The Eagles have long been labelled as a country-rock band, owing to their musical influences from folk-rock legends The Byrds. Even after all these years, this designation still irritates founding member Don Henley.
Speaking with Cameron Crowe in 2003, before of the publication of (yet another) greatest hits compilation, Eagles: Very Best Of, Henley challenged the notion that their music could be described just by the terms ‘country’ and ‘rock’. “Even now the Eagles are thought of as a country-rock band,” he told me. “The music industry and the media slapped us with that moniker from the start, and no matter how diversified our musical tastes, it has been tough to shake that caricature. At the end of the day, we are an American band. We’re a musical jumble of inspirations from every genre of American popular music. It’s all there, and it’s rather evident.”
To refute the title, he cited the song ‘Midnight Flyer’, saying, “I was delighted to produce something in that style because I was a big bluegrass fan. The Dillards, in particular, made a big impression on me. Bernie Leadon, along with Doug Dillard and Herb Pedersen, was one of the best banjo players in the country, so I was pleased to perform a bluegrass tune—I believed it added authenticity and credibility to our band. “It demonstrated adaptability.
Perhaps using a song that substantially leans towards one of the more recognised country sub-genres to make the point isn’t the most dramatic method to establish genre distinctions, but the song is undoubtedly more country than rock, despite its rocky undertones.
Originally released on the 1973 album On the Border, ‘Midnight Flyer’ features all of the Eagles singing together on the train-whistle melody over a drum beat played by Henley that rolls along like the titular train running down the track, an expert cascade of bluegrass banjo from Bernie Leadon, and slide guitar from Glenn Frey.
Though some of the band members preferred a more aggressive, hard-rock path for this record, Henley was content to take a train into the heart of the country. Perhaps it was the band’s push and pull towards the direction they wanted to go that caused them to frequently meet in the middle and bring those aspects of country and rock together.
According to Henley, it wasn’t the only track on the compilation album that demonstrated their versatility. He classified ‘Wasted Time’, from their 1976 album Hotel California, as “a Philly-soul torch song.”
He continued, “I loved all the recordings coming out of Philadelphia at the time. I ordered some sheet music so I could study some of the tunes, and I began to develop my own musical ideas with that Philly influence. Don was our Teddy Pendergrass. He might stand there alone and scream. We did a big Philly-style production with strings—definitely not country rock. You won’t find that track on a Crosby, Stills, and Nash or Beach Boys record.”
Perhaps if they had recorded more songs like this instead, they would have spent less time fighting the country-rock label, but then again, perhaps they would have simply been branded as a blue-eyed soul band. Maybe the Eagles didn’t want their wings chopped at all.