DISGRACELAND - The Eagles Pt. 1: International Drug Smuggling, Endless Cocaine, and California Excess

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

From games of chicken on private planes to one member surviving a private plane crash, the Eagles as a group very narrowly survived themselves. During their early days, they dosed out on Peyote and reimagined and reconfigured a new FM sound for the ages that would result in unimaginable success and excess. When their debut record was released on Geffen Records in 1972, America couldn’t have been more ready for their breezy, countrified Southern California sound. Yet something else came with their that heady, golden age of California in the 1970s, that era of endless cocaine, groupies, money, and excess beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. As the Eagles would soon learn, that “peaceful easy feeling” they were peddling wasn’t built to last. For the full list of contributors, visit ⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠ This episode was originally published on March 8, 2022. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ ⁠⁠X⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠ ⁠⁠TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Just a quick note to my beloved music nerd listeners out there. I'm quite aware of the fact that the name of the Eagles isn't the Eagles and that it is officially just, Eagles. No, the. But you know what? I can't do it. I can't go an entire episode referring to the band I and everyone else, Jeff Lubowski, included have slash has forever referred to as the Eagles. It just sounds too fucking weird to just constantly refer to them as Eagles. So, even though it's wrong, because it just feels right. For me, Don Henley, Glenn Frye and company are forever the Eagles. Melotron. The stories about the Eagles are insane. Upon their assent, the band narrowly avoided arrest from smuggling drugs. One member, on the eve of the band's breakup, skirted potentially devastating legal ramifications from the discovery of an overdosed, underage sex worker in his home. During their early days, the Eagles dosed out on peyote

and reimagined and reconfigured a new FM sound for the ages that would result in unimaginable success and excess. Private Plains, Games of Chicken on Private Plains, and one member surviving a private plane crash. The Eagles as a group very narrowly survived themselves. Decades after the 70s superstardom, the band's status as one of the best-selling artist of all time, remains untouchable with 200 million global record sales.

And the Eagles are untouchable because the Eagles made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron, called Chuck Wagon Chowdown, MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to O Girl by the Shylights. And why would I play you that specific slice of right-on-time cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on June 1, 1972,

and that was the day the Eagles released their self-titled debut album, an album that would begin the band's ascent to iconic status and attempt to restore America's innocence with peaceful, easy feelings. On this, part one of a special two-part episode, international drug smuggling, a dead sex worker, a plane crash and innocence lost at what cost, courtesy of the Eagles. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgraceland.

The dead don't laugh. They don't cry either. They don't dance. They don't smile. They don't succeed. fail, fuck, or fight. They don't do much of anything. They're dead, gone, over. In 1980, the Eagles were dead, but they were far from gone. They were everywhere. Despite the fact that by the beginning of the decade, the individual members of one of the biggest selling bands of the

1970s, Don Henley, Glenn Fry, Don Felder, Joe Walsh, and Timothy B. Schmidt had disbanded. But you wouldn't know it from listening to FM radio in the early 80s. And that's because in 1980, as fortunate an event as any eagle could have imagined happened. The classic rock radio format was invented. It made ubiquitous on FM radio dials around the country. For this format, radio station execs needed reliable programming, i.e. music that post-dated rock and roll's early oldies era of Elvis Presley and Little Richard and predated rock's current new wave video era of talking heads and devo. So classic rock radio programmers turned to the peaceful, easy sounds of Southern California's Eagles. Born in the 70s and dead in the water in the 80s,

the band's proven hits Hotel California, one of these nights already gone, lion eyes and take it to the limit, among what seemed to be an endless parade of other chart-toppers from the Eagles decade-defining studio albums, proved easy fodder for unimaginative radio programmers and thus filled the airwaves. After nearly a solid decade of stadium sellouts, number one singles top-selling albums, enough cocaine, sex, and tension to make even the hardest, wildest 70s rock and rollers cry uncle. The Eagles Glenn Fry called his co-leader in the band Don Henley on the telephone. It was over. Glenn was out. No mas. Henley didn't argue. What could he say? Things would get better, easier? They wouldn't.

