"When We Get off the Stage, I'm Gonna Kick Your Ass"

Topics covered: Glenn Frey's temper, Don Henley's ego, Don Felder, rock docs, etc.

I cannot tell you how absolutely delighted I was when Jesse Hawken asked me to discuss the bloated, 4-hour Showtime documentary, History of the Eagles (2013), on his podcast, Junk Filter.

Admittedly, everyone in the band, past and present, is an undeniably talented musician and “One of These Nights” is a total jam, but as a whole, I never felt particularly captivated by this band’s music. Yet I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this 4-hour opus since watching it for the first time a few months ago as it documents a specific kind of toxic boomer masculinity. Plus, watching band members fight is never going to stop being funny to me. Neither is watching thin-skinned documentary subjects who lack self-awareness sit down for probing interviews. It’s probably for the best that this band never sought group therapy like Metallica cause that sounds like it would unleash a whole Lament Configuration of buried, metastasizing resentments.

I dare you to listen to Glenn Frey (RIP) and Don Felder threaten to kick each other’s asses in between songs at the infamous 1980 concert preceding the Eagles breakup and not crack the hell up.

It also kind of crystallizes my misgivings about the band as Frey was upset with Felder for embarrassing him in front of Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA). Can you think of a less rock n’ roll reason for a band to implode than one of them making a mildly rude quip to someone who held institutional power?

While conceding that Frey, Henley, et. al. were/are great songwriters, there is something keeping me from fully connecting with the Eagles’s catalog. I struggled to articulate why that is on the Junk Filter pod, but Tom Scharpling hit on it in an interview with The Ringer:

“I think they knew the rap on them the whole time is that they’re these pretty boys who are trading in the mythologies of country music and Americana or whatever you want to call it, but they’re just not legit,” he says. “That crushing insecurity is why they’re dicks.”

An authenticity gap plagued the Eagles from the outset. The legendary Gram Parsons, whose sound the band slavishly aped, called them “bubblegum” in an interview shortly before his tragic death in 1973.

“They’re not actual country music people! They’re not cowboys,” Scharpling says. “They were just kinda handsome guys who saw an opportunity to smash a couple genres together with an eye toward the charts. The Eagles could confidently play with their shirts off. They were the shirtless Byrds!”

The shirtless Byrds!

Anyhoo, here’s the podcast if you’d like to listen:

It’s my second appearance. My first time centered upon Steven Seagal’s homage to On the Waterfront, Out for Justice, another film starring a thin-skinned man with a certain bespoke toxic masculinity.

Till next time,

xoxo,

Maggie