The Eagles

From the early seventies into the eighties, the Eagles were a rock and roll force to be reckoned with. Touring extensively and producing countless singles off their best-selling albums, the Eagles, alongside other seminal American rock and roll bands such as the Steve Miller Band or Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, offered a unique taste of Americana through their unique blend of folk, country and straight ahead rock, building a template for the new sound of American rock and roll post-British invasion.

While the Eagles sound was not entirely new (after all, some members had played in The Flying Burrito Brothers), the Eagles managed to package their music in a way that appealed to the increasingly conservative music audience after the hippie revolution ran out of steam. While Moby Grape had been flashing their middle finger on album covers and similarly choking their shot at mainstream success, the Eagles created a wholesome image that still allowed them plenty of wiggle room to sing about sex, drugs and rock and roll.

An unusual feature of the band was the prominence of their drummer, Don Henley (born July 22, 1947). A talented songwriter and vocalist as well as capable of holding down the beat, Henley out of all the Eagles went on to have the greatest success as a solo artist following the band’s official dissolution in 1982. While he provided the percussion for the band’s four number one albums and five number one singles, his solo recordings did nearly as well, and he both toured and recorded up until the band’s surprising reunion in 1994.

The breakup of the band had been famously acrimonious, leading the Eagles to dub their reunion album and tour in 1994 “Hell Freezes Over,” as, when the frequent question arose as to when they would reunite, the answer was typically, “When hell freezes over.”

They are currently back together, and have been playing to large audiences across North America. Capable of producing both touching ballads and road trip rock and roll, their greatest hits album is often the best selling album of all time, only occasionally losing ground to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.