A must read:
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/08/quit_defending_the_eagles_theyre_simply_terrible..."As their career progressed, the Eagles shed much of their country aspects, with only their fairly bland harmonies remaining. They became high priests of lowest-common-denominator rock, crafting studiously inoffensive rock designed to appeal to the broadest swath of the record-buying, radio-listening public. And perhaps that’s why Jeffrey Lebowski and so many of us continue to villainize the Eagles: They didn’t stand for anything. They lacked the outrage that drove John Fogerty’s music and Gram Parsons’ unwavering belief that the answers were blowing in the hickory wind. Their hedonism was never as much fun as Marc Bolan’s, and their desperadoes had no code of honor like Willie Nelson’s redheaded stranger or Townes Van Zandt’s Pancho and Lefty. The Eagles may have decried record industry avarice on “Hotel California,” but they were already the multi-headed beast at the head of that table. Don Henley may have transformed himself into a public scold, but his ecological concerns, however valid, never informed the music he made with the band or as a solo artist.
The Eagles’ legacy is selling a lot of records. All the reappraisals in the world won’t change that."
-----
“They were rich hippies. They were virtuosos in an idiom that did not require virtuosity. They were self-absorbed Hollywood liberals. They were not-so-secretly shallow. They were uncaring womanizers and the worst kind of cokehead. They wanted to be seen as cowboys, but not the ones who actually road horses. They never rocked, even after adding Joe Walsh for that express purpose (the first forty-five seconds of ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ are a push). They lectured college kids about their environmental footprint while flying around in private jets. They literally called themselves ‘The Eagles.’”