Their Greatest Feuds (David Geffen): The Eagles Part 3

Our series on The Eagles concludes with a look at the business dealings and lawsuits that took place behind the scenes and the man who helped to shape their early career, David Geffen. A Brooklyn kid whose mother called him King David, Geffen moved to L.A. in the sixties and swiftly became a mover and shaker. By the time he met The Eagles, he was a kingmaker in the local rock scene. But as The Eagles themselves became kings, their relationship with Geffen soured, setting the stage for Geffen's protege, Irving Azoff, to swoop in and become their new manager.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rivals as a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone,
Welcome to Rivals, to show about music beefs and feuds
and long simmering resentments between musicians. I'm Steve and I'm

(00:20):
Jordan's and it's appropriate that we conclude our three part
epic on the Eagles with a boatload of lawsuits. Today
we're gonna focus on David Geffen, the music industry Barracuda,
who helped launch the band with the stable of Laurel
Canyon Acts in the early seventies, and later on he
does battle not only with the Eagles, but also his
own protege, irving A's Off, who swooped in and smatched
the band from his control, leading to decades of animosity. Yeah. Yeah,

(00:44):
It says a lot about the Eagles that we know
the names of so many of their managers, And I
think that's because, like, the Eagles were as much a
business as they were a superstar rock band. Now, I
think that's true of all superstar rock bands, but the
Eagles really didn't do anything to hide their business side.
Like when you watch the movie that we've referenced many
many times in this series documentary, The History of the Eagles,

(01:08):
you immediately noticed that like David Geffen and Irving Asof
are prominently featured. David Geffen especially is one of the
best and most colorful talking heads in that movie. Like
whenever he's on camera, I get really excited because I
know he's about to blow somebody out of the water
with a pithy put down. Yeah, Yeah, he's the best.
I mean, geffn is truly one of the most fascinating

(01:28):
figures of music because he has one of those quintessential
American dream stories, you know. I mean, this poor dyslexic
kid from Brooklyn wants to make it in the entertainment history,
so he works his way up literally from the mail room.
Within a few years, he's a millionaire. And for the
last I think twenty years he's been a billionaire. And
he did it by being the meanest, toughest, shrewdest guy
on the block. Aside from perhaps Irving as Off getting

(01:50):
back to the Eagles, I think both men were what
the band needed at that specific moment in time. Geffen
was perfect to ingratiate them with the hip Laurel Canyon
scene in the first half the decade, and Azof was
the wild hotel trashing Arena rock manager they needed for
the Hotel California era, and the personality clashes, to say
nothing of the legal clashes are just endlessly amusing to me. Yeah,

(02:11):
you know, dun Henley once referred to Irving Aidsof as Satan,
and he meant it as a compliment and Eagles compliment.
But I think in his heart Henley looks at David
Geffen as like an actual devil because those guys had
a very public feud that didn't end well. Of course,
nothing ever ends well in the Eagles story, but that
is very, very good for us. On the Rivals podcast,

(02:33):
you know, Jordan's I'm sad that we finally reached the
third in concluding installment of this series, but all good
things must come to an end, and I can't wait
to dive into the dirty business dealings of the Eagles.
So without further ado, let's get into this mess. Geffen
was born in Brooklyn and came from a long line

(02:53):
of deal makers. His mother apparently used to walk in
the Bloomingdale's and try to haggle with the store clerks,
which is not that kind of place. It got to
the point where they'd roll their eyes whenever she'd walk
in it's great. Uh. She raised her boy for greatness,
calling him King David, and Uh. They were not well
off when he was growing up, and she would say
to him, you better learn to love to work because

(03:14):
we have no money, and you're gonna be working for
the rest of your life. And I think those two
King David, and you're gonna be working the rest of
your life because we have no money. I think those
two things fused in David's mind and that became the
Giffen that we know and love. That's what fuels him
because he was the scrawny kid. He was a bit nerdy,
and you know, he knew he was never going to

(03:34):
be the quarterback or the lead singer in any kind
of band. So this, coupled with his mother's workaholic streak,
helped fuel his ambition. And he would say in later years,
I'm really just a boy from Brooklyn who wishes he
was six ft tall with blonde hair and blue eyes. Now,
after high school, King David moves west to the land
of tall, blond people with blue eyes, California. And when

(03:55):
he gets there, you know, he has this idea that
he wants to be in movies. But of course he
doesn't have V star looks or a movie star talent,
so instead he goes into artists management, and he learns
early on basically like how to be a liar and
like to get ahead by being underhanded. And it's hilarious,
like when you read like magazine articles about David Geffer
or you watch documentaries, how often like this aspect of

(04:18):
his background is like romanticized and like even praised. It's
like quaint. It's portrayed as like quaint. Yeah, it's like
he's not really criticized for this is always like oh wow,
isn't a cute like that he learned how to be
a huge liar when he was young. You know. The
story that I think is like the most famous from
this period is that, as you said, you know, he
applied for a job in the mail room at the
William Morris Agency, which was the big talent agency at

(04:40):
that time, and on his job application he lied about
graduating from u c. L A. Now, soon after this,
a colleague of Geffen's was fired for lying on his resume.
So Geffin starts to worry. Obviously, he knows that William
Morris at some point is going to do a background
check on him. They're gonna ask U c l A
for his transcripts, and he can't let the agency find
out about his lies. Geffen decides that he's going to

(05:02):
come into work early for the next six months, and
his goal is basically they like trying to intercept the
letter that he knows is coming from U c l A.
At some point. Well, one morning, the letter finally arrives
and David Geffen like steams it open, like he's like
in some like sitcom or something. I just picture, like,
you know, like a you know, an episode of like
Growing Pains, like where Mike Sieber is like trying to

(05:24):
cover up one of his scams from Alan Thick or something.
He steams open this letter, and of course the letter
inside says that we've never heard of David Geffen. David
Geffen takes that letter and he replaces it with a
letter that says that they do know who he is
and that you shouldn't be worried that he didn't lie
on his application. So this is a very elaborate scheme,
but it shows, I think the level of commitment that

(05:46):
David Geffen had to his own career and also his
lack of scruples, you know. He said later on in
an interview that he said, like, did I have a
problem with Lyne to get the job? None whatsoever. In fact,
he said that he learned that like lying was like
a big part of his job. Like he said, he
looked around at the agents there and he said, the
epiphany for me at William Morris was realizing, these people

