The most important tour that the Eagles ever went on was not an Eagles tour: “Perfection is not an accident”
One night in 1976, at a bar in Newcastle, the pissed-up patrons poured so much money into a jukebox, constantly wanting to listen to ‘Hotel California’ over and over, that they broke the machine.
The local story goes that a group of young lads had never heard of the Eagles, but they had also never heard anything like this enchanting new song in a more poetic sense. They were mesmerised by this mysterious band and their magical sound, to such an extent that they burnt out the machine playing it on an endless loop until it ka-boom.
There are no doubt similar stories the world over. In truth, the band were a strange enigma that captivated plenty of people, pissed-up or otherwise, in a similar manner. This was partly because they arrived on the scene like bandits, busting typical pop culture trends. While most bands crave attention, the Eagles were the opposite.
“For years, we’d been able to walk around L.A., into restaurants, clubs and theatres, and melt anonymously into the crowd. It is one of the great bonuses of being an Eagle. No one knows what we looked like,” Don Felder recalls in his memoir.
“No one really knew who Don Henley and Glenn Frey were – or any of us, for that matter,” he adds. That singled them out as a unique entity. Above all, the resounding question was, ‘How could they be so good?’ This strange and enigmatic force seemed to just sift into the global consciousness without any press or pandemonium, just great songs.
Usually, the great songs come after the fact. Even The Beatles had to wrestle the world’s attention before they progressed onto more complex matters. But the Eagles somehow seemed to be able to occupy themselves with secretly crafting perfection, and as Glenn Frey would later decree on the History of the Eagles, “perfection is not an accident.”
But where had they been practising? Where had they been ‘perfecting’ their sound? Well, before they even existed as a band, the Eagles had been on the road with Linda Ronstadt. She was, in her own eyes, a live act, and after years of not being taken seriously by the industry, she had forced a big break by the 1970s and was determined not to let that slip.
So, with Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner behind her, all future Eagles, she hit the road extensively, showcasing her stunning chops as a performer. All the while, his backing band was forming a crafted bond and studying the classics that Ronstadt was sweetly singing.
All the while, their own ambitions fell into place. “It was a calling, it was a career,” Henley put it. Their eyes were set on being something greater than a backing band with each passing successful show. “Our goal was just to be the best we could be. We wanted to get better as songwriters and as performers. And we worked on it.”
Thanks to Ronstadt’s drive and glistening ability to make the spotlight seem like a candle that only she could occupy, the band were afforded the opportunity to hone their style without great scrutiny. This was pivotal to their development, as she put it herself, “Nothing gets your chops like playing every single night.”
So, when they did form the Eagles after their stint on the road, they had none of the usual pressures of having to earn their stripes in view of the masses. They had already harnessed an idiosyncratic sound from the shadows, and it was still shrouded in that mystic realm from whence they would deliver their strange sounds that could silence a whole pub into a stunned stupor, which is quite a feat on a Friday night in Newcastle.
