Condition: used
The Eagles - The Long run
Asylum Records, Canada, 1979
Cat# X5E-508
Vinyl is in VG++ condition with a few light scuffs that do not sound. Gatefold cover has ringwear(see pic)
Includes insert with pic on one side and lyrics on the other, slight wear to insert (See pic).
Tracks:
The Long Run
I Can't Tell You Why
In the City
The Disco Strangler
King of Hollywood
Heartache Tonight
Those Shoes
Teenage Jail
The Greeks Don't Want No Freaks
The Sad Cafe
**
Released: September 1979
Chart Peak: #1
Weeks Charted: 57
Certified Platinum: 2/1/80
By day, the stardom-obsessed City of Angels depicted on the Eagles' The Long Run is a dreary land of blank vistas and empty promises, baking slowly under an unsentimental sun.
But when the night comes, the landscape is suddenly infested with mad shadows: inky, menacing configurations that provide an ominous depth. Unbridled by reality, this is the time when desperate dreams emerge from their lairs. Such dreams stalk the back streets, bistros, board rooms and bedrooms where the deals for success are struck -- and then metamorphose into nightmares.
The Long Run, the Eagles first album in three years, is a chilling and altogether brilliant evocation of Hollywood's nightly Witching Hour, that nocturnal feeding frenzy where the desperado and the ghoul are employed as antiromantic symbols of the star caught in the devil's bargain.
And both eventually come to realize that they have to give up the guise of observers and confess their roles as participants.
On first listening, The Long Run seems a modest, flawed project that's virtually devoid of gloss, catchy hooks and flashy invention that typified earlier Eagles records. The title tune sets an unambitious tone: the group lopes along in a familiar country-rock framework, singing about youthful hopes and the virtues of tenacity. But it slowly comes apparent that the "long run" is a metaphor for a host of secret concerns and passions that are either career- or relationship- oriented. The cards have all been dealt and played, and all that remains is to tally the terrible cost: "Who is gonna make it/We'll find out in the long run."
Overall, The Long Run is a synthesis of previous macabre Eagles motifs, with cynical new insights that are underlined by slashing rock & roll. There's a stark simplicity to the album, especially when compared with the hyperslick Hotel California. Not a collection of hot car-radio singles, The Long Run is easily the band's most un commercial effort. Vocally, instrumentally and lyrically, the Eagles' trademark of coy cleverness has largely been replaced by a raw, direct approach. The songs are of a piece, each one complementing and building on the other with a total effect that's shattering.
The Long Run closes with "The Sad Cafe," a dirgelike hymn to the Troubadour, the legendary Los Angeles saloon that sheltered the Eagles and so many of their cohorts in their scuffling days, providing a stage on which they could express themselves, and a bar at which they could forget about themselves. Clustered around the bar, the Eagles admit that the long run was never a roll of the dice as much as a conscious attempt to outrace their demons. It seems that the drive for success is a kind of black hole in the center of the soul -- a black hole that sucks in and devours most of the feelings, lovers or oneself.
The Long Run is a bitter, wrathing, difficult record, full of piss and vinegar and poisoned expectations. Because it's steeped in fresh, risky material and unflinching self-examination, it's also the Eagles' best work in many, many years.
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