Don Henley was too practical to not know that. Writing hit songs was tough sledding under the best of circumstances, never mind under constant burn. from the grind of the road. Under the distrustful eyes of creatively jealous band members, romantically jealous lovers, or under the gaze of over-demanding, insensitive record label suits whose entire financial quarters could turn on the release of a long-awaited Eagle's album, all of whom were gagged to the gills, lovers and band members included,

unable to see their way through any challenge with clarity, hazed by paranoia and exhaustion, two constants that were as omnipresent as the bands of repressible hooks and inimitable harmonies. No, Glenn was right. Henley knew it. The eagles were dead. But even so,

classic rock radio kept the band still heart beating strong. Unlike the heart of the 16-year-old sex worker in Don Henley's bathroom at the moment, her heart was another story. The paramedics moved with the quickness. The young girl had stopped breathing. Voices from the end of the corridor confirmed it.

Fear pressed itself hard against the Texas singer's chest. His Mulholland drive home was quickly transformed from idyllic West Coast party scene to crime scene, and there was nothing he or his high-powered representatives could do about it. If the girl was dead, there would likely be no coming back from it. What happened next isn't entirely clear. The only person was ever told the story is Don Henley himself, and he hasn't said much. Henley claimed he called the paramedics out of a sense of decency. Henley claimed he didn't know she was 16.

Henley claimed he didn't have sex with her. Henley admitted he'd solicited the girl from a trusted madam as a gift for his hardworking road crew, a going-away gift to make tonight's going-away party go off with a little extra oomph. November 21st, 1980, the Eagles were over. Don Henley's road crew were out on their asses. Unlike the 33-year-old rock star who could fall back, on what would be a tsunami of royalties from his band's hits, his roadies faced a much less certain financial future. A party with some girls and some blow was the least Mr. Henley could do

for them, or so went the thinking. The girl was naked, and there was another girl too, even younger, 15, and the drugs were everywhere, coke, ludes, grass. Relax, the nightman was calm, unlike the rock star, but then again the nightman was always calm. A near-dead girl on the looads, little dope wasn't going to rattle him. He'd seen worse. But Don Henley was tense. How could he not be? Henley claimed he took the heat in the moment. When the girl turned up naked, convulsing and near dead, he didn't panic. The fear pulsed, though. His head was heavy, his sight dim. He managed to hold tight and grasp control the moment. Henley claimed he didn't dart about his house to flush the drugs. He focused on helping the girl. He called the paramedics, and the paramedics called the

cops, and the cops called the department sexually exploited child unit, and Don Henley, co-founder of the Eagles called his lawyer, for he was under arrest. The fear was now enough to make his chest explode. The fear was always there in some way or another, going as far back as his days in Linton, Texas as a boy. Sure, his upbringing had him high on the sounds of T-bone Walker and Hank Williams, but down in the dust was that lingering fear of where his future would take him, or more specifically, if his future would take him anywhere at all. His father owned an auto parts store and he saved, the dimes and eventually enough quarters that,

when coupled with whatever savings, Teenage Don Henley himself, scrapped together from gazing around Northern Texas in his high school bands amounted to enough to cover the tuition at North Texas State University. But college didn't hold. His English lit classes interested him. However, college presented a new kind of fear, fear of becoming something you weren't, a jag,

Just another guy. Don Henley was not just another guy. There was greatness in him. He knew this. Henley was more than just college. Or at least he sensed that the world held more form than the boredom and straightness of academia. He buttonholed another Texan, Kenny Rogers.

Rogers had success with his group, the first edition. Kenny Rogers recognized something in Don Henley. Call it game, recognizing game. Call it just dropping in to see what condition the kid's condition was in. Call it whatever you want. For Don Hemley, his group, Shiloh, was the play they called. Kenny Rogers as producer was the coach, and Los Angeles, California was the field of opportunity.

Go west, go west, go est, young man, and see what the sun is set in motion. Manifest Destiny Los Angeles, sunny Southern California. It was a rock and roll gold rush in 1970. The Beach Boys had established the California sound in the mid-60s, but it had evolved from sunny and sunny. surfy to electric folk to psychedelia.

In each evolution struck another motherload of pop hits. Now, nestled in the dust and blacktop ribbons of Laurel Canyon just north of Hollywood, was one of the most fertile artistic communities in the world. Cross-pollinating musical ideas and band members, the birds, the Mamas and the Pappas, Buffalo Springfield, all culminating in the Crosby Still's Nash and Young Supergroup of the late 60s, with their honeyed vocal harmonies, thick, acoustic bliss, and men. massive success. On any given night in the city,

music legends and the Laurel Canyon scenesters would crowd Doug Weston's troubadour on Santa Monica, where Buffalo Springfield had debuted in 66, and where in 1970, Elton John had made his thunderous U.S. debut. The troubadour in 1970 was something else.

