All of the above happened to the Eagles, the first rock band of the free agent era. The problem wasn't Walsh per se, it was the "now they'll really achieve greatness" mentality that accompanied him into the group. There was an ease to the pre-Walsh Eagles. They moved as a unit. They functioned as a pack. The latter-day Eagles felt more like high-priced session men backing up each other's projects than a group of peers.

The band's sound changed along with its mentality. Their pre-Walsh albums (up through One of These Nights) breathed. There are spaces in the surface of the music which afford clean, dry ventilation, like cotton or fine spun wool. The holes closed up on Hotel California and the material didn't breathe: it was slicker but caused discomfort in the long run.

The band changed stylistically as well. When they traded the bluegrass-based Bernie Leadon for the '70s-rock based Joe Walsh, they lost their contact with the desert: their source of high-lonesome inspiration. Gone were the banjos, the pedal steel, the fancy finger picking that informed even their most un-Western material. The falsetto R&B vocals of "One of These Nights"
were "Western" R&B vocals.

When the Eagles looked out over the city lights of L.A. in "Lyin' Eyes" or "Hollywood Waltz'" they saw the city for what it really was: an irrigated desert. They saw the ancient smoke of the indian's campfires backing up against the San Gabriel Mountains. The Eagles traded this view for a windowless luxury suite at the Hotel California.

When I listen to to warm dry breezes of "Peaceful Easy Feeling," or "Tequila Sunrise," or "Lyin' Eyes," I remember an incident from my childhood: When I was ten my family lived a few doors down from an open field of Southern California sage, tumbleweeds, sun-beaten dust and desert critters. Kids rode dirt bikes and flew kites and went on hikes and searched for old spent shells from the WWll firing range. We lived where Southern California confronted its former self.

One fall day, I went to the field to practice my boomerang - the real thing that my grandmother had brought back from Australia. I gave the stick a mighty heave and it swung out in a beautiful, soaring arc. Unfortunately my trajectory was off and the boomerang landed in a forbiddingly tangled mess of prickly brush. Heedlessly I charged through the crackling brown tangle, and spotting the hole that the boomerang had neatly sliced through the brush, I reached down to claim my prize.