(Credits: Showtime / The Eagles)
Wed 18 June 2025 19:07, UK
Most people listening to prog rock need to seriously do their homework before even considering reaching the big time. The biggest names of the genre like Genesis were known for making some of the most extravagant music ever made, so no one simply tries to create a masterpiece of their own if they don’t have the proper technique yet. But that doesn’t mean that bands like Eagles couldn’t try to give prog-rock musicians a run for their money both on the charts and on the road.
Because looking through the country-rockers’ discography, it’s not like they were immune to having some extravagant moments. The gall to release ‘Hotel California’ as a single despite being six minutes long took a lot of guts, and when listening to a track like ‘Journey of the Sorcerer’, they weren’t afraid to take their audience on a journey the same way that someone like Peter Gabriel may have claimed to.
But if the country-rockers like to have everything perfect in the studio, they developed a few battle scars on the road. While they were hardly the most high-profile bad boys in rock and roll, they could hang with the likes of Led Zeppelin in terms of unadulterated excess, with Glenn Frey even remembering filling an entire hotel bathtub with Budweiser during one of their treks across America.
By the time they got to work on the tour for One of These Nights, it almost became a challenge whenever they reached the day of any show. They had already become rising stars, but the entire game was to see who was able to party the most and stay upright when it came time to pump out classics like ‘Lyin’ Eyes’. And that kind of fun wasn’t limited to the country-rockers, either.
The band were always to take people out on the road, but after a lousy time opening up for Yes in their early years, Jon Anderson remembered quickly becoming friends with the band on the final few shows on their tour together. And when anyone in the band talked about having a good time, they normally meant bringing mountains of cocaine in tow, and Chris Squire remembered becoming a full-blown addict after partying a little too hard.
Even though the subsequent albums never suffered, Squire was always aware of what Glenn Frey and Don Henley did to him out on the road, saying, “I got involved in cocaine. Blame the Eagles. But that was it. As far as I know, no one in Yes ever did heroin.” And while the 1980s were prime time for the drug to run rampant throughout the music industry, it did come back to bite Eagles in the ass.
Yes were already having their own problems around the time they were working on their pop comeback on ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’, but after one too many long nights out, The Long Run was what officially tore Eagles apart as well, with everything needing to be perfect and Frey and Henley finally bottoming out after having nothing to write about and being dogtired from being on the road.
While the rock and roll lifestyle comes with the mantra of sex and drugs half the time, Squire and the rest of the Eagles had to find out the hard way about what happens when things get overdone. It’s one thing when it works as a writing tool, but when you become dependent, you find yourself in a prison you can’t escape.
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