It was where careers were made, where low-key folksters made it with bronze dime-spot California girls on the make, and where rock and roll-and-roll dreams came to life in a Hollywood Technicolor. It was where greatness actually seemed possible to a starry-eyed musician from a one-stop town in nowhere, Texas.

It was where Don Henley met J.D., and where he met Jackson, and most importantly, where he met Glenn. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either.

We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands.

I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler,

we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, and my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary.

I wake up. And I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance, like he's about to attack me. Like, making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellow-O. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the gut.

Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Santa Muju, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies?

Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there.

Okay. That's another film grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over.

From hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Glenn Frye was in Mexico, 20 years old, confidence radiating off of his young, tone, tan, body. Quickly, he loaded the contraband, tightly packed bags of cheap, Acapoco Gold, marijuana onto his pickup,

American made, born in Detroit, just like him. The pickup was solid, reliable, capable of making the 100-plus mile trip from south of the border to Los Angeles without breaking down and getting flagged by the customs man. The desert highway was dark, the wind cool blowing through Glenn's long dark hair. Light in the distance, shimmering, beckoning. The Kalita and the ashtray burned sweetly. Innocence shattered his big round almond-colored eyes. He could feel it in his chest, excitement, anticipation. Los Angeles,

California, there was nowhere in the world like it, at least not in Glenn Fry's young world, which at the time consisted of just Detroit, Michigan, San Francisco, and some drug. dealer's den on the border. L.A. came as advertised, girls that were somehow more beautiful than the weather. Music on every stage, opportunity it seemed, on every corner. Hell, David Crosby was right there, man, on sunset, just walking down the street in his flat-brimmed hat like everyone else. Detroit, Glenn's hometown, was a different trip entirely. Music didn't surround you in the Motor City so much as it punched you in the face. It was ubiquitous, but the barrier for entry was steeper. Barry Gordy wasn't banging down Glenfry's door any time soon to sign him to Detroit's

Motown Records, but another Michigan native was more welcoming, Bob Seeger. Beginning in the early 1960s, as incredible as it might sound today, it was hard to find another musician anywhere, never mind in Detroit, who better embodied the rock and roll spirit than Bob Seeger. He and his bands first the Bob Seeger system, then Bob Seeger in the last heard, and later the Silver Bullet Band, were live forces of nature, putting in work night after night on the Midwest circuit with a mix of traditional blue-eyed R&B and mid-60s frat rock energy in a way that would help solidify what true classic rock would become. Bob Seeger brought it night after night, and as he experienced local rocker with a steady

lineup of shows and a record contract to boot, he brought a young, ambitious, irrepressible local kid named Glenn Fry under his wing in a half-ass sort of mentor-protech kind of way. Glenn made the most of his opportunity. Music was his ticket out. From where or what he didn't really know, just out. Out of Teen Gangland, out of Detroit, out of going nowhere fast, a chance at becoming somebody, something, something more, something great. He made the most of his first opportunity when asked to sit in on backing vocals for Bob Seeker's second major label single,

1969's Rambling Gambling Man. And Glenn Fry came in hot on the first chorus. You can hear the ambition in his voice. says he shadows Seeger. It's a pronouncement of someone new hitting the scene. Someone not likes some other guys. Someone not content with the shadows of the stage. Someone destined for greatness. Rambling, gambling man hit number 62 on the pop charts and gave young Glenn Fry a taste. Music was away. It was possible. He loaded up his pickup and split for the coast. No job, no band, no plan, just confidence. And himself, he'd figure it out. That's what the Acapulco gold was

about. He'd break it off in smaller bags for the heads down on sunset and walk away with some walking around money to get him started, enough to drink down to the famous troubadour on a weeknight and see what kind of trouble he could get himself into. Glenn quickly connected with the troubadour's local lethario, J.D. Souther, an Amarillo stickman who knew his way around not only the local scene, but around a country chord progression as well. J.D. met Glenn through one of Glenn's X's. Quickly, the two men developed a bond around music. Glenn brought a street-smart, R&B toughness to J.D.'s natural country roots. They took up under the name Long Branch Penny Whistle as a duo and settled into a cheap apartment in Echo Park to woodshed some original songs. In the one-room apartment downstairs,

