Here comes my baby
Singing like a nightingale
Coming my way down along that devastation trail
Well tell the lord above
She’s got a brand of love
That cannot fail

Somewhere along the line Clive Davis convinced everybody it was a hit business.  Make no mistake, it’s an ALBUM business.  And that’s why the business has tanked.  Chasing the septuagenarian every other exec in the business lost focus.  Pledged allegiance to Mr. Arista as opposed to Mr. Warner Brothers, Mo Ostin.  Mo fought Morgado.  In the Doug Morris battle.  HE knew that career artists beat flashes in the pan every day of the week.  But the ignorant Morgado was dazzled by the flash.  Of single chart numbers.  Of rolling revenue throughout the year.  Whereas when Mo released his superstar records in the fourth quarter he eclipsed the year-long Atlantic numbers.  Mo had a secret weapon.  FANS!  Who believed in the acts that Mo and his team signed and developed.  While Doug Morris was constantly trying to reinvent the wheel, Mo Ostin was selling those who purchased the original automobile ACCESSORIES!  Mo was a BMW dealer.  Servicing customers along the way with greatness so that when they were in the market for something new they’d shop at HIS store.  Knowing that he was interested in quality, the consumer experience.  Nobody in the mainstream business is interested in the consumer experience today.  As a matter of fact, the execs HATE the consumer.  For not buying their lame goods, for stealing what they want.  They’re so pissed, they’re SUING their lifeblood.  Don’t we call this biting the hand that feeds you?

The Eagles didn’t go gonzo, didn’t truly blow up, until the fourth album.  "One Of These Nights" was ubiquitous on FM radio during the summer of ’75.  The pump was primed for the eventual release of "Hotel California the following year.

Somehow the band’s career has been divided into the country-influenced tunes before ’76 and the rock that came thereafter.  But not every track on those first four albums was "Peaceful Easy Feeling".  There was a broad range of COUNTRY ROCK!  That we bought and loved.

I’ll admit it, I got hooked on "Take It Easy".  THAT’S what got me to buy the debut.  But that’s not what made me a fan.  What made me a fan was "Witchy Woman", "Earlybird", "Tryin’" and "Nightingale".  Songs that are never played on classic rock radio.  Songs that don’t even exist in the eyes of the business.  But they’re godhead in the eyes of the consumer.

Last week Mike Marrone played "Too Many Hands".

I bought the second Eagles album because of the first.  And the third because I had an investment.  I didn’t love the third at the time, but "My Man" got me to buy the fourth.  I played that record EVERY DAY!  I know every track on that album, along with the skips and surface noise.  That’s what being a fan is, that’s what having an investment in a band is like.  To hear "Too Many Hands" was to bring me back and unite me with the deejay at the same time.  That strange FM alchemy which now only exists on XM.

And when I heard "Nightingale" this afternoon, I about plotzed.  Made me want to go home and play the whole damn debut.  It brought me right back to ’72.

Oh, "Nightingale" doesn’t grab you at first.  It takes off like a shot.  It’s like you’re on a galloping horse, or a chugging freight train.  But then it hits this CHANGE!  The one delineated above.  The whole song slows down and bends.  You wait for it.  After the second verse.  I’m driving down Western, trying to remember why I love this song so much, and when a young Don Henley started singing about his baby, oh, my body started to twist, I remembered why I was a fan of not only the Eagles, but music.

Clive Davis would say the hook doesn’t come soon enough.  He’d bring in Diane Warren to punch the song up.  Make it sound like everything else on the radio.  But what’s great about "Nightingale" is it sounds like NOTHING ELSE!  It sounds like the four guys in this band.  A bunch of renegades.  The coolest dudes in the pack.  Who the girls want to fuck and the guys want to hang out with.  They were individuals, doing what they wanted.  As opposed to the automatons bent to the will of the man.

Genius comes from within.  You can’t understand it if you’re not a creator.  The best you can do is RECOGNIZE IT!

We, the audience, we recognized the genius of the Eagles.  I would never tell Don Henley how to write a song.  God, maybe he even has to write stinkers to get to the GREAT STUFF!  That’s the mystery of the process.

This business is all fucked up.  It’s lost sight of what it was based upon.  It’s become about marketing.  Whoring out crap to movies and commercials.  About the revenue, not the music.  Find a great talent.  Lock it up for a couple of months with a talented producer and flog the result.  If you believe, the people will believe.  Not every time, but more than now.