DISGRACELAND - The Eagles Pt. 2: Death, a Plane Crash, and Innocence Lost at What Cost

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

In the 1970s, The Eagles made taking off into the upper stratosphere of the charts look easy. Their near decade-long reign of rock afforded them hobbies like dismantling hotel rooms with chainsaws, playing chicken with private jets, and joining delirious drug dealers on high-speed Corvette rides. But after nearly a solid decade of stadium sell-outs, No. 1 singles, top-selling albums and enough cocaine, sex and tension to make even the hardest, wildest, ’70s rock ‘n’ rollers cry uncle, the Eagles had burned out. They were at the top of their game in a decade that they owned, yet somehow, the greatness they sought had destroyed them.For the full list of contributors, visit disgracelandpod.comThis episode was originally published on March 29, 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 NEWSLETTERFollow Jake and DISGRACELAND:InstagramYouTubeX (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan GroupTikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee 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. 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. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The Story of the Eagles, their beginnings as a band, their Southern California's swagger. Their unprecedented success and their abrupt breakup is so complex. that two episodes were needed to properly tell this story. If you're just tuning in now, I suggest you hit pause and go back to part one of the Eagle's story, where we discuss the band's beginnings, their relationship with would-be mogul David Geffen,

Glenn Fry's smuggling of Acapokal Gold, in the near-dead girl in Don Henley's bathroom. In this episode, we get into the band's immeasurable excess, including pranks with private jets, overseas gambling in high-speed corvette rides with delirious drug dealers. We, of course, refused to refer to the Eagles as Eagles, just as we do in part one, and we also introduced the band's new ball-busting manager, Irving Azov, fast-talking the Eagles out of a Bahamian drug bust.

And, of course, we dive into the soaring success of the band's 26-times platinum album Hotel California. Truly great music. Unlike that music I played a few at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Medicated Thumblister, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Lady by Kenny Rogers. And why would I play you that specific slice of rejected Commodore cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on November 21st, 1980, and that was as the night Don Henley rang the paramedics about the underage girl overdosing in his bathroom,

a girl that was about to be as dead as his band's career. On this episode, Private Jet Pranks, Private Jet Crashes, Ball-Busting Managers, SoCal's Swagger, and the Masters of Life in the Fast Lane, The Eagles. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. You're driving. It's late. Your friends are with you and your car. car. One of them has to piss. It's annoying to have to pull over, but extra annoying because you're so close to home. Can he wait? No, he can't. And he won't shut the fuck up about it. So you pull over to the side of the road, a random stretch of road, abandoned at this hour. You're silly at so late.

So are your friends who remain in the car with you. The car idles your foot on the gas. Your friend outside finishes his business, shakes himself off and reappears from the wooded area beside the road. In the rearview mirror, you spy your friend coming up to the backseat door from behind the car. He's getting closer. He's about to put his hand on the door handle to open it up and jump on in. You quickly put the car into drive, your foot on the gas, and jerk the car forward about 15 feet. Your friend outside gets the joke, but doesn't find it nearly as funny as your friends in the back seat who are cutting up. Outside, Mr. Almost Pissed his pants trots quickly to the backseat car door. Inside, your friends don't even have to say anything.

You don't either. You all know what is going to happen next. Once Mr. Almost Pissed his pants gets to an inch of that door, you're going to gun it again and move the car out of reach. And that's exactly what you do. Now your friend outside is visibly angry and your friends in the back are dying. Outside, you hear him tell you to fuck off. You yell back some fake apology and assure him it's now cool and out of your system.

Tired, annoyed, he doggedly accepts your apology and tenor. shuffles back to your car, which is now about 30 feet away from him up the road. Once he gets to the door for the third time, you peel out and leave him with a face full of dust and take off down the road. Mr. Almost Pissed his pants is now Mr. Pissed the fuck off and begins kicking at the dirt on the ground and punching randomly in the air while screaming in frustration. It's the funniest thing you and your friends have ever seen and you've seen it a million times. We all have, in movies and in real life. I myself have pulled this trick on a band member who got so pissed he temporarily quit our band. Didn't matter. We're going to kick him out anyway.

