EAGLES: Release Date and a Review   

The Eagles have announced April 30th as the release date of career-spanning documentary,History of the Eagles. It is a three-disc set containing parts one and two that premiered on Showtime last month along with Eagles Live at the Capital Centre - March 1977 on the third disc. It will be available on DVD and Blu-ray -- all with 5.1 Surround Sound and Stereo audio -- and will contain a photo book.

A limited-edition deluxe version will contain three Blu-ray discs; a 40-page case-bound book featuring still photos from the film; 10 archival-quality photographs of the band from throughout its storied history; and a specially created lithograph of the band’s desert-bleached skull icon. It will all be encased in a specially designed foil-stamped and embossed box with a Native American blanket-inspired liner, wrapped in a leather tie, and fastened with a bone button.

Former guitarist Don Felder, who was booted from the band in 2001, was interviewed for the documentary and prefers to take the high road when offering up his opinion of what he saw. He enjoyed seeing the old footage, which brought back a lot of memories, but he says there were a few omissions. "You got the feeling that Don Henley and Glenn Frey had been best buddies since ’72 or something. And in fact there was always a lot of friction between them, especially when Glenn quit the band in ’81 and called up Don and said, ‘I can’t work with you anymore; I’m leaving to go do my solo records.’ And Henley finally said, ‘I’ll work with you again when hell freezes over.’ Thus, it was 14 years of them holding hard feelings against each other. Don went on to have a sterling solo career, Glenn made some solo records, Joe [Walsh] did, I did, Timothy [B. Schmit] -- everybody went out on their own. But a lot of that was omitted in the documentary.

And one other critique. "There was an extreme amount of segregation, where everybody rode in their own cars, everybody had their own hotel room, their own bodyguard, their own dressing room backstage. When you got on the private plane, you had your own private lounge where you could close the door. So there wasn’t a lot of friendly conversation; we were in incubators by ourselves. That just bred a void -- avoid each other and avoid the issues. I think it was [manager] Irving Azoff’s idea that we do that. And that wasn’t in the documentary at all.”