El Burro Volador

When I last wrote about my weekly music experiment, I had been listening to a pioneer of west-African juju music.  The week before I had been listening to Mexico City’s reigning kings of alternativo, Cafe Tacuba.  I enjoy expanding my musical horizons, but I was still glad to see that for week five I would be coming back home – both geographically and musically – to a good old slice of American classic rock: Eagles’ Hotel California.

What makes this album great is the way it caught lightning in a bottle.  The first four Eagles records had established the band as the premier country-rock act in the world.  They were impressively centered, creating a distinctive laid-back sound and easygoing vibe which they just hit dead-center again and again, producing gems like “Tequila Sunrise”, “Desperado”, “Peaceful Easy Feeling”, and “Already Gone”.

After four albums, though, the groove was threatening to become a rut, so the departure of founding member Bernie Leadon, which might at other times have been a greeted with a great wringing of hands, turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  The songwriting team of Don Henley and Glenn Frey was still intact, and one of the band’s greatest strengths to this point had been their sensitive lyrics, which were just perfect for Henley, whose great gifts as a singer are a raspy sawdust-on-the-floor voice and the ability to sing gently – rare enough in rock music.  Leadon’s replacement, Joe Walsh, brought just the right combustible element to counterbalance these mellow fellows, and gave the group something it badly needed: rockstar swagger.

You can hear it in the revved-up “Life in the Fast Lane”, or the discontented growl of the guitar that opens “Victim of Love” – this band now has attitude.  The team of Henley and Frey have discovered a new edge in their writing as well, cranking out an album full of sharp social criticism.  Any way you slice it, this album represents the very best moment in the career of one of America’s best bands.

I love the title track, of course, a six-and-a-half minute epic which sketches out a memorably surreal depiction of showbiz decadence and tops it off with some of the best guitar work in the rock canon.  After that, my favorite track on the album is probably “Victim of Love”.  Here’s where Henley and Frey’s insightful take on matters of the heart grows talons, helped considerably by some surly guitar from Walsh and Don Felder.

“Life in the Fast Lane” is essential listening as well, combining as it does the band’s hardest-rocking moment with some killer turns of phrase (I’ve always been fond of the line “He was brutally handsome, and she was terminally pretty”).  Other high points are the melancholy saga “The Last Resort”, and “New Kid in Town”.