(06:06):
bullshit on the phone. I can bullshit on the phone too.
So with that he was off and he really wanted
to be in the movies, but he was so young
that none of the film people were really going to
take him seriously, and so ultimately he was persuaded to
move into rock and roll because that's where all the
young people were, and he side acts like Jesse Culin
young and most amusingly to me, the young bloods who

(06:27):
had the song you know, come on people now, smile
on your brother, everybody get together, come and love one
another right now, that classic hippie anthem about peace and
love and all living together in harmony. I just love
how the band that was given that platform was David
fucking Geffen, probably his far away from that kind of like,
you know, peace and love. I think that you could
possibly get. I really enjoy that, but it's perfect. He

(06:49):
did have a tender side. Um. When he saw Laura Niro,
the incredible singer songwriter bomb at the Monterey Pop Festival
in ninety seven, he took her aside and bonded with
her just sort of fragile artistic self and became her
partner rather than her boss. He took her under his
wing and signed her to be her agent. At first,

(07:10):
this sort of paternal streak would endear him to all
sorts of sensitive artistic people around that way, before his
inner shark drove them away. Uh. He ultimately quit the
William Morris Agency and started his own, with Laura Niro
was his first client. Yeah. An important thing about David
Geffen I think is that while he has this reputation
for being like this cold hearted and even like unscrupulous businessman,
I think he was also like a legitimate music fan.

(07:32):
Like embracing someone like Laura Nero to me suggests that
he was honestly engaged with her music. You know, like,
like Laura Nero was this really talented artist, but she
was hardly like a conventional star, like as you said,
he saw her bomb at Monterey Pop. It would have
been very easy to just like let her slide out
of the music business at this point. But you know,
he could see that she was this idiosyncratic talent that

(07:53):
needed someone like David Geffen in her corner in order
to be a success. And I think that also explains,
you know, along with that sensitivity, that paternal aspect that
you were talking about before. I think that that genuine
music fandom is like why artists were also drawn to him, Like, yeah,
he was a shark, but he was a shark with
like legitimately good taste and talent. Yeah. I think Neil
Young would later say what it would endeared him to

(08:15):
Geffen was Geffen said that he loved the song on
the Way Home, the Buffalo Springfield song. I mean, he
knew the music. It wasn't just like he knew that
these guys want to make him a lot of money.
He genuinely loved them. Geffen had a bit of a
rivalry at the stage with another young agent named Elliott Roberts,
who was managing Joni Mitchell, and there was a bit
of a like your girl, my girl thing between you know,
Joni and Laura. But when Roberts was recruited to untangle Crosby,

(08:39):
Stills and Nash's solo contracts so they could record together.
He called on David Geffen for help, because Geffen had
a better head for these kind of contractual things. Uh.
And soon they formed their own management team, Geff and Roberts,
which sort of became the official management team of the
Laurel Canyon crowd. I mean all those incredible artists that
Crosby Stills, Nation Young Crew, Johnny Mitchell, like you mentioned,

(09:00):
Jackson Brown. Uh, so many folks. It was the place
you wanted to be. It was like a sort of
alternative company where where contracts didn't exist. It was all
you know, the the hippie ethic of like it's all
about your word. Well, Geffen in later years I would say,
I think it was in a documentary about his life
he would say, oh, yeah, they didn't want to be
with us who wanted them? So as far as he
was concerned, Uh, it was less about sort of the

(09:22):
hippie side. That was more Elliott Roberts, and he was
more just like, they want to be here, fine, screw him.
It was and their dynamic Elliot Roberts and Geffen. It
was a total good cop bad cop. I mean, Roberts
was the house hippie and Geffen was working the phones
and ensuring that these insensitive artist types were financially set
for life. It was a really great combo. Now, at
this time, David Geffen was like hanging out a lot

(09:44):
at the Trouper Door looking for new talent basically that
they could sign up to the Elliott Roberts agency. And
you know, we've talked a lot about the Trouper Door
in this series, and of course, you know, it was
this bar that was like the hub of like the
l A rock scene in the late sixties and early seventies.
And it's really like we're like a lot of the
as associated with David Geffen and Elliott Roberts started That bar.
Also reminds me of like one of my favorite David

(10:05):
Geffen documentary appearances, which takes place in this like really
great BBC movie called From the Birds to the Eagles.
Like you can find that on YouTube. Sometimes you might
have to do like a bit of a Google search
for it, but it is a great documentary about the
Little Canyon scene and how it changed as the seventies progressed,
and there's a scene in the movie like where David

(10:25):
Geffen is telling the story about how he wanted to
book the Folks singer named David Blue at the Trooper
Door and the club's owner, Doug Weston refused, and Geffen says,
if you don't book him, I'll start my own club,
and Weston says, you think you can start your own club?
And Geffen says a club. Yeah, I think I can
start a club. That is dead on by the way,

(10:47):
the way he says that it's great, Like he's so
indignant that like someone would think that he couldn't operate
a club. It's like, who do you think I am.
I'm David Geffen. Of course I can run a club.
Doug Weston apparently says fuck you to David Geffen and
hangs up the phone, which is the wrong thing to
say to David Geffin, Like you do not want to
get on David Geffin's bad side, because he then proceeds
to actually start his own club, which is called the Roxy,

(11:09):
and then that becomes the new hip club in l
A in the back half of the seventies. This story,
to me, it's kind of similar to I think what
happened a few years earlier with Asylum Records, which was
the record label that David Geffen ends up starting, because
the genesis of that is that David Geffin discovered this
singer songwriter, very handsome guy named Jackson Brown, that he
believed in, and he actually ended up taking him to

(11:32):
Atlantic Records, and the head of that label, very famous
guy named Ahmed Urigan, turned him down and he instead
encourage David Guffin to start his own label. And Urigan
basically said, this guy can make you a lot of money.
I have a lot of money, so why don't you
start a label so you can have a lot of money,
Which sound advice. That's a great quote. I've been waiting
my whole life for someone to say something like that

(11:52):
to me. Like I wish I could walk into Ahmed
Uragan's office and he could say that, you know, I
have a lot of money, now you should make a
lot of money. So, just like in the nightclub example,
Geffen goes out, he starts his own business and creates
Asylum Records, which becomes immediately I feel like the hippest
record label of the early nineteen seventies. The lineup for

(12:14):
Asylum included Joni Mitchell, Jackson Brown, Linda Ronstat, Tom Wait's,
Judy Sill, and of course the Eagles. But I think
the artist that he was really counting on being on
this label, which his like original love in terms of
like a manager client relationship, and that was Laura Nero.
And Laura actually did not sign with him. She signed
with Columbia. And this was just like a terrible event

