WASTED TIME

So you live from day to day
And you dream about tomorrow

You’re gonna die.  And you never used to think about it.  But, suddenly, your
father passed away.  Maybe suddenly.  And you can see the deterioration in
your mother.  And it starts to dawn on you, you’re not going to be here forever.
 And it’s scary.

Oh, you didn’t used to feel like this.  You used to feel like you controlled
the world, that you ruled, that life was full of opportunities.  Now, you’ve
been battered, you’ve lost, instead of searching for new things you’re
desperately trying to hold on to what you’ve got.  You suddenly feel like there’s more sand in the bottom of the hourglass than the top.  You don’t know whether to
grab hold, and try to make every minute count, or get under the covers and
close your eyes.  And it’s not like there are a lot of answers.  Your kids are
suddenly who you used to be, they don’t want to be home, never mind spend any
time with you.  And your friends…some haven’t woken up yet, they still believe
in the life of accumulation and achievement.  And others…they’ve drifted
off, you’ve lost their phone numbers, for all you know they could be dead.  All
you’re left with, all you can believe in, is your family and the music.

TAKE IT EASY

Well, I’m a standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona
Such a fine sight to see
It’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford
Slowin’ down to take a look at me
Come on baby, don’t say maybe
I gotta know if your sweet love is gonna save me

That’s why we knew the Eagles were different.  This one verse.

This is the kind of verse Clive Davis hates.  It doesn’t play well in Europe,
the rest of the world.  I mean WHERE THE FUCK is Winslow, Arizona?

Actually, we weren’t sure either.  But we could picture it.  Somewhere in the
southwest.  Hot and dusty.  Open country.  Where you had to live by your
wits.  There was a girl, who wasn’t interested in appearances, who wasn’t doing
Pilates, who was just being herself, her long hair flying in the breeze, just
going about her business.

And she wasn’t in a T-Bird, not something exquisite and exotic, but a FLATBED
Ford.  A truck.  Something utilitarian.  THIS was someone you could love. 
And she was meeting you halfway, this wasn’t a big city bar, where you had to
get up your nerve, employ your best line, she wasn’t keeping her distance, she
was curious, she wanted to know YOU!

Now you’ve got to know, "Take It Easy" was a summer song.  Emanating from the
AM radios still populating our cars in June of ’72.  You’d cruise down the
highway with the window down, and when that acoustic guitar strum blew out of
the speakers you felt fully alive, you believed in the POSSIBILITIES!

Still, how good could an act with the name "Eagles" BE?  After all, this
broke on AM, not FM.  But if you took the plunge and purchased the album you
realized this band delivered on the promise that Poco had shown but never
fulfilled.  The music was endearing, catchy, yet deep.  It resonated.

DESPERADO

I was in a hotel lobby in Vancouver, way past midnight, back in May 1993, and
Joe Walsh strode in with Seymour Duncan and sat down at the piano just the
other side of the plush chair I was sitting in.  And he started to tickle the
keys.

There were fewer than half a dozen people there.  Joe had had way too much to
drink.  He was being that kind of obnoxious that made you wonder whether you
shouldn’t give him a pass, even though he was a rock star.  But then, the
noodling stopped.  And with a flourish, Joe started playing the chords to this
song.

Suddenly, it was church quiet.  Despite the alcohol floating through his
system, Joe seemed completely sober.  And he delivered the best version of
"Desperado" I’ve ever heard.

It was strange.  Because not only did Joe not write this song, he wasn’t even
in the band when they recorded it.

Then again, they didn’t really become the Eagles until he joined.  Yes, they
had monster hits, but they didn’t quite have the credibility. "Hotel
California" delivered the credibility.

Actually, their career had not been a constant ascent.  After "Take It Easy"
came…nothing.  The "Desperado" album would be considered a stiff today.  No,
the Eagles weren’t always icons.  Rather, they were struggling.  They were
the band that major labels drop today.  Oh, they would be warned first.  Make
your music MORE COMMERCIAL!  Deliver HITS!  Give us more like "Take It Easy".

