The quilt of Bernie Leadon’s new solo album is a vivid echo from his esteemed country-rock previous. Within the image, the singer-guitarist — and co-founding member of the Eagles — stands together with his guitar in profile on a hill overlooking the glowing lights of nighttime Los Angeles.
It’s a misty, romantic view Leadon obtained to know nicely throughout his a few years within the metropolis, the place he helped create a style whereas a member of the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Linda Ronstadt’s band and different rock combos with a weak point for music of melancholy and twang. The image was taken by photographer Henry Diltz for a never-completed Leadon solo venture 45 years earlier.
Utilizing it now on his just-released album, “Too Late To Be Cool,” isn’t meant as an enormous assertion, he says. The musician merely all the time cherished the image, nevertheless it does replicate his lingering affection for a scene that took him world wide and to the highest of the music charts.
“It’s an homage to that period of time and what was occurring here creatively,” says Leadon, throughout a current go to to L.A. from his house in Nashville. “Around that time, in the late ’60s, early ’70s … many of those artists were like the Pied Pipers and doing what artists are supposed to do — making social commentary, but also driving and steering the culture. That was a singular moment and a pretty amazing thing that happened.”
Proper now, Leadon, 78, is visiting the places of work of Warner Chappell Music in downtown L.A., the place he just lately signed a publishing deal that may assist unfold his new music via licensing and recordings by different artists. Again within the Eagles days, Leadon was recognizable for a tangle of curly hair and a handlebar mustache. Now, his head is shaved and the mustache has been gone since 1986.
Leadon’s new album was recorded in his private analog studio in Nashville, utilizing traditional gear and 2-inch tape, with producer Glyn Johns, who produced the primary two Eagles albums, and a part of the third. Finishing the studio was a five-year venture.
(Wil Cohen / For The Instances)
“Too Late to Be Cool,” launched independently by Straight Wire Data, is his first solo music in 20 years, and it displays the traditions he was a central a part of with the unique Eagles foursome: singer-drummer Don Henley, singer-guitarist Glenn Frey, singer-bassist Randy Meisner and himself.
Although not one of many Eagles’ major songwriters, Leadon co-authored the hit “Witchy Woman,” a music he initiated whereas nonetheless within the Flying Burrito Brothers. Henley helped end it, and the music reached No. 9 on the Billboard singles chart, the band’s first High 10 hit.
The Eagles had been hitmakers from its 1971 debut, then struck a deep industrial nerve with the compilation “Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975,” which now stands because the bestselling album within the U.S. of all time, with gross sales of 38 million copies. (Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is now No. 2.) The file collected songs from the band’s first 4 albums, the years Leadon was a member.
Throughout his years in L.A., he lived in Topanga Canyon, then moved together with his younger household to Pacific Palisades. The day earlier than this cease at Warner Chappell, Leadon visited the placement of his former house, now a break from this yr’s apocalyptic wildfires. “It’s just a hole in the ground,” he says grimly. “The hedges are still there, but the hedges are burned. The eucalyptus tree is there, but it’s all scarred. But then down below you can still see the ocean and the surf coming in.”
Just a few months earlier, he wrote a music for his previous neighborhood known as “Requiem for a Village.” The unreleased music will not be solely an indication of his grief over the remnants of his previous neighborhood, however exhibits Leadon as soon as once more impressed to precise himself via songwriting.
On “Too Late to Be Cool,” the title music is a gently driving monitor, mixing acquainted textures from the early Eagles with a little bit of Creedence Clearwater Revival, as Leadon sings of renewed spirit and goal. “The first verse is about maybe reconsidering some of my assumptions and making a decision to stop following the crowd,” he explains. “Then it just talks about getting in motion.”
Different tracks embody “Just a Little,” strutting to a Rolling Stones-ish riff, and the bluesy, moody “Go on Down to Mobile,” with a quick however searing guitar solo that’s recognizably his.
The album was recorded in Leadon’s private analog studio in Nashville, utilizing traditional gear and 2-inch tape, with producer Glyn Johns, who produced the primary two Eagles albums, and a part of the third. Finishing the studio was a five-year venture.
“I went from writing maybe two or three songs a year that I wanted to keep to maybe 12 or more,” Leadon says. “When Glyn Johns got involved, I pared it down to 30, and then helped pare it down to 15. We recorded 14, 15 and pared that down to 11. So it’s a culling process. That was all a lot of fun. I love being in the studio, and I love writing.”
The brand new album was recorded with a gaggle of Nashville gamers: keyboardist Tony Harrell, drummer Greg Morrow and bassist Glenn Worf.
“Nashville has really spectacular musicians, who are very empathetic, incredibly skilled,” Leadon says. “We get the sounds fast. First, second, third take usually is it. So it’s fresh, and four guys sitting in a room looking at each other, like it used to be when I first did sessions in L.A.”
Songs had been recorded with all musicians collectively within the studio. “That’s how all the great records that we all love from the ’60s, ’70s and after were usually made — everybody in the room looking at each other. And each take would be different because that guy did something different, so, ‘Oh, I’m gonna react to that.’ That results in a freshness to the recording. People can feel it.”
At Warner Chappell, Greg Sowders, senior vp of A&R, says Leadon has a particular historical past and sound that is still related throughout a number of music genres.
Bernie Leadon, from left, Glenn Frey, Don Henley and Randy Meisner of The Eagles pose for a gaggle portrait in London in 1973.
