Pop CultureMarch 23, 2017

The Eagles: Hating them doesn’t make you cool, it’s just a waste of time

Madeleine Chapman

Editor

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Don Henley, drummer/singer/songwriter of the Eagles, one of the most loved and loathed bands ever, plays in Auckland on Thursday. So, it must be asked, are the Eagles good or are they bad? Madeleine Chapman argues the former.

There are very few things in life that make me genuinely mad. But the look of pure condescension and pity that white men over 30 give me whenever I say I like the Eagles is one of them. It’s a look that says, Oh she just doesn’t get it. One day when she’s older and wiser, she’ll understand. There’s a feeling of smugness that inhabits all those who openly hate the Eagles. As if in the case of this one band, opinions are invalid and it’s simply a matter of being right or wrong. It’s right to despise the Eagles. It’s wrong, and frankly embarrassing, to think anything else.

“Look, we all know the Eagles are objectively bad.”

My boss Dr. Duncan Greive, Professor of Bad Music, uttered this profoundly incorrect statement at last week’s editorial meeting. I’d just said that I’d be writing a defense of the Eagles in response to a take-down submission we received [which can be read here – Ed]. Everyone either laughed or groaned as if I said I’d be writing about the benefits of lead paint on kids toys. What a burden for all of them to be associated with someone who enjoys listening to the Eagles occasionally.

Objectively bad is not a thing that exists in almost any creative arena. Objectively good is also hard to pin down. It’s all a matter of opinion. My opinion is that the Eagles have great harmonies and songs that I like. Another of my opinions is that Bruno Mars writes bad lyrics and therefore I don’t like his music. My opinion isn’t better than anyone else’s. But, apparently everyone else’s opinion that the Eagles suck is better than mine.

And before you say that even The Dude from The Big Lebowski hated the Eagles, I already know and I love him for it. Because he said, “I hate the fucken Eagles, man”. He did not say “I hate the fucken Eagles, man, and so should you.” There’s a big difference.

My colleague Simon Wilson, a Man of the Arts, just told me that he and many men his age feel as though the Eagles ruined their childhood. Well, Simon, I will gladly look you in the eye (via this story) and say that if the Eagles were able to ruin your childhood I genuinely don’t know how you’ve managed to stay alive another 50 years.

Sometimes the world just decides to hate someone. There’s no meeting or group chat, it just happens. More often than not, this person hasn’t done anything horrifically bad, at least not in the grand scheme of things, but that’s not the point. It becomes cool to hate these people. Woke, even.

Currently, this group consists of Taylor Swift, Lena Dunham, Amy Schumer, the entire cast and crew of La La Land, and Anne Hathaway. Recent history has seen Sally Field, Creed, and Kid Rock all baptised into this holy order before time gracefully phased them out and into oblivion. The Eagles have managed to remain as leaders of this group for forty years.

Which leads me to believe that half of the people who claim to hate the Eagles today just say so because their too-cool-for-soft-rock-I-only-listened-to-David-Bowie parents hated the Eagles. It’s the same as when a young rugby fan from Wellington hates the Crusaders because that’s who he’s supposed to hate. Or the whole of New Zealand deciding that hating Quade Cooper should still be a thing. There’s no logic besides if even my lame Dad hates them, they must be bad. And that would be totally fine if people weren’t so proud of their hate.

The enduring distaste for a middle-of-the-road band from the ’70s is indicative of the personality-by-hate phenomenon that has stormed in hand in hand with social media. A Twitter timeline is a curated feed of opinions and thoughts that you agree with. Somebody should be able to scroll through your timeline and figure out what you love and what you don’t love based on your tweets and retweets. But I scroll through people’s timelines and all I see is everything they hate. What you hate has become a way to present yourself to the world.

Hi, my name is Mary and I hate loud eaters, coriander, and white people.

But Mary, what do you love?

Some things are good to hate. Hating inequality sometimes leads to activism and change. Hate can be productive. But such strong negativity towards something so trivial as a band or a movie? It’s not cool or woke, it’s a waste of time and energy.

When founding Eagles member Glenn Frey passed away last year, the NY Daily News published an article with the headline “Glenn Frey’s death is sad, but the Eagles were a horrific band.” Nobody deserves that headline.

I love the Eagles because my older brother used to play their albums when I was growing up and we’d all sing along. I love the Eagles because I can’t sing well but listening to their five-part harmonies really makes me wish I could. I love the Eagles because they still sounded good in their sixties when I flew to Melbourne to see them in concert as a 15-year-old. I love the Eagles because who cares, they sing nice songs with no swearing that I can enjoy with my mum. I don’t need to defend my love of the Eagles, as much as people feel the need to attack it. But I do wonder what people get out of spitting hate at them. How about suggesting a band that you do like instead? Define yourself by the things and people you love, not those you hate. Or something deep like that.

