I remember the Eagles as a kid when they had a few hits in the British charts but it was not the music I grew up with. By the time I was a teenager they had already broken up.
They were a band I got to know retrospectively through their hit songs and then later their new songs after they reformed in the 1990s.
So I arrived to this two part documentary rather fresh knowing little about the band apart from band members Don Henley and Glenn Frey had pop hits as solo artists in the 1980s.
Part one focuses on the formative years of the musician from being kids onwards, the early days of the band until they hit the big time and their creative tensions leading to their breakup. Its a fascinating and informative story for me. I had no idea that such a Californian sounding rock/country/blues band recorded their early work in London and how much they were in awe of the music of The Who, Beatles, The Rolling Stones.
The band has gone through lineup changes with disputes among band members. Joe Walsh with his past demons comes across as the most honest in the documentary, Frey and Henley as the victors and the defacto leaders of the Eagles get to write their version of the history.
