Following the Eagles’ spectacular implosion in 1980, the band’s former members — particularly principal songwriters Don Henley and Glenn Frey — have been keen to place the previous behind them and stand on their very own two ft as solo artists. So that they have been none too happy after they instantly needed to compete with their previous selves upon the discharge of Eagles Best Hits Quantity 2 on Nov. 13, 1982.
You’ll be able to’t blame Asylum Information for eager to milk their now-defunct money cow. Eagles have been of their imperial part in the second half of the ’70s, buoyed by 1976’s stratospheric Lodge California and its flawed (however nonetheless huge) follow-up, 1979’s The Lengthy Run. Even the postmortem, contractually obligated Eagles Stay, launched in November 1980, went platinum inside two months.
And naturally, best-of compilations had already confirmed a profitable gambit for the band, as 1976’s Their Best Hits (1971–1975) earned the first-ever RIAA platinum certification and went on to turn into the bestselling album of all time in america, with gross sales exceeding 38 million.
Their Best Hits (1971–1975) drew a dividing line between Eagles’ country-rock origins and their hedonistic, harder-rocking second act. It solely made sense to memorialize that second act, particularly with Lodge California functioning as a veritable greatest-hits in itself. So it was no shock that eight of the ten tracks on Best Hits Quantity 2 have been culled from the band’s two most up-to-date studio albums as much as that time, rounded out by Eagles Stay‘s “Seven Bridges Street” and the pointed album nearer “After the Thrill Is Gone,” off 1975’s One in all These Nights.
It was additionally fortuitous timing, as Frey had launched his debut solo album, No Enjoyable Aloud, in Might 1982. The LP went gold off the energy of two Prime 40 singles, “I Discovered Any individual” and “The One You Love.” Henley’s solo bow, I Cannot Stand Nonetheless, adopted in August 1982 and fared even higher because of the smash single “Soiled Laundry,” which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Scorching 100 and pushed the album to gross sales of roughly 700,000.
Hearken to Eagles’ ‘Seven Bridges Street’
These debut album figures would have been trigger for celebration for many artists, however Henley and Frey weren’t most artists; they have been ex-members of one of many bestselling rock bands in historical past, and so they felt they nonetheless had extra to show. “I offered 650,000 copies or one thing, which is respectable, I assume, for a primary album,” Henley advised Analog Planet about I Cannot Stand Nonetheless. “I had a gold album and a gold single. … I used to be reasonably happy.”
That satisfaction curdled into frustration when Eagles Best Hits Quantity 2 hit cabinets simply in time for holidays, with neither Frey nor Henley’s session or consent. With its nameless cowl artwork (a vinyl file repurposed as a taking pictures goal) and slapdash observe itemizing, it bore all of the telltale indicators of a swiftly assembled label cash-grab.
And it labored.
“Don and Glenn have been now competing within the charts in opposition to the Eagles Best Hits Quantity 2, launched by Asylum/Elektra in time for the 1982 Christmas market, cobbled collectively from Lodge California and The Lengthy Run,” former Eagles guitarist Don Felder defined in his 2007 memoir Heaven and Hell: My Life within the Eagles (1974–2001). “Regardless of its lack of direct involvement with the band, it far outsold each solo albums. It was a tough act to comply with.”
It did not assist that Frey and Henley, who selected to be actually faceless throughout Eagles’ zenith, have been now going up in opposition to such a well-recognized model. “The difficulty was that, after years of maintaining our names out of the newspapers and our faces off Eagles album covers in favor of the artist Boyd Elder’s unimaginable ornamental cattle skulls, nobody actually knew who Don Henley and Glenn Frey have been — or any of us, for that matter,” Felder wrote. “For years, we would been capable of stroll round L.A., into eating places, golf equipment and theaters, and soften anonymously into the group. It is among the nice bonuses of being an Eagle. Nobody is aware of what we appeared like.”
Though Eagles Best Hits Quantity 2 solely reached No. 52 on the Billboard 200, it loved an extended shelf life and was ultimately licensed 11-times platinum by the RIAA. But its recognition wouldn’t encourage Eagles to kiss and make up — no less than not for some time. When requested in 1980 if his previous band would reunite, Henley famously replied, “Yeah, positive, when hell freezes over.” His quip impressed the title of the band’s 1994 reside reunion album, their first launch since Best Hits Quantity 2.
Eagles Albums Ranked
The Eagles have been rightly praised for his or her canny combining of Glenn Frey’s city-slicker R&B with Don Henley’s country-fried rockabilly.
