Artist

Eagles

Formed in Los Angeles, California, 1971 7 studio albums 1 dive so far

Five guys from Los Angeles who started out playing country-rock and ended up making some of the biggest American records ever pressed. The Eagles formed in 1971 and spent the decade getting harder, bigger and tighter, trading the loose California sound of their early work for something built to fill stadiums. Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Don Felder, Joe Walsh, Randy Meisner: at their peak they could write a hook, stack a harmony and turn it all loose with two lead guitars running at once. The 1970s had a sound, sun-bleached, a little restless, faintly uneasy under the gloss, and for a lot of people the Eagles are that sound. Start with the song everyone thinks they know, then keep going.

Worth knowing

The Eagles you hear on Hotel California are not quite the band that started in 1971. By 1976 the country-rock outfit had remade itself: Joe Walsh, a harder rock player, had come in, founding member Randy Meisner was on his way out, and Don Felder and Walsh were now running twin lead guitars. The lineup that made their biggest record was, in a sense, a band in the middle of becoming a different one.