another local songwriter was putting on a master class in songwriting every morning. Glenn could hear him through the floorboards, up at 9 a.m., straight to a pit stop at the the stove where the songwriter would set a tea kettle a light. Then he'd work out the first verse, the chord progression on the keyboard with the vocal melody over and over again. The kettle would blow off steam, the songwriter would break, pour his cup, let it steep, back to the bench, time for the chorus. The chord progression on keyboard with the vocal melody on top, just like the first verse, over and over again. Then he'd retrieve his tea, settle, sip, on to the second verse same as the first, over and over. He'd break for a sip here and there to grease his vocal cords and then straight

back at it. From the second verse to the second chorus to the middle eight, the final verse in the outro. When all was said and done, it would be lunch and the song would be not only worked out, but fused by muscle memory. Glenn Fry knew the dude downstairs was onto something, and the dude downstairs was Jackson Brown. Blessed with the good looks of everybody's favorite little brother, Jackson Brown was at an early age already and experience, not to mention naturally gifted singer-songwriter. He'd grown up in L.A., but by the time he'd crossed paths with Glenn Fry, he'd already been around the block, having completed a songwriter's pilgrimage to New York City's Greenwich Village, where he'd witnessed firsthand the culture defining a rattle of the Velvet Underground,

wound up backing their singer Niko on stage, and personally fallen in and out of bed with her in the process. Nico's iconic World Worry's signature ballad these days, Jackson Brown wrote that. when he was 16. After New York, Jackson Brown wound up back in Los Angeles at the turn of the decade, with a head full of inspiration and just enough experience to turn that inspiration

into a coveted record contract. None of it surprised the blue-collar Glenn Fry, who could hear Jackson Brown's discipline emanate through his kitchen floor every morning. This was how the greats did it, through hard work. It wasn't just fast cars, grass, and bronzed babes. It was putting in work.

It was hustle. And in Los Angeles in 1970, when it came to the folk scene anyway, no one had more hustle or was more of a hustler than David Geffen. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no.

I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark.

When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up, and I'm hitting him in the head.

with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance, like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleepwalk.

David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships, or religion, or sex, or addiction, or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monjou. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more.

Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says, she's gone, she's gone.

These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the judges. journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you'd do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. David Geffen believed in Jackson Brown before anyone else believed in Jackson Brown because

David Geffen believed in himself, or perhaps because David Geffen had what traders of any commodity covet most, inside knowledge. How he got that knowledge was anyone's guess. When he was coming up in the mailroom at the William Morris Agency, he simply took it, steaming open letters to agency executives to gain inside information on what opportunities were available for him to pounce upon. But when it came to Jackson's, Jackson Brown. David Geffen didn't need anyone to tell him about Jackson's talent. Not his clients, Crosby, Stills, or Nash, or Laura Niro. Geffen just knew. It was obvious. Jackson Brown was going to write hits and become a star. He wasn't like the other artists in Geffen's circle.

Jackson had it all, talent, drive, and good looks. How'd no one else in the music industry besides David Geffen saw that only reinforced Geffen's belief in himself, that he alone had a special understanding of talent and thus success. Ahmed Erdogan, founder of Atlantic Records, believed in David Geffen, even if he didn't believe in Jackson Brown. When Geffen went to Erdigan for a record contract for Jackson Brown, who Geffen was now managing, Erdogan told Geffen that if he believed so strongly in his artist,

that he then should start his own record label, and Atlantic would distribute the records. David Geffen took to the challenge, and with his managing partner, Elliot Roberts, Geffen founded the artist-friendly asylum records, and that's artist-friendly as in the artists

or the inmates were running the asylum. It was the spirit of the early 70s when musical artistry trumped everything in the folk-inspired pop scene. In 1971, in the record business,

to be for the artist was to be at the vanguard of hipness. It was who David Geffen was. It was why asylum was perfect for a song-focused artist like Jackson Brown. And Jackson Brown had friends. talented friends, friends who hung out nightly at the troubadour.

