Revolving Doors
The absence of hit singles on the Desperado album gave Henley and Frey less leverage than they would have liked to make Asylum listen to their requests for a new producer. Then again, Johns’ failure to recreate the commercial zing of the band’s debut on their second album could be used against him, too. But for a while, at least, the Eagles chose to go with the flow.
The band’s third album would again be recorded with Glyn Johns at the helm, and again in London. Almost a year after they had assembled at Island Studios for Desperado, they were back to record what would become On the Border. It would not be a pleasant experience for anyone, however, and despite cutting recording short to support Neil Young on a series of U.K. dates, which gave them some much-needed respite from the control room, the Eagles were ready for a change of producer. Six weeks in the studio had produced just two songs, “You Never Cry Like a Lover” and “Best of My Love.”
This time around, Frey and Henley had an ally in their management company. The band’s new manager, Irving Azoff, was still proving himself to them, and this was his opportunity to show his worth. The Eagles had been particularly unhappy when told that at the end of 1973 there were no profits for the band to share. Besides the money, they felt that they were no longer a priority to their management. This was a crucial issue, and a matter that was reinforced when Elliot Roberts told Frey to take a taxi to a concert instead of getting him a limousine. Frey snapped. That was disrespectful, as far as he and the other Eagles were concerned, and it would not be forgotten. The Eagles had been slighted.
Azoff wisely took care of the immediate problem and found the band a limo. He also threw his full support behind replacing Johns, even connecting them with an alternative candidate: Joe Walsh’s producer, Bill Szymczyk.
Big Shorty
The twenty-two-year-old Irving Azoff who asked Geffen and Roberts for a job at their über-cool offices on Sunset was a far cry from the man who would later take Geffen’s confrontational, artist-first management techniques to a completely new level and wind up as one of the most powerful men in entertainment business. Azoff was an inexperienced but eager young artist manager working tirelessly out of a small Los Angeles apartment to promote his first two clients: Dan Fogelberg and Joe Walsh.
The diminutive Irving, who at five feet and three inches would be nicknamed “Big Shorty” by the Eagles and “Poison Dwarf” by others, had given up on a career in medicine after attending a Yardbirds show when he was seventeen years old. That cemented his love for rock and roll, which had begun earlier when he started booking local bands. As a non-musician with a serious passion for music, pursuing a job in the business side of the industry seemed obvious to him. “I used to sit and read my Rolling Stone about David Geffen and Bill Graham, and to me, they were gods,” he told Rolling Stone in September 1978.
While still at high school, Azoff found local rock group Shades of Blue somewhere to practice and booked them some shows. The kid had a knack for it, and soon he was running the college circuit, making and breaking bands as he built connections across the Midwest. As his influence and confidence grew, Azoff helped REO Speedwagon secure a major-label deal. He then figured it was time to leave Illinois behind and seek his fortune out on the left coast. Management would become his next step after he came across another artist he believed in, Dan Fogelberg, a singer/songwriter with plenty of talent who was also ready to travel west.
The Odd Couple
Azoff and Fogelberg shared a small Los Angeles apartment as they began their musical journey. Then Azoff ran into another old contact playing in an L.A. club: Joe Walsh. Walsh was despondent after it seemed his career had stalled and was ready for encouragement and direction. Azoff, showing an innate understanding of the artist ego, cajoled and supported Walsh, signed him as a client, and would go on to play a significant role in the continuation of Walsh’s crazy adventures in rock and roll.
Walsh helped Fogelberg in the studio after Azoff scored him a solo deal at Epic Records. Walsh produced the 1974 Souvenirs album, chipping in on guitar, bass, and vocals. Azoff took Walsh and Fogelberg with him to Geffen and Roberts at a time when Geffen’s attention was turning elsewhere. (Unknown to most, Geffen was readying himself to make a huge financial deal with Warner Bros.)
Like his musician friends the Eagles, singer and songwriter Dan Fogelberg (August 13, 1951–December 16, 2007) was inspired by Native American culture and imagery. As he is quoted as saying on his Facebook page, “The Navajo and the Hopi communicated with their god, the Great White Spirit, by wishing on an eagle feather. They would pray over it, bury it, and hope the message would ascend with the feather up to the god. That is essentially the same thing as recording an album.”
