That Long Road Out Of Eden Just Got A Whole Lot Shorter, Folks...

What'd they say about Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road? 'Too fat to float'? That's pretty much true of most double albums. If I had to name a double that probably works better as a double, I'd point to London Calling, because the sprawl and diversity is the point and I would have trouble cutting that one down in a sensible way. But other than that? Woof, there's a lot of other double albums, even classics of the genre, that are indeed 'too fat to float' and so it's up to ol' OBG to try to get them to slim down. We started recently by turning Nick Cave's The Lyre Of Orpheus/Abbatoir Blues double whopper into a (hopefully) more delightful single album, My Beautiful World, and now it's time to take the knife to our first real double album.

The Eagles' Long Road Out Of Eden is a prime candidate for this nes weries, because, man, this thing is flabby as fuck, and there's a lot of grease to cut away here. Which in itself was surprising when the album came out in 2007. After all, in the preceding thirteen years after their 1994 reunion, the band had managed a grand total of five new songs, four in 1994 for Hell Freezes Over and a pretty good one-off ("Hole In The World") in 2003, which technically hails already from the first Long Road Out Of Eden sessions. So the fact that not only they'd finally came out with a new studio album, the first after 1979's The Long Run, but on top of that that it was a double album, was somewhat surprising. (Incidentally, and infamously, The Long Run was initially announced as a double album, mainly to give guys like Don Felder a chance at a lead vocal, but they didn't even have enough material for a single good album, hell, I'd argue not even enough for half a single good album. But, as usual, I digress.) Maybe less surprising: they worked, on and off,  over six years on that sucker. Another Long Run. Anyway, with one album they almost quadrupled their output of the last fifteen years of their existence. Impressive!

Except, well, you know. There's quite a bit of stuff on Long Road Out Of Eden that is, you know, not all that good. Not to mention that, much like Henley's and Frey's solo work, songs have a tendency to run long, too long. The result: A rather unreasonable ninety minutes for twenty tracks, and several tracks that drag. So, OBG to the rescue! There is a pretty good classic Eagles album in there, you just have to extract it from amidst all the chaff. Because, let's be honest: One part of Long Road Out Of Eden - arguably the better, more succesful part - was a conscious choice to recreate not only the Eagles sound, but to create songs that reminded you of the band's heydays: "Busy Being Fabulous" is such a song, as is the choice to finally issue J.D. Souther"s "How Long". 

The band had covered that tune in concert throughout 1973 - with Frey, Henley and Randy Meisner all trading lead vocals on verses - but didn't issue a studio version to not steal their buddy's thunder. Having Frey's kids stumble onto their dad playing that song on Dutch TV on Youtube pushed the band to issue it as the first single, making it, like "Busy Being Fabulous", a top thirty hit, which was no small feat for a veteran classic rock band in 2007. But the slow crawl - sometimes literally - through Long Road Out Of Eden also reveals, that the band's two dictators leaders Frey and Henley used the album as a sneaky stealth way to issue what sounds like solo recordings, more or less smuggling in solo EPs into the double album, knowing full well that an album with the Eagles name on it would largely outsell any of their solo records. 

So, there' was a lot of throwing out to do. A ton of tracks that sounded like solo adventures got the boot, mostly Frey's, since he indulged a lot in yawn-inducing ballads. All the songs that sounded like Eagles songs made the line-up, with the exception of "Fast Company", a sort-of redo of "Life In The Fast Lane". The problem with that one: The band did another number that vaguely recalls the funk-rock of "Life", "Fail Grasp At The Big Picture", one of Henley's patented political rants, and of the two I liked the latter better. So long, "Fast Company"! Speaking of Henley's political content: This is of course the biggest change from the classic years: Whatever ecologic or political criticism the band could muster in its prime was couched in metaphor so as to be almost unrecognizable - you have to really stretch to read the 'white settlers edstroying paradise'-scenario of "The Last Resort" as a critique of the way Aspen, Colorado got turned into a snowy Disneyland for rich guys like, ironically, Henley and Frey.

Henley got a lot more direct during his solo years, and it shows on Long Road Out Of Eden. His nature activism shows up on the a capella poem adaptation "No More Walks In The Woods"and he comments on the reliance on media manipulation and American Imperialism in "Fail Grasp" and the title song. The sentiments of both have sadly become way more relevant in the last decade thanks to a certain orange dictatorial authoritarian dictatorial you-know-who. Henley's bitter political rants aren't obvious classic Eagles material, but they're better than the overkill of soppy ballads. 

A classic Eagles album would make room for one solo spot for the two 'good hands' members of the band, which limited the choices for Wals and Schmit, who had two tracks each on the double album - quitely respecting the logic of 'one track per album'. I picked "Do Something" for Schmit, which while also a ballad is much more urgent than the ultra-sappy "What Do I Do With My Heart". For Walsh, a dilemma: He has an original song on the album, but it's an ultra-slow crawl of a song about doing nothing that, well, does nothing, but takes a mind-numbingly long seven minutes to do so. Attempts to edit it down proved unsuccessful, so I picked his cover of "Guilty Of A Crime", which itself is a remake. He recorded it in the mid-90s for a TV series soundtrack, but it's sprightly and (somewhat) rocking, which any version of Long Road Out Of Eden is in short supply of, so it might have gotten the vote for inclusion either way. 

Well, folks, this write-up threatens to get as long and difficult to get through as the original album *shudder*, so I'll try to be quick: Conceived as a classic vinyl-era album, ten tracks sequenced as two distinct sides with their own dynamics; The two singles and most-Eagles sounding tracks frontload side a, while side b opens with the album's epic, the ten-minute title song and its accompanying piece, Frey's short (and Grammy-winning) instrumental "I Dreamed There Was No War". The Walsh track then livens up the solemn proceedings, before we close gently with "Waiting In The Weeds" - sounding totally like a Henley solo track, but again, real quality cuts were limited - and the aforementioned "No More Walks In The Woods", which is lovely, but works much better as a closer than an album opener.   

Given Henley's and Frey's predilections for long, drawn out codas that don't really bring much to the table besides running time - carried over from their solo work - a number of them have been edited down a bit. Also: no soft rock slop! That sleazy saxophone solo at the end of "No More Cloudy Days"? Sayonara, sucker!

So there it is, ol' OBG really slimmed that flabby album down to a core that is infinitely more listenable. The Long Road Out Of Eden might still be long, but it's a lot shorter and more agreeable to listen to.. agree? Disagree? Step on that road to find out...