Randy Meisner

That's, that's one of the albums I don't have, so, uh-

Randy Meisner was the lead singer on the track.

Uh, Glenn Frey's on the slide guitar, and, uh, a great banjo work, great banjo work from Bernie Leadon.

Bernie Leadon.

It, it's very, um...

It, it just, yeah, the, the, the woo-woo Midnight Flyer.

Uh, I mean, yeah, it sounds better when the Eagles sing it, even Randy Meisner.

That-

The two

that weren't the famous ones, like Randy Meisner and Don Felder, the mandolin guy.

They were like

the others.

Um, Eagles has some, some falsetto.

Um, Ran-uh, Randy Meisner, actually.

Um, uh, both, both of those guys.

Um, Leo Sayer, Gino Vannelli.

And this is interesting.

Her original backing band had Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Ledin, and Randy Meisner of the Eagles.

Wow.

So she had a shit ton of music and she was all over the seventies, eight albums.

They're, you know, like I said, quintessential LA rock.

And it was Glenn Frey, Don Henley, the guy who, Don Felder was the band member who wrote that song, Hotel California.

They had Bernie Ledin, Randy Meisner, and then Joe Walsh joined the band.

Timothy B. Hutton? No, Timothy B.

Eagles has some falsetto.

Randy Meisner, actually.

Both of those guys.

Leo Sayre, Gino Vanelli.

Recorded by the band and produced by Bill Sizismic, there's a lot of consonants in there, kids, at Criteria and the Record Plant Studios between March and October of '76.

It was the band's first album with guitarist Joe Walsh, who had replaced founding member Bernie Leadon, and the last to feature bassist and vocalist Randy Meisner.

The album cover is a photograph of the Beverly Hills Hotel taken by David Alexander, and among its ratings and chart highlights, well, we said it at the top of the show, Hotel California was an immediate critical and commercial success.

It topped the Billboard 200 chart, and at the 20th Grammy Awards, the title track won Record of the Year.

Amazing.

Okay, and let's meet the band.

We have Don Henley on vocals, drums, percussion, and synthesizer on "The Last Resort," Glenn Frey on vocals, guitars, keyboard, piano, clavinet, and synthesizer, Don Felder on vocals, guitars, pedal steel guitar on "The Last Resort," Joe Walsh, the new kid, vocals, guitars, slide guitar, keyboards, piano, organ, and synthesizer, and Randy Meisner on vocals, bass, and guitarron on "New Kid in Town." Say that three times fast.

Like it.

whole it was a literal community of the southern california artists that were all just kind of intermingling and just kind of playing off each other.

And like you said, I think it was in 1971, it was Henley Fry, Randy Meisner, and Bernie Ledin were her backing band for, I think, one tour.

And I think they played on her third album.

And then they're like, yeah, you know what? I think we're going to make a go of this ourselves.

I've never heard of him, Eric Kaz.

He's a lyricist, but he's written...

He's written for Randy Meisner.

He's written for Kenny Rogers.

But Don Henley, he was becoming more and more dominant as a vocalist.

And he sings all the tracks on there, apart from Randy Meisner's and Joe Walsh's songs, with the exception of New Kid in Town.

expectations.

Everybody's watching you.

You're right.

Yes.

But, yeah, I think it's important that those songs by Joe Walsh and Randy Meisner are on the album because they give another dimension to Hotel California because without those albums, there wouldn't quite be the...

the full range of human emotion.