Longevity is a precious commodity in the music business, a trait that eludes many (if not most) artists. Like them or not, Eagles have certainly achieved that status and more—especially with the recent news regarding their Eagles Greatest Hits (1971 – 1975).
Released in February 1976, that album was the first ever to be certified Platinum in the United States by the RIAA (1 million units sold), an award that was introduced in that same year. Eagles Greatest Hits (1971 – 1975) ranked Number 4 on Billboard’s album chart for 1976, and last September the album surpassed 500 weeks on the charts, though the run has not been consecutive.
The big news a few weeks ago was that the album was certified quadruple Diamond by the RIAA, becoming the first ever to achieve sales of 40 million copies in the United States alone. That’s a lot of records, and it isn’t hard to do the math: At a nominal royalty of a buck per unit sold, that’s hmmm… let’s see, $40 million. Yikes.
And—God bless ’em—Don Henley and the estate of co-founding member Glenn Frey control their publishing, though they share it with Warner Music. The numbers are staggering and are approached in the U.S. only by Michael Jackson’s Thriller (approx. 34 million) and Eagles’ own Hotel California (approx. 28 million). Note: Your mileage may vary regarding these numbers and the various audits over the years that were used to obtain the data.
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In my younger years, I was a big fan of the band. I saw them in June 1980 at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., courtesy of my cousin Frank (support acts were Little River Band and Heart, in case you’re wondering). It certainly wasn’t my first concert—by that time, I had already become addicted—but it was the first I ever saw on that scale. The P.A. system was massive; unlike anything I had ever seen before. And, little did I know at the time, but I would eventually learn to pilot such P.A. systems. My recollection is that all three bands sounded pretty good, and I’m certain it was the first time I had ever seen that many people gathered for a single event (around 70,000), despite frequent visits to Yankee Stadium with my Dad.
What is it that enables a band to maintain popularity across such a wide time span? One might say it’s the romance with freewheelin’ West Coast living, but I think that faded by the mid-to-late 1980s. It’s certainly not that the band had the sex appeal of, say, New Kids On The Block. It could be that they were among the first acts to blur the lines between pop, rock and country music, combining elements of all three to create something that can only be described as California Rock.
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One could make a good argument that the band’s influence on other acts (rock and country alike) created the template for contemporary country music. Their string of Number-One hits in the mid-to-late 1970s didn’t hurt, nor did the success of Hotel California, which made the band a staple on classic rock radio. Adding bonafide guitar hero Joe Walsh to the lineup in late ’75 was certainly a plus. Could it be the secret messages that were inscribed in the dead wax of their LPs? Or perhaps the band’s 14-year hiatus from 1980 to 1994 left fans wanting more?
Or could it be that Frey, Henley, et al. wrote some great songs?
