It has been said that, for their third album On The Border<\/i>, the Eagles stopped working with producer Glyn Johns because he continued to push them towards their country rock roots, but they wanted to record a rock album.<\/p>\n
This seems odd, because this effort embraces the sound that defined their debut effort, though there are times when the chains break and a more rock-influenced style bursts through. It almost is as if producer Bill Szymczyk knew how to merge the two worlds into one album and keep everyone happy.<\/p>\n
If anything, Szymczyk is more responsible for the Eagles keeping a country-rock sound (not minimizing the individual songwriting efforts) than Johns; the two tracks salvaged from the recordings they made in England with Johns were more adult-contemporary ballads than anything else, and gave us their first big hit, \u201cBest Of My Love.\u201d (The other track from the Johns sessions, \u201cYou Never Cry Like A Lover,\u201d honestly is a bit of a throwaway track.)<\/p>\n
That country-rock influence? Oh, it\u2019s still present\u2014”Midnight Flyer\u201d is proof of this, as is the follow-up song on the album \u201cMy Man,\u201d Bernie Leadon\u2019s tribute to his late bandmate Gram Parsons. Even their cover of Tom Waits\u2019s \u201cOl\u2019 55\u201d has more than a little country influence to it. And, while the Eagles were desperately trying to move out of that classification, it still fit their music like a glove. These are not bad songs at all; if anything, they built on the strengths of their previous two efforts. (Waits\u2019s original version is still especially powerful, but if this song is the gateway to discovering Waits\u2019 discography, all the better.)<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t to say that their efforts to move towards rock were unsuccessful. \u201cAlready Gone,\u201d the album\u2019s opener, is proof positive that the Eagles could handle this genre just as well. Featuring lead guitar work from new member Don Felder, it helped expand the sound of the band well. Likewise, \u201cJames Dean\u201d has a catchy riff that will hook the listener in.<\/p>\n
\u201cBest Of My Love,\u201d is the linchpin that holds the two worlds together. It\u2019s not country, it\u2019s not rock. It\u2019s a gentle ballad that shows the absolute power the Eagles held in their musicianship and songwriting. It doesn\u2019t matter that, as of this writing, the song is 51 years old, it\u2019s still one of the most powerful tracks they ever laid onto tape.<\/p>\n
The other strength that On The Border<\/i> shows well is how blessed the Eagles were with numerous members holding down lead vocals on different songs. \u201cIs It True\u201d and \u201cMidnight Flyer\u201d showcase Randy Meisner\u2019s abilities, and Leadon makes the most of his one appearance as lead throat on \u201cMy Man.\u201d The title track showcases all four original members\u2019 vocal talents, but the bulk of the heavy lifting is done by Glenn Frey and Don Henley\u2014not that there\u2019s anything wrong with that.<\/p>\n
On The Border<\/i> continued the upward path of success for the Eagles, and is a strong follow-up to Desperado<\/i>, while not following its formula to the letter. There are plenty of songs that never found their way to radio waiting to be discovered (or, perhaps, discovered again), and while I love the best-of release that would come out a few short years later, this is a refreshing change of pace from only hearing the radio-friendly songs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5764],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-47281","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-eagles","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47281"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}