "Aren't you glad you don't live over there?"

Notwithstanding, seven LPs by the band were found in Peel's record collection after his death. [3]

Festive Fifty Entries[]

  • None for the band as a whole, but Joe Walsh's solo track Rocky Mountain Way got to #28 in the 1976 Festive Fifty.

Sessions[]

  • None

Other Shows Played[]

Eagles_-_'The_Last_Resort'_(lyrics_in_description)

See Also[]

References[]

  1. ↑ Ken Garner, The Peel Sessions, p217.
  2. ↑ Ken Garner, The Peel Sessions, p217.

External Links[]

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