Saturday, December 11, 1976

Steve Miller Band “Fly Like an Eagle” charted

Fly Like an Eagle

Steve Miller Band

Writer(s): Steve Miller (see lyrics here)


Released: August 13, 1976


First Charted: December 11, 1976


Peak: 2 BB, 3 CB, 5 GR, 5 HR, 4 RR, 38 AC, 1 CL, 2 CN, 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.)


Sales (in millions): 1.0 US


Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 14.8 video, 146.05 streaming

Awards (Steve Miller Band):

Click on award for more details.


Awards (Seal):

About the Song:

The Steve Miller Band was formed by its namesake I 1966 in San Francisco. They appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967 and released their first album, Children of the Future, in 1968. Their real breakthrough, however, came in 1973 with The Joker, which reached #2 on the album chart and went platinum. It sparked the #1 tile cut which went five times platinum.

It set them up for the even more successful Fly Like an Eagle in 1976. It reached #3 and sold four million copies. Lead single “Take the Money and Run” hit #11 and “Rock ‘N’ Me” topped the charts. The album, however, is “dominated by its title track, all bubbling synths and breathy boys, while everything percolates furiously beneath.” DT “Fly Like an Eagle” just missed out on the top spot, peaking at #2, but was the album’s only gold single.

Miller said, “Originally, I wrote the lyrics as a political statement. The words were from the perspective of Native Americans and the despair they felt, especially after the Wounded Knee standoff with law enforcement earlier that year.” MM He continued, saying, “As I sang the song on the road, I came up with new lyrics and kept the ones I like best. At some point on tour, I broadened the lyrics’ focus, replacing ‘reservation’ with ‘revolution.’ I wanted to make the song’s message more universal.” MM

When it came time to record the song, he lifted some of the guitar work from his own song “My Dark Hour.” He still thought “it needed more dimension and texture” MM so he picked up a cheap synthesizer. He created effects “that felt like an eagle taking off and flying.” MM He later “added the spacey overdubs…[and] the song sounded just right.” MM On the album, the minute-long instrumental is listed as a separate song, “Space Intro.” The two are often played together on the radio. SF

In 1996, Seal covered the song for the movie Space Jam and reached #10 on the Billboard Hot 100.


Resources:


Related Links:


First posted 10/2/2023.

Wednesday, December 8, 1976

The Eagles released Hotel California

Hotel California

Eagles


Released: December 8, 1976


Charted: December 25, 1976


Peak: 18 US, 2 UK, 14 CN, 112 AU, 18 DF


Sales (in millions): 26.0 US, 1.8 UK, 32.33 world (includes US and UK)


Genre: classic rock


Tracks:

(Click for codes to charts.)
  1. Hotel California (Don Henley/Glenn Frey/Don Felder) [6:30] (2/18/77, 1 BB, 1 CB, 1 GR, 1 HR, 1 RR, 10 AC, 1 CL, 8 UK, 1 CN, 60 AU, 1 DF)
  2. New Kid in Town (Don Henley/Glenn Frey/J.D. Souther) [5:04] (12/11/76, 1 BB, 2 CB, 2 GR, 3 HR, 1 RR, 2 AC, 43 CW, 1 CL, 20 UK, 1 CN, 16 AU, 7 DF)
  3. Life in the Fast Lane (Don Henley/Glenn Frey/Joe Walsh) [4:46] (4/15/77, 11 BB, 11 CB, 7 GR, 16 HR, 7 RR, 1 CL, 12 CN, 96 AU, 5 DF)
  4. Wasted Time (Don Henley/Glenn Frey) [4:55] (20 CL, 16 DF)
  5. Wasted Time (Reprise) (Don Henley/Glenn Frey/Jim Ed Norman) [1:22] (35 DF)
  6. Victim of Love (Don Henley/Glenn Frey/Don Felder/J.D. Souther) [4:11] (6 CL, 28 DF)
  7. Pretty Maids All in a Row (Joe Walsh/Joe Vitale) [4:05] (47 CL, 24 DF)
  8. Try and Love Again (Randy Meisner) [5:10] (47 CL, 28 DF)
  9. The Last Resort (Don Henley/Glenn Frey) [7:25] (11 CL, 3 DF)


Total Running Time: 43:28


The Players:

  • Don Henley (vocals, drums, percussion)
  • Glenn Frey (vocals, guitars, keyboards)
  • Don Felder (guitar, backing vocals)
  • Randy Meisner (bass, vocals)
  • Joe Walsh (guitar, keyboards, vocals)

Rating:

4.344 out of 5.00 (average of 23 ratings)


Quotable:Hotel California unveiled…a band…that made music worthy of the later tag of ‘classic rock’” – William Ruhlmann, AllMusic.com


Awards:

(Click on award to learn more).

