Which Eagles songs feature on Randy Meisner’s debut solo album?
Soon after Randy Meisner departed the Eagles in the autumn of 1977, he set about working on material for the first record of his solo career. Although Meisner had recorded with other musicians during stints in Poco and the Stone Canyon Band before becoming the Eagles’ bassist, he’d never gone it alone as an artist in his own right.
And despite his working relationship with others in the band ending in acrimony, he needed to bring a little of that Eagles magic with him into the studio for his self-titled debut album. He couldn’t enlist the other Eagles as performers on any of his songs, but their longtime collaborator, JD Souther, did pitch in with backing vocals on three of the tracks. More importantly, via Souther Meisner, I got permission to use an Eagles composition as the album’s opener.
The track ‘Bad Man’ was co-written by Souther and Glenn Frey four years earlier, amid sessions for the Eagles’ third studio album, On the Border. A version of it was recorded, but it didn’t make the final cut, giving Meisner the opportunity to make his solo recording of the song the first one released to the public. Ironically, it was a confrontation between Meisner and Frey, the main songwriter behind ‘Bad Man’, that precipitated his departure from the band. Yet Meisner was still more than happy to use Frey’s unreleased material for his own record.
As well as ‘Bad Man’, the other Eagles song which makes it onto Randy Meisner was even more relevant to the rift between the band and their former bass player. Its appearance on the tracklist reaches a whole new layer of irony, and must have raised an eyebrow or two in the Eagles camp, especially from Frey and Don Henley.
So, what was this second song?
The song in question was one of the band’s biggest hits ‘Take It to the Limit’, a track Meisner had written alongside Frey and Henley. It was largely his composition, though, and in the Eagles version he’s the lead singer. And so, it makes a certain amount of sense that he’d reappropriate it for his own record.
What’s more, Meisner’s solo rendition of the song arguably serves it better than the version he recorded with the Eagles. Its sparse arrangement featuring a prominent piano accompaniment allows Meisner’s vocal performance to shine, imbuing the track with an intimacy and emotional weight that the original Eagles recording can’t quite match.
The real irony of Meisner rerecording ‘Take It to the Limit’ in particular, however, is that his refusal to sing the song as an encore at the end of Eagles live sets in the spring and summer of 1977 is what led to his confrontation with Frey. Meisner apparently didn’t enjoy the attention his vocals on the track brought him during live shows, and was scared he wouldn’t be able to hit the high notes during his performance.
Perhaps he intentionally included it on his own album as a flippant gesture to Frey and Henley. But more likely the song had a deeply personal meaning for him, which he preferred to express on his own terms than at the end of the live sets of Eagles arena tours. Their loss, and his album’s gain.
