One for the sound guys: the Eagles live..?

AK99

Just watched The Eagles "Live from the Forum 2018." on TV there. At one stage there were seven guitarists on stage.
Forgive me if the terminology isn't right, but I was wondering how they manage to get such a 'clean' sound without drowning everything with the mids when so many of them are seemingly playing the same chords ?

If there were a couple of Teles, or mandolins (or heaven forbid - banjos) in the mix perhaps, I could understand it, but with two or three six-string acoustics guitars and a load of humbuckered electrics, I would have thought you'd have trouble getting anything other than a mushy wall-of sound. They obviously don't. Is the sound engineer cutting the volume of some of the guitars in the mix, or is there something else going on ?

mike257

*urgh. Typed a big helpful essay of a comment here and it's only published the first line of it. I'll come back and do it again later!*

AK99

Do mike - please. I'm intrigued now

Danny1969

Is it an official release ? if so then it's probably been 80 % retracked in the studio like older Eagles official live releases. 

I'm a huge Eagles fan but Don Henley is a perfectionist who basically insists every mistake slightly off pitch guitar and vocal is redone until whats meant to be a live recording is just a soulless studio performance faked onto live video footage and if you look closely you can see some of the video is fake and redone as well

One problem they have is the lead singer is the drummer, it's very hard to get a pristine lead vocal from a drummer while he's playing. You get drum and cymbal spill into the mic and because it's a dynamic mic designed for vocals the drum spill isn't a nice sound, it's a trashy middy sound that gets worse with vocal compression. Then there's the harmonies, yeah they were / are just about the best band for solid vocals but not quite to the standard you hear on the DVD's ... everything gets fixed. 

From a mix point of view though The Eagles generally made room for more guitars by arrangement rather EQ. When you see a load of them all playing the same chords that's just a visual and I doubt they are all up in the mix without being ruthlessly high passed and stripped out. FOH they tend to get mixed very vocal heavy

AK99

Thanks Danny, Never considered the televised concert might have been remixed - but of course it must have been.

On the perfectionist thing, I think Henly musnt have bewn too far behind. I remember watching a video of him putting ear as damnit a full strings contingent from an orchestra that had been hired to do the classical backing pieces for some of the songs on the Hell Freezes Over DVD, over a song some several times to try to find out who was playing the wrong chord at one point.

Zero tolerance when you've been hired by a former session man I'd say. Playing with all of them together must have been even worse

Danny1969

AK99 said:

Thanks Danny, Never considered the televised concert might have been remixed - but of course it must have been.

On the perfectionist thing, I think Henly musnt have bewn too far behind. I remember watching a video of him putting ear as damnit a full strings contingent from an orchestra that had been hired to do the classical backing pieces for some of the songs on the Hell Freezes Over DVD, over a song some several times to try to find out who was playing the wrong chord at one point.

Zero tolerance when you've been hired by a former session man I'd say. Playing with all of them together must have been even worse

I don't know if you have read it but I highly recommend Heaven and Hell : My life in the Eagles by Don Felder  ... he spills a lot of beans in that book and Henley and Frey are shown ultimately for what they were, ego driven, money grabbing and petty. Trying to boot Felder out of the band despite the fact he was a one third member of the limited company. 

I don't think they were quite the same without Felder, he gave that band a really cool edge and came up with their best ideas for songs, without him it's not the same and Walsh looks like a fish out of water without Felder as well. 

Felders own live DVD has the lead vocal very obviously autotuned .... I was watching it the other night. People want and expect perfection I guess. 

AK99

I've listened to Felder being interviewed a couple of times. He came across as nice guy, and was fairly diplomatic about the breakup. You're right about Joe Walsh looking like a fish out of water - but I think big Joe would look like that in 99.95% of all of the bands I can imagine

Blueingreen

Danny1969 said:

AK99 said:

Thanks Danny, Never considered the televised concert might have been remixed - but of course it must have been.

On the perfectionist thing, I think Henly musnt have bewn too far behind. I remember watching a video of him putting ear as damnit a full strings contingent from an orchestra that had been hired to do the classical backing pieces for some of the songs on the Hell Freezes Over DVD, over a song some several times to try to find out who was playing the wrong chord at one point.

