How I accepted that the Eagles are not a dirty word anymore

It's 1992 and Glenn Frey of the Eagles is on a plane from California to Australia to start a solo tour. He has just released an album called Strange Weather, so he's pleasantly surprised to pick up one of the country's most popular magazines on the flight and discover they've run a review.

Well, he's pleasantly surprised until he reads it. The opening line states: "The Eagle has laid a bad egg." Things get worse from there.

To their critics, the Eagles were smug corporate rock cynics and liberal scolds.Credit:Fairfax

When he touches down in Sydney he still has the magazine in his hand. On disembarking, he waves it at the record company publicist and the first words he utters on Australian soil are these: "Who the f— is Barry Divola?"

Well, that would be me.

Checking into the Hotel California: From left, Don Felder, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Glenn Frey, Randy Meisner in a 1970s studio shot.Credit:RB/Redferns

Yes, the Eagles and I have history. Let's face it, the band is so ridiculously big that we all have history with them. And it's complicated.

In August this year Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) overtook Michael Jackson's Thriller as the biggest-selling US album of all time. It has now gone platinum 38 times over. I'm listening to it right now. And you know what? I'm not hating it much at all. In fact, my foot has not stopped tapping for some time and I'm looking off into the distance a little wistfully and singing wobbly, out-of-tune harmonies with Glenn and Bernie and Randy and Don and the other Don.

I know these songs as well as I know my own name. I'm listening on a streaming service, but I could just as easily reach into the dusty back regions of my vinyl collection, where I'd find the well-worn copy I bought in 1976. My equally well-worn copy of Hotel California would be right next to it. I'd have to flick through all the albums by the Velvet Underground, Big Star, the Jam, the Smiths and countless other critically approved bands to get to them. But tellingly, even though I hid those Eagles records when I officially became a cool nerd instead of an uncool nerd, I never got rid of them. I just retired them to the back bench, along with Supertramp, the Doobie Brothers, Meat Loaf and … deep breath, you can type this … Rick Wakeman.

With their tequila sunrises, lyin' eyes, peaceful easy feelings, and that girl, my lord, in a flat-bed Ford slowin' down to take a look at me, it's no surprise I left them behind in 1977 when Elvis Costello smirked at me from the cover of My Aim Is True wielding a Fender Jazzmaster like a rifle and I immediately fell in love. It's as if the Eagles were waving faded denim flags in the air and bleating "Hello! Punk rock! We're over here! Kill us now!" in perfect four-part harmony.

It was almost a default position to hate the Eagles after they became one of the most famous musical punchlines in film history when Jeff Bridges, playing the Dude in 1998's The Big Lebowski, jumped in a taxi, only to discover the Eagles were playing on the radio.

"Jesus, man, could you change the channel?" he asked the driver. "I hate the f—ing Eagles, man."

The driver threw him out of the cab, but the rest of the world seemed to be on the Dude's side. When cinema's most famous stoner had his high harshed by a band, it gave us all permission to weigh in on that band. This became blatantly obvious in January 2016, when Frey died at the age of 67.

Yes, I thought Strange Weather was a terrible record and I said so in that review in 1992. But I didn't gleefully jump up and down on Frey's grave when he shuffled off this mortal coil. The New York Daily News did. The paper ran an op-ed under the headline "Glenn Frey's death is sad, but the Eagles were a horrific band".

I know all these songs as well as I know my own name.

"No disrespect to Glenn Frey, but the Eagles were, quite simply, the worst rock and roll band," wrote Gersh Kuntzman. "And hating the Eagles defines whether a music fan is a fan or just a bandwagon-jumper."

Crass timing? Definitely. Completely false in his judgment of the band? Well, that's subjective, isn't it?

The thing is, it's difficult to separate the music from the people who made it – and the Eagles made it very easy to dislike them. To their critics, they were smug corporate rock cynics and liberal scolds who wrote about the fall of a decadent America while hoovering most of the cocaine in California during the '70s and becoming among the richest rock stars on earth, their battling egos resulting in nasty lawsuits between members as the group unceremoniously tore itself apart.

It's no coincidence that when they finally did reform 14 years after their 1980 break-up, the resulting tour and album were called Hell Freezes Over, because Don Henley had always said the band would only get back together when that happened.

Are the Eagles the only musicians on earth to have lived debauched lifestyles and developed outsized opinions of themselves after huge success? Hardly. In fact, another gargantuan '70s Californian band was serious competition for the Eagles in hoovering all that cocaine while having epic ego battles and internal strife. Time has not only treated Fleetwood Mac much more kindly, but despite being in punk's firing line alongside the Eagles, their music has undergone a massive re-assessment and today they are critically lauded. When Neil Finn became a band member in April, the news was not met with a wall of raspberries and a barrage of rotten fruit (well, Lindsey Buckingham excepted), but with a general sense of celebration that a much-loved Australasian musical icon was joining musical royalty. Would the same thing have happened if, say, Paul Kelly joined the Eagles? Most would think he'd gone mad.

After a day of listening to the Eagles again, my opinions largely remain unchanged – Life In The Fast Lane still makes me involuntarily play air guitar, just like it did in 1976; Heartache Tonight is even more terrible than I remember it in 1979.

Ultimately I'm with US pop-culture writer Chuck Klosterman. In his 2013 book, I Wear the Black Hat, he wrote a chapter called "Another Thing that Interests Me About the Eagles is that I (am Contractually Obligated to) Hate Them". He explains that he spent a lot of his early life as a metal-head thinking the Eagles were just a boring old rock band, but then in his mid-20s "I suddenly decided they were the worst band that had ever existed, or could ever exist".

In the end, he comes to some sort of peace with the Eagles and all the other music he hated vehemently throughout his teens and 20s. His conclusion? His opinions were often coloured by age or ignorance or circumstance and he eventually grew old enough to not only appreciate some of the work of those acts on his hit-list but to realise it was pointless hating a band that much.

I know exactly how he feels. When it comes to being in the "I Hate the Eagles" club, you can check out any time you like and you can leave.

But that Glenn Frey solo album still sucks.

The Eagles play Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne on March 5-6 and Sydney's Qudos Bank Arena on March 13 (sold out) and March 14.

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