Ravinia 2025 Issue 3

Hearing these formerly scattered, well-known songs as a singular, com- plete work is a unique listening event, presented with fresh urgency wrapped in warm nostalgia. This summer, on July 19, Ravinia be- comes that landmark Hotel California —almost. The Eagles’ historic milestone and its nine songs, which was released in December 1976, has sold a staggering 32 million copies worldwide. It will be performed in its entirety—along with a healthy helping of more beloved Eagles hits from their five-decade career—by the internationally touring Ravinia Festival favorites Classic Albums Live. A frequent feature at the summer festi- val, the Canadian ensemble devised by musician and composer Craig Martin impeccably re-creates many of the rock era’s seminal albums on stage, meticu- lously reproducing them exactly as they sound on the featured album. THE EAGLES and their crowd-pleas- ing sound are legendary, influential, and the band is among the best-selling acts in music history. Its Greatest Hits 1971–75 compilation, for example, has sold more than 38 million copies in the US alone, eclipsing Michael Jackson’s 1982 phenomenon Thriller as the num- ber-one selling album of all time. Though the band is most associat- ed with laid-back, comforting coun- try-rock, it didn’t pioneer the organic, genre-mixing sound. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, artists and bands like Bob Dylan, Mike Nesmith (The Monkees), Waylon Jennings, Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman (The Byrds and their later band, The Flying Burrito Broth- ers), Buffalo Springfield, and others first experimented with combining rock with country-tinged melodies, instruments, vocal harmonies, and rustic themes. The Eagles’ origin story appropriately began in the heart of the country-rock movement—California. Drummer Don Henley, a Texan, and guitarist Glenn Frey, a Michigan native, both moved to LA seeking their musical fortunes. The two eventually played in Linda Ron- stadt’s touring band, which led the two to form their own group. “He [Frey] walked up to me one night in the Troubadour and handed me a beer, and he just started talking to me. You know, the Troubadour was the cen- ter of the universe at that point in time,” Henley remembered to Gayle King on CBS Mornings . Bluegrass vet Bernie Leadon (for- merly of The Flying Burrito Brothers) and Randy Meisner (of Poco and Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band, and who passed away in 2023) were then recruit- ed, as both also had ties to Ronstadt’s bands and recordings. In 1971, the Eagles hatched. While Frey favored a tougher rock sound, Leadon leaned hard on the country influence. Noted British pro- ducer Glyn Johns (who produced The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and others) agreed with Leadon after hearing the band’s smoothly blended harmonies. Johns steered them toward the country-rock lane on their 1972 de- but that would ultimately define them. The band’s chief songwriters— Henley and Frey—as well as Leadon, Meisner, early collaborators Jackson Browne and JD Souther (who previous- ly teamed with Frey in the short-lived Longbranch Pennywhistle), and later band addition guitarist Don Felder elevated the harmony-driven sound into major pop music success through the mid-’70s with solid, maturing albums— Desperado (1973), On the Border (1974), and One of These Nights (1975)—and equally evolving songs like “Take it Easy,” “Witchy Woman,” “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” “Tequilia Sunrise,” “Despera- do,” “Lyin’ Eyes,” “One of These Nights,” “Take It to the Limit,” and the band’s first number-one single, the loving lulla- by “Best of My Love.” Despite this winning streak, Henley and Frey decided the band’s next album should further explore and expound on a long-sought heavier, electric gui- tar-based sound. Felder’s arrival in 1974 boosted the band’s edge and volume, but Henley and Frey wanted The Eagles to fly higher and harder. Leadon grew increasingly dissatisfied with this new direction and left the band in late 1975. Subsequently, the first, bold, transformational musical statement Henley and Frey put forth was bringing gonzo guitarist and singer-songwriter Joe Walsh into the fold. Walsh was proven and respected in his own right as the driving force of two hard-rocking outfits, James Gang and Barnstorm, and as a solo act. His initial, riff-riddled stompers “Funk #49,” “Walk Away,” and “Rocky Mountain Way” remain rock radio staples. Adding Walsh, with his wild, reckless on- and off-stage persona and bom- bastic guitar proved a masterstroke by instantly providing The Eagles with the complex, rougher, less predictable sound it craved, as well as adding a gritty, dangerous aura to its previously sedate, sensitive image. Hotel California was recorded at both Criteria Studios in Miami and The Re- cord Plant in Los Angeles between March and October 1976, and was produced by the painstaking and sound-conscious Bill Szymczyk, who worked on the band’s two preceding albums. Although not as overt as the Western outlaw-themed 1973 album Desperado , Hotel California is at its core, a concept album—albeit purposely vague in its overriding message and premise. “Vagueness is the primary tool of songwriters,” Frey, who passed away at age 67 in 2016, told a journalist in 2003. “It works, it means whatever the listener wants it to mean.” According to Henley in a 1976 inter- view with the Dutch magazine ZigZag , “This is a concept album, there’s no way to hide it. The word ‘California’ carries with it all kinds of connotations, pow- erful imagery, and mystique,” Henley asserted. Henley hinted at the album’s various themes: “Loss of innocence, the cost of naiveté, the perils of fame, of excess; exploration of the dark underbelly of the RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 13