(12:36):
for David Geffen. He's talked in later years about how
he really felt hurt by this, and you kind of
feel like, Okay, this represents the point where David Geffen
is going full on shark, like, if there was any
heart in him before this, it's been broken and now
he's never going to let an artist break his heart again.
So it's really full steam ahead on like David Geffen

(12:57):
being wholly self interested at this point. And to Brown,
as you mentioned, plays a crucial role in the story,
not only as the catalyst for Asylum Records, but he
also tells Geffen about another group of guys who lived
upstairs from him and they had a band called Long
Branch Penny Whistle, and Jackson Brown said, oh yeah, these
guys are pretty good. Should check them out, and that
was Glen Fry and j D. Souther. Uh. Geffen liked

(13:17):
the musicians and he liked their sounds so much that
he bought their recording tract out from there, the small
label that they were on, Namos Records, out of his
own pocket, and he thought j D could hack it
as a solo guy. But he tells Glen Fry, you know,
you really need a band. So Glenn teams up with
Don Henley and ultimately Randy Miser and Bernie Lendon to
become the Eagles. The Eagles, particularly Don Henley and Glenn Fry,

(13:39):
were part of this sort of new breed of rock
and roll band who understood the business side and they demanded,
you know, what they thought was their fair share of
the financial action. This was years after, you know, in
the late fifties and early sixties, when artists were getting
ripped off left right in the center. They knew what
was up, and they knew it was entitled to him.
And this was attractive to Geffen. That least at first

(14:00):
he knew that he was gonna be fighting with these
artists too, you know, actually uh make a profit. He
knew that they were going to really lean into the
business side. And Geffen would say years later the Eagles
weren't gonna fail. It was a group that was put
together with clear intentions, So it wasn't gonna be like
years later with Neil Young when he's wrestling with Neil
to try to make a commercial product. He knew that
the Eagles were on his side from that standpoint, and

(14:23):
they were going to together make a lot of money.
It's interesting when the four musicians did meet with Geffen
in his very fancy office, all three of the musicians
deferred to the more experienced and more direct Bernie Leaden
laden made the pitch, so you want us or not,
which I thought was I'm sure Geffen appreciated that that bluntness,
although despite Bernie's bluster, Glenn would later admit that, you know,

(14:46):
they would have done anything to sign on on Geffen's roster.
I mean, as we said earlier, that was the place
to be at this time. Yeah, And the appeal of
Silent Records again was that it was this label that
was very artists oriented. That you know that the name
of the label was supposed to suggest, you know, a sanctuary,
that this was a place that you could go and
you would be protected from the usual pressures that like

(15:08):
bands have to deal with when they're first getting started
in their music career. And you know, Geffen his sales
pitch of the Eagles was basically like, you worry about
the music and I'll take care of everything else. And
there's this story that's been told about how apparently like Geffen,
Henley and Fry were in a sauna together and like,

(15:28):
which is great. I mean, I'm just picturing this right now.
These three guys are in a sauna together, and like
Geffen's picture them was basically like, this company will never
be bigger than as many people as you can fit
in this sauna. And uh, it's a very seventies rock metaphor.
By the way, I love the idea of like lining
the size of your company to a sauna. You know.
I just picture like Harry guys with like gold chains,

(15:50):
sweating a lot and you know, just doing business in
this environment. It's a very funny and also it's like
slightly like gross image to me. But again, the idea
here was that this was not typical record label that
like you could make the records that you would want
to make. And yeah, like they all wanted to be successful.
But I think again like there was that combination of
like Geffen being this great businessman, but also having an

(16:11):
appreciation for the art, like the artist that he was
bringing onto his label. At least at this time, we're
all people that he personally liked, and I think that
belief in the Eagles music as well as his thinking
that these guys should actually be commercially successful, really led
Geffen like to give the Eagles, I think, the hands
on treatment early on in their career. And we've talked
about this in our previous episodes, but like Geffen was

(16:33):
instrumental and shipping the Eagles off to Aspen before they
made their first record to basically like get their act together,
you know, into into you know, jel was a band,
and get a good repertoire going. He was also a
big part in bringing Glenn John's into into the fold.
You know, we've talked in our previous episodes about how
Glenn John's initially wasn't that impressed by the Eagles and
didn't want to work with them, But Geffen was the

(16:55):
person that was really kind of pushing to get Glenn
John's into the band, and that really ended up paying
off on the first Eagles record came out in nineteen
seventy two, the self titled debut, which spawned those three
big hits that we've talked about in another episodes, take
It Easy, Witchy Woman, and Peaceful, Easy Feeling, and really
got the Eagles going in their career, and Geffer really
did a lot for them, and he went to bat

(17:15):
for them when they wanted to make their mature concept record, Desperado.
He let the band have their way and agreed to
bankroll this like really kind of expensive undertaking, including all
the artwork with all the elaborate Western costumes and stuff,
and he even he helped the band find this common look,
this western outlaw theme. Geffen saw the band is like
sort of this mystical Americana type group that he thought

(17:38):
was just perfect for branding. He thought it was it
was just a great marketing opportunity really because it just
sort of symbolized this American sense of freedom. But around
the same time, the band we're starting to really become
more disillusioned with Geffen. They would say that Henley would say,
were this album was us rebelling against the music business,
not society, And there's a famous back cover when the

(17:59):
band they're all looking like dead outlaws, all strung up
up at the feet, and then behind them are standing
all these guys dressed as the law who you know
in the concept of the album art looked like they
just like took them down. And it's all their their
industry people, it's all their managers, and Glenn John's is
there too, So it's definitely that you can sense that
kind of resentment setting in around Desperado, and they were

(18:21):
annoyed with Geffen because they thought he was giving too
much attention to other groups, one of them being America,
which they the band America, which they thought was sort
of in their lane. This American a loving harmony group,
and also Poco, who were both signed to Asylum without
the Eagles consent, and they thought that this was hitting
a little too close to them and kind of like
their lane was getting infringed on. And when Desperado tanked,

(18:44):
Glenn John's blamed Geffen, saying he was too distracted trying
to sign Bob Dylan, which would have been you know,
a massive coup at the time, then actually focusing on
his clients. So you have the Eagles starting to feel
discontent with David Geffen, and then you have David Geffen
also feeling this content with being a manager at this time,
you know, and he's talked about how he was basically

(19:04):
like protecting his artists, and this is a term that
he used, a river of ship, you know, from coming
down out of them. Like he felt like he was
like the bulwark from that river of ship consuming his clients.
And you know, he was around like watching all these
great artists basically succumbed to like drugs and paranoia as
like the early seventies became the mid seventies, and he
really felt like he was like their babysitter, and I

