Mick Wall

Reading the final chapter in this biography I was in tears. And wondering how Mick Wall could make me feel like that for a totally indulged band of men, who have apparently spent their adult lives doing exactly what they want, without the constraints of (lack of) money or sense of responsibility.

Mick Wall has done his meticulous research: reading the books, articles, watching the footage and even having access to the principle players & their retinues. He’s great at describing the music & show more chronologically telling what happened. Though the insertion of second person narration jarred to begin with, I got used to it.

And yes, I found it sad if it’s true that Page has spent the largest part of his life trying to resurrect a band and a time that he was in control of that has gone. That Jason is unwilling to escape his father’s shadow - a family man who morphed into an aggressive thug with drink & drugs; and Robert, proud of his charismatic part in the band, but spending the rest of his life, roaming where the fancy took him, wanting to free himself from the impossible shackle of being the once 21 year old Rock God.

An amazing story told page-turningly well. show less

The first thing I’d say about this bio of the Eagles is that it is immensely entertaining. It starts at a breakneck pace and maintains that for most of the book, sketching scenes of how, when and where the band came together and, eventually, fell apart – only to get together again.

Mick Wall’s portrait of the scene in and around The Troubadour is crystal clear and dripping with cross-references to the Eagles’ antecedents, contemporaries, associates, and rivals. And it’s often very show more funny. There’s lots of drugs, alcohol, money, women, managers, recording, tours, and an almost Shakespearean sense of drama in the way power within the band is gradually winnowed until Don Henley is left at the top.

Especially at the start, it’s almost a tone poem, painting a word picture of the LA music scene transitioning from the 60s to the 70s (spoiler alert: Charles Manson ruined everything), while going backwards and forwards through the band’s development and the individual members’ backgrounds (another spoiler alert: none of the original four Eagles were from California). In that way, it’s certainly compelling.

What it’s not is a fan piece. It’s pretty clear that Wall doesn’t particularly like the Eagles, although he acknowledges their popularity and success. He has definitely come to bury the Eagles, not to praise them.

What it’s also not is original, other than in the way it pulls together other people’s research. Oh, he gives credit to the other writers who have profiled the band, he’s not plagiarising. In fact, he lists his sources at the end of the book, 52 of them, many of which he name checks during this book.

So Dark Desert Highway is a kind of compilation, a selective summary or summing-up of everyone else’s Eagles books, with some over-arching (and often overly arch) commentary.

This is a bit odd, coming from from “the world’s leading rock writer”, who has written mote than 30 books about bands, musicians and the music industry.

I’ve only read one of them, an excellent biography of Led Zeppelin called When Giants Walked The Earth, which is more your standard, well-researched, and engrossing band profile. I heartily recommend it.

By comparison, Dark Desert Highway is almost a comic book treatment. Perhaps Wall felt that suited the Eagles. If they were in it for the money, well, so is he.

I’m also a bit confused about how this book relates to Life in the Fast Lane, also by Mick Wall and released within a month of Dark Desert Highway. You’d think maybe the latter was just a renamed version for the Australian, or American, or non-UK market (Wall is British), but both books seem to be equally available in all markets.

Anyway, if you’re interested in the whole California country rock phenomenon, focused on the Eagles but with lots of cameos from Linda Ronstadt (of course), Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, CSN&Y, Joni Mitchell, Gram Parsons, Fleetwood Mac, David Geffen, Irving Azoff, Glyn Johns and many (really, many, MANY) more, Dark Desert Highway is a quick and highly entertaining read. show less

Wall, a rock journalist who knew him for decades, published this soon after Lemmy's death. Part researcher and critic, but much of the material here comes from years of one on one interviews with Lemmy, bass player, singer and main songwriter of Motorhead. Wall has been around long enough that he often has the two or three sides to infamous events, such as the departures of band members or management changes. He does something which few biographers or interviewers do, which is to write about show more Lemmy as a real person with real character flaws, who could be arrogant and even a bit tyrannical when he believed his position was threatened. Wall and Lemmy spoke of money, drugs, and declining record sales, things that most would shy from. It's warts and all, and the best bio on the man, and the band, that I've read so far. show less

Not so much a straight biography as a hip, conversational and occasionally meandering fable about the band Eagles (no definite article), the 1970s, too many egos, and mountains of cocaine. I worshipped the band in their heyday, in the desperate way only a lonely teenaged girl can pull off, but felt only mild outrage when they became a pop culture punching bag in the ensuing decades (mostly thanks to The Big Lebowski).

Wall doesn't argue that Eagles were groundbreaking musical geniuses, but show more he admires the way they captured the zeitgeist of 1970s California, when the folksy Laurel Canyon sound of Crosby Stills & Nash and Joni Mitchell was replaced by a darker hedonistic cynicism. Plus they sure knew how to write hit songs. Sure we all know now that Glenn Frey and Don Henley were raging misogynistic assholes, but reading this book made me nostalgic for my 13 year old self, listening to Eagles records in my bedroom, with only the music and lyrics to tell me how to feel. show less