(Gijsbert Hanekroot / Redferns by way of Getty Photographs)
“Most people never write any hits, let alone songs that change popular music, which certainly defines him as a player and a writer,” says Sowders. “From Dillard & Clark to the Burritos, to the Eagles, he actually helped invent a genre.”
Leadon was a part of a country-rock motion that started years earlier than the Eagles, with connections to the folks revival within the late Nineteen Fifties, early Sixties that flourished earlier than the arrival of the Beatles. And because the ’60s rolled on, pioneering acts like Rick Nelson & the Stone Canyon Band and former Monkees member Mike Nesmith’s First Nationwide Band moved into a brand new country-rock sound.
The Byrds, with the addition of country-rock icon Gram Parsons, made an enduring mark in 1968 with “Sweetheart of the Rodeo.” Although now thought-about a traditional, the album started as a industrial failure. When Parsons and the Byrds turned up on the Grand Ole Opry, they weren’t well-received.
“Because they had long hair,” suggests Leadon with a understanding smile. “Gram was very reverential about the Opry stars, but the audience wasn’t ready for it. Of course, a few years later, everybody had long hair, and then you had Southern rock.”
At about the identical time, Leadon joined Dillard & Clark, a band led by former Byrds singer Gene Clark and bluegrass banjo participant Doug Dillard (of the Dillards).
Leadon was quickly within the Flying Burrito Brothers, working alongside Parsons, who stayed round lengthy sufficient for one album, 1970’s “Burrito Deluxe.” The band additionally performed at Altamont, the Stones-led free competition outdoors San Francisco infamously marred by violence. He remembers it as “the antithesis of Woodstock.”
After a yr within the Flying Burritos, Parsons left the U.S. to hitch the Rolling Stones within the South of France, the place the band was recording “Exile on Main St.” He invited Leadon to return alongside. Leadon recollects with a smile, “I said, ‘Well, Gram, it’s interesting, but I don’t have a trust fund like you do, so I’m not self-funded like you are. I gotta keep working, buddy. So see you later.’”
The final time Leadon noticed the singer-songwriter was when he performed a session for a Parsons solo album. Just a few days later, Leadon and the Eagles left for London to file once more with Johns. “When we got to England to start the third album, Gram Parsons had just died, but I didn’t know until I landed,” he says. “It hit me hard.”
Leadon wrote a tribute to his late buddy, “My Man,” for the 1974 album “On the Border.” The music is a wistful ballad, with the added heat of some traditional Eagles vocal harmonies, as Leadon sang: “He’d sing for the people and people would cry / They knew that his song came from deep down inside / You could hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes.”
Leadon’s technology of country-rock artists ended up influencing not solely rockers but additionally mainstream nation artists. Lengthy after the Eagles breakup, a 1993 tribute album, “Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles,” included covers of the group’s best-loved songs as recorded by the likes of nation stars Travis Tritt, Brooks & Dunn, Trisha Yearwood and Vince Gill (later a touring member of the Eagles).
Founding Eagles guitarist Bernie Leadon sits for a photograph in Los Angeles on Sept. 4.
(Wil Cohen / For The Instances)
Because the band soared in reputation throughout the first half of the last decade, the touring schedule grew extra demanding, and new tensions emerged. Leadon lastly left the Eagles after a falling out with Frey throughout a band assembly, although his exit wasn’t rapid.
“He was just pontificating about his plans — ‘We’re gonna do this and we’re gonna do that,’” Leadon recollects of that gathering, “and I felt non-consulted. I was in a bad mood, impulsive. I poured a beer on his head. Of course, he took exception to that. Then maybe a month or two later, we had a heart-to-heart and I said, ‘Yeah, I think I should go.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, I agree.’”
After the Eagles, Leadon stored working, and recorded a 1977 album, “Natural Progressions,” with guitarist-singer Michael Georgiades. He additionally performed on different artists’ albums, recruited for session work by producer Johns for information by Ronstadt, John Hiatt, Emmylou Harris and others.
The Eagles broke up in 1980, and Leadon remained principally estranged from Frey, although he and Meisner rejoined the band for its 1998 induction into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame. He wasn’t a part of the reunion excursions that started in 1994, however he was invited to hitch the two-year “History of the Eagles” juggernaut that started in 2013.
It took place on account of reconnecting with Frey, which Leadon now credit to a letter he wrote to the band co-leader.
“I opened the door and apologized,” Leadon says, calling the 25 months of touring, plus two months of rehearsals, as a time of reconnecting with their shared previous. “At the last show, he gave me a big hug at the end and said, ‘It’s been great having you out here. This is not the end.’ But it was for him, unfortunately.”
Frey died at age 67 from a number of illnesses, together with rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis.
As for the Eagles, he’s stored in contact, and calls his present relationship with the band “very good.” Just a few days in the past, he texted with Henley, and spoke with their supervisor weeks earlier than that. Whether or not Leadon is seen once more onstage with the band he co-founded, he solely says, “Never say never.”
Regardless, the lasting impression of reuniting with the band continues to propel him now with new music. For the second, Leadon is again in motion.
“I’ve been retired a bunch of different times,” says Leadon, who’s married with children and grandkids. “I actually have found that it’s very beneficial to take time away from it because it can get to be a grind, and who wants to burn out on the thing that you chose because you loved it? As an artist, you’ve got to go do more living before you have anything else to say.”