(19:26):
think he got a little burned out with it. So
this was around the time that like Warners became interested
in buying Asylum records, and when they made an offer,
David get basically just jumped at the chance. He got
offered two million dollars in cash and five million dollars
in Warner stock, plus the opportunity to stay on at
the label as president. So this is like a great
deal for David Geffen, but the artists on his label

(19:47):
were not pleased that Geffen did this. He basically broke
his sauna promise. You know, this was many more people
than could even fit in like the world's biggest sauna
at this point, and the Eagles were especially volc about
like feeling displeased because, you know, they wanted to be
on Asylum because they thought it was like a different
kind of record label. They thought they would be protected from,

(20:08):
you know, the sort of normal corporate pressures that like
most artists would have to deal with, and you know,
and Don Henley later said, you know, Asylum was an
artist oriented label for about a minute and then the
big money showed up, and then after that pretty much
everything changed. So they were upset about that. And I
think this was also around the time that they also,
i think realized that they didn't know as much about
business as they thought they did, Like, they started looking

(20:29):
at their deal and realizing, like a lot of bands
that like, they were kind of getting ripped off by
David Geffen. So they're starting to reach a breaking point
basically in their relationship with him. Yea, not only did
they feel betrayed, but they realized that their hands were timing.
Geffen was their manager, their publisher, and record company, so
there was no just no negotiation no phone call, no warning.

(20:50):
I mean, he owned them, and they woke up and
according to what I've read, they just read about it
in the paper. Uh, and Henley would say, to be
sold like a commodity like pork belly or soybeans. Didn't
sit right. And Geffen offered no words of apology whatsoever.
I mean, he was fond of telling his acts, we
are not partners. He didn't care about this blatant conflict
of interest that he was managing a band that was

(21:12):
signed to his own label and he owned they're publishing.
He didn't care at all. Yeah, I guess he like
got like half the money basically from the Eagles publishing,
as he did from like all of his artists. But
like around this time, like he actually gave his half
of Jackson Brown's publishing back to Jackson because he felt
that he owed Jackson Brown because Jackson Brown you know,
had been like one of his early artists. He had
like hooked Geffen up with the Eagles and like other artists,

(21:34):
so you know, as a sign of goodwill, he gave
Jackson Brown all this publishing. But unfortunately for David Geffen,
Jackson Brown told the Eagles about this and Uh, they
were not happy about it because it's like, why does
he get half of his publishing back, We should get
all of our publishing as well. Whereas I think David Geffin,
like when he heard about this, he just felt like
the Eagles were being ungrateful, you know, because again, as
we said before, like David Geffen was instrumental and like

(21:57):
setting up the Eagles. He had kind of positioned them
to be like this big American rock band, and without him,
I think it's fair like when you look at it
from his perspective that without Geffen, I don't know if
the Eagles would have been as successful. On the other hand,
I don't know if Geffen could have sold Asylum records
for as much money as he did were it not
for the success of the Eagles, Like we're one of

(22:18):
the biggest acts on the label at this time. So yeah,
we're in a pretty bad place right now in terms
of like David Geffin's relationship with the Eagles. We're gonna
take a quick break to get a word from our
sponsor before we get to more rivals. As you said earlier,

(22:40):
when he saw Asylum at this point, he just didn't
want to be in the in the management business anymore.
He was just tired of dealing with these people, Henley
would say in the History of the Eagles documentary, Geffen
was just tired of the responsibility and burden of making
people happy. And this opens the door for a young,
ambitious Geff and Roberts employee named Irving azo. Yes, and

(23:00):
Irving Azof has so many great nicknames. He's known as
Big Shorty, He's known as the Poison Dwarf favorite. He's
known just as Satan. He's been called Satan before. Uh,
you know, kind of reminds me of like that part
and walk hard. Like how Dewey Cox has so many nicknames,
Irving Azof is second only the Dewey Cox in terms
of colorful nicknames. Irving Azof got his start in the Midwest.

(23:23):
He was a manager of the band Ario Speedwagon, who
was like one of the big Middle American acts at
that time. When he started to have some success with
that band, he decided that it was time to leave
the Midwest and move out to the West Coast. And
when he was out there, he started getting involved in management.
He worked with the artist Dan Fogelberg. He got hooked
up with Joe Walsh. He's moving up the ladder in

(23:44):
the rock scene, and that brings him into the orbit
of like the Geffen Roberts world. And uh, once he
gets into that company, he realizes right away that the
Eagles are not happy. And because Irving as Off, like
David Geffen, is a shark and he could smell blood
in the water, he zeroes in on the Eagles and
he realizes that there's an opportunity here for him to. Uh.

(24:05):
Maybe you served David Geffen, and I think the difference
here and you spoke to this earlier that you know,
I think David Geffen was good for the Eagles early on,
because again, he was more of a paternal figure. You know,
he could take this band under his wing and really
nurture them when they were a baby band and they
needed to sort of grow and figure out who they were.
But you know, by the mid seventies, the Eagles were
a fully fledged entity. And I think that really opened

(24:28):
the door for someone like Irving as Off, who was
you know, closer to the age of the guys in
the band. And he was also a guy that like
would actually like party with the band. Like there's a
story about David Geffen that I love, where like he
had tickets to go to Woodstock, but he was watching
like footage of the festival with Joni Mitchell on television,
and he decided that it was too dirty, So like

(24:50):
he didn't go to Woodstock for that reason. Irving is Off, however,
like loved to get dirty. Like he was a guy
who would actually like get in the mix with people
like Joe Walsh and like trash hotel rooms and like
mess around with groupies and do all the things that
rock stars good to do. And I feel like he
probably really relished that because if he wasn't a rock manager, Like,

(25:12):
there's no way Irving AI's Off could have done any
of that stuff. Again, he was the poison dwarf, you know.
I feel like he's like the nerdy guy that somehow
gets accepted by the cool kid click, which allows him
to do all these sort of wonderful things that under
normal circumstances he would never get to do. My favorite
Irving as Off stories when he was at some really
fancy restaurant in Los Angeles or Beverly Hills, Spago's or

(25:34):
something like that, and he thought that the service was
lacking and he wasn't getting the attention that he was due,
so he set his menu on fire and just waved
it around. I feel like that image of him and
a fancy restaurant holding a flaming menu aloft is just
to me what I think of when I think of
Irving as off. Yeah, just like you know, brazen ass
whole behavior basically, you know, which is like, in a
way kind of lovable in this context. Like I have

