Re: Celebration of "One of These Nights"!
I am one of those that felt Felder should get more credit for the bass track, especially the intro. Not necessarily songwriting credits. I guess because he's so well known for Hotel California, and while that song has grown on me in a live environment, I'll take listening to OOTN over HC any day, and the intro really does it for me.
VK
You can't change the world but you can change yourself.
Re: Celebration of "One of These Nights"!
From H&H:
About "Visions":The title track originally began life as an R&B song on accoustic piano, but it didn't sound right to me when Glenn first played it to us. Randy was stuck in Nebraska, snowed in, and couldn't get to the studio, so I told Glenn, "Wait a minute, I'll play bass." I came up with the introduction and bass figure. We played a couple of demo passes with me playing the bass part over Glenn's piano, and I wound up writing the entire bass line for the title track. When the weather finally cleared and Randy was able to fly in, I taught him what I'd written, verbatim, and we recorded it for the album. As long as the track came out good, I didn't care.
I took a look at the lyrics and they do seem to be more typical of Felder (going by his Airborne songs) than Henley.I also wrote a song called "Visions," for which Don provided some of the lyrics..."
Felder also says that Henley and Frey would go off and write and only emerge when they had a finished product and then the rest of them would come up with ideas on how to perform it.
Re: Celebration of "One of These Nights"!
Tough crowd!Originally Posted by Funk 50
Southern rock was getting very popular in the U.S. at the time (Lynyrd Skynyrd and others), so maybe that factored into it also.
I really like this song, it's a lot of fun, especially the backing vocals. The band sounds like they're having a blast, especially Glenn.
Re: Celebration of "One of These Nights"!
Agreed. It's nice that Don gets mentioned for writing the bass lines, but an actual songwriting credit is another matter.
Re: Celebration of "One of These Nights"!
Over the years I've gotten the impression that some famous song writers are stingy and some are generous when it comes to handing out song writing credits.
Bill Wyman said he came up with the riff for Satisafaction. One of the greatest hooks of all time. I've not heard anybody challenge Bill's statement, yet Jagger/Richards have the song credit. Sting was embarrassed to get a healthy cut of Dire Straits, Money For Nothing when Knopfler rephrased his "Don't Stand So Close To Me" as "I want my MTV"
Long Road Out Of Eden is credited to Henley, Frey and Schmit, yet the highlight of the track is Joe's guitar solo. To his credit, Henley. questions his songwriting credit for Doolin/Dalton which was apparently a pre-Eagles track.
One I can't quite work out is, to my knowledge, Don's only solo composition, A Month Of Sundays. Intro written by actress, Maren Jensen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maren_Jensen.
I'm not a fan of Felder's intro to One Of These Nights but I think it's worth a writing credit. Judging by the sleeve notes, it looks like the rationing of song writing credits, on some Eagles albums, was predetermined before the albums were made.
In hindsight, the mid seventies were Bernie's creative peak as a songwriter. Great picker, fantastic harmony singer, not so hot or committed song writer.
Re: Celebration of "One of These Nights"!
Further to Funk 50's example above, I believe Black Sabbath (at least in the early days) always used to credit every song to all four members as they believed that nothing would be the same if one of them wasn't there. In reality it was usually guitarist Tony Iommi who came up with the music, and bassist Geezer Butler who came up with the lyrics.
Re: Celebration of "One of These Nights"!
When we've discussed credits elsewhere, I think it was said that the legal copyright of a song is just the lyrics and vocal melody and the rest is just the arrangement. Indeed, when you ask someone about a song, they will usually just sing the lyrics. Part 2 of the doc has a good example when a group of people are asked what they are looking forward to hearing and they sing the words "One of the nights...". No one sings the baseline and the song is quite recognisably without any of the instrumentation.
Further support to the idea that the OOTN bassline is just an arrangement comes from Felder's description. The bass was added to a song that had already been written. It changed the sound of the track but not the song.
However, it does seem that the band sometimes gives songwriting credits for the music (beyond vocal melody) or riffs and this seems to be when the song started with that music eg Witchy Woman, Hotel California, Victim of Love, Hotel California.
As I said the other day, I believe Felder wrote a lot of the lyrics of Visions as well as the music because it's more his style than Henley's.
I wonder what the copyright position is on instrumentals.
Re: Celebration of "One of These Nights"!
Joe's guitar solo on Long Road Out Of Eden and therefore I believe is not considered part of the composition so he shouldn't be credited as a writer there IMO. I agree that it is a highlight but that is neither here or there when it comes to songwriting credits - he isn't credited on Hotel California either. To give another example, David Gilmour's guitar solo is by far my favourite part of Pink Floyd's Another Brick In The Wall Part 2, but the song is credited solely to Roger Waters as Gilmour's contribution was just the solo.
In Mark Knopfler's case I suspect he was quite content to give Sting part of the credit (barely deserved in my view - especially as Sting himself sings the 'I want my MTV' lines, not Knopfler, and the song would have worked fine without it in my view) because he was otherwise the sole songwriter in Dire Straits and therefore giving credit for one of just two songs which used elements of other compositions (the other being Tunnel Of Love, which did need to credit Rodgers and Hammerstein for the Carousel Waltz introduction) was not a big deal to him as he didn't need to worry about not being recognised for his writing in the way that someone in a band with multiple writers would be.
I hadn't heard that Don Henley had questioned his writing credit on Doolin-Dalton, but I did once read that he wasn't quite sure whether he merited being credited for James Dean. Is this an indication that those two songs were for the most part written together by Glenn, Jackson Browne and J.D. Souther and that Don only became involved at a later stage? James Dean IIRC was written for their second album before it became Desperado and was left until On The Border so it isn't inconceivable that it was written around the same time as Doolin-Dalton, especially as both songs focus on anti-hero/rebel characters.
Re: Celebration of "One of These Nights"!
My impression is that both Doolin-Dalton and James Dean were started before Henley joined the Souther-Browne-Frey writing team, so he may have just helped with the polishing.
Re: Celebration of "One of These Nights"!
Yes, both of those were from the Longbranch Pennywhistle days, when JD and Glenn were living above Jackson. I always imagined Don added a bit lyrically or something to deserve the credit.
Always in our hearts, Never forgotten
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