Life in the Fast Lane

June 15, 2023
A veteran British rock journalist takes creative flight in a book about an all-American band. In the acknowledgments, Wall, the author of When Giants Walked the Earth and other music bios, doesn't thank the members of the Eagles or anyone in their orbits. Instead, he leans heavily on those who have written about the Eagles before, along with a "distillation" of his own "archive of interviews not just with members of the Eagles but with hundreds of other significant figures from the same period." Much of the material feels secondhand and sometimes stale, and the narrative is often scattershot. However, it's also entertaining and often edgy. At the very least, Wall captures the spirit of that era's "fast lane" in a manner reminiscent of a highly caffeinated Tom Wolfe, treating the band in the manner that Wolfe did Phil Spector or the Merry Pranksters. In one early scene, Wall takes us to the Troubadour in LA, where you go "to get drunk, get loaded, and get laid." There, he introduces us to "Linda Ronstadt--the cute cut-off denim shorts and sweet brown doll's eyes, the Troubadour girl with the sunny small-town smile and the voice of a cactus mountain goddess, the super-groovy chick that all the would-be groovy guys want the most." There's still more to that sentence, about how Ronstadt (apparently) says, "there are two sets of Troubadour regulars, 'the musician pool and the sex pool.' " As an exercise in style, the text provides most of the substance of the band's stories, including the shifts in balances of power, management issues, and the passage of time that left leaders Glenn Frey and Don Henley at loggerheads. Then they vowed that they would never engage in a cash-grab reunion--until they did, with a "farewell" that has now lasted decades longer than the band's original "long run." A serviceable rock bio in which nobody, including the author, takes it easy.

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June 16, 2023

Wall (Like a Bat Out of Hell) plows through the familiar story of the slow rise, the drug-fueled triumph, and the inevitable decline in this book about the Eagles. Beginning with the germination of soft country rock, the book describes how core Eagles members guitarist Glenn Frey and drummer/vocalist Don Henley bonded when they played in in Linda Ronstadt's band in 1971. The Eagles' first, self-named album in 1972 produced three hit singles. After the less commercially successful Desperado in 1973, the band became rock-oriented with the addition of guitarists Don Felder and Joe Walsh. The group won Grammy Awards for "Hotel California," "Lyin' Eyes," "New Kid in Town," "How Long," "I Dreamed There Was No War," and "Heartache Tonight." After six albums, they disbanded in 1980. The book rushes through the next four decades of sporadic reunions and one album of new material in the book's final chapters. Writing in an off-the-cuff style, Wall adds little to the already substantial material published about the Eagles, notably Marc Eliot's To the Limit and Don Felder's Heaven and Hell. VERDICT Die-hard Eagles fans won't find much new, but readers curious about the band may still want to read it.--Dr. Dave Szatmary

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