Are the Eagles America's best band?

[VAisForEagleLovers]

This article is in anticipation of tonight's concert in Atlantic City, but these guys ask the question and give it a good discussion. I felt it deserved it's own thread as surely people here will have opinions on it, especially about who else might at least be contenders.

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/l...b2061d9e0.html

[UndertheWire]

Interesting. If you'd asked me three years ago who were the most successful american band, I wouldn't have guessed Eagles. I had no idea. And yet, I struggle to name many big american bands. Individual artists, no problem, but for a band, I've got to look to the british ones.

Why are there so many great british bands and so many great american solo artists?

[VAisForEagleLovers]

Interesting. If you'd asked me three years ago who were the most successful american band, I wouldn't have guessed Eagles. I had no idea. And yet, I struggle to name many big american bands. Individual artists, no problem, but for a band, I've got to look to the british ones.

Why are there so many great british bands and so many great american solo artists?

Great minds and all that. I was thinking the same thing in another thread when we all listed our top ten bands, and it occurred to me that so many were British.

ETA: I wonder if it's a culture thing... Like Led Zeppelin, Plant did the lead vocals. Perhaps in the US, the band would have been Robert Plant & the Led Zeppelin band. Like Bob Seger and the Seger Sound Machine (or whatever they were before he hooked up with the Silver Bullet Band). Springsteen and the E Street band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It was common for bands here to have more than one lead singer, or at least an occasional song by another. CSNY, etc.

[Brooke]

It's obvious to me, of course it's the Eagles! And I'm not just saying that because they are MY favorite band. Firstly, they are all American. Their numbers tell the story in album sales alone. And also when you look at the other criteria. Many bands and solo stars have said they were influenced by them, country stars included. Don H, Glenn, and Joe were top solo stars in their own right. And the classic songs top it off! Some of their songs will still be sung and heard 50 years from now.

The only contender for me would be Fleetwood Mac, but over half the band are actually British.

UtW, as we're looking for American bands here, British bands don't qualify.

[AlreadyGone95]

I can name plenty of American bands(Van Halen, Aerosmith, Styx, Lynyrd Skynyrd etc), but none that have the staying power and the amount of hits that the Eagles have. They are THE American band. I knew that even when I was a casual fan.

Of course, only 3 out of my top 10 bands are American. The rest are British.

[Fleurette767]

Wow what a provocative article. The bands he mentioned I was considering, then he dismissed them for reasons I might have also.

Another band I would consider would be Metallica whose history has spanned decades (they also had personnel changes and uhhh LOL intraband battles, guys quitting, etc.) but they are a niche/genre band (sorry to say but still excellent)! They have the longevity but I guess not the mass appeal factor.

R.E.M.? They had diversity in terms of artistic development through the years, several high quality albums that were increasingly mature. They started to become more mass appeal in the late-80 and even had some hits. But what are the enduring hits? They had hits but when's the last time you thought of Fall on Me or Everybody Hurts. Those are wonderful songs but even on my go-to alternative stations, I don't hear R.E.M. too frequently.

However, while I love and occasionally listen to these two bands, among many others, they don't hit all the criteria that the Eagles have. R.E.M. & Metallica might be great for me on certain days and are certainly influential, but they don't have mass-appeal, enduring hits like Take It Easy where probably even very casual fans probably can sing the words and know what's coming on the first two chords.

[Jonny Come Lately]

The article isn't showing for me. I've clicked the link a few times and it's not showing. Shame, I'd certainly be interested in reading the piece, and I'd love to know which other bands were mentioned.

I personally like R.E.M. a fair bit - Losing My Religion is to my mind one of the relatively few genuine classic songs to become hits in the past 25 years or so, and I absolutely love the closing sequence of tracks on Automatic for the People - Man On The Moon (my favourite song by them), Nightswimming (absolutely gorgeous piano and strings) and Find The River (also beautiful). Their main weakness IMO is that even their strongest albums typically contained one or two filler tracks - Star Me Kitten on Automatic is a good example IMO. Then there is Shiny Happy People, I song I have mentioned my distaste for in the past. I know it was meant to be a satirical piece, but I think they got the tone badly wrong. Their parody of a meaningless summer pop song was too convincing for its own good, and it duly became one... Quite simply I find it extremely irritating and nauseating to listen to. I think the way I feel about SHP is kind of similar to how several people on here feel about The Disco Strangler (FWIW I think it's one of the worst Eagles songs, but I really don't dislike it that strongly and I don't tend to skip it).

