Eagles - Dark Desert Highway
How America’s Dream Band Turned into a Nightmare
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Orion Publishing Co
Published:25th May '23
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'This could be heaven or this could be hell...'
So sings Don Henley on their biggest hit, 'Hotel California', and it is true that the Eagles story was one that blurred the ultimate Hollywood highs and subterranean LA lows beyond recognition.
The band that embodied the American dream with globe-straddling success, impossibly luxurious lives, almost supernatural talent also descended into nightmare with bloodletting betrayal, hate-filled hubris, the skeletons of perceived enemies, brutally discarded lovers and former band mates left unburied on the road behind them. The story of the Eagles is a truly gothic American fable: one of ultimate power and rivers of money; of sex and drugs at a time when both were the lingua-franca of sophisticated So-Cal living; of a band who sang of peaceful easy feelings in public while threatening to kill each other in private.
Now, for the first time, esteemed music biographer Mick Wall will provide the definitive insight into America's bestselling band of all time, a band who have sold more records than Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones combined, exploring their meteoric rise to fame and the hedonistic days of the 70s music scene in LA, when American music was taking over the world.
"Mick Wall treats us to a savvy, authoritative chronicle of the flight of the Eagles, immersing us in the heady world of the Laurel Canyon scene and the other aspiring musicians who would rise to fame together. The Eagles persevered through obscurity and management and recording challenges to finally realize their dream, but the brilliance of their songwriting and musicianship was juxtaposed with the menacing tide of cocaine abuse, a broken brotherhood, and too much money. The Eagles: Dark Desert Highway is a comprehensive history of a band that burned so bright, yet finally succumbed to the heat." * Sandra B. Tooze, author of Levon: From Down in the Delta to the Birth of the Band and Beyond *
"Hip, wise and witty, Wall knows these beatniks out to make it rich for who they were and spares nobody in his bare knuckles account, a sordid only-in-Hollywood tale that could have come from James Ellroy." - Joel Selvin, author of Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day
"Entertaining and often edgy. . . . Wall captures the spirit of that era's 'fast lane' in a manner reminiscent of a highly caffeinated Tom Wolfe, treating the band in the manner that Wolfe did Phil Spector or the Merry Pranksters. . . . [A] rock bio in which nobody, including the author, takes it easy." - Kirkus Reviews
"Wall knows the decade inside out, its derangements and its alchemies. The freewheeling style he adopts - he writes like a DJ on West Coast FM radio in 1977 - gets into the spirit, gladly granting the Eagles a free pass to snort coke off their amps." - The Telegraph
ISBN: 9781409190691
Dimensions: 236mm x 164mm x 34mm
Weight: 560g
352 pages