Just a heads up. I like the Eagles (the band, not the football team.) OK, I actually love the Eagles.
But it seems that most of the “cool” people I know don’t. In fact, most of my “cool” friends hate the band, actually. Is it because the Big Lebowski dude told them to? Or does it go deeper than that? Why is Yacht Rock cool, but the Eagles still aren’t? Michael McDonlad gets a welcome hug, but Glenn Frey will get a punch in the face?
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, a person who likes to blast “Take It to the Limit” with the windows down. A person whose top five karaoke songs include “Take it Easy.” So I asked Facebook, and got quite a response. (I also discovered that, for some reason, most people seem to be OK with Joe Walsh.)
“Classic Albums Live” is playing a note-for-note tribute to the Eagles on Friday at Clearwater’s Ruth Eckerd Hall. If you go, wear a mask and expect a temperature check. Tickets are only sold in pairs, and the venue is acting at 50% percent capacity.
And whether you’re headed there or not, check out this Eagles hate thread featuring comments from local curmudgeons below.
Classic Albums Live: The Eagles Greatest Hits. Friday, Feb. 12, 8 p.m. $38.75 & up. Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater. rutheckerdhall.com
“The Eagles are for people who are perfectly happy with everything they've already got: Bud Light, chicken wings, skin cancer, and Rick's On The River.”—LiveWork Studios’ Devon Brady said, within a much longer statement
“They took everything Gram Parsons did before them, and formed it into a sellable commodity for their own gain, basically,”—Matt Slate, guitarist for Tampa emo staple Pohgoh
“The deal-sealer, though, is Glenn Frey. The members of the band were all exceedingly talented musicians, except for Frey. So, of course, he was the boss. He fired members. He berated members… So Glenn could hang back, count his money, and take ‘er easy. Fuck him. And fuck the Eagles,”—Local DJ and host of Saturday Asylym, Scott Imrich
“Fleetwood Mac was always better.”—Tampa’s Queen of Pop Jeremy Gloff
“FAKE AMERICAN BULLSHIT.”—Musician Kaleb Stewart
“ …those boring west coast cokeheads suck…”—Trumpeter Kenny Pullin
“It's tepid honkey music of the highest order.”—Tampa music polymath John Nowicki
“Aside from the money grubbing bitch baby nonsense, they encouraged the hippies and boomers to stop all the civil unrest and ‘Take it Easy.’”—Comedian Matt Carter
“Their music stands for nothing and means nothing, besides unfettered sell-out capitalism,”—Alec Shurtz, who happens to be my husband. (I’ll be making listening to the Eagles before any kind of intimacy a prerequisite from this point on.)
But it seems not all the cool kids think they suck.
“I love the Eagles.”—Luxury Mane’s Billy Summer
“I have no issue with them.”—Microgroove owner Keith Ulrey
“The Eagles rock.”—Matt E. Lee of Poetry N Lotion
And what does Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s senior music contributor and music guru Gabe Echezabal think?
“While I’d be the first to attest of the undeniable talent these guys possessed and compliment the pedigree from which they emerged, they are like wallpaper to me. Maybe nice to look at (or, in this case, to listen to) occasionally, there’s really not a lot that keeps me captivated or wanting to come back.
Maybe it’s because of my brain being jammed with all the hits they had in the ‘70s that received an obscene amount of airplay at the time while seated in the backseat of my mom’s Buick, but I don’t think I’ve ever found myself with the urge to grab an Eagles record to spin and listen to leisurely. On a non-musical level, I think they represent the epitome of the fat cat, bloated, coke-fueled machine that corporate rock became in the ‘70s.
You often hear that punk rock was hatched as a reaction to noodly prog-rockers like Yes and ELP but my money is on the vast separation bands like The Eagles and Crosby, Stills and Nash created between fan and artist. They wore blue jeans and T-shirts like their audience members did, but they always seemed to carry an air of snooty elitism that came from knowing that the limos, the drugs and the groupies they were surrounded by raised them above the classes of those who bought their concert tickets.
Good songs, pristine harmonies and impressive musical chops, but nothing they ever recorded has ever moved me or my heartbeat as frantically as a Clash song does.”
Ouch.
See a list of Tampa Bay’s “Safe & Sound” live music venues here.
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This article appears in Feb 11-17, 2021.