I've done this to my wife and my wife has done this to me. It's one of the oldest car tricks in the book. But the Eagles, the Eagles pulled this prank, not in cars, but in private planes, at airports. And not just on the tarmac. They'd actually make the pilot achieve liftoff for a brief moment and then touch back down. Wait, allow bassist Randy Meisner or a new guy guitarist Don Felder who joined the band to bring that extra rock and roll additive to Bernie Lennon's country style, and bam, just when whichever poor sap would reach the plane, the pilot on instructions from the band inside would take off again. And again, racking up majorly expensive airport fees with every takeoff and landing.

But it didn't matter. Such was the level of success afforded the Eagles from their first few albums. Their self-titled debut rocketed from No. 102 to No. 22 on the Billboard 200 in six weeks and charted three top 40 hits, including Witchy Woman, which cracked the top 10. Their second album, Desperado, sold modestly by comparison, but regained chart positioning once their third album on the border was released. Their self-titled debut had just been certified gold when on the border yielded more hits. Their incredibly rocking single already gone at number 32, but most importantly,

their first chart-topping number one single, Best of My Love. The full album on the border hit number 17 on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold in under three months, their fastest and best-selling album yet. The Eagles made taking off into the upper stratosphere of the charts look easy. Private planes weren't a problem. But even still, customs agents were. To rockers, ramblers and gamblers alike

and to the Eagles in 1974 who were all three, high-stakes gambling as it was to the Old West characters depicted on the, the cover of their second album Desperado was a new pastime for the suddenly flush rock and roll band. So in the middle of tour, they headed to the Bahamas on a private jet with new manager Irving Azov. Don't know who Irving Azov is? He's a legend in the business who made his bones with the Eagles at first under David Geffen and then on his own. These days, he's a respected elder statesman of sorts within the music industry. Not exactly shy or saw spoken in his old age, but definitely gentle by comparison to who he was in the 70s. This guy. Not gonna fucking pay. My artist played for you,

motherfucker. Like they fucking agreed to. Where the fuck is our money? The promoter quite literally was near shitting his pants. It was a short helicopter ride up for Azoff garbed in his satin-tor jacket glasses and slight afro poking out from under his orange construction helmet which she wore because, well, who the hell really knew? But regardless, a short ride up for Azov in the helicopter, but a long, long way down for the promoter if he happened to be thrown out of the helicopter. Give me the fucking money, shit fuck! The promoter at that point would have given Azov his firstborn. And that was the point.

Irving Azov got what he wanted, especially for his clients. And when the chopper landed, he sure his shit got the performance fee the promoter owed him. But that was a different time with a different aircraft. Here and the now at the airport in the Bahamas with the Eagles, The heat was now on him and not the other way around. Glenn Fry was holding, grass, in his boot. The rest of the band, with the exception of Don Henley was holding too. Irving was even holding.

30-value. Shit, even the pilot was holding. As soon as they got off the plane, customs agents rounded the band up and took them off to be searched. Busted. Jail was imminent. Bahamian customs officials were notoriously strict. Unable to be bribed, they said.

Money didn't matter to them. Somehow, Irving Azov was able to convince them to let him, the rest of the band and crew, go. They'd give up the dope and operate in the Bahamas under the watchful, responsible eye of their drummer, Don Henley, the only one among them who wasn't trying to smuggle drugs onto the island. How Irving Azov did it, to this day, no one really knows. Persuasion, confidence. The Eagle's new manager's superpower has not only worked on Bahamian customs agents, they worked on the powerful David Geffen as well.

As successful as the Eagles were over the course of their early career, their music industry benefactor and head of their record label, David Geffen, was even more successful. The same year he launched Asylum Records in 1971, Geffen signed Linda Ronstat, Joni Mitchell, and of course, Glenn Fry. So successful was Asylum that by the very next year, 1972, Warner Brothers Records purchased Asylum Records and made David Geffen already a very rich man and even richer man. The Eagle's record contract was then transferred to Warner Brothers, as was half of their publishing revenue, Geffen's half, as part of the sale.

