Transcript
Jake Brennan (0:04)
Double Elvis.
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Jake Brennan (1:49)
Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis, the story of the Eagles. Their beginnings as a band, their Southern California swagger, their unprecedented success, and their abrupt breakup is so complex that two episodes were needed to properly tell this story. If you're just tuning in now, I suggest you hit pause and go back to part one of the Eagles story, where we discuss the band's beginnings, their relationship with would be mogul David Geffen, Glenn Frey's smuggling of Acapulco gold in the near dead girl in Don Henley's bathroom. In this episode, we get into the band's immeasurable excess, including pranks with private jets, overseas gambling, and high speed Corvette rides with delirious drug dealers. We of course refuse to refer to the Eagles as Eagles, just as we do in Part one. And we also introduced the band's new ball busting manager, Irving Azoff, fast talking the Eagles out of a Bahamian drug bust. And of course we dive into the soaring success of the band's 26 times platinum album, Hotel California. Truly great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called Medicated MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to lady by Kenny Rogers. And why would I play you that specific slice of rejected Commodore cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on November 21, 1980. And that was the night Don Henley rang the paramedics about the underage girl overdosing in his bathroom. A girl that was about to be as dead as his band's career on this episode Private Jet Pranks, Private jet crashes, ball busting managers, SoCal swagger and the masters of life in the fast lane the Eagles I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace. You're driving. It's late. Your friends are with you in your car. One of them has to piss. It's annoying to have to pull over, but extra annoying because you're so close to home. Can he wait? No, he can't. And he won't shut the up about it. So you pull over to the side of the road, a random stretch of road abandoned at this hour. You're silly. It's so late. So are your friends who remain in the car with you. The car idles, your foot on the gas. Your friend outside finishes his business, shakes himself off and reappears from the wooded area beside the road. In the rearview mirror, you spy your friend coming up to the backseat door from behind the car. He's getting closer. He's about to put his hand on the door handle to open it up and jump on in. You quickly put the car into drive, your foot on the gas and jerk the car forward about 15ft. Your friend outside gets the joke, but doesn't find it nearly as funny as your friends in the back seat who are cutting up outside. Mr. Almost pissed his Pants trots quickly to the backseat car door. Inside, your friends don't even have to say anything. You don't either. You all know what is going to happen next. Once Mr. Almost pissed his Pants gets to an inch of that door, you're gonna gun it again and move the car out of reach. And that's exactly what you do now. Your friend outside is visibly angry and your friends in the back are dying outside. You hear him tell you to fuck off. You yell back some fake apology and assure him it's now cool and out of your system. Tired, annoyed, he doggedly accepts your apology and tentatively shuffles back to your car, which is now about 30ft away from him up the road. Once he gets to the door for the third time, you peel out and leave him with a face full of dust and take off down the road. Mr. Almost Pissed His Pants is now Mr. Pissed the Fuck off and begins kicking at the dirt on the ground and punching randomly in the air while screaming in frustration. It's the funniest thing you and your friends have ever seen, and you've seen it a million times. We all have in movies and in real life. I myself have pulled this trick on a band member who got so pissed he temporarily quit our band. Didn't matter. We're gonna kick him out anyway. I've done this to my wife and my wife has done this to me. It's one of the oldest car tricks in the book. But the Eagles the Eagles pulled this prank not in cars, but in private planes at airports and not just on the tarmac. They'd actually make the pilot achieve liftoff for a brief moment and then touch back down. Wait, allow bassist Randy Mizner or New Guy guitarist Don Felder, who joined the band to bring that extra rock and roll additive to Bernie Letton's country style and bam. Just when whichever poor SAP would reach the plane, the pilot, on instructions from the band ins, would take off again and again, racking up majorly expensive airport fees with every takeoff and landing. But it didn't matter. Such was the level of success afforded the Eagles from their first few albums. Their self titled debut rocketed from number 102 to number 22 on the Billboard 200 in six weeks and charted three top 40 hits, including Witchy Woman, which cracked the top 10. Their second album, Desperado, sold modestly by comparison, but regained chart positioning once their third album, on the Border, was released. Their self titled debut had just been certified gold when on