(25:57):
a weakness for like knowingly sleazy music figures, you know,
like people in the music business who like don't make
any apologies for just being the absolute worst. Like there's
something kind of attractive like about that for me, Like
I wouldn't want them in my life, but if they're
in a movie or if I'm reading about them, I
just find it irresistible. And yeah, like Irving is Off

(26:18):
and David Geffin are like at the top of like
the knowing sleeves bag music industry list. And once Geffen
sells Asylum and starts to back away from management, Irving
just starts to fill this power vacuum in the Eagles
life and given gives them the attention that they saw it,
and he alerts them to the numerous conflicts of interest
in their Geffen Roberts song on records legal quagmire, and

(26:41):
so eventually he founds his own management firm, Frontline, which
became basically the second half of the seventies what Geffen's
Roberts was to the first. They signed Jimmy Buffett, Chicago, Steely,
Dan Boz Scaggs. And his first order of business as
the Eagles manager is to get the Eagles back there publishing,
and in doing so, he takes Geffen and Warner Brothers
to court UH alleging conflict of interest, and he saw

(27:02):
some ten million dollars in damages, and geffn claimed the
suit was a quote bullshit issue designed to extract the
new deal lot of Warners, and he said that he
gave Henley the half that he'd been own in the
first place, after buying out, you know, his early record
contract when he first became his manager in the early seventies.
It took two years of legal headaches. UH Warreners eventually

(27:22):
settled out of court and the Eagles got their copyrights.
I think at this point Geffen just mostly wanted to
be rid of the band. Gevin would later say Irving
as off went about his career in a way that
I didn't approve of. He thought it was good to
create distance between the clients and the record companies. He
created a sense of paranoia, and I always resented the
fact that he was responsible for two of the only

(27:43):
three lawsuits I've ever had in my life, one with
the Eagles and one with Don Henley. It's amazing was
only three, I know exactly. That seems like a low number.
I would have like put it at like thirty at
least with David geffin. But yeah, this is now the
period like where there's like open animosity between David Geffen
in the Eagles camp. But something then happens that like
the Eagles are initially upset about, but it ends up

(28:06):
being just a huge boon for their career, which is uh,
David Geffen, who again he's at Warners now and he
decides that he wants to put out the greatest hits
record for the Eagles, And you know, you look at
it at the time and it was kind of like
a strange move to do this because the Eagles, you know,
they've only been around for like, you know, like three years.
They had like four albums to their credit. They had

(28:27):
just put out like their most successful album up to
that point, which was One of These Nights. In It's
not really like a moment that you would expect for
like the Greatest Hits record to come out normally, that
is like at the end of a band's career, not
in the middle. And I think for the Eagles that's
why they took offense to this. You know, I think
artists in general kind of dread when their Greatest Hits

(28:49):
record comes out, because I think they take it as
a sign that they're on their way out the door.
But I think for the Eagles especially, you know, it
was a warranted feeling, like, you know, we don't need
the Greatest Hits treatment at this point. Besides, you know,
we believe in the sanctity of our albums. We want
people to revisit Desperado and One of These Nights and
on the Border. But Geffen goes forward with the Greatest

(29:10):
Hits record anyway. It comes out in seventy six. It's
of course called their Greatest Hits nineteen seventy one to
seventy five, and look, we've talked about it on this show,
but like this is one of the biggest albums of
all time. It was actually certified the best selling record
of the twentieth century. It's sold more copies than Thriller.
You know, just a huge success, and it really set
up the Eagles as they were getting ready to put

(29:32):
out Hotel California. It's like, once they put out that
record in conjunction with this Greatest Hits record, it really
just sent the Eagles into a whole new stratosphere. Where again,
this was a band that, for I think eighteen months
was selling one million records per month, you know. Between
Hotel California and this Greatest Hits record, I have to
say to that, Like, you know, I'm an album purist myself,

(29:53):
so I tend to avoid Greatest Hits records as a
rule because I think albums tend to stand better on
their own it. I revisited their Greatest Hits for this series,
and I gotta say that it is extremely well assembled.
Like the way that it's sequenced I think is really smart.
Like it's not just in chronological order, like it's actually
structured in terms of flow. And I don't know how

(30:16):
much input Geffen head on that, but like I really
think that like their Greatest Hits is like probably better
than any Eagles album. Like, with a lot of Greatest
Hits record you always feel like, oh I missed cut Yeah, yeah,
like I missed these kind of other songs that weren't hits.
I never get that feeling listening to the Greatest Hits record,
Like I feel like, oh, this is all you really
need from the Eagles, so kind of against their will,

(30:39):
Geffen gave the Eagles like this great gift. And this
is just one of the many reasons why you should
never question David Geffen in a matter of music business.
I mean so after he he tosses off the best
selling album of the twentieth century. Uh. In the late seventies,
when the Eagles are going through their Hotel California renaissance, UH,
Gevin is actually backed away from the music industry to
pursue his long time dream in films, in the film industry.

(31:02):
And it's sort of an ill fate adventure. And it's
made even worse by this freak false cancer diagnosis and
for a few years at the end of the seventies,
he believed he was about to die, which still blows
my mind that that was able to happen. I think
in around nineteen eighty he learned that it was a
false positive test and he was not going to die.
And soon after he gets back into rock and roll

(31:24):
and he found Geffen Records and immediately starts pursuing huge
name artist John Lennon, John Joni Mitchell, uh and another
Geffen's Robert's mate Neil Young, and the ultimately led to
the third of Geffen's allegedly three lawsuits. Uh. And it's
possibly my favorite of the three. Can we get a
fact check on that three? By the way, I still

(31:44):
I still feel like David Geffen's lying here. There's gonna
be like another dozen lawsuits against David Geffen that were
buried at some point. First for a second of this episode,
well Capital three. Um, it's nineteen eighty one, and Neil
Young gets into a fight with Reprise Records for not
promoting Reactor to his satisfaction. He also wanted it released
on a triangle shape album. I suppose for his for
his request, I don't really know why. Neil Young always

(32:08):
the best. Yeah, when we're back in Neil Young Country,
welcome everybody. So he ends up leaving his label of
thirteen years over this Reactor squabble, uh and Geffen's in
the process of starting his new label, and he offered
Neil total control, which is what something Neil desperately needs
at all times. Despite the fact that Elliott Roberts had
gotten him an even bigger deal at our ci A,