Technically, the publishing was Geffens to sell. The Eagles signed it away to David Geffen, so much for protecting the artist, so much for providing asylum for the artists. Regardless, the publishing was Geffens to sell. It was his, again, signed over to him from the band as part of their first record contract. But Irving Azov claimed that when the deal was signed, It was signed under all manner of conflicted interests from asylum label heads, business managers, and lawyers who were all allegedly working in concert to come up with contracts that favored the

business interests of David Geffen and not his artists, the Eagles. Irving Azoff had Geffen by the balls, right where he wanted him. So he put on the squeeze and sued David Geffen to get the Eagles out of their original contract and into a more favorable one. David Geffen dug in, unwilling to relent. Artists didn't leave David Geffen, and they could check out, but leave, never. Or so he thought. Irving Azoff thought he was doing the right thing, even if he was completely submarining his and his client's relationship with one of the most powerful men in the music business in the process.

If he and the Eagles came out on the losing end, they would have been worse off than before. Incredibly, though, the high-stakes gamble paid off. David Geffen settled out of court. Irving Azoff stared down the master from inside his chamber. There was a new outlaw in town. Don Hemley said of Irving Hazoff, he may be Satan, but he's our Satan. 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, 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 act or whatever, and my first thing is always,

can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd 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 asleep walking. 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. 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 Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tana Monsu.

Camilla Marone, 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, Great By 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 Fry couldn't blame him. The Pacific Coast Highway was built for this 75 Corvette Stingray. and the vet flew. Didn't matter that they were holding. Big time. Top off, 90 miles per hour, and Bucco Blow in the back seat. Also, cash. Lots of it.

The count was one of Hollywood's most successful drug dealers, so lots of coke and cash and his possession wasn't out of the norm. Glenn Fry wasn't freaked out by that. They needed the cash, and they needed the coke. They were on their way to a high-stakes poker game. What had Glenn freaked out was the speed. Not for fear of crashing, for fear of getting pulled over and popped by highway patrol. The count wasn't afraid.

When you're young, good-looking rich, drive a stingray hang out with rock stars, bang models and actresses on the reg, and are high on blow all the time. You need to push it over the line every now and then in order to feel alive. Otherwise, it all just feels normal. Blah. But Glenn Fry was in a different position. He was on top of the world. Life was pretty fucking far from normal.

Normal life for Glenn Fry was a factory job back in Detroit, an American eight cylinder in the garage, 2.2 kids and a pretty but average-looking wife who gave you a blowjob once a year on your birthday. Fuck that. He was Glenn Fry. He was an eagle. He counted on blowjobs from different beautiful women on any day that ended with a Y and was seldom disappointed. He was rich, respected, relied on, important. And none of that was going to change anytime soon because he was in a band, a great band. one of the greatest bands on the planet at the moment, the Eagles. 1976, life was sweet. Why risk losing it going 100 miles per hour on the PCH with the trunk full of blow?

The Eagles were on top of the world, and by the mid-70s record sales for the band were so abundant that Warner Brothers Records could account for an entire quarter of their financial year's balance sheet on revenue from one new Eagles release. Imagine that. One band,

successful and important to their record label that their label depended on them to cover an entire quarter's balance sheet. It's because people loved the Eagles. Kids love the Eagles, parents love the Eagles, daughters, moms. Some mother-daughter duels went as far as to offer themselves up as a dual sexual treat for the band after their sold-out shows. And boy did their shows sell out. Stadiums, racetracks, auditoriums, crammed with kids whose entire high school careers in the early 70s have been soundtracked by the Eagles. The band's hits, blanketed airways because powerful FM radio DJs and programmers also loved the Eagles. Shit, even the Eagles loved the Eagles. Glenn Fry and Don Henley knew what they had, a great fucking band. Despite what the critics said, many of whom,

especially East Coast critics, loathed what they perceived as insipid harmonies and watered down Graham Parsons' country vibes. But it didn't stop Henley and Fry in their pursuit of greatness. None of it. Not the success, not the critics, not the grind. The two co-leaders of the band were on a mission to continuously outdo themselves creatively and commercially, which, given their success, was a pursuit made more difficult every time they went to record and release a new album. Following the release and success of their third album on the border, they upped Annie and became a five-son by adding hot-shit young guitarist Don Felder to bring that driving hard rock and roll vibe that the Eagles were missing.

and you can hear the results immediately on the album's lead off track already gone, which is in the running as the Eagle's greatest single. The song burns off the wax out of the speakers and raises America's collective middle finger high in the air, out of the sunroof and in the direction of every bullshit lover overbearing parent, principle, and or authority figure. It's the ultimate kiss-off song, and in short, it fucking rocks. Thanks to Don Felder's guitar playing and Glenn Fry's drive to be great,

because it was Glenn's idea to add Bernie Ledden's friend Don Felder to the group. The album, not surprisingly, flew off of shelves. And the Eagles burned out on the road, putting in discipline, but somehow still rocking now legendary live performances, partying their faces off at night and doing it all over and over again. Another album, one of these nights, their first topped the Billboard 200 chart, came screaming into 70s musical Zykeyes with another trio of top 10 hits.

