Right or wrong, what’s done is done
It’s only moments that you borrow...
Groupie, my apologies for the delayed response, but this thread is fine as it is. There are several threads that are similar, but each has a little different twist on it. However, what I really meant to say is that with one of the Eagles signatures being their awesome harmonies, the topic, understandably, comes up often in board discussions.
Now, I seem to be the only one who feels this way, but I want to come to the defense of the harmonies of the later renditions of the band. I don't think the band abandoned their harmonies at all in later years. To me, Hotel California, The Long Run, and Long Road Out of Eden albums all had incredible harmonizing on them. I don't believe the band lost anything eitherr in terms of quantity or quality.
"People don't run out of dreams: People just run out of time ..."
Glenn Frey 11/06/1948 - 01/18/2016
I feel that the harmonies are exceptional on Hotel California as well. I don’t think that on a practical level the band missed out on Bernie. The long run I feel wasn’t as good because although the harmonies are still fantastic, they seem less “full” and more of Glenn, Don, and Timothy doing all the work. I feel Timothy was a downgrade not because Timothy isn’t good, but I told Randy in a extremely high regard vocally. His type of voice is just hard to replicate. I don’t think Timothy made them necessarily worse, rather just less like the “Eagles sound”. Randy’s range and smoothness I think worked well with Glenn. Timothy it seems has worked better with Don vocally. I do think timothy was probably going to be the singer whose voice would age better. He was great on LROOE, and his harmonies on WITW are spectacular. I think he is a great aging act voice. Definitely a major asset to the band in the recent years
I agree with both the last two posts, but when it comes down to it I had to choose the original four. Randy was a far superior singer than Joe & Bernie's harmonies more distinctive than Tim's.
Nice post, Derk. I especially agree with the bolded part, which I have seen expressed numerous times outside this board. Enjoy the concert!
If you’re referring to my post, I didn’t say the band abandoned their harmonies; in fact I said they had nice harmonies later as well. It doesn’t seem the band emphasized the harmony stacking like they did in the earlier albums. Hotel California has some beautiful harmonies but the vocal arrangements had a bit of a different approach (and there’s nothing wrong with that).
I believe the harmony sound changed when Bernie left. Felder even said so in his book and that affected how the vocals were arranged. But they still had Randy at that point, and his voice added a particular flavor to the songs that helped give the band that Eagles sound. As others have said, after Randy left the band seemed to go to 3-part (and even 2-part) harmonies which is fine, but that didn’t distinguish them much from other bands who also had nice vocal harmonies. There is an exception here and there, like with Seven Bridges Road. Also, Waiting in the Weeds, which has a really lovely 2-part harmony with Don and Timothy that stands out from the rest of the later output, IMO.
Right or wrong, what’s done is done
It’s only moments that you borrow...
The original 4
Then the RRHOF 7. Even if it was just for 2 songs
One can dream of all 7 of them doing a song together In the studio in their prime. If only...
Hands down the original 4 had the best harmonies. There was something very magical on how well their voices harmonized to create the Original Eagles sound. Miss those harmonies.
So Put Me On A Highway And Show Me A Sign
And Take It To The Limit One More Time..............