I don't consider Fleetwood Mac to be an American band, but I don't consider the Rumours line up to be British either (the Peter Green version of the band however, I see as an unquestionably British blues band). I was to pin labels on a world map with the names of different bands on I would probably the Mac's pin somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic Ocean...

The Eagles are the only American band that are definitely in my top five - my three other definite choices are British (Floyd, Zeppelin, Dire Straits) and fifth spot would most likely go to a certain aforementioned mid-Atlantic band! Lynyrd Skynyrd are my second favourite US band and would be in my top 10 but probably not my top five.

[Brooke]

JCL, from the article:

OTHER CONTENDERS
"Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band have plenty of reasons they could be called the greatest American rock ’n’ roll band — classic albums and songs, four decades of CDs worth hearing and five decades of live-performance excellence. But the question remains: Are they a truly great band, or just an extremely creative leader and his talented sidemen?

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers have been one of the most consistent rock bands of the last five decades. But they are arguably better at producing singles than albums, and their period between 1976 and 1993 is stronger than their output during the last 20 years.

Aerosmith is still performing live with all the original members from its 1970s heyday, and the album “Rocks” from 1976 is a hard-rock classic. But the band is not as good live now as it used to be, and studio CDs over the past 20 years have been weak.

Pearl Jam delivers one of the best live rock shows by an American band that can be seen currently. But their 1990s studio work is better than the material they released during the past 15 years.

Green Day has risen from humble beginnings to become a Grammy-winning band whose members are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Their live shows are still energetic. But some of the fun of their earlier years has been lost with the seriousness of the more recent albums."

[Fleurette767]

[QUOTE=Jonny Come Lately;305479]The article isn't showing for me. I've clicked the link a few times and it's not showing. Shame, I'd certainly be interested in reading the piece, and I'd love to know which other bands were mentioned.

I personally like R.E.M. a fair bit - Losing My Religion is to my mind one of the relatively few genuine classic songs QUOTE]

Oh wow, you added some valid points, that sometimes, REM weren't as sincere and included a few tongue-in-cheek songs that were distractions.

Let's not even get into the inscrutable lyrics on the early albums, which I love mind you, but even with those lyrics published now on the web now, meanings still aren't cleared up for me. And that would be another drawback to being Best American Band. Songs need to have lyrics that are meaningful. Now I like poetry and pastiches, but you won't be best band ever that way. You may however, be influential, ala Dylan.

I won't even get into how on each subsequent album from @ Fables through about Out of Time, in interviews Peter Buck would diminish the previous album. To me, not standing by your work is also a problem.

Additionally, I think Peter Buck was kinda limited in his playing LOL. You can't be best American band unless your guitarists can overtake Joe and Felder, and for that matter GLENN! Buck did a mean mandolin on Losing though but dude don't go thinking you're Bernie or something.

I loved SHPeople though. Sorry it grates. Maybe it's that screaming in the background when he sings "gold and silver shine". I always thought that, if it's intended and not just a recording error, it's the suffering that goes on while people in the foreground go about vapid contented lives ignoring the cries and suffering that's hidden (AIDS crisis was peaking at that time)? However that's just my conjecture (because REM has never confirmed screaming) and the video (where an old tired man in the background pedaled a bike to stream the cartoonish pictures in the foreground) was also disturbing to me.

[Freypower]

Great minds and all that. I was thinking the same thing in another thread when we all listed our top ten bands, and it occurred to me that so many were British.

ETA: I wonder if it's a culture thing... Like Led Zeppelin, Plant did the lead vocals. Perhaps in the US, the band would have been Robert Plant & the Led Zeppelin band. Like Bob Seger and the Seger Sound Machine (or whatever they were before he hooked up with the Silver Bullet Band). Springsteen and the E Street band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It was common for bands here to have more than one lead singer, or at least an occasional song by another. CSNY, etc.

There are plenty of American bands with one frontman whose name isn't in the title like Journey, Metallica, Van Halen ,Toto. REM, Pearl Jam, Green Day, Aereosmith etc. I used to love REM & then they fell apart, plus I listened to their pre Out Of Time work & I didn't think it was as great as critics claimed. As I have said before, the Eagles are the only American band in my top 10.