Take it to the limit, the title track, one of these nights which went to number one, and Lion Eyes, which won the Grammy for Best Pop Performance by a duo or a group with vocals. And then, again, the road. After the road, it was tough sledding creatively. Henley and Fry weren't factory workers. They had now become experienced creative songwriters and producers, and their experience told them they needed a fucking minute. Warner Brothers was left waiting for a new album to follow up,

one of these nights for much longer than they wanted. Their bankers weren't happy, and neither was their board of directors. It was decided unilaterally, without input from the band, without input from Don Henley and Glenn Fry, the leaders of the band, that Warner Brothers, in order to save their financial ass in 1976, would release a greatest hits album from the Eagles, from a band with only four full-length albums, from a band who'd only been in existence for four years.

So, in February 1976, their greatest hits by the Eagles was released, and predictably, it went straight up the charts. More than that, the album sold a million copies by the end of its first week of release, becoming the first record to ever receive platinum certification introduced just that year. By 1990, the album had sold more than 12 million copies. It is now the highest-selling album of all time in America, with more than 38 million copies sold, selling more than not only Michael Jackson's thriller and ACDC's Back in Black, but more than anything by the Beatles or Elvis Presley as well.

So, with the rest of 1976 stretched outperform just like an open road, Glenn Fry needed to top that. But first, he needed to not get arrested on the Pacific Coast Highway for going 100 miles per hour with a drug dealer named the Count and holding a mountain of cocaine. As the Stingray raced north, it's topoff. Glenn's long hair blowing in the California wind. Glenn turned to the Count and as coolly as possible said,

Hey man, you might want to slow down. The Count pushed his foot on the gas, pedal to the metal. James Dean be damned. He turned to Glenn, smiled and said, What do you mean? It's life in the fast lane. 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 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. 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 sleepwalking. 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. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Durbin. 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? Gait and moderato from Stranger Things. Tena, monsieur. Camilla Marone, 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. 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 closet. 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 P and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks and 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. Life in the Fast Lane was the third single off of the Eagles next album, Hotel California. It, like the rest of the album, was a massive success. The album's title track, Hotel California, set the theme for the rest of the album's set of songs, and as a track, its composition would forever set the Eagles apart from their contemporaries. As 70s rock bands were pulling hard on the influence

of reggae sensation Bob Marley, Eric Clapton with his cover of Marley's eye shot the sheriff, Paul Simon with Mother and Child Reunion, and most recently the Rolling Stones with Hayne Grita. The Eagles managed to take the reggae influence, drafted from the guitar of Don Felder, who now firmly supplanted his pal Bernie Ledden as the band's only lead guitar player, and with Ledden's ousting made room for madman guitarist Joe Walsh to ride shotgun as a rough twin lead player. Felders Latin-style guitar riff for Hotel California inspired a Jamaican groove from Don Henley's drums and Randy Meisner's bass, and that groove, along with the song's lyrics penned by Henley and over-the-top virtuoso guitar playing, constituted something entirely unique

sounding. Hotel California was a revelation, the Eagles' stairway to heaven. It clocked in at six and a minutes, and the record label insisted on an edited version so that radio stations would play it. But just as Glenn Fry's real-life experience told him that racing down the highway with piles of cocaine was just the right fodder for a hit single, Henley's experience told him that Hotel California was perfect as is, and not to be fucked with. There would be no edit. Radio stations would play it as is, all six and a half minutes of it, and if they wouldn't, it would be their loss. Per usual, from the Eagles paid off. The song went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100,

their fourth chart topper. The single sold a million copies in three months and went on to win the Grammy for record of the year. The Eagles were used to gambling, except now they gambled with experience. And that's what Hotel California was all about. Experience. The cost of experience, which is lost innocence.

