EAGLES, THE

American band that cultivated country rock as the reigning style and sensibility of white youth in the United States during the 1970s. The original members were Don Henley (b. July 22, 1947, Gilmer, Texas, U.S.), Glenn Frey (b. Nov. 6, 1948, Detroit, Mich.), Bernie Leadon (b. July 19, 1947, Minneapolis, Minn.), and Randy Meisner (b. March 8, 1946, Scottsbluff, Neb.). Later members included Don Felder (b. Sept. 21, 1947, Topanga, Calif.), Joe Walsh (b. Nov. 20, 1947, Wichita, Kan.), and Timothy B. Schmit (b. Oct. 30, 1947, Sacramento, Calif.). Los Angeles-based professional pop musicians, the Eagles recorded with Linda Ronstadt before the 1972 release of their eponymous debut album. Clearly, from the band's earliest laid-back grooves on hits like Take It Easy to the title song of their 1973 Desperado albumthe Ave Maria of 1970s rockto the later studio intricacies of One of These Nights (1975), Henley's band felt a mission to portray emotional ups and downs in personal ways. However, the Eagles were content to do so within the boundaries of certain musical forms and music industry conventions, pushing and expanding them gently or aggressively at different junctures along the way. This willingness to play by the rules may have been as responsible for the success of their resolutely formal, exceptionally dramatic songs as was the Eagles' hankering for the fiddles and dusty ambiences of the country rock movement they unhesitantly polished for popular consumption. Before the Eagles recorded, country rock was a local alternative in late 1960s Los Angeles. After they recorded, it became the soundtrack for the lives of millions of 1970s rock kids who, keen on the present yet suspicious of glam rock and disco, donned suede jackets and faded jeans to flirt with the California dream restyled as traditional Americana. The band's Hotel California (1976) was, in this respect, their masterpiece. With the craft of songwriting as central to their approach as it is to that of any country singer, the Eagles' music had begun as well-detailed melodies delivered by Henley and Frey with some nasality. The arrangements, with percussion far more forward than anything Nashville producers would have brooked, started out in a starkly rock mode with rustic accents. By the time they began work on Hotel California, they were joined by ex-James Gang guitarist Walsh, who combined technical expertise with native rambunctiousness. His contribution, mixed with an increasingly assured blend of country directness and Hollywood studio calculation, made for an unmatched country rockpop fusion that started with One of These Nights and reached its meticulous apex with The Long Run (1979). Hotel California, coming at the midpoint of the band's later period, captured the style at its most relaxed and forceful. Afterward, as punk and new wave repeated country rock's journey from underground to mainstream, the Eagles' music subsided. Beginning in the 1980s, Henley enjoyed a solo career as an increasingly subtle singer-songwriter. As the Eagles had done in the 1970s, he engaged stylistically with his times, staring down electropop on 1984's moving Boys of Summer smash. The Eagles' music, although never exactly replicated, became the envy of mainstream Nashville artists who longed for some sort of mainstream edge. In 1993 Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles, a tribute album performed by country artists like Vince Gill and Travis Tritt, became a blockbuster in that field. The group's nostalgia-tinged yet still musically vibrant reunion tour and album in 1994 featured four new songs and proved even more successful. James Hunter Additional reading Marc Shapiro, The Story of the Eagles: The Long Run (1995), is a biography. Marc Eliot, To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles (1997), contains copious information on the band's formation and business dealings. James Hunter, The Eagles, in Paul Kingsbury (ed.), Country on Compact Disc (1993), pp. 5556, is an evaluative recordings entry with special emphasis on how the Eagles' studio style affected some Nashville artists during the 1990s. The Eagles, in Patricia Romanowski, Holly George-Warren, and Jon Pareles (eds.), The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, completely rev. and updated (1995), pp. 293295, includes a discography, career chronologies, and band history. Representative Works: The Eagles Don Henley