(32:30):
Neil went with Geffen because he wanted this control and
it seemed like a really obvious choice considering that Geffen
was his manager, Eliot Roberts's friend and longtime partner um
and early on Geffen said all the right things. I mean,
as as Elliot Roberts would later say, Neil is not
concerned with selling large numbers of records. He's concerned with
making records he's pleased with. Unfortunately, they're not always commercial

(32:51):
from the record company's point of view. But David Geffen
relates to that, and he did relate to that to
a point. Yeah. You know, the thing I said before
about David Geffen being in music fan like, I feel
like that really came back to haunt him, like in
the early eighties because he was signing all these like
huge name artists that like he I think he was
personally a fan of you know, I think he loved
Neil Young obviously a fan of John Lennon and Nelton

(33:13):
John and Joni Mitchell, but like these artists like were
no longer like in the prime of their career. Like
if you look at Geffen Records, like in like the
later eighties going into the nineties, you know, they had
huge success with like Guns and Roses and Aerosmith and
Nirvana and its basically because like the label started signing
bands that Geffen personally didn't care for but he knew

(33:33):
would sell a lot of records. And I wonder, like
to what degree he learned that lesson like from this
Neil Young debacle that he was about to get into.
You know, there was like a famous article at the
time where there was a joke in there they said,
what's the difference between Geffen Records in the Titanic and Uh,
the punch line is the Titanic had better bands, um

(33:53):
which and apparently like that was like fed to a
journalist by Irving as Off, which is like pretty hilarious
if that's true. You know, I really don't think the
problem is that the artists were bad on Geff. And again,
they just weren't really at a point in their careers
where they were selling a lot of records, and in
the case of Neil Young, I mean, he wasn't even
really trying, I think, to make commercial records at this time.

(34:14):
And it really kind of reached a peak of sorts
with the record trans which came out in two And
I'm actually like a fan of this record. It's it's
very strange, but I think it's a pretty clearly like
personal record, and I think it has like a real
emotional residence because of that. You know, it was inspired
by Neil young son Ben, who has cerebral palsy and

(34:35):
he couldn't speak, and Neil was helping his son with
therapy at the time to try to help him with
his speech, and those therapy sessions inspired the record, which
is this very sort of like heavy electronic record where
Neil is speaking like through a vocoder, sounds like a
robot wearing flannel essentially on this album. And you know,

(34:55):
David Geffen, he's expecting Neil Young to be making records
like harvest Ston after the gold Rush, and you know,
you mentioned how Geffen loves the song like on the
Way Home, like all these beautiful kind of folky battleads
that Neil Young was writing in the seventies and trans
is definitely not that. So yeah, Kevin was not happy
when Neil Young turned in this album, and he also

(35:17):
wasn't thrilled with Neil's proposed follow up, which was like
a country album called Old Ways and give him more
or Less. Said he wanted some rock and roll and
no more of this craft work ship, and Neil said, Okay,
you want some rock and roll, I'll give you some
rock and roll, And the result was Everybody's Rocking, which,
despite being sort of warmly received when it was initially released,
also tanked. Yeah, can we just clarify that, like, um

(35:39):
that Everybody's Rocking? It's not like a crazy Horse record.
It's like Neil Young doing like kind of like fifties
rockabilly type music, and like, to me, like he was
basically trolling David Geffen. I think at this point totally
it's like, oh, yeah, you want a rock and roll record,
I'll give you this like corny pastiche music that really
has nothing to do with what I do, right, And
it also tanked, so Geffen sued him. He given Neil

(36:00):
Young a million dollars a piece for these two weird
albums that nobody wanted, and he really felt he took
it personally. He felt that Neil was intentionally giving him
substandard material more or less to just screw with them.
Elliot Roberts, an interview years later, would say that from
Geffen's point of view, it's like Neil Young can make
harvest to any time he wants. Why won't he make
it for me? He just he really took it personally. Meanwhile,

(36:23):
as you said earlier, Geffen is completely unaware that that
Neil is managing treatment for his son's health concerns and
just has other things on his plate. Roberts is trying
to make peace between the two, but there's nothing you
can do to keep Geffen and Neil Young from colliding.
And in November of Neil was served with papers requesting
damages and excess of three point three million dollars terming

(36:44):
trans and Everybody's Rock and quote not commercially or musically
characteristic of Young's previous recordings, and Neil, of course responded
in a very Neil like way. Uh, you'd say they
paid for me. They didn't pay for me to do
something which is incredible. It's incredible view from his perspective,
um for a time, he thought that the sole lawsuit

(37:05):
was funny until he realized that he needed money and
he wasn't able to record because this lawsuit was suing him,
so he filed the counter suit, and the music press
really painted Geffen as the villain. I think Rim refused
to sign with Geffen a few years later, and they
specifically mentioned this lawsuit with Neil as the reason. And
Neil loved it. This was like the best press he'd
gotten in years, and the most press he'd done in years,

(37:25):
and he would say that this lawsuit was better than
a Grammy for him. So you know, we're going on this,
Neil Young Tangent. I think just to illustrate how much
had changed really with David Geffen from like the early
seventies to the early eighties. You know, as we talked
about before, when David Geffen was doing Asylum Records, he
was really known as this like artist friendly manager and

(37:46):
label had, you know, someone who was creating a sanctuary
for artists to create music away from the normal corporate
pressures that like other artists would have to deal with.
And he flashed forward a decade later and now he's
the epitome of like the you know, unscrupulous record head
who will like pressure artists into making what he called
harvest to you know, a sequel to a successful record

(38:06):
that Neil Young had already made. This relates now to
Don Henley's relationship with David Geffen in the nineteen eighties,
and it's kind of crazy to me that these two
guys hooked up again, considering like how like poorly the
relationship ended in the mid seventies. But like you know,
Don Henley was at a point in his career where
he put out his first solo record in two Can't
Stand Still, and it did pretty well, but he was

(38:28):
upset that that record didn't get what he felt was
sufficient promotion. So David Geffen actually like corded Don Henley
asking him if he would sign to Geffen Records, and
Henley would say later that, like, you know, David used
the same pickup lines, you know how much I care
about you, all that stuff, and and Henley admitted, like
I bought it the second time. So in eight four,
Don Henley puts out his first record on Geffen Records,

(38:50):
which is Building the Perfect Beast, huge record, lots of hits,
including The Boys of Summer, which Jordan's inexplicably hates and
all she wants to do is dance. Sunsegre record goes
multi platinum, but you know there's trouble in paradise. Don
Henley inevitably starts to complain that he feels that now
David Geffen is not promoting his record enough, and he