You can never go back. And the Eagles, with even more success than they ever imagined, were never going back to that place they were before. Joe Walsh didn't understand innocence. What he understood was destruction. The chainsaw he wielded inside his Astor Tower's hotel suite growled. Joe's buddy, Chicago local and funniest comedian on the planet at the time,

John Belushi howled in delight. Joe took the chainsaw to the bed, then to the chair, then the walls. Belushi's laughter faded away. Joe Walsh, rock and roll chainsaw-sling hotel-destroaring lunatic on the outside was cowering on the inside. The violent grind of his weapon was silenced by the voices in his head. From down the corridor, they taunted him in perfect harmony. He'd never be able to do what they were doing.

All he was good for was destruction or perhaps a good laugh. Belushi, the funniest dude on the planet, thought so at least. That had to count for something, right? But comedy wasn't why he was in this. He was in this for the music to be one of the greats. Glenn and Henley, they were great. Joe Walsh knew this and it fucking tore him up inside. So he tore the world up on the outside, one hotel room at a time.

Checkout was at 11, but what did it matter? Joe knew he could never really leave. He'd be right back here in the same place tomorrow night. That's the thing with hotel rooms. You see enough of them and they all look the same. Same goes for fans, audiences. They're all the fucking same, man. Might as well get Blotto, Ball, laugh, and destroy.

Cut the world into little pieces so you can try to put it back together and make sense of it all. He was a fucking sideman as all. Didn't matter how mad they went for Rocky Mountain Way each night. It was the Glenn and Henley show. Joe couldn't compete with those songs, those harmonies, that confidence, that greatness. The voices told him so, more than the chainsaw. God damn, they sounded so fucking good. They scared him.

And Joe was scaring Belushi, which was saying something. Belushi stopped laughing. Joe had gone ballistic. He was lost, thrashing about the room with the chainsaw, screaming, it was cathartic, it was pain, Belushi saw it. Joe saw the look in Belushi's eyes, the fear, the pity. Fuck this! Joe dropped the chainsaw, grabbed the television, hurled it through the window of the 14th floor suite he just destroyed and waited for the sound of the bottom, which is where the Eagles were headed, remarkably. Despite the success of Hotel California, which, as a full album, had gone platinum in a week,

just like their greatest hits album had prior, and it topped the Billboard 200 for eight weeks total, selling nearly six million copies in its first year. Long-time bassist, the only non-alpha in the group, Randy Meisner, was out. He couldn't hang. He did the beta bounce and fucked off to St. Elsewhere. He was replaced by another poco bassist, Timothy B. Schmidt, who finally landed his dream gig

and promptly made his presence known by writing and recording what is possibly the Eagle's greatest song, I can't tell you why, on their Hotel California follow-up, the long run. Glenn Fry sunk into deeper cocaine use, doing so much of the drug that he had to have his septum surgically repaired. Twice, the second time was surgeons installing Teflon to replace his mucous membranes. Glenn was a mess, and Don Felder, for one, was sick of it. The two nearly came to blows on stage, and the result was Felder splitting the band. It was all enough to nearly spin the normally controlled Don Henley out of control.

Here they were, the fucking Eagles, at the top of their game at the end of a decade that they owned. Five number one hits, the biggest selling album of the last 10 years, able to sell out any stadium in the country, enough record royalties to retire four times over, nine Grammy nominations and four Grammy Awards, greatness, by any measure, finally achieved, but somehow they were never so low. Somehow, the greatness they sought had destroyed them. The Eagles were over.

October, 1980, Don Henley's Eagles were broken up, and Don Henley was racing for his life, back to that place he was before, trying to get there anyway. The pilot of his leered jet missed just, judged the landing in Aspen. The altitude had a mall out of sorts. The jet ripped off the runway after touching down at over 60 miles per hour. Fear had Henley and his girlfriend on the plane with him gripped. Cheap headlines flashed across his sight line.

Eagle Don Henley crashes to his death. It offended the well-read English major in him. His girls screamed. The plane goes through a fence, then tore through a cow pasture, then out of the pasture and onto jagged earth that peeled back the bottom of the plane below them. worried about the gas tank, a spark, an explosion. Another cheap headline. Eagle Don Hemley fires himself, plane explodes. He looked at the window and saw the co-pilot out of the plane sprinting across the cow pasture. He looked ahead to the cockpit. The pilot was frantically trying to slow the plane

but to no avail. They were headed for a collision, a spark and explosion. Don Henley gripped the emergency door as the plane continued to roll and ripped it off. His girl drove out first. She landed face-first on a boulder. Henley jumped from the moving plane next, landed, picked his girl up, and the two began to sprint, away from the plane. Faster. Over the barbed wire fence. Faster. Through the cow pasture, faster still, over the boulders, faster, away from the now burning wreckage of the plane and then. Don Henley made it out alive, literally and figuratively. Out of the wreckage of the plane crash, out of the 70s, and out of the Eagles. But he barely survived himself. The excess of the 1970s spilled over like a deluge into 1980.

It truly was the end of the innocence for Henley as well as for the rest of the Eagles, and nothing illustrated it more than the dying girl. In 1980, getting caught with a teenage sex worker half dead on your floor wasn't enough to derail your career. The decades that followed, though, the incident would haunt him. When reporters asked, Don Henley developed a standard response that he'd selflessly taken the rap for everyone else at the party,

for the Coke, for the grass, for the ludes, and that he didn't have sex with those girls and that he didn't give them the drugs. Of course, he didn't know they were underage, went the response. And the journalist who asked those questions, Moe shrugged and smiled and that was that. After all, nobody died, right? At the end of the day, what are the cops given Don Henley anyway?

A $2,000 fine and two years probation. How bad could it have been, they wondered. While the press swarmed, Don Henley took it in stride, channeling his angst into a number three solo single, Dirty Laundry, a highlight of an impressive solo career for the Texas Eagle that included other top ten hits like All She Wants to Do Is Dance, The End of the Innocence, and the Stone Cold Classic The Boys of Summer, and these latter two also won him rock male vocalist Grammys.

Glenn Fry thrived as a solo artist as well, with two hits that reached number two, The Heat is on from the Beverly Hills cop soundtrack, and you belong to the city, one of two tracks. He contributed to the smash hit TV show that defined the 1980s, Miami Vice, a show he himself would appear on. The 80s worked out fine for Henley and Fry, so much so that when they finally reunited with band members, Don Felder, Joe Walsh, and Timothy B. Schmidt in 1994, it didn't seem so much like a reunion as it did a reconvening. They had simply made music for a decade, took the next decade off, but benefited from classic rock radio playing their hits constantly. It was like they never left, and then picked up their instruments two decades removed right where they left off.

It wasn't that easy, of course. They named the resultant live album Hell Fries Over for a reason, but pretty much. Joe Walsh needed a kick blow and booze after tearing ass across his own personal rock bottom for the entirety of the 80s, and Don Felder needed to be convinced to some degree. Timothy B. Schmidt needed no convincing. He was right back where he was born to be. Randy Meisner and Bernie Lennon weren't invited to rejoin the regrouped Eagles. Their time had passed.

But they were invited to join the Eagles at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998 and deservedly so. The Hell Freeze's Over album hit the Billboard charts at number one with a bullet and sold six million copies in the U.S. The band continued touring throughout the 90s, and in the year 2000, they followed up with a box set, selected works 1972 to 1999. It was another certified platinum album. In 2001, Don Felder quit, or was fired depending on which band member you listen to, ensued the band over wrongful termination and breach of fiduciary duty, claiming the band used to split profits evenly, but that Henley and Fry had taken a larger cut ever since they reunited. Henley and Frye countersued that Felder broke contract by writing a tell-all memoir,

but all charges were dismissed in 2007 after they settled out of court. Glenn Fry died unexpectedly in 2016 of complications from pneumonia, ulcerative colitis and rheumatoid arthritis, with which he had struggled quietly for years. Joe Walsh remains in the Eagles alongside Don Hemley and the band is still touring, still alive, sort of, and no doubt still chasing that, greatness, albeit with only one original band member. But like most surviving rock and roll bands, particularly those from that heady golden era of California in the 1970s, that era of endless

cocaine, groupies, money, excess, beyond anyone's wildest dreams, all the innocence is gone. It's been replaced, of course, by experience. Experience that kept the Eagles alive in the long run, but very nearly grounded them in disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. 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 Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it.

And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgracelandPod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at DisgracelandPod. Rock a roll.

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