The Eagles: a band I loathe—a troupe of musicians with obvious talents as songwriters, instrumentalists, and vocalists—who try too hard to secure a significant place in rock and roll history. Despite their apparent charms and conspicuous skills at being tuneful, you can't shake the burdensome feeling that they're calculated in nearly everything they attempt. Their rock and roll feels sluggish, their ballads dragged out, more a burden than an expression of pathos. And those strained vocals, reaching for that perfect moment when the voice cracks and then swells dramatically—it’s all a bit much. As for the lyrics, especially the weak variations on the gloom and doom of Nathaniel West's downcast novel Day of the Locust found in “Hotel California,” they appear weepy, whiny, and oddly proud of their own low self-esteem.
They were a defining band of the 70s , the last hurrah for the country-infused rock that dominated SoCal music, but even a period where narcissistic self-regard left an odious trace in too many lyric sheets, The Eagles capacity to feel sorry for themselves was so pronounced and heavy-handed that it became toxic; it made you feel bad not in an exhilarating way that an artist Elvis Costello could achieve (due, perhaps, to Costello's wisdom in making his rhyming ruing of missed chances more compact, not turning them into speeches), but instead in a way that made one want to take a mallet to the stereo that was broadcasting their songs. Not a good thing, yes?
However, there’s an exception: “Boys of Summer.” This solo effort by Don Henley—a singer I never quite warmed to due to his Rod Stewart/Bob Seger/Willie Nelson affectations—stands out. The song is genuinely good, boasting a well-crafted arrangement of guitar textures and an insistent beat. Henley’s singing here seems to draw from a deeper well of inspiration, beyond the usual manager’s playbook. The lyrics are clipped, terse, and vividly convey the sense of a man haunted by memories of lost love—an Eden he cast himself out of. And then there’s the video: one of the most effective I’ve ever seen in capturing the song’s mood. Black-and-white photography, suitably faded to evoke memories slipping away, blends with home videos superimposed over the stark reality of the present. That scene—the man brooding over his glass-top desk while a Super 8 home film flickers on the wall behind him—is nothing short of brilliant. It encapsulates the stream of regret a man feels when he reflects on the imagined perfection of a past life with the woman of his dreams.
