How Eagles: Their Greatest Hits Became the Best-Selling Album of All Time
In record stores worldwide, usually floor-bound stacked in unruly piles, often dusty, combed through daily by digging fingers, are boxes of dollar-priced records. These boxes, with rare exception, are filled with the same things: water damaged wax, one-hit wonders, tribute records, covers albums and – mostly – compilations. To the collector, who’s hoarding is the entire enterprise of their obsession, why grab a single album with all your favorite songs when you can — with greater intention and hassle — haul those same songs spread across four less action-packed packages? In a broad stroke, compilations lack sequencing and narrative. They are built, not grown. They aren’t original visions, they are recycled collections. Never a career highlight, they are rather a simple recap of previous triumphs. Unless, of course, that compilation is The Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975). For your chance to hear it live performed by Classic Albums Live, join Arts Commons Presents on Thursday, April 18 in the Jack Singer Concert Hall at Arts Commons.
There’s two histories to how Their Greatest Hits came about. One story goes their label, Asylum Records, panicked at the then-in progress Hotel California's constant delays (due, in no small part, to Black Sabbath’s recording of Technical Ecstasy next door) and compiled a stopgap to pacify the Eagles growing fanbase. The other story goes that the band simply thought they had enough hits to specify the greatest among them.
The cultural impact of the Eagles fourth “album” is settled: it was the first album to be distinguished with the RIAA’s Platinum certification (due, partially, to some serendipitous timing), has spent more than eight years time within the Billboard Top 200, sold more than 38 million units domestically, more than 45 million globally. It was the best-selling American album of the 20th Century. In 2017, it was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. In 2018, under the RIAA’s recently overhauled system to measure album sales*, it overtook Michael Jackson’s Thriller — which sat atop the mountain undisturbed for three decades— as the best selling album of all time in the U.S. And of course it is, by a canyon of a gap, the best-selling greatest hits album of all time.
Beyond their market share, Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) provided the band with a recipe for success and, in doing so, a dividing line between eras. On their first four albums, they were an egalitarian country band originally formed to back Linda Ronstadt that occasionally flashed stardom of their own. With a knack for crafting melodic harmonies and bountiful rock arrangements brought to life by country-strummed guitars, they sang of loneliness, the heart’s tired unreliability and time’s relentless haziness. And while the peaks were majestic, it seemed too much to string a consistent enough mood across both sides of a vinyl long-player. Critical reception was middling. Their first three records were considered good, not great. There was something there, though.
That something was, largely, Don Henley and Glenn Frey. In culling from the 40 songs released prior to Their Greatest Hits, it was obvious that the work from those two overshadowed that of their bandmates. On the first four albums, all members were given a relatively equal share of the songwriting and singing duties. On Their Greatest Hits, all but two songs were written principally by Frey or Henley. All but one had them singing lead. This streamlining wasn’t completely well received, and sowed the seeds of the band’s infamous in-fighting. And yet, Their Greatest Hits was stitched together more seamlessly than anything they had done before. It was cohesive in mood and affect. It didn’t feel like a recycled collection of songs. It flowed like an album.
Shortly before the release of Their Greatest Hits, founding guitarist Bernie Leadon left the band on poor terms. Frustrated and concerned with a lack of input and the departure from well-worn western swing with which they had found moderate success, he lost faith in the band’s direction. He and the pastoral sound he influenced would be replaced by Joe Walsh’s harder, smoother rock sound, and success that could conservatively be referred to as “more”.
That new direction ultimately led to the Eagles most heralded project and their undoing entirely. The strategy was the same: give Glenn and Don a pen, a pad, a pair of captain’s chairs and to hell with the rest. The focused fusion of the two growing bandleaders resulted to Hotel California, a succinct encapsulation of their lonesome, wandering ethos. It was as Californian as sunburn. Founding member Randy Meisner was once again given only a single song to showcase his talents, and left the band thereafter. Joe Walsh was given no songs.
They would for three more years agonize over a commercially disappointing follow-up (The Long Run, 1979), and, in 1980, finally succumbed to envy, resentment and outside pressure, ending an unprecedented run of supremacy from an American Rock band. It would be nearly 30 years before the acrimony was able to diffuse to the point where they could record a final album under the Eagles banner — as long as it didn’t include Don Felder.
Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) is a white whale of an anthology that eclipsed the episodes on which it was built. It was proving grounds for a band on the cusp of greatness, where they honed the power that would eventually crush them. It was the ultimate statement from a band in an altered state, held together like some sick joke by the very fusion that would wrench it apart, at once a pinnacle and nadir. It’s at worst, the second-best Eagles album, a final twang to echo through Best Of- and Highest-Selling- lists for eternity, the greatest Hits album of all time.
Join Arts Commons Presents this April 18 in the Jack Singer Concert Hall as Classic Albums Live reproduces this singular album, note for note, cut for cut. Get your tickets today!
*A platinum certification is given to a song or album with 1 million units sold. In 2013, downloads and streams were included, with ten downloads and/or 1500 streams equaling an album sale.
How Eagles: Their Greatest Hits Became the Greatest Album of All Time is courtesy of Blackbyrd Myoozik.
