Credit: Far Out / Steve Alexander
When you’ve amassed as many hits as the Eagles, even the best songs often fade into the background each time you play them.
Don Henley has performed Hotel California countless times at this point, and there are so many great moments that keep me coming back to it, even if I rely on muscle memory throughout the show. However, even after years of performing hit songs, Glenn Frey felt that some songs were far better than anything he later came up with.
Again, Frey and Henley were in many ways completely different ends of the musical spectrum. They both knew how to put together quality songs and certainly relied on having great chemistry with each other, but Frye was the one to have a good time every time they made a record, whereas Henry was more reserved and needed everything to be as perfect as possible. He didn’t mind having some difficult moments during recording, but that didn’t make their album any less great.
As with most Queen records, every song required perfect vocal harmonies, and it’s not like Furay didn’t make similar efforts. If a song needed a certain sound, if that meant trying his best to make the right vowels or strumming the guitar the right way to play the drums so everything sounded right, he was going to move the earth.
But with that first record, the goal was never to make a pure album. The band were more than happy to have the Glyn Johns-produced record on hand, and the fact that songs like “Peaceful Easy Feeling” were already in their repertoire was enough to get them started, even if it was still rough around the edges. It wasn’t very complex, but best of all it captured their vibe well.
That feeling of heading down an open road with the wind in your hair was practically the soundtrack of California at that point, and Frey thought it was all he needed in putting together one of his classics, saying in 2003, “Compared to the original recording, it’s evolved through the live performance and is now a slightly different animal.” “Feeling” had a happy, country-rock quality to it, but there was a bittersweet irony about it that I thought was really great.I still think “I love that song.” I love singing it. ”
At the same time, that doesn’t mean that every song on the record is as well. With this song and “Take It Easy,” Furay helped write the soundtrack for what country rock was becoming, but when you look at what the rest of the album turned out to be, a lot of it felt like a hodgepodge of what the L.A. scene was like, especially when they started throwing in other people’s songs, like a cover of Jackson Browne’s “Nightingale.”
This was still an impressive record for 1972, but Frey and Henry didn’t want it to be known as a classic at the time. They had a lot more to offer, even if the rest of the world didn’t necessarily respond. desperado When this song was first released, it was enough for them to hone their craft as songwriters, especially when they created the title track and perfected it as a traditional American hymn.
But the beauty of a song like “Peaceful Easy Feeling” is that it remains malleable over the years. Furay could sing this song like a child with a sail in the wind, or like an older man trying to enjoy his final years, but when a band plays it without a leader today, it’s simply a reminder of the magic it had when Frey was singing it in his prime.
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