Don Henley made the scene immediately upon arriving in L.A. The Trubidor's doors swung open, and so too did the doors to his own slice of heaven on earth. On his first night inside the club, he saw Neil Young and Linda Ronstak just hanging out, and they were both already firmly established as stars. Don Henley couldn't believe his newfound lot in life. His band Shiloh booked a gig, but it was clear quickly that Shiloh was going nowhere. Henley fell in with Glenn Fry, who had already firmly made the scene. Glenn and Henley sat in with J.D. Souther in the front room at the Troubadour and traded songs

with Jackson Brown. Don Hemley, Texas boy that he was, vibed on the laid-back country stylings that came naturally to all involved, even for Glenn Fry, the boy from Detroit. Glenn's hard R&B influence tempered the dusty honky tonks swinging from Henley's sticks and snare. Together, amalgamated with J.D. Souther's direct country take on Jackson Brown's breezy Southern California songwriting, something special started to happen, and Linda Ronstadt took note, recruiting Glenn Fry and Don Hemley to become part of her live band. She recruited J.D. Souther for something else, her bedroom. In Anaheim in 1971, Glenn and Hemley backed Linda Ronstadt, alongside two other musicians, Pocos, Randy Meisner on bass, and the Flying Burrito Brothers

Bernie Ledden on guitar and banjo. The four backing musicians felt it, and Linda Ronstat did too, especially when they sang, in harmony, voices rushing up from far away, snapping you to attention, enough to wake you up no matter the time of day. Dan Tannas, 1972, Santa Monica Boulevard. If the troubadour was the place to be, Dan Tannas was the place next to the place to be. In old school, red and white checkered Italian restaurant that served as a pre-turb. and post hang for Trubodore regulars, not to mention an old-school Hollywood power player clubhouse, where attendees got up to all manner of no good on a regular basis. David Geffen sat in a corner booth, surrounded by Southern California folk rock royalty,

Jackson Brown, Joni Mitchell, among them. A pregame of sorts before a party later that night at the Laurel Canyon home of Geffin's business partner, Elliot Roberts, where the guest list would include Hollywood's young elite, Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, and Dennis Hopper, among more rock royals, Michelle Phillips, Cass Elliott, Neil Young, and John Sebastian. But back at Dan Tannas gathered for their pre-party feast, David Geffen stabbed at his broiled swordfish with his steely knife and called for more wine. Jackson Brown was unusually uncool,

in Geffen's ear constantly about putting his friend Glenn Fry under contract with him in Asylum Records. Geffen was aware of Frye, whose reputation as a singer, songwriter, and potential frontman was beginning to make the rounds due to his stint on the road and then in the studio with Linda Ronstadt. Fry's reputation was growing quickly, so much so that Columbia Records, Clive Davis, was circling and ready to sign him right out from under Geffen. What innocent as Glenn Fry was, he understood what most artists often fail to understand, and what David Geffen sure his shit never failed to understand, and that is that artists, at least the ones who can create and perform at a high level,

are the rarest of commodities. Like professional athletes, there are only so many people in the world who can do what they do. And for record label owners and music managers, those artists, those rare few are all they got. Their business is entirely dependent on them, on the artist. The rub is that artists are naturally insecure. They operate from a position of fear and too often lose sight of the power they actually possess, when it comes to business, and therefore allow themselves to be taken by the businessmen. Glenn Fry was not naturally insecure, quite the opposite.

He was brimming with confidence, even at a young age. Jackson Brown saw it. Everyone on the scene saw it, and it would be David Geffin's great loss if he, too, didn't see it soon. But David Geffen wasn't used to losing, and he was clearly no dummy. He got the message, and despite Clive Davis' aggressive stab at Glenn Fry, Geffen was able to preempt Columbia Records. David Geffen went on a shopping spree, long in the process of signing Linda Ronstadt away from her existing record contract.

He moved quickly to secure the rights to her backing band, and that meant purchasing the existing small-time record contract for Long Branch Penny Whistle, Glenn Fry's band with J.D. Souther, as well as the small-time record contract for Shiloh, Don Henley's band. David Geffen's Asylum Records now not only owned Jackson Brown, but Linda Ronstak, Glenn Fry, and Don Henley, as well as other solo artists Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, and of course, J.D. Souther.

