Why does T-Bone Burnett hate the Eagles?
Few bands in history have soared quite as high as the Eagles. In fact, two of their records sit among the best-selling albums of all time. And while commercial success doesn’t equate to quality and worth, you can’t avoid the fact that their popularity isn’t fixed to a passing fad or some masterful marketing ploy—contrary to many column inches, people simply love the easy-listening American rock band, and it’s a phenomenon the world over.
And it’s a phenomenon the world over as well. If you do any amount of travelling in Asia, then you’ll soon come to the conclusion that ‘Hotel California’ might actually be one of the most successful engines of American cultural hegemony that the world has ever seen. It is the musical version of McDonald’s convincing the socialist-leaning region that capitalism mustn’t be all bad if it’s throwing up sweet rock ‘n’ roll like this.
There is a profound irony to that point. The song actually makes the opposite point, detailing the collapse of the American dream at the hands of greed. The further irony is that despite what ‘Hotel California’ says in its own obfuscated way, there is a slew of folks from the 1960s who saw the Eagles as the main culprits of killing off the counterculture revolution in the first place. The legendary T-Bone Burnett was one of them.
When the Coen brothers were making The Big Lebowski, they reached out to the musical genius – who has rubbed shoulders with the likes of Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Willie Dixon – to help them curate a suitable music taste for The Dude. It was Burnett’s suggestion that he should hate The Eagles. Why not? Burnett f–king hated them, too, man. He even went as far as to tell Rolling Stone that they contributed to killing the counterculture movement: “[The Eagles] sort of single-handedly destroyed that whole scene that was brewing back then.”
So, how did they kill the scene, and how was that even relevant for a film set in the 1990s? Well, as it happens, a few years prior to the release of the movie, the Eagles hit the headlines as the first rock band to charge over $100 for tickets. Seeing as though The Dude hailed from a place of hippie idealism, parcelling simplified peace and love with a price tag that lofty was an awful duality to straddle as a band.
The irony of a platitude like ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ – a song that strips the counterculture movement of any of its pointed intent and merely serves it up as a lukewarm laidback lark with an incense addiction – was bound to get on his nerves almost because it’s simply pleasant cab ride music. Burnett saw this as diluting the era down to its most commercial elements and serving it up for cash.
He even used his hatred of the band to leverage song rights deals for the Coen brothers film later down the line. He wanted to use Townes Van Zandt’s cover of The Rolling Stones’ ‘Dead Flowers’ to close the movie, but he encountered contractual issues as their manager, Allen Klein was asking for a budget-busting $150,000. But Burnett convinced him to watch the first cut of the film, and he recalls: “It got to the part where the Dude says, ‘I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man!’ Klein stands up and says, ‘That’s it, you can have the song!’ That was beautiful.”
While the band would refute that they saddled the 1960s with stilted commercialism and point to the message of their biggest hit as evidence, Burnett saw the inflated price that they started charging people to hear it as evidence that their heart was always just slightly too far to the right of the right place.
