Episode #97 | 3.8.22
The Eagles Pt 1: International Drug Smuggling, Endless Cocaine, and California Excess
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In this episode
From games of chicken on private planes to one member surviving a private plane crash, the Eagles as a group very narrowly survived themselves. During their early days, they dosed out on Peyote and reimagined and reconfigured a new FM sound for the ages that would result in unimaginable success and excess. When their debut record was released on Geffen Records in 1972, America couldn’t have been more ready for their breezy, countrified Southern California sound. Yet something else came with their that heady, golden age of California in the 1970s, that era of endless cocaine, groupies, money, and excess beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. As the Eagles would soon learn, that “peaceful easy feeling” they were peddling wasn’t built to last.
Sources
To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles, by Marc Eliot
History of the Eagles (2013)
Rock star fined, placed on probation (UPI)
Life in the fast lane: the turbulent tale of the Eagles (Louder)
The Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know (Rolling Stone)
Illegal Eagle: How the Fake Randy Meisner Was Caught at Last (Ultimate Classic Rock)
CPD didn’t “Take It Easy” on Eagles’ Glenn Frey (614)
Don Henley Arrested for Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor (Music History Calendar)
The Most Insane Stories in the Career of the Eagles (Rock Pasta)
The Second Life of Don Henley (GQ Magazine)
Don Henley, lead singer of the Eagles rock group… (UPI)
Rock star fined, placed on probation (UPI)
Don Henley, naked underage girl, drugs, fined $2500 in 1981 (The Press Democrat)
They Call Him Big Shorty (Rolling Stone)
Disgraceland is a podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. It melds music history, true crime and transgressive fiction. Disgraceland is not journalism. Disgraceland is entertainment. Entertainment inspired by true events. However, certain scenes, characters and names are sometimes fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
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