“Desperate to make money”: The band David Crosby thought never had any fun
Rock and roll is never meant to be treated like a job. Yes, there is a business side to everything, but the moment that people start mentally clocking out in the middle of a performance is normally when they should hang it up. It’s supposed to be about having fun every time you get out onstage, but David Crosby thought that one of his fellow 1970s rockers had been going through the motions whenever they went out on the road.
Then again, not every piece of Crosby’s time on the road has been sunshine and roses, either. Considering how volatile Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young could get, it wasn’t out of the question for the tour to be abruptly cancelled because Neil Young wanted to go home or the band splitting up halfway through because they weren’t that happy with what direction they were going in.
It’s unfair to the fans, but that’s how they seemed to operate. After all, CSN was always looked at as a side project in between the group’s solo careers, so it wasn’t out of the question for them to break things off if they felt that it wasn’t from the heart. For Don Henley, though, rock and roll was the kind of hard-working job everyone had to devote themselves to.
Although the Eagles sprang out of the ashes of the 1960s, their approach to country rock wasn’t perfect by accident. Henley could still write emotionally gripping tunes with Glenn Frey, but half the time, it was about pouring over every piece of the tune until it was exactly right, whether that meant a single word or a guitar solo played with a certain feeling.
And that wasn’t about to stop once they got to the live show, either. Despite getting the track record of “loitering” onstage by certain critics, the whole reason why the band stood fairly still was because of how methodical everything was, whether that was nailing the perfect vocal harmony or making sure the dual guitars from Joe Walsh and Don Felder were in tune with each other.
Crosby could certainly appreciate the time and effort put into everything, but he wasn’t as enthused about their work ethic, saying, “All my friends that are out working, they all say it’s total isolation: no guests, no family. Off the bus, on the stage, back to the bus, back to your hotel room, locked. The Eagles? They’re not having any fun at all. What they’re doing is making a bunch of money, and everybody is desperate to make money because they haven’t worked for a year. But the companies are more desperate than the artists.”
Granted, it’s hard for anyone not to have a little bit of fun onstage with Joe Walsh behind the fretboard. Even for a group that seems to take themselves as seriously as the Eagles, Walsh is the court jester amid everything, usually throwing in different runs that aren’t as typical or being his usual goofy self when he doesn’t have to harmonise.
But the reason why that works so well has more to do with how artists carry themselves as they get older. Some people might still see music as the freeform model that they saw it as when they were kids, but all Crosby saw was a bunch of guys trying to turn themselves into a money machine.
