Post by erik on Oct 28, 2023 22:54:46 GMT -5
Everyone's favorite in-house desperados are in this week's Pop Music Hits Spotlight with a tribute to a Hollywood icon who died far too early in life.
JAMES DEAN (The Eagles; Asylum; 1974)—Although they are arguably the most successful rock band in American history, The Eagles, in their 1970’s heyday, were not without their rock star faults. Having seen their self-titled 1972 debut album sell extremely well but its follow-up, 1973’s Desperado, fail to connect, the band led by co-lead vocalists Glenn Frey and Don Henley, were assessing where to go from those first two albums. They spent six weeks in the fall of 1973 working with Glyn Johns, the British rock producer who had produced their first two albums, but they only had two tracks to show for it (“You Never Cry Like A Lover”; “Best Of My Love”); and, having let go of the mercurial Johns (who thought they were less of a rock and roll band and more of a left-of-center country outfit), they returned to their home base in Los Angeles to get going on what would become On The Border, with their new manager Irving Azoff and new producer Bill Szymczyk. Frey wanted the Eagles to rock with a much firmer hand than they had done before’ and the proof of this was in their song “James Dean”, a track that, oddly, had been considered for Desperado. Nobody needed to guess that the song was in tribute to the great young actor James Dean, who, having made such films as Giant and A Place In The Sun, lost his life in a car accident on September 30, 1955 at the age of 24. Lyrics like “too cool for school” and “too fast to live, too young to die” were accentuated by the interplay between Frey’s hard-rock guitar dynamics and fellow Eagle Bernie Leadon’s more C&W-influenced Telecaster twang. The song became one of the band’s most readily identifiable fan favorites, but it was initially only a mild hit, peaking at #77 in May 1974. On The Border, however, would prove to be a sizeable hit for the group, establishing them as essentially an album band, even more than a singles-generating machine. But the more successful they got as the 1970’s went on, the more testy each individual member would become with another, until the band’s unceremonious disbandment in 1980. It would be more than thirteen years before most of the differences they had with one another during their salad days would be resolved in time for a reunion, or, as they called it, a “resumption” tour.
JAMES DEAN (The Eagles; Asylum; 1974)—Although they are arguably the most successful rock band in American history, The Eagles, in their 1970’s heyday, were not without their rock star faults. Having seen their self-titled 1972 debut album sell extremely well but its follow-up, 1973’s Desperado, fail to connect, the band led by co-lead vocalists Glenn Frey and Don Henley, were assessing where to go from those first two albums. They spent six weeks in the fall of 1973 working with Glyn Johns, the British rock producer who had produced their first two albums, but they only had two tracks to show for it (“You Never Cry Like A Lover”; “Best Of My Love”); and, having let go of the mercurial Johns (who thought they were less of a rock and roll band and more of a left-of-center country outfit), they returned to their home base in Los Angeles to get going on what would become On The Border, with their new manager Irving Azoff and new producer Bill Szymczyk. Frey wanted the Eagles to rock with a much firmer hand than they had done before’ and the proof of this was in their song “James Dean”, a track that, oddly, had been considered for Desperado. Nobody needed to guess that the song was in tribute to the great young actor James Dean, who, having made such films as Giant and A Place In The Sun, lost his life in a car accident on September 30, 1955 at the age of 24. Lyrics like “too cool for school” and “too fast to live, too young to die” were accentuated by the interplay between Frey’s hard-rock guitar dynamics and fellow Eagle Bernie Leadon’s more C&W-influenced Telecaster twang. The song became one of the band’s most readily identifiable fan favorites, but it was initially only a mild hit, peaking at #77 in May 1974. On The Border, however, would prove to be a sizeable hit for the group, establishing them as essentially an album band, even more than a singles-generating machine. But the more successful they got as the 1970’s went on, the more testy each individual member would become with another, until the band’s unceremonious disbandment in 1980. It would be more than thirteen years before most of the differences they had with one another during their salad days would be resolved in time for a reunion, or, as they called it, a “resumption” tour.