But the Eagles never cut anything like "Take It Easy" again.  They were doing
nothing wrong, it’s just that the system hadn’t caught up with them yet.  And
now, years later, when almost everybody in control of that system that didn’t
embrace the band has been squeezed out of the business or retired,
"Desperado" has become an American standard, right there along with "Home On The Range".

Desperado, oh, you ain’t gettin’ no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they’re drivin’ you home
And freedom, oh freedom, well, that’s just some people talkin’
Your prison is walking through this world all alone

I always saw it as a western.  Of the cowboy out on the range.  I didn’t
truly catch it as metaphor until she started talking about her ex.  How this was
his theme song.

Then I realized.  That the baby boomers, who were taught life was one of
endless opportunity, had been so busy trying to get the BEST that in some cases
they’d ended up with nothing.

Oh, it’s not only those who divorce their spouses in search of an elusive
better.  It’s those who never took the plunge.  Who were so busy waiting for
perfection to come down the pike that they ended up emptyhanded.

Oh, you know them.  They’re over forty, they’ve never been married.  They’re
still waiting for their lives to start, even though they’re getting closer and
closer to being over.  They’ve got all the accoutrements, the Rolex, the
plasma, the Porsche.  They just haven’t got somebody.

HOLE IN THE WORLD

There’s a hole in the world tonight
There’s a cloud of fear and sorrow
There’s a hole in the world tonight
Don’t let there be a hole in the world tomorrow

If Jay-Z had rapped in the break, if they’d sampled an old disco hit, "Hole
In The World" would have been a number one record.

But Top Forty radio has got no room for the Eagles.

Top Forty is about evanescence.  It’s kind of like the gas in your car.  It
gets you somewhere, but in the process you use it up, you’re left with nothing.
 And that’s one of the great things about the bands of yore, they and their
music stuck with us.

A pro watching the Eagles special on Wednesday night could see/hear where’d
they’d overdubbed in the studio.  For a band of supposed outlaws, it was hard
to square the sport jackets they wore.  Furthermore, I can’t think of a band of
this stature with less charisma.  No, all that was in evidence was the songs,
and the community.

The Eagles who were who we wanted to be.  Not rock stars.  Rock stars are
uneducated pricks whose image is massaged by handlers.  They do hard drugs,
they live a life of flashbulbs and club openings.  They didn’t even go to our high
school.  But the Eagles…they were us.  Just more talented.  And without
Daddy’s money, without connections, but through sheer effort and ability, they
made it.  They got to sleep with multiple women, they got to live life in the
fast lane.  But they didn’t put us down for not being able to participate,
rather, they told us about it.  And we embraced their words.

Yup, that was a common expression back in the seventies.  That someone was
living life in the fast lane.  It meant they were doing too many drugs, burning
the candle at both ends.  They felt spiritually connected to the Eagles,
however far from their world they really lived.

But it wasn’t only about the excess.  The band spoke about their feelings
too.  Rather than portraying themselves as endless winners, like the so-called
icons on MTV, some of their greatest songs were about loss.

Back in the day, everybody would have known the Eagles were going to be on TV
Wednesday night.  God, a band coming to your town was the biggest event on
the agenda, KLOS gave out stickers at the gigs with the bands’ names, you still
see them on cars now and again.  But today music is just another diversion. 
Just something in the mix, not the main ingredient.

But it used to be different.

Last time I checked, U2’s Lemon tour debut, a one hour special broadcast on
Fox hyping their tour, was the lowest rated show in the history of network
television.  But now, a decade later, the Eagles were just shy of winning their
time slot.  As the show ran, the audience increased by FIFTY PERCENT!

I found out about the special via e-mail.  A diehard fan e-mailed me.  I set
my VCR right away, I didn’t want to forget.

But at the appointed hour I found myself at her house.  And when I walked in,
the television was on and I asked ARE YOU WATCHING THE EAGLES?

When it turned out she wasn’t, we switched the channel.  We fired up the
stereo, to hear the soundtrack just like we used to listen to the simulcast on FM
back in the seventies.  And, at first we were talking, but as the show
progressed, the silent periods were longer and longer.  It wasn’t like seeing Prince
in HD at Dolby Labs, still, we just couldn’t turn it off.

And then, during one of the commercial breaks, the phone rang.  It was her
sister.  She only had one question…ARE YOU WATCHING THIS?