As Asylum Records merged with Elektra to become part of Warner Communications, Geffen pocketed a couple million dollars, as well as millions more in Warners stock. Now the president of Elektra/Asylum, Geffen would no longer be involved in artist management, and the new guy found himself with a much larger workload than he’d expected. From having a couple of talented but low-profile clients, Azoff was thrown into a hive of activity, guiding the careers of Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Graham Nash, and America.
Another part of his role was to check in on the Eagles, who were out on the road in support of Desperado, an artistic statement that had proven less popular than its more commercial predecessor. Glenn Frey and Don Henley had lost faith in Geffen and felt they were being neglected. Promises weren’t being delivered on, and the band were being deprived of the kind of input and control they felt they deserved, especially as far as recording was concerned. It was disconcerting, too, for the Eagles to discover that their management company had signed two bands, Poco and America, without informing them. They found out instead from the British music press.
Azoff and the Eagles got along well, slowly building a trust that would result in Azoff taking the management reins from Geffen’s company.
Bill Szymczyk
While there’s a huge technical aspect to making a record, especially in the post–George Martin/Phil Spector era, the majority or top rock-and-roll producers have a background in playing musical instruments. Even if their musical pursuits were amateur at best, many have dabbled fairly seriously with being a musician/artist/performer. The Eagles’ first producer, Glyn Johns, was a choir singer and semi-pro musician before opting for life behind a mixing desk; George Martin was a classically trained pianist; Dann Huff was a session guitarist before becoming Nashville’s top producer.
By contrast, Bill Szymczyk, who by the time he was working with the Eagles was an established rock producer, had never lifted a guitar in anger—at least not in the musical sense. His music path began with a childhood fascination with crystal radio. Back in the pre-digital age, many kids were entertained for hours by crystal radios—rudimentary radio kits that run without a power supply and involve some wood, nails, a crystal diode, an earphone with a solenoid, a thin metal plate, and a small antenna. Crystal radios are still made today, but in the ’50s they came in kits that advertised in children’s comic books. When Szymczyk discovered how to pick up more than one station on his radio, he discovered the raw blues and country and rock and roll that was busting out of radio stations in the Southern states, and he loved the sound.
ABCs
In 1960, seventeen-year-old Szymczyk signed up for a stint in the United States Navy, where his natural pitch perception saw him ushered off to sonar training. The navy also gave him a basic understanding of electronics. He left the service in the winter of 1964—the year the Beatles launched themselves on The Ed Sullivan Show—determined to work his way into the music business.
Unafraid to work his way up, he began his music career as “Mr. Fixit” at a recording studio in New York, turning down a place at New York University’s Media Arts School to take the job. The studio he worked at, Dick Charles Recording, happened to be contracted for all the demo work for music publishers Screen Gems, the company that provided many of the hits for the Monkees, with ace hit songwriters like Neil Diamond, Gerry Goffin, and Carole King.
The eager and enthusiastic Szymczyk worked on folk music and R&B (even engineering some Quincy Jones sessions) before moving to a full-time engineering job at the Hit Factory. From there he took a substantial pay cut to move from engineer to producer when he found himself a job as a staff producer at ABC Records. But the move led to an opportunity to make his name. By revamping B.B. King’s sound with some young pop and rock musicians, he played a key role in relaunching the blues legend with the crossover hit “Why I Sing the Blues.” B.B.’s career was suddenly in overdrive; Szymczyk rose quickly at ABC and was given license to find some new acts for the label.
James Gang
It was during an ABC Records scouting trip to Cleveland that Szymczyk stumbled across Joe Walsh & the James Gang. He recalled seeing them play in a high-school gym and presuming, as he walked toward the gym, that they were a five-piece, from the amount of noise generated. Bill was impressed. “I thought, ‘Damn, this guy’s pretty good,’” he told Goldmine in October 2012. “I watched the set and then afterwards I talked to Joe and I said, ‘Joe, I’d like to maybe think about producing you guys and signing you.’ They had cut some demos, and I took them back to New York and I studied them. I really wanted to sign them, so I talked to the bosses and they said, ‘Bring them out.’ I signed them and they got a total advance of $2,000. The entire album only cost something like seven grand. We knocked out the first album in about a week or so, and we were off and running.”
