By the summer of 1976, when the Eagles were making their Hotel California album, they were already so far over the rainbow they were shitting pots of gold. When co-founding member and country music missionary Bernie Leadon stormed off, taking his banjo with him after yet another clash over the band’s “direction”, the Eagles stopped masquerading as wholesome weed-and-wine minstrels from Laurel Canyon. They were now playing what singer/guitarist Glenn Frey called “satanic country rock”.
Frey, a James Dean-worshipping Motown devotee from Detroit, had arrived in LA in 1969 playing Chuck Berry covers. For Frey, as with his co-songwriting compadre Don Henley, a lantern-jawed Texan not much taken with fucking around, the country thing was merely a ticket to ride; just what happened to be happening where the Eagles hatched. If they had formed in London instead of LA, they would have been a glam-rock band, no beards or double denim allowed.