Eagles 2.0

The 1976 version of the Eagles was far different than the group from just five years earlier. The band formed in 1971 with singer/guitarist Glenn Frey, singer/drummer Don Henley, guitarist/singer Bernie Leadon, and bassist/singer Randy Meisner. The four had served as backup singers for Linda Ronstadt and were experienced session musicians. TB They were “cosmic cowboys” CM who epitomized the country-rock sound, but “couldn’t rock convincingly.” AM

However, Frey and Henley “were cowboys only as much as Brian Wilson was a surfer. Quite at home in Los Angeles, they hung with literate songwriters like Jackson Browne and tapped into the zeitgeist of the time which was, one way or another, decadence. Frey and Henley had an ear for hooks and they had built the Eagles into one of the biggest bands in America.” C Still, they “never seemed to get a sound big enough for their ambitions.” AM

They’d also “pretty much exhausted the cactus-and-tequila iconography of country rock as practiced by the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers.” TM Leadon, “who had given the band much of its country flavor,” AM left the group in December 1975. “Normally personnel changes for bands of this stature ar cataclysmic.” TM However, the pairing of new arrival Joe Walsh, “whose banshee wail and theatrical solos sparked the James Gang and such solo singles as ‘Rocky Mountain Way,’” TM with guitarist Don Felder [who’d come on board in 1974] gave the band more “arena-rock heft.” AM

“The Eagles maintained their trademark vocal-harmony style, but where some of the group’s earlier work tended toward a pastoral, folksy feel, they now” TB had a “pronounced rock swagger.” TM

In the Studio

The Eagles entered the studio in March 1976. They recorded at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida, as well as the Record Plant in Los Angeles.” TB They had “very little material prepared and watched the studio hours tick by as they struggled to come up with the musi, arrangement, and lyrics. It was a torturously long process with Don Henley and Glenn Frey acting as dicators over the ensemble.” CRS

The group “were notoriously perfectionist in the studio” CM and, in the interest of making “a big statement…would not rush anything.” CM They “were none to nitpick over every detail in a song, sometimes spending days getting a chorus just right.” CRS With occasional diversions into touring, they managed to drag the recording process out until October.

With “changes in producer and personnel, as well as a noticeable growth in creativity, Hotel California unveiled what seemed almost like a whole new band.” AM “In the eighteen months between the release of their 1975 album One of These Nights and Hotel California in 1976, they made “a stylistic shift toward mainstream rock.” AM Henley and Frey got “in touch with a rock-star audacity they’d been missing.” TM This newer version of the Eagles “could be bombastic, but also one that made music worthy of the later tag of ‘classic rock,’ music appropriate for the arenas and stadiums the band was playing.” AM

Themes

Don Henley said, “It didn’t start out to be a concept album, but it became one after all.” CM His songs use “California as a metaphor for a dark, surreal world of dissipation; comments on the ephemeral nature of success and the attraction of excess; branches out into romantic disappointment; and finally sketches a broad, pessimistic history of America that borders on nihilism.” AM In simpler terms, Frey said, “We think that this album represents the whole world, not just California, as something elegant which has been corrupted.” CM

“No record captured the spiritual decline of America better.” CM Ironically, the band’s statement on corruption and greed came to be a critique of the Eagles themselves. CM

A Commercial Juggernaut

The Eagles had been a consistent platinum-selling band through their first four albums with 1975’s One of These Nights reaching an enviable four million in sales in the U.S. Hotel California, however, became a monster, selling over 26 million copies in the United States – more than their first four albums combined. With estimates of worldwide sales between 32 and 42 million, the album also ranks as one of the twenty best-sellers of all time.

The Songs

Here’s insights into individual songs on the album.

“New Kid in Town”
Perhaps nervous about abandoning their country-rock audience, the first single, “the gently-sung ballad” TM New Kid in Town, was rooted in their old sound. It featured Glenn Frey, who’d also taken the lead on classic country-leaning Eagles songs “Take It Easy,” “Peaceful, Easy Feeling,” “Tequila Sunrise,” and “Lyin’ Eyes.” Fans embraced it, sending it all the way to #1. It was their third trip to the top, following the Don Henley-led “Best of My Love” and “One of These Nights.” The real test, however, would be how fans reacted to the rest of the album.