Unfortunately for Szymczyk, when ABC Records became part of Dunhill in 1969, most of the old ABC staff was let go or transferred to the West Coast office. And so it was that Bill Szymczyk arrived in Los Angeles on January 1, 1970.
Walsh, who brought much-needed guitar grit and steel to the Eagles, forged his gunslinger reputation with the James Gang.
Who’s Next
The next month, California was hit by a sizeable earthquake. Szymczyk figured that one quake was enough, so he moved instead to Denver, Colorado, determined to establish himself there as a freelance record producer. The opportunity soon came for him to work with Joe Walsh again when a bored Walsh, on tour with the James Gang, found time to catch up with his old producer when the band played Denver. Several drinks later, Walsh had chosen to pursue a solo career, with his next album to be produced by Szymczyk in Colorado.
Meanwhile, Glenn Frey and Don Henley had reached their limit with Glyn Johns. Johns still wouldn’t buy the Eagles as an R&B/rock-and-roll band. This time, the Eagles won the battle to remove him and decided to scrap the recordings they’d made in London, except for a couple of tracks they were actually happy with, “Best of My Love” and “You Never Cry Like a Lover.” While looking around for someone to replace Johns, they listened to Joe Walsh’s solo work at Irving Azoff’s suggestion. Walsh set up a meeting, and Henley and Frey decided to work with Szymczyk.
This placed the producer in a tricky situation, however, as he explained to Sound on Sound in November 2004: “They started the third record with Glyn in London and had completed most of it when they decided to work with me. They were willing to start all over. I agreed, but on one condition: that I check with Glyn and that he was OK with it. He was one of the producers I had looked up to for a long time. I called him in London and I guess the feeling was mutual, because he said ‘Better you than me, mate!’”
Borderline
A rejuvenated Henley and Frey resumed recording for what would become On the Border, with Szymczyk piloting the ship. Szymczyk’s personality could not have been more different from Johns’. He was laid-back, affable, and prepared to let the band have plenty of input and direction.
For a while, at least, the new kid in town brought some much-needed harmony to the Eagles’ recording sessions. When one track sounded like it needed some meatier guitar, Bernie Leadon said he had the perfect man for the job. The band had already met Don Felder, an old guitar-playing friend of Leadon’s from Florida, at various gigs; now, when he came by to visit with Leadon, Felder reacquainted himself with the guys and played the heck out of “Good Day in Hell.”
Frey invited Felder to join the band the next day, but Felder wasn’t too sure about it. Knowing Leadon well, he was well aware of the frictions in the Eagles camp, and was under the impression that they were constantly on the point of breaking up. Then again, they were a pretty great band. Weighing his options was difficult, so Felder simply asked his current boss, Graham Nash, for advice. Nash—one of the most decent men in rock and roll—advised Felder to join the Eagles for career reasons, despite Felder being an integral part of the Crosby and Nash band.
Felder had a difficult decision to make. His wife was pregnant with their first child, and he was making excellent money—around $1,500 a week. But as Nash had pointed out, he was just a sideman—a musician for hire. To be part of a major rock-and-roll band, and one that wanted his particular skills and style, could be career-changing. But would it last? Would the arguments and in-fighting break up the band? Obviously, Felder voted yes to joining, and once he became attuned to the internal dramas, the addition of some new blood brought a huge uplift in spirits in the Eagles camp.
Eagles Ltd.
In the spirit of camaraderie and bonhomie, the band members started a company, Eagles Ltd.—a corporation of Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Bernie Leadon, Randy Meisner, and Don Felder. It was fair, simple, and democratic, as Felder told Macleans.com in November 2008. “We each owned 20 per cent of this company that owned the Eagles. It owned the T-shirts, the touring, everything, it was all divided equally. This band was going to be different, there were going to be no sidemen involved with this organization.”
Felder could hardly have joined at a better time. New blood gave fresh impetus to the band, and being free of Glyn Johns’ control improved Frey and Henley’s moods considerably. They were also back on home soil, recording at the legendary Record Plant, which was more conducive to partying than being at Island under Johns’ watchful eyes in chilly old London.
On the Border proved that Henley and Frey had a good sense of where the band was heading. The tougher, rockier sound that Felder’s extra rock guitar gave them worked brilliantly, more so, perhaps, on the rowdy “Already Gone” than even on the biting “Good Day in Hell.”