the Border yielded more hits. Their incredibly rocking single Already gone at number 32, but most importantly their first chart topping no.1 single, Best of My Love. The full album on the border hit number 17 on the Billboard 200. It was certified gold in under three months, their fastest and best selling album yet. The Eagles made taking off into the upper stratosphere of the charts look easy. Private planes weren't a problem. But even still, customs agents were. To rockers, ramblers and gamblers alike. And to the Eagles in 1974, who were all three. High stakes gambling, as it was to the Old West. Characters depicted on the COVID of their second album, Desperado was a new pastime for the suddenly flush rock and roll band. So in the middle of tour, they headed to the Bahamas on a private jet with new manager, Irving Azoff. Don't know who Irving Azoff is. He's a legend in the business who made his bones with the Eagles at first under David Geffen and then on his own. These days he's a respected elder estatesman of sorts within the music industry. Not exactly shy or soft spoken in his old age, but definitely gentle by comparison to who he was in the 70s. This guy not gonna fucking pay. My artist played for you, motherfucker. Like they fucking agreed to. Where the fuck is our money? The promoter quite literally was near shitting his pants. It was a short helicopter ride up for Azoff, garbed in his satin tour jacket, glasses and slight afro poking out from under his orange construction helmet, which he wore because, well, who the hell really knew? But regardless, a short ride up for Azoff in the helicopter, but a long way down for the promoter if he happened to be thrown out of the helicopter. Give me the fucking money. Shit. Fuck. The promoter at that point would have given Azov his firstborn, and that was the point. Irving Azoff got what he wanted, especially for his clients. And when the chopper landed, he sure as shit got the performance fee the promoter owed him. But that was a different time with a different aircraft. Here in the now, at the airport in the Bahamas with the Eagles, the heat was now on him and not the other way around. Glenn Frey was holding grass in his boot. The rest of the band, with the exception of Don Henley, was holding too. Irving was even holding 30 volume. Shit, even the pilot was holding. As soon as they got off the plane, customs agents rounded the band up and took them off to be searched. Busted. Jail was imminent. Bahamian customs officials were notoriously strict. Unable to be bribed. They said money didn't matter to them. Somehow Irving Azoff was able to convince them to let him, the rest of the band and crew go. They'd give up the dope and operate in the Bahamas under the watchful, responsible eye of their drummer, Don Henley, the only one among them who wasn't trying to smuggle drugs onto the island. How Irving Azoff did it. To this day, no one really knows. Persuasion, confidence. The Eagles new manager's superpowers not only worked on Bahamian customs agents, they worked on the powerful David Geffen as well. As successful as the Eagles were over the course of their early career, their music industry benefactor and head of their record label, David Geffen, was even more successful the same year he launched Asylum Records. In 1971, Geffen signed Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, and of course, Glenn Frey. So successful was Asylum that by the very next year, 1972, Warner Brothers Records purchased Asylum Records and made David Geffen, already a very rich man, an even richer man. The Eagles record contract was then transferred to Warner Brothers, as was half of their publishing revenue, Geffen's half as part of the sale. Technically, the publishing was Geffen's to sell. The Eagles signed it away to David Geffen. So much for protecting the artist. So much for providing Asylum for the artists. Regardless, the publishing was Geffen's to sell. It was his again signed over to and from the band as part of their first record contract. But Irving Azoff claimed that when the deal was signed, it was signed under all manner of conflicted interests from Asylum label heads, business managers and lawyers who were all allegedly working in concert to come up with contracts that favored the business interests of David Geffen and not his artists, the Eagles. Irving Azoff had Geffen by the balls, right where he wanted him. So he put on the squeeze and sued David Geffen to get the Eagles out of their original contract and into a more favorable one. David Geffen dug in, unwilling to relent. Artists didn't leave David Geffen. They could check out, but leave never. Or so he thought. Irving Azoff thought he was doing the right thing, even if he was completely submarine his and his client's relationship with one of the most powerful men in the music business. In the process, if he and the Eagles came out on the losing end, they would have been worse off than before. Incredibly, though, the high stakes gamble paid off. David Geffen settled out of court. Irving Azoff stared down the master from inside his chamber chambers. There was a new outlaw in town, Don Henley said of Irving Azoff. He may be Satan, but he's our Satan.