More Eagles

 More Country and Country Rock

• KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it brings the Eagles’ first Number One album to life on this early Asylum pressing
• On a copy such as this one, the soaring guitar solo of the title track really comes alive – assuming you have it turned up good and loud
• “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Take It To The Limit” sound the way they should – we guarantee you have never heard them sound remotely as good as they do here
• A top quality side two is not easy to find on this album – they are consistently one half to one full grade lower than side one – but not this side two, which won the shootout and is the BEST we have ever heard
• Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
• 4 stars: “…a lyrical stance — knowing and disillusioned, but desperately hopeful — had evolved, and the musical arrangements were tighter and more purposeful. The result was the Eagles’ best-realized and most popular album so far.”

Another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume.

This is one of the toughest Eagles albums to find with good sound, which is why only a small handful ever make it to the site. This album may never sound quite as good as Hotel California or the self-titled debut, but there are some wonderful songs here and a Hot Stamper like this brings them to life in a way most pressings cannot begin to do.

The better copies are richer and sweeter. When you turn them up, they really come to life. When you play the better sides at Rock Music Volumes they really ROCK. When a copy is cut really clean, as the best ones are, the louder you play them the better they sound. They’re tonally correct at loud levels and a bit dull at what we would call “audiophile” levels. That’s the way it should be.

Here is the one comment which really gets to the point of the better pressings: “guitar solos rise above.” The big solo on the title track just soars on this copy like we’ve rarely heard in the past.

This is the guitar sound that Bill Szymczyk achieved with the band that Glyn Johns had not. Of course, Johns had never tried; he saw them as a Country Rock band. The Eagles saw themselves as a Rock band, it’s as simple as that.

Also note on side one that the loud choruses and huge guitars on the second track, “Too Many Hands,” hold up on this side one amazingly well. It’s a great test track as well as the first, providing positive confirmation that what you will hear for the song “One of These Nights” — the size and the power — will carry all the way through this side one.

Side two in general tends to have worse sound than side one on this album by one half to one full grade, if our experience is any guide.

What The Best Sides Of One Of These Nights Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1975
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

Size and Space

One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.

Other copies — my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” — create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re just bigger and clearer.

And most of the time those very special pressings just plain rock harder. When you hear a copy that does all that, it’s an entirely different listening experience.

What We’re Listening For On One Of These Nights

Less grit — smoother and sweeter sound, something that is not easy to come by on One of These Nights.

A bigger presentation — more size, more space, more room for all the instruments and voices to occupy. The bigger the speakers you have to play this record, the better.

More bass and tighter bass. This is fundamentally a pure rock record. It needs weight down low to rock the way Bill Szymczyk in this case — wanted it to.

Present, breathy vocals. A veiled midrange is the rule, not the exception.

Good top-end extension to reproduce the harmonics of the instruments and details of the recording including the studio ambiance.

Last but not least, balance. All the elements from top to bottom should be heard in harmony with each other. Take our word for it, assuming you haven’t played a pile of these yourself, balance is not that easy to find.

Our best copies will have it though, of that there is no doubt.

Not only is it hard to find great copies of this album, it ain’t easy to play ’em either, which is why this recording ranks high on our difficulty of reproduction scale.

You’re going to need a hi-res, super low distortion front end with careful adjustment of your arm in every area — VTA, tracking weight, azimuth and anti-skate — in order to play this album properly.

If you’ve got the goods you’re gonna love the way this copy sounds. Play it with a budget cart/table/arm and you’re likely to hear a great deal less magic than we did.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don’t have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that’s certainly your prerogative, but we can’t imagine losing what’s good about this music — the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight — just to hear it with less background noise.

Side One:

One of These Nights
Too Many Hands
Hollywood Waltz
Journey of the Sorcerer

Side Two:

Lyin’ Eyes
Take It to the Limit
Visions
After the Thrill Is Gone
I Wish You Peace

AMG 4 Star Review

The Eagles recorded their albums relatively quickly in their first years of existence, their LPs succeeding each other by less than a year. One of These Nights, their fourth album, was released in June 1975, more than 14 months after its predecessor. Anticipation had been heightened by the belated chart-topping success of the third album’s “The Best of My Love”; taking a little more time, the band generated more original material, and that material was more polished.

More than ever, the Eagles seemed to be a vehicle for Don Henley (six co-writing credits) and Glenn Frey (five), but at the same time, Randy Meisner was more audible than ever, his two lead vocals including one of the album’s three hit singles, “Take It to the Limit,” and Bernie Leadon had two showcases, among them the cosmic-cowboy instrumental “Journey of the Sorcerer” (later used as the theme music for the British television series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). Nevertheless, it was the team of Henley and Frey that stood out, starting with the title track, a number one single, which had more of an R&B — even a disco — sound than anything the band had attempted previously, and continuing through the ersatz Western swing of “Hollywood Waltz” to “Lyin’ Eyes,” one of Frey’s patented folk-rock shuffles, which became another major hit.

One of These Nights was the culmination of the blend of rock, country, and folk styles the Eagles had been making since their start; there wasn’t much that was new, just the same sorts of things done better than they had been before. In particular, a lyrical stance — knowing and disillusioned, but desperately hopeful — had evolved, and the musical arrangements were tighter and more purposeful. The result was the Eagles’ best-realized and most popular album so far.