Zero tolerance when you've been hired by a former session man I'd say. Playing with all of them together must have been even worse

I don't know if you have read it but I highly recommend Heaven and Hell : My life in the Eagles by Don Felder  ... he spills a lot of beans in that book and Henley and Frey are shown ultimately for what they were, ego driven, money grabbing and petty. Trying to boot Felder out of the band despite the fact he was a one third member of the limited company. 

I don't think they were quite the same without Felder, he gave that band a really cool edge and came up with their best ideas for songs, without him it's not the same and Walsh looks like a fish out of water without Felder as well. 

Felders own live DVD has the lead vocal very obviously autotuned .... I was watching it the other night. People want and expect perfection I guess. 

There’s a very long and detailed multi-part  tv/film documentary about the Eagles that pops up from time to time, probably on Sky Arts or BBC4. It’s good of its type but no-one watching it could be left in any doubt that Henley and Frey were thoroughly nasty people, narcissistic, utterly selfish and ruthless.

I haven’t read the Felder book (I’m probably too much of a casual fan to want to read a book about The Eagles tbh) but the beauty of the documentary is that Henley and Frey are condemned out of their own mouths. They either lack the self-awareness to realise how badly they are coming across or are too rich and self-important to care. With a book by a “victim” you’d always be wondering to what extent it was a selective settling of old scores. The film just shows monsters being monsters.

Whistler

Don Felder comes across as very diplomatic partly because that seems to be his character but also the settlement over his unpaid income from The Eagles includes a non-disclosure agreement.

ICBM

Felder's book is well worth reading even if you have no interest in the Eagles - it's a well-written account of his life growing up and as a musician through the 1970s and beyond.

I agree with Danny that somehow he was the spark that made the Eagles the great rock band they were, even though he was never one of the principal writers* - before he joined they were a good country-rock band, and after he was fired they were a second-rate country-rock band, despite Joe Walsh... and even when Bernie Leadon was back with them.

Frey and especially Henley are world-class writers, but I agree that they don't seem to have been nice people.

(*Although he *did* come up with the original idea for Hotel California.)

springhead

ICBM said:

Felder's book is well worth reading even if you have no interest in the Eagles - it's a well-written account of his life growing up and as a musician through the 1970s and beyond.

I agree with Danny that somehow he was the spark that made the Eagles the great rock band they were, even though he was never one of the principal writers* - before he joined they were a good country-rock band, and after he was fired they were a second-rate country-rock band, despite Joe Walsh... and even when Bernie Leadon was back with them.

Frey and especially Henley are world-class writers, but I agree that they don't seem to have been nice people.

(*Although he *did* come up with the original idea for Hotel California.)

Unless perhaps the idea came from Ian Anderson!

https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/did-eagles-get-hotel-california-idea-jethro-tull 

ICBM

springhead said:

Unless perhaps the idea came from Ian Anderson!

https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/did-eagles-get-hotel-california-idea-jethro-tull 

Not that again, please...

Felder wasn't even in the band when they toured with Tull. It even says that in the article.

So no.

Longer version - Felder's initial demo recording of what became Hotel California didn't actually sound anything like the final version, and was known by the band as 'Mexican Reggae' before Henley wrote the words. It's just a coincidence with a reasonably similar sequence of chords.

Rocker

I ordered the book @ICBM, it is winging it's way to me now or so I believe.....

Frantic1

Rocker said:

I ordered the book @ICBM, it is winging it's way to me now or so I believe.....

Rocker said:

I ordered the book @ICBM, it is winging it's way to me now or so I believe.....

Eaglely awaited?  apologies i'll get my coat!

Voxman

Frantic1 said:

Rocker said:

I ordered the book @ICBM, it is winging it's way to me now or so I believe.....

Rocker said:

I ordered the book @ICBM, it is winging it's way to me now or so I believe.....

Eaglely awaited?  apologies i'll get my coat!

I was going to say that...but clearly that bird has now flown! I'll get my coat too!