Glenn Fry corralled the players behind that magic on stage in Anaheim with Linda, Don Henley on drums, Bernie Ledden on banjo and guitar, and Randy Meisner on bass. Together with J.D. Souther and Jackson Brown, in formerly contributing bits of songs, they set about to become, like so many before them, America's next great rock and roll band. To become just that,

There was only one name possible for the band. Only one name that contained the requisite combination of inspiration and aspiration. Only one name capable of representing the greatness Glenn Fry and Don Henley sought. Only one name American enough. The Eagles. The late 1960s, America torn apart. Vietnam. Fast approaching 50,000 soldiers dead.

Martin Luther King Jr. dead. Robert F. Kennedy, dead. Riots in the streets, Detroit, D.C. Watts. The early 70s, more dead in Vietnam, crossing the 50,000 milestone like nothing. Cambodia, Agent Orange, Watergate, and then... Finally, arrest. A crack in the chaos. California sunshine sneaking through.

Something approaching hope. A new decade. A chance at no more war. No more death. A fucking break. A peaceful. Easy. By the time the Eagles' self-titled debut record

was released on Geffen Records in 1972, America couldn't have been more ready for the breezy, country-fied Southern California sound of the Eagles. A decade of discord in this. This sounded like harmony. Glenn Fry, Dawn Henley, Bernie Lennon and Randy Meisner's self-titled debut album was a smash.

Just like David Geffen, Jackson Brown, and anyone with ears who heard and saw the Eagles come together knew would be the case. Everyone except their chosen producer, the renowned Glenn Johns. He couldn't hear it, so the record almost never happened. To Johns, the Eagles were confused, one part country, one part rock, one part acoustic, one part electric. Sonically, Glenn Johns believed the band didn't know who they were or what they wanted. to be, until they opened their mouths and started singing together and those beautiful vocal harmonies came out. They were somehow gritty and angelic at the same time, dusty like the desert floor, sublime

like the desert sky. The Eagles were their own trip. After recording their debut, they shipped off to the desert to capture photographs for the cover of their album. Before making the 140-mile trip to Joshua Tree, they loaded up on tequila shots at the Trubidor, the joint, then piled into a late model American sedan with room for the band plus their photographers, a cooler of beer, more tequila, and a pouch of peyote squirled away in the glove compartment, and sped off to capture sunrise in the desert before it passed. The peyote kicked in hard. On his

back, Glenn Fry stared at the desert sky. The blinding sun turned the blue sky to silver, glass, a mirror on the ceiling, cutting through an actual eagle. Glenn would never forget this. It was so on the nose, but one of those things that actually happened. He would later tell the story over and over again, but now, in the moment, it freaked him the fuck out. It's all over. This was the moment. One of those points in your life, where you can feel the punctuation happen, where you know life will never be the same, where you feel your past life compartmentalized into a mental archive right there in real time.

You're on the precipice of something. There is only one direction. forward, away from the past, but you can feel yourself being pulled back as you run for the door. That passage back is the wrong way. Or so you think, innocence can never be regained. What remains is only experience. You're shot at something big, at something grand, at something great. Life in the fast lane wouldn't truly present itself for a few years to come,

but it began here in the desert, and then on the road and on the airwaves. Peaceful easy feeling, witchy woman in the brilliant lead-off track, Take It Easy, co-written with Jackson Brown, the songs Hank Williams inspired lyrical simplicity, magical harmonies, and perfect mix of banjo and driving rock rhythm, resulted in a masterful work of pop Americana magic. Take It Easy does what the greatest pop songs throughout history have done, gives the masses what they don't even know they want. As with many turning points in history, music provided an alternative,

a relief from the status quo and relief from the turbulent 60s. Just like the Beatles, I want to hold your hand did in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, and just like Nirvana did with Smells Like Teen Spirit in the wake of the overtly commercial 1980s. The Eagles had arrived with three bona fide smash hits off their debut album, and nothing for any member of the band would ever be the same. I'm Jake Brennan, and this episode of Disgracelam. is to be continued. Disgraceland was created by yours truly

and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now

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and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at Disgracelandpod. Rockerola. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters in their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever,

And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yelloo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gait and Moderato from Stranger Things. Tena Mongeau. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver.

And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the... IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on from blockbusters to deep cuts.

Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.