Posted on 01/14/2022 10:57:04 PM PST by nickcarraway
Interesting gossip out of the classic rock world today: apparently Steely Dan producer Greg Katz once had to fire the Eagles’ Don Henley from tracking vocals on Steely Dan’s 1977 hit “Peg.” And it’s still awkward. Musicians Review 2021: Billionaires' Race To Space Speaking to Ultimate Classic Rock, Katz talked about how both Steely Dan and the Eagles were tight, as they were both managed by Irving Azoff. “In the chorus, the backgrounds are sort of the lead,” Katz said. “It wasn’t like a [usual] background part.” And while the song was originally coming together, Katz and Donald Fagen talked about how they “both liked Henley’s singing. ‘Why don’t we call Henley and Linda Ronstadt? Maybe that would be cool and something different.’ So, I called Irving … Linda wasn’t feeling well, so Nicolette Larson came.”
But when Henley went to learn the part and sing, it sounds like the chemistry just wasn’t there. “There wasn’t patience as much as instant reaction of the realities of the moment,” Katz said. “We didn’t jerk people off by letting them think it was going to work and have them sit for two hours. When we knew it wasn’t going to be OK, Fagen would tell me to end it. So they sang it again, and it was no good.”
Soon after, Fagen apparently went to go get a sandwich with bandmate Walter Becker, before which Fagen told Katz: “Oh, fire them.” Recalling the experience, Katz said, “Which I did — and have heard about for 35 years since, in various ways.”
Katz added: “The last time I saw Henley, he sidled up to me … and he said, ‘Are you going to fire me again today, Katz?’ But he didn’t smile when he said that.”
It was “a difficult day at the office,” Katz added, “because, like [Fagen and Becker], I was part of that inner-circle crowd. We were all in the same little area. We lived in the same place and had the same manager. It was always Eagles and Steely Dan for a long time in L.A.”
Anyway, Michael McDonald was brought in to do the backing vocals, and “Peg” became what it is today. Henley would later join Steely Dan for “FM (No Static at All)” (along with Glenn Frey and Tim Schmit), so I guess it’s safe to assume that Fagen and Becker remained on good terms with Henley in the end.
I saw the Eagles bio movie...Henley and Frye are awful people. They demanded that they get a disproportionate cut of reunion tour money...Felder left, Walsh and Timmothy B Schmidt stayed.
I like the early Eagles music when they had Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner.
After Walsh joined, their sound became somewhat meh, IMO.
Think they added Joe for the hard rock audience. I also make a joke that they fired Joe but he just kept showing up, Joe was heavily into drugs at the time. So he did not realize that he had been fired. One day Don took Joe aside to explain he had been fired. Joe kept going ok but can I still play with the band. Finally Don said ok you can play but no paycheck. Joe replied OK, but can I still have a free tour t shirt? Don laughed and said ‘sure’.
Who are the eagles?
it might be the same bio i saw too. If Henley was fired, it must have been "karma" and could not have happened to a bigger horse's butt.
Sometimes vocals just don’t blend on a track. It depends on the melody and surrounding sounds as well. Just having a big name doesn’t mean you’ll blend with every other vocalist.
Almost the same thing happened to Mark knopfler. He was hired to play guitar on one of their songs. He played for hours and they included just a couple of minutes in the final cut.
It can’t be the case that anyone cared back them. Background voices were not money makers. And Steely Dan tried 100’s of studio musicians, often not using their parts. The eagles were already very big so the money was not important to them. I think his use of the word “fire” is just for click bait. Its better to say, they just did not use the material in the final release recording. With Steely Dan this was common.
Fagen and Becker were never satisified. They had a lot of guitar players sit in on songs in the studio, and they said Rick Derringer was the only player that actually played what they wanted and how they wanted it.
Here is a funny, engagingly produced skit on the topic, generally:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMTI8vg7A5U
Meisner was easily the best Eagles vocalist. I honestly got the impression Frey and Henley were jealous.
There are lots of music analysis channels on YouTube.
But the one group they can never analyze is the Eagles because Henley pays people from what I’ve heard to scour YouTube and threaten lawsuits.
There was one live recording of Meisner singing Take It To Tge Limit but the vocals were warped so it doesn’t even sound like him.
Steely Dan has held up well.
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that was a good documentry i had always thought Felder was the difficult one but Don and Glenn were hard asses, Felder came across more sympathetic, Joe Walsh on my 5 greatest guitarist of all times list!
Henley ... horrid! I think Frye was far left, too, but not as bad as Henley.
Odd that one of the lines in the song (Peg) is...
“It will come back to you”
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