(39:12):
ends up putting out the end of the Innocence in
That's a big hit too. But he's still feeling like
he has to fight for budgets for music videos, he
has to fight over artwork for his albums, and it's
just not really working out well for him. So like
by the early nineties, Don Henley is starting to feel
tempted by an offer from E M I to leave
Geffen Records and to sign with that label. The problem

(39:32):
for Henley is that he still had two albums left
on his contract at the time, so this leads to
a big fight with David Geffen. Geffen actually sues Don
Henley for breach of contract for thirty million dollars, and
Henley counters by saying that there's like this old studio
era like contract loophole. Basically that like if you are
signed with an entertainment company for seven years. The contract

(39:54):
expires after seven years. I don't know if that's actually true,
but this ends up being a legal argument that goes
on for years and years and years, and uh, it
gets pretty like brutal. Like at one point, like geffen
deposes Don Henley's wife, who like has ms and like
makes her travel like from Texas to Los Angeles, and
like asked her a bunch of questions and that she

(40:14):
doesn't really know anything about the business dealing. So like
that gets under Don Henley's skin. And I mean, this
is like some of my favorite parts of the Eagles
documentary because like this is like where David Geffin like
gets really like angry about Don Henley. Like at one
point he says, by nature, he's a mal content. He's
always been a mal content and that's just life, which

(40:34):
is great. But then and this is my favorite quote
maybe in the whole movie, which is saying a lot
because I have many favorite quotes from the history of
the Eagles, but like he's talking about irving A's off
because I think at some point, like doesn't I think
Henley like counter sees him at some point, like they're
just like lobbying lawsuits back and forth, and Geffen says,
and he says this in the documentary. He says, they

(40:55):
told Irving A's off, I'd sooner die than let you
fuck me, which is just awesome. So um, basically, I
think they ended up resolving this because this was around
the time that the Eagles We're going to get back together.
So I think the agreement was that they would put
out the greatest hits record for Don Henley and then
didn't Geffen get a piece of Health Freezes Over like

(41:17):
that reunion record? Yeah, I think it might have even
been on Geffen. I think that's incredible to me, Like,
after all of that, David Geffen got to put out
Health Freeze Is Over, which ended up being a huge success.
So like, after all of that legal wrangling, David Geffen
still managed to get like millions more dollars out of
the Eagles. It's fair to say. I can't think of
a time when he hasn't won. Geffen seems to always win.

(41:39):
My favorite part of this whole saga is also just
regardless of Henley, Geffen and Azof had their own tiff
all through the eighties. I mean, I really think it
was Azof that fed the journalist that line about the
difference between Geffen Records and the Titanic is that Titanic
a better bands. I mean, they had this great little
like caddy thing in the press for the whole decade. Uh.
During Geffen's movie studio detour in the late seventies, Aisof

(42:03):
pretty much supplanted him as the most feared music industry
figure in Hollywood, and he added to his legend by,
you know, trashing hotel rooms like we mentioned, and lighting
that menu on fire at that restaurant. On another occasion,
he had a messenger deliver alive Boa Constrictor to a
lawyer that he was feuding with, which is amazing. It
was how he had it delivered to this guy on
his forty birthday with a that included an unkind note

(42:25):
about his wife. So really, you know, he's a terrifying man.
And the Eagles were effectively fine with this. I mean,
during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, they
famously said of Irving, he may be Satan, but he's
our Satan. Like we said at the top of the episode,
that's a compliment coming from them. But but even Geffen
was taken aback by his business approach, and there he
was interviewed for a uh music business exposse called hit

(42:50):
Man Great Book. Geffen said that Aisof is devilish, and
that's interesting on some level, but not nearly as interesting
as intelligence or charm or wit or real true ability.
He thinks that in order to be powerful and important,
you have to funk with people or frighten them or
be awful to them, which I find unacceptable behavior. Oh, yes,
and I think that's hilarious coming from David Geffen. Yes, yes,

(43:13):
David Geffen doesn't think it's right to be feared in
the music industry. He's taking a stand against that. One
wrinkle in this like you know sidebar with Geffen and
A's off has to do with like asof stint at
m c A Records, because he ended up like taking
over like the head job at that label, and it
was at a time where m c A was like
in like the dull drums financially and as basically like

(43:36):
rescued the label. Like he ended up basically gutting most
of the artists roster, you know, clearing out all this
deadwood that you know, they weren't selling records anymore. And
he kind of gradually like built this record label back up,
and uh, you know, had a great run there, and
then by the end of the eighties he ended up
like going to Warner Brothers to like start his own
label called Giant Records. So you think, like, wow, this

(43:57):
is like a great triumph for Irving as Off. He's
like turned around so other record label. Now he gets
to start his own label, and he's like making millions
of dollars in the meantime. But there's like this theory
that like David Geffen was like engineering this whole thing
that like he got Irving as Off to leave m
c A because m c A was the label that
ended up buying Geffen Records, and he knew that, like

(44:19):
if Irving as Off were there, you know, he would
have never given David Geffen hundreds of millions of dollars
for his label. But like somehow Geffen pulled off this
like machiavellians like maneuver that he could get like A's
Off out of m c A and then get someone
else in there who like would buy Geffen. I mean,
I don't know if that's even possible, but again, this
is David Geffen. Like if anyone could do that, Like

(44:41):
he could do that. So I don't know, I don't
know what you think about that, like if he actually
if you think he actually pulled that off. Oh, I
absolutely choose to believe it. I'm just doing this show
right now, like that he would somehow hear this and
has has bugs in this. I mean, I yeah, I
I absolutely have no doubt in my mind that he's
somehow engineered that and maneuvered that and it made him

(45:03):
obscenely rich. I think Geffen was sold for something like
five fifty million dollars worth of stock and by it
made him a billionaire. And yes, Irving as Off, it's
worth noting, is also obscenely rich. Yeah, they're both rich.
They're both guys. I pictured them like uh, Michael cor
Leone at the end of The Godfather Part two, you know,
like where he's like killed all of his enemies, he's

(45:25):
like murdered his brother. He's like rich and powerful, but
he's just like sitting alone in that chair, you know,
looking forlorn. Like you feel like these guys like they
were all about winning, but like in the end, like
how happy are they really? Deep down? My sense is
that like when you have people that are like that ambitious.
You know, you can't never be happy because you're always

(45:46):
going to be striving for something else. Like the thing
that drives ambition is dissatisfaction with your current place in life.
And uh, to me, like this is like a great
way to end our Eagles episode because there's something very
Eagles e about that, that idea that you can win
and be hugely successful and in the end still be
a miserable s ob All right, hand, we'll be right

