Eagles are an American rock music group which was originally formed in Los Angeles, California during the early 1970s.
Their music was a mixture of country and bluegrass instrumentation embedded in accord with the California surfer rock,
producing gentle tender ballads and soft top-down country-flavored pop-rock about relationships, cars, and the rootless life.
The original band included singer/songwriters Jack son Browne, J. D. Souther, and Warren Zevon. The bands early compositions
were similar to the southern California country rock. But in the later albums the Eagles generated bluegrass instrumentation
blended with straight-ahead rock sound. None of the band founders were born in California. Guitarist/keyboardist Glenn Frey
was born on November 6, 1948 in Detroit, Michigan. Drummer Don Henley was born on July 22, 1947 in Gilmer, Texas and he
majored in English literature. Guitarist/mandolinist/banjo player Bernie Leadon was born July 19, 1947, in Minneapolis,
Minnesota and had great interest for country and bluegrass music. Bassist Randy Meisner was born on March 8, 1946 in
Scottsbluff, Nebraska and was a car and cycle buff. But he always spent his free time with family and playing bass in a rock
and roll band. After the formation of Eagles in 1971, the band came out with their first album “Eagles”, consisting pure
country rock.
The band formed in 1971 when Linda Ronstadt's then-manager, John Boylan, extracted Frey, Leadon, and Meisner from their
affiliations. They were short a drummer until Frey phoned Henley, a musician he'd met at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. The
Eagles backed up Ronstadt on a two-month tour, then decided to become a band on their own. Their first album, Eagles, was
filled with pure, sometimes innocent country rock; their second, Desperado, was themed on Old West outlaws and introduced the
group's penchant for conceptual songwriting.
To record their third album, On the Border, the group selected producer Glyn Johns, who had previously worked with Led
Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and The Who. The band wanted to rock, but Johns tended to extract the lush side of the band's
double-edged music. After completing two thirds of the album with Johns, the band turned to Bill Szymczyk to produce the rest
of the album. Szymczyk brought in Don Felder (born September 21, 1948 in Topanga, California) to add slide guitar to a song
called "Good Day in Hell", and the band was blown away. Two days later, Felder became the fifth Eagle. On the Border yielded
a #1 Billboard single in the song "Best of My Love", which hit the top on March 1, 1975.
Their next album, One of These Nights, had an aggressive, sinewy rock stance. Between the album and the subsequent tour,
Bernie Leadon left the group because he was disillusioned about the direction the band's music was taking. The group replaced
Leadon with Joe Walsh (born November 20, 1947), a veteran of such groups as the James Gang and Barnstorm and a solo artist in
his own right. The addition of Walsh made the group's aim perfectly clear: they wanted to rock. The title track from One of
These Nights hit #1 on the Billboard chart August 2, 1975. By this time, the personalities inside the band would start
clashing with each other, and there were plenty of inter-band fights.
After a brief hiatus and further lineup changes (the replacement of Meisner with Timothy B. Schmidt), the Eagles released
The Long Run in 1979, a solid success featuring the chart-topping single "Heartache Tonight."
Following ''The Long Run'' tour, in 1980, the band broke up, and all of the members had solo careers of varying degrees of
success.
During the early 1990s, an Eagles country tribute album ''Common Thread'' was released. Travis Tritt insisted on having
the ''Long Run''-era Eagles in his video for "Take It Easy."
After the "Take It Easy" video was completed in 1994 the band reunited, after years of public speculation that it would.
The personnel was the five ''Long Run'' era members, supplemented by additional players on stage. The ensuing tour spawned a
live album entitled ''Hell Freezes Over'' (named for Henley's statement that the group would get back together only when hell
froze over), and a single, "Get Over It".
Controversy followed on September 12, 1996 when the band dedicated "Peaceful Easy Feeling" to Saddam Hussein at a United
States Democratic Party fundraiser held in Los Angeles.
In 1998, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. During the induction ceremony, all seven former
members played together on stage. Several subsequent reunion tours would follow, notable for their record-setting ticket
prices.
The Eagles were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2001.
In February 2001, Don Felder was fired from the group; Felder and the Eagles filed lawsuits against each other. In 2003
the Eagles released a new single, the September 11th-themed "Hole in the World". In the same year, The Eagles were again in
the news when their total album sales hit a whopping 83.5 million - making them the third biggest selling band of all time,
behind the Beatles and Led Zeppelin.