You can choose to never listen to the Eagles again. You can truly believe they were terrible people making boring music in a decade filled with ‘real’ rockers. Whenever you see me in person you can tell me, in great detail, why the Eagles are the worst band in history and why I’m an idiot for enjoying their music. But don’t you have anything better to do with your time?

Read Greg Pritchard’s provocation here.

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Pop CultureMarch 23, 2017

The Eagles: The third worst band ever

Greg Pritchard

Guest writer

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Don Henley, drummer/singer/songwriter of the Eagles, one of the most loved and loathed bands ever, plays in Auckland on Thursday. So, it must be asked, are the Eagles good or are they bad? Greg Pritchard argues the latter.

These days, a lot of energy is devoted to how Baby Boomers are the worst generation ever. It’s not a hard argument to make. They’ve shagged the environment, hijacked the property market, and claim that most of the health and education advantages they were given are now too expensive for subsequent generations to have.

These are all valid points. But I think the Boomer sin most often overlooked is that awful bands from the ’60s and ’70s can keep coming back and touring with the same musical meconium after 40 or 50 years and filling venues at $200 a ticket. So here we are in March 2017 and Don Henley, hopefully the last surviving member of the Eagles, is coming to our shores again.

I approve of fleecing people with more money than brains. So, in that sense, I approve of this tour, but he’s then taking that money overseas, so I feel it’s my patriotic duty to publicly state what many are afraid to say – the Eagles are the third worst band of all time. Of course, when it comes to music there is no right and wrong, only feelings and impulses, but seeing as Dan Harmon and the Eagles’ main impulse seems to be cashing in, I figure they’re fair game.

When I say that the Eagles are the third worst band of all time, people think I’m joking. But I’m pretty sure I’m right. The worst, of course, is Coldplay. Second, you can decide for yourself, but I’d say it’d be either Chris Brown or the Bee Gees. And that leaves the Eagles, whose music is distinctly vapid, forgettable and utterly without conviction.

The best music either opens up a new world to you or opens you up to the world. In 2016, we lost artists such as David Bowie, Prince, and George Michael. These were guys who spent their careers pushing and stretching the fabric of society and musicianship. Leonard Cohen too. Lemmy, Maurice White, Merle Haggard. These are people who really lived and breathed and fought for music that made people want to dance and cry, fight and fuck. Glen Frey from the Eagles died last year too, and I’m sure that was a sad thing for his friends and family, but you’d hard-pressed to make the argument that this news moved anyone else.

The Eagles, with Tim Henman on drums, started out as the backing band for Linda Ronstadt in 1971. I think that’s a pretty good level for them. They basically put out a handful of records, two of which were compilations, and have somehow sold over 150 million records. Numbers like that suggest that maybe these guys are actually good songwriters, but that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that this group of mustachioed millionaires, the way they chose to record and tour and generally hang around like cultural crop dusting, are among the worst of all time.

The early-’70s was an important time for popular music. Recording technology was making great advances and musicians were making albums that embraced those opportunities and we got albums like What’s Goin’ On from Marvin Gaye, Dark Side of the Moon from Pink Floyd, and Alladin Sane from David Bowie. This is the era where all the Eagles’ hits came from, probably. I’m not actually sure because if I look it up I might fall into a coma. While Gaye and Bowie and Floyd were re-imagining the medium, Jim Henson and the Eagles had figured out a way to make an audio recording of an all-beige painting of a yawn.

I’m sure that if I were to look it up, I’d be shocked and dismayed at just how many hit singles they’ve had. As I sit here, though, I try to think of these songs and how they go and it’s just bland soup. The only one I can accurately remember is ‘Hotel California’ and I’ll make this my main example. I know ‘Hotel California’ because it was that song, covered by the Gypsy Kings and popularised in The Big Lebowski, that led me down this path. Listening to Gypsy Kings cover I realised that the Eagles lacked the soul and fire that makes music great. The Gypsy Kings give that song a passion and even a geographic grounding it was lacking. Most of the Eagles’ and Jim Hicky’s songs, if covered by someone who actually cared, could be just as great.

And that’s the problem with the Eagles. They’ve spent 40 years within reach of having an impact and just decided not to. They seem happy to just cash in on those songs they wrote way back then, pull out into the middle of the road and just ride that peaceful easy feeling off into the sunset. I’m sure there are many fine people who have many fine reasons for loving the Eagles, and they’re entirely welcome to that because there is nothing more subjective than music. Listen back through their hits, as much as you can before passing out – listen to the drifty lyrics with their faux-spiritualism, convenient harmonies and lazy guitar riffs, and you’ll hear what I do – the third worst band of all time.

Read Madeline Chapman’s retort here.

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