“Hotel California”
The title cut was more representative of the Eagles’ new, more classic-rock-oriented sound – and a shift toward Henley as “the band’s dominant voice, both as a singer and a lyricist.” AM He wrote or- co-wrote seven of the songs on the album. Still, Felder and Walsh also “perform an amazing guitar duet, establishing the Eagles’ rock foundation.” RV Hotel California was “a sprawling epic” TL became a staple at classic rock and “may be the group’s finest work.” RV

The song “framed Hollywood…in terms so impressively vague they seemed mythic.” BL Henley said, “I meant it to be a symbolic piece about America in general, which is a land of excess. Lyrically the song deals with classical themes of conflict: darkness and light, good and evil, youth and age, the spiritual versus the secular. I guess you could say it’s a song about loss of innocence.” CM

The song had “Satanic undertones that might have been subconsciously cribbed from Jethro Tull’s ‘We Used to Know’ when the bands toured together. As for the warm smell of colitas, fans are split on whether the word is Spanish slang for cannabis buds or an easy lay. Given the band and the era, the safest guess is both.” TL

“Life in the Fast Lane”
Nowhere is that stylistic shift of the album more apparent than on Life in the Fast Lane, “the album’s super-energized rock moment” TM which “drew a line between the band’s country-tinged past and rock and roll future.” TL The song “captured coke culture in a catchphrase.” BL It offered “the perspective of a brutal morning after…and celebrity excess.” TM The title was suggested to Frey as he and a coke dealer were zipping down the highway. CM

“Wasted Time” and “The Last Resort”
“If the title track defines the album, Wasted Time, The Last Resort, and ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ reinforce it.” CM The first two showcase Henley’s balladry at its best; “The Last Resort” may be the Eagles’ most overlooked epic.

“Victim of Love” and “Try and Love Again” and “Pretty Maids All in a Row”
The album also included “the retro Victim of LoveTM and Try and Love Again, “a plaintive country-rock ode that’s the album’s often-neglected masterstroke.” TM That was also Meisner’s only contribution to the album, both as lyricist and singer. Joe Walsh, meanwhile, contributed Pretty Maids All in a Row, an unexpected foray into balladry.


Notes

A 40th anniversary edition of the album included a live disc recorded at the L.A. Forum between October 20-22, 1976.

Review Sources:


Other Related DMDB Pages:


First posted 3/11/2008; last updated 8/11/2024.

Saturday, November 27, 1976

Sex Pistols chart with “Anarchy in the U.K.”

Anarchy in the U.K.

The Sex Pistols

Writer(s): Paul Cook, Steve Jones, John Lydon, Glen Matlock (see lyrics here)


Released: November 26, 1976


First Charted: November 27, 1976


Peak: 33 UK, 1 CL, 1 CO, 5 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.)


Sales (in millions): -- US, 0.2 UK


Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 27.04 video, 82.03 streaming

Awards:

Click on award for more details.

About the Song:

During the mid-‘70s, a stagnant economy, labor strikes, and the “perpetually drizzly weather that has always afflicted the country” TB contributed to general dissatisfaction amongst British youth and “things seemed to assume a permanent greyness.” TB The Sex Pistols “contempt for their dreary culture and moribund music scene” TB put them at the forefront of the British punk scene.

Then band had generated buzz with their live shows and “the groundswell that was clearly building..for snotty, amateurish rock bands.” TC EMI signed the band and their first single, “Anarchy in the U.K.,” as released in late 1976. It is “what the beginning of a revolution sounds like.” RS500 Its “wit and anger make it the great political protest song of our times.” MC It certainly generated controversy – British radio banned it and EMI “pulled the single and dropped the band, which just made them more notorious. ‘I don’t understand it,’ Rotten said in 1977. ‘All we’re trying to do is destroy everything.’” RS500

The Sex Pistols “were not only sincere in their desire to make rock that smashed rock, but…they were absolutely equal to the task.” MA They “essentially…reinforced what the garage bands of the ‘60s had demonstrated – you don’t need technique to make rock & roll.” TC

Actually, though, while “Anarchy” certainly displayed combative lyrics by opening with “I am an anti-Christ” and ending with “Destroy!” it was otherwise “comparatively familiar, highly competent hard-rock.” TB Steve “Jones made his guitar sound like a pub brawl, while [Johnny] Rotten snarled, spat, [and] snickered” RS500 with an “evil cackle.” RS500 This is a band, which despite its reputation for not being able to play, “understood perfectly how to make rock and roll effects in the recording studio.” MA


Resources:

  • TC Toby Creswell (2005). 1001 Songs: The Great Songs of All Time. Thunder’s Mouth Press: New York, NY. Page 735.
  • MA Dave Marsh (1989). The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made. New York, NY; New American Library. Pages 72-3.
  • MC Neil McCormack (3/13/09). Telegraph.co.uk “100 Greatest Songs of All Time
  • RS500 Rolling Stone (4/7/2011). “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
  • TB Thunder Bay Press (2006). Singles: Six Decades of Hot Hits & Classic Cuts. Outline Press Ltd.: San Diego, CA. Page 165.
  • WK Wikipedia
  • PW Paul Williams (1993). Rock and Roll: The Best 100 Singles. New York, NY: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc. Page 168.


Related Links:


First posted 4/9/2020; last updated 10/2/2022.