Hints of Fab: the band Billy Joel considered “the American Beatles”
There will never be another sensation like The Beatles ever again. Despite the plethora of solo artists that have been to rack up numbers in the modern age with one incredible tour after the next, the certain magic captured by the Fab Four from the minute they started playing is the perfect storm of limitless talent, fantastic chemistry, and the best luck in the world that only happens once every century. Billy Joel knew that he could never hope to match the Fab Four, but if there were someone who could, it would be The Eagles.
Whereas The Beatles were on the verge of collapse by the beginning of the 1970s, the start of the Eagles was just beginning to come together. Don Henley had just moved from Texas to California, and his chance meeting with Glenn Frey in Linda Ronstadt’s backing band was far too good an opportunity for him to pass up.
No alarm bells seemed to be going off that this would be an all-time great band, but Henley and Frey’s chemistry after striking out on their own wasn’t that dissimilar from John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Henley was more focused on the words, just like Lennon, while Frey brought a certain lighthearted humour into the mix, just like McCartney.
The rest of the band may have served the songs just as well as George Harrison and Ringo Starr, but one thing stands out above all else: the harmonies. The Fab Four may have had a dense knowledge of vocal harmony, but hearing Henley’s golden croon match up with Frey, Joe Walsh, and Randy Meisner was a match made in the musical heavens.
Joel certainly wasn’t shy about his Beatles fixation, either. He admitted that the album The Nylon Curtain served as his answer to Sgt Pepper, and a song like ‘Scenes From an Italian Restaurant’ may as well be a love letter to the back half of Abbey Road. He didn’t have the full group behind him, though, and when he heard those country-rock voices, he got some flashbacks to the band that changed the world.
When talking about the outfit to Rolling Stone, Joel admitted that the Eagles were the closest thing to The Beatles that America ever had, saying, “You could argue that they were the American Beatles, with that dual songwriting team of Frey and Henley, and all those state-of-the-art hit records. I have to say, though, I’ve always thought that singing drummers looked weird.”
Regardless of their poor aesthetic choice of putting the strongest singer at the back of the stage, Joel does at least have somewhat of a point. From a raw sales perspective, the Eagles have one of the best-selling albums of all time in their greatest hits album, and there’s probably not a single bar throughout America that hasn’t seen a crowd break into a song like ‘Take It Easy’ or ‘Desperado’ at least once.
The Eagles may have the reputation of being strictly a California country-rock band, but they were always about more than just rock and roll. This was about making records that were timeless, and while the production might be questionable sometimes, the songs still hold up after years of being played.
