Discussion of Eagles Documentary "History of the Eagles"

[DivineDon]

Same here, Shun. I was a fan but not a 'fanatic' until I saw the HOTE and my latent love for Don exploded!!!

I was just wondering what Don and Glenn thought about Felder's 'crocodile' tears when they saw the finished product the first time??? Would love to have been a fly on the wall for that

[Ive always been a dreamer]

Wow! What a difference three years can make. I remember my eager anticipation that day and how excited I was the whole time I was watching the documentary for the first time.

Now, tonight I'll be feeling extremely sad watching Don, Joe, Timothy, Bernie, and Jackson performing a tribute to Glenn at the Grammy Awards.

Still - I am so glad we have this documentary - it is a wonderful lasting tribute to the band. I may try to watch it again soon.

[AlreadyGone95]

Happy 3rd anniversary HOTE!

I first saw the documentary after becoming a huge fan, but it definitely did help to increase my love of the guys and their music. It's the best rock documentary I've seen. If not for the tribute tonight, I would try to watch it again.

[NightMistBlue]

I saw HOTE long after it came out, in December 2014, and it made me a fanatic. I was already a fan, and had seen the band several times in concert in recent years but HOTE pushed me over the edge so to speak.

Maybe it had something to do with a certain angel-faced Nebraskan with big blue eyes and a James Dean-esque vulnerability...

[buffyfan145]

I watched this originally with my parents and brother when it aired. I agree it's the best music doc I've seen, with "The Beatles Anthology" and Martin Scorsese's George Harrison doc tied for a very close 2nd. It was just so well done.

[GlennLover]

I want too, but I haven't been able to watch it since Glenn's death.

[Jonny Come Lately]

HOTE is one great rockumentary. I am glad that they made it when they were all able to participate. It's difficult to imagine what it would have been like without Glenn, and that's before taking into account that he was really leading the whole documentary, as well as selecting the music which of course is also very important.

I was watching TV with my family and I noticed that HOTE was on TV quite recently. They were watching something else so I was really only able to catch the section from Hotel California onwards. Both my parents have always liked the Eagles going back to the 1970s (not quite as much as I do though! ) so they enjoyed watching it as well. I thought it would be a good idea for me to point out some of the observations they made about it while I can still remember.

- My Dad said that one of the things that really makes HOTE great is how honest Glenn was about the conflicts in the band. He said this around when it got to 'Long Night at Wrong Beach'.
- He also said 'I don't know why, but I can't help but like Joe Walsh', during one of his interviews. I told him that many people feel the same way!
- Interestingly, neither of my parents really had any idea of what the Eagles looked like in the 1970s. Goes back to the Glenn's old 'cow skulls and hotels' comment!

But the thing that most intrigued me was my Dad's comment about songwriting credits when the list of songs used in Part 1 came up at the end - having not really known about who wrote what until then, he was really struck by how many of the real classic Eagles songs were co-written (partly or entirely) by Don H and Glenn. He didn't just notice this with the obvious hits like the HC and OOTN singles, but also with songs like VOL and ATTIG. The only major exceptions he noted were the singles from the debut album - I explained to him that Don and Glenn didn't co-write together on that record and their partnership only really started in the Desperado era.

(As a Led Zeppelin fan, I also noticed that in the music credits at the end, Communication Breakdown credits John Paul Jones by his real name, John Baldwin. My Dad was surprised when he saw that and didn't know who this Baldwin bloke was!)

[NightMistBlue]

Jonny, can you elaborate on Glenn's "cow skulls and hotels" quote? I'm not familiar with it and Google turns up cattle auctions when I search on that term.

[Brooke]

I hadn't thought about yesterday being the anniversary of the doc until I saw a post about it on fb. That was such an exciting time for all of us fans! And for me, our fearless leader, Miss Soda, drove at least 8 hours by herself to the boondocks of Missouri to meet me for the first time and watch the show with me and my husband! I thought she was just a little bit crazy to do that, but we had a fabulous time! And she's a wonderful person!

And look how everything has changed. The end of our favorite band and the loss of it's dear leader. I'm so glad we have it!

[Jonny Come Lately]

Jonny, can you elaborate on Glenn's "cow skulls and hotels" quote? I'm not familiar with it and Google turns up cattle auctions when I search on that term.

No problem - I looked this one up and have Soda to thank for it, as it's on the Glenn Frey Online website. It's in the Quotable Frey section, specifically on the 'My Own Business' page:

http://www.glennfreyonline.com/quotes/myownbusiness.htm

It's part of a longer piece about his Pepsi commercial in the 1980s but here are the most relevant sentences:

After we broke up, we had this joke about having cow skulls, neon lights and hotels on the album covers. No one knew what we looked like, which made the leap into solo stardom a bit difficult.

This quote makes me smile when I read it, not least because it reminds me of a certain other favourite band of mine (Pink Floyd), who didn't even put photos of themselves anywhere on their albums after 1971. I remember hearing part of a radio interview with Roger Waters (I think it was from the Amused to Death era, so early 1990s) where he bemoaned how few people recognised him from his Floyd work.