(46:06):
back with more rivals. We've now reached the part of
our episode where we give the pro side of each
part of the rivalry. Let's talk about David geffin first, Um, look,
I mean I think David Geffen is clearly like one
of the great rock managers of all time and along

(46:28):
with you know again, he's a cold hearted businessman. He
learned how to lie early on. But I also think
that he had like a genuine affection for artists and
he had really good taste and like certainly in the
early seventies, that taste did him very well. He associated
with I think some of the best artists in Los
Angeles at that time, and Asylum Records really was I
think a great label for that era. And also he's

(46:51):
just like one of my favorite people to see in
a documentary being interviewed. Like you would think a man
as successful and powerful as David Geffen would maybe like
more diplomatic or politically correct in like in a documentary,
but like he's not. Like he lays it all out,
Like he has these grudges that he's held for decades,
and like he's not shy about like just going after

(47:14):
people that did him wrong, like in the seventies or eighties.
And I love that about him. Again, if you see
David Geffen in a documentary, get a bowl of popcorn
because it's gonna be a great show. He lacks any
sense of joy whenever he's on camera. You think that
David Geffen at this stage it's always done in the
billions of dollars in the bank there, he would just
let some of that stuff go. But you're right, it's

(47:35):
still you see that flash in his eyes that he's
just as pissed as he was fifty years earlier. And
you're right. That's one of the things I love about him.
I and I think that, like I said at the
top of the episode, I think Geffen was the perfect
manager for the Eagles at the start of their career.
I mean he was the gatekeeper, I think, in a
lot of ways to the whole Laurel Canyon Musical Clubhouse,
and by teaming with someone who had that level of power,

(47:56):
it gave the Eagles a really unprecedented amount of level
ridge in the industry. Um. I think that the big
studio systems and the sort of cigar chopping managers of
the early sixties had given away to these more you know,
like I'll call them the sauna organizations, these sort of
more egalitarian, hippie like businesses that were operating into the
guys of almost like a hippie commune type thing. I

(48:18):
think the Eagles and Geffen both knew which way the
winds were blowing, and they knew that rock was about
to become an even bigger business that had been in
the sixties, and they really leaned into it. I mean,
there wasn't like Crosby Stills a Nash who were more
concerned about, you know, about integrity or um reputation among
their peers. They were fine with it being a business.
So I think that they were bonded by this mutual

(48:39):
shared interest with Geffen giving them all kinds of leeway
with advances and creative freedom and securing them Glenn John's
and it worked really great until business interest is diverged.
So if you go over to the pro Eagles and
I guess irving as off side, I mean, look, I
think it's clear that the Eagles were probably right to
separate from Geffen when they did. You know, I could

(49:00):
see that David Geffen, for as much you know, care
as he had given to the early part of their career,
he was in a way kind of ripping them off.
Like the Eagles did not have a very good deal,
and they had reached a point in their career like
where they could negotiate and move on and make more
money than they did early on. And you know, irving
A's off to me, you know, he's not as cool
as David Geffen. Like again, like I when I see

(49:20):
Irving A's off in documentaries, he has more business like
he's a little bit more laid back. He doesn't have
that like Satan's side that he seems to have in
his business dealings. But he was much more of like
a rock and roll guy. You know, he was parting
with the bands he was trashing hotel rooms. He seemed
again as as you were saying before, it seemed like
he was like the right guy for like that part
of the Eagles career, you know, basically like Irving, he's

(49:43):
off to me, he's like Jack Nicholson and a few
good men. Like you might not like him, but like,
if he's your manager, you want him on that wall.
You need him on that wall. He's the satan that
you don't want to face and you wish was on
your side. Yeah. I always thought that Irving as Off
was like Geffen if Geffen just did a ship load

(50:03):
of cocaine. I mean, in my opinion, Geffen ultimately wanted
to control an empire, you know, he's King David, Whereas
I always thought Irving Aisoff like to control people. And
I think that was the difference between him. I mean,
Geffen bailed on artist management at the earliest opportunity, whereas
Aisoff ended up going back to artist management after his
lengthy spell as a label chief. And I was thought

(50:24):
that was really interesting, Uh, you know, without someone as
attentive as Irving at the end, I think that the
Eagles could have floundered, almost like the Beatles after the
death of Brian Epstein. I think in the end he
out geffened Geffen of at least of all the Geffen acolytes,
but of course not Geffen himself. You will never out
Geffen the Geffen. So when we look at all these
guys together, you know, I'll go back to something I

(50:45):
said at the top of the episode, which is that,
you know, for most bands, we have no idea who
the managers are. We don't care because you know, rock
managers for the most part, are like pretty boring their
business types. You know, they're they're they're supposed to like
bleed in the background and keep the focus on the
art us. But the Eagles story is so rich and
chaotic and crazy and has so many like, you know,

(51:07):
great bastard characters in it that like, we want to
hear about the managers. We want to hear about the
money men behind the scenes, and you know, people like
David Geffen and Irving as Off they just add another
layer of enjoyment for like talking about this band. You know, like,
I'm glad that these guys ultimately are as big a
bastards as they are, because if they weren't, they just

(51:27):
wouldn't belong in the story of the Eagles, Oh absolutely.
And you know, I have to wonder if the Eagles
Beheemoth was just sort of too unwieldly and just chaotic
in their in their inner workings to whether not only
that insane level of success and musical industry changes in
the seventies, but just I almost feel like two separate
sets of management is what they needed to extend their

(51:48):
life as a band, you know. I mean, Geffen provided
that ignition, but azof kept them going in the long run,
or at least as long as their intra band hatred
would allow. Uh See. I like how you slipped a
little pun there at the end. I appreciate tried. You know.
I have to say I'm a little choked up right
now because I've had so much fun talking about the Eagles,
and this series has just been like one long, hard

(52:11):
road out of Eden. But we're finally at the end,
and I'm a little sad about that. But you know,
there's always more feuds and beefs to talk about Jordan's
So that's the silver linning I'm looking at right now,
And I can't wait to get into more rivalries with you,
and we will be back next week with another episode
where we talk about beefs, feuds, and long simmering resentments.

(52:31):
See You then. Rivals is a production of I Heart Radio.
The executive producers are Shawn Titone and Noel Brown. Supervising
producers are Taylor Koin and Tristan McNeil. The producers Joel Hatstat,
I'm Jordan run Talk. I'm Stephen Hyden. If you like
what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review.

(52:52):
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows