The Long Run - Eagles (Rock) (The) (CD)

I really tried to like The Eagles. I mean I really, really tried.

In fact, I probably tried harder to like them than any other band my friends listened to. You know how it is. You don't want to be the weirdo, and I was already catching a lot of flak from them back in the 70's for my Flying Burrito Brothers fixation. At least I gave the Eagles a halfway fair shot, which is more than they gave my beloved Burritos.

After all, why wouldn't I like the Eagles? It was the late 70's, and I was as big a fan of the California sound as anybody. I loved Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Jackson Browne, and James Taylor. I owned every album Dan Fogelberg had put out up to that point, and all of Joe Walsh's solo work as well, not to mention his outings with The James Gang. Walsh was an Eagle, Fogelberg almost was, and since the band's demise I must admit that I have been taken with much of Don Henley's solo material as well, although not enough to actually buy any. You know, once bitten and all that.

"But surely," you ask. "You must have liked Hotel California?" Nope. I thought it was some of the blandest and most annoying bilge ever put down on vinyl. And don't call me Shirley.

The Eagles, like Elton John, had their place in my musical sphere. An occasional good tune augmented by lots of stuff that, sorry, just did not get my juices flowing. With John, for every "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," there was such drivel as "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" or "Crocodile Rock." It was the same with the Eagles. For every "Midnight Flyer" there was "Witchy Woman" or "New Kid in Town." They were all hits, so obviously somebody liked them. Fine. They can write their own reviews.

In desperation, I did the unthinkable. I actually went out and bought an Eagles album, if nothing more than to sit down, listen closely to it, and see if I could get what everybody else seemed to be getting. I had to be missing something, hadn't I?

The album I chose was The Long Run, for no other reason than it was their current release and on top of the charts at the time. Joe Walsh was with them, and bassist/vocalist Timothy B Schmidt had just come over from Poco. I liked Poco.

The opening title track pretty much set the tone. Not bad, but not good either. It was just sort of there, and the rest of the record lived up to this early promise. Schmidt made his Eagles debut as a lead vocalist on the next cut "I Can't Tell You Why." I never thought music could possibly get this colorless and uninteresting, although Schmidt and the Eagles would top it years later with "Love Will Keep Us Alive," which managed to be colorless, uninteresting, and maudlin. Hat trick!

But The Long Run's most unforgivable sin arrives on track 3. "In The City" was Joe Walsh's contribution to the soundtrack of the Walter Hill teen-gang saga The Warriors. One of Walsh's most stunning works, "In The City" was a powerful and unforgettable take on the desolation and despair of life spent on the mean streets. And more importantly, it rocked.

The Eagles re-cut the song almost note-for-note, but in the process managed to strip away every ounce of drama and immediacy that was the hallmark of the original. Maybe they just forgot, or they lost the "Drama and Immediacy Overdub" master tape somewhere. Hopefully it will turn up on a re-mastered version, and...I'm dreaming, aren't I?

After that, the rest of the album just seemed to go by in a kind of blur. "Heartache Tonight" is one of Glen Frey's radio-friendly pop-rockers whose searing guitars mask its lighter-than-air innocuousness, and Jimmy Buffett contributes guest vocals on "The Greeks Don't Want No Freaks." Listen closely, he's buried in there somewhere. I think. It says so on the liner notes, anyway. The boys even have Walsh resurrect his "Rocky Mountain Way" talk-box guitar on "Those Shoes." After all, it worked for Peter Frampton, didn't it? I'm going to get sick now. You may want to step back, this could leave a stain.

"The Disco Strangler" sounds like it was written and recorded during a weekend-long coke binge and somebody forgot to erase the tape, and "The Sad Caf " sounds like it was done after everybody sobered up, at least to a certain extent. Neither would be worth mentioning except for the fact that they're on the album, and this is a review of that particular album. The album, let's see, called...oh yeah, The Long Run. By the Eagles, it says here.

In hindsight, perhaps I should have chosen a different album in my attempts to fathom the Eagles mystique. It wasn't like I hadn't heard some of their other work. My brother had their self-titled first album and On The Border, a friend of mine had Desperado, and everybody had Hotel California. The Long Run has since earned the reputation of being the worst of the Eagles releases, but at the time it was the #2 album on the charts. Who knew?

Well, I did. But then, I don't like the Eagles. Lord knows I tried.

Great Music to Play While: Writing your suicide note.

Copyright 2002 Bill Klein. All rights reserved.