{"id":620,"date":"2018-07-31T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T13:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/?p=73395"},"modified":"2018-07-31T06:00:44","modified_gmt":"2018-07-31T13:00:44","slug":"eagles-crashed-long-night-wrong-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/eagles-crashed-long-night-wrong-beach","title":{"rendered":"38 years ago, the Eagles crashed in ‘Long Night in Wrong Beach’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is a sad, sad day for whatever Eagles fans remain on this side of the daisies. It\u2019s the 38th anniversary of the so-called \u201cLong Night in Wrong Beach,\u201d when the outwardly mellow rockers burst into flames and called it quits after their July 31, 1980 concert that fell just shy of an all-out brawl between founding member Glenn Frey and second-chair guitarist Don Felder.<\/p>\n

Probably the only thing that prevented physical violence was the fact that both musicians were burned out and reduced to about 90 pounds apiece after a year-and-a-half of recording and touring fueled by voluminous amounts of various liquids and powders.<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s performance that night was a charity affair arranged by Frey to benefit Sen. Alan Cranston\u2019s reelection campaign that year. Backstage before the show, Cranston\u2019s wife, Norma Weintraub, thanked Felder for doing the performance. Apparently not realizing the show was a benefit, he said \u201cThank you,\u201d before muttering to his wife, \u201c…I guess.\u201d Frey heard the aside and took it as an insult to Cranston, and, what with nerves being frazzled, a declaration of war.<\/p>\n

And then the fun began.<\/p>\n

Obscenities, violent epithets and dark threats. Frey threw a seven-letter adjective at Felder, who came back with, \u201cThat\u2019s an honor, coming from you.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his autobiography, \u201cHeaven & Hell: My Life in the Eagles,\u201d<\/a> Felder recalled, \u201cWe walked onstage and Frey came over while we were playing \u2018The Best of My Love\u2019 and said, \u2018F—you. I\u2019m gonna kick your ass when we get off the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe. No set list from the show indicates the band even played \u201cThe Best of My Love\u201d that evening, but don\u2019t let that ruin a good story. The point is, things didn\u2019t simmer down. Threats from both guitarists bounced back and forth through \u201cLyin\u2019 Eyes\u201d and \u201cI Can\u2019t Tell You Why,\u201d as sound techs muted Frey\u2019s microphone when he wasn’t singing.<\/p>\n

In the book, Felder recalled that Frey \u201capproached me after every song to rant, rave curse and to let me know how many songs remained before our fight.\u201d As Joe Walsh\u2019s \u201cRocky Mountain Way\u201d was firing up, Frey gave Felder the heads-up: \u201cOnly three more songs before I kick your ass, pal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show ended without a skirmish. Felder, knowing he was going to throw a fit, told his guitar tech to leave his Takamine guitar just off the stage and when the show ended, Felder picked it up and slammed it against a concrete pillar in a show of anger, which didn\u2019t diminish when Frey said, \u201cLeave it to you to smash your cheapest guitar.\u201d Felder jumped into a limo and was driven away before anything newsworthy occurred. And when bassist Timothy B. Schmit called Frey the following morning for a debriefing, Frey told him the Eagles were finished.<\/p>\n

And they were, until hell froze over over 14 years later and the band reunited, bigger than ever. It went through some personnel changes. Following Frey\u2019s death in 2016, the band added his son, Deacon Frey, and Vince Gill played some 2017 dates. Felder was let go, and the band has steered clear of Long Beach ever since the Long Night in Wrong Beach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obscenities, violent epithets and dark threats. Frey threw a seven-letter adjective at Felder, who came back with, \u201cThat\u2019s an honor, coming from you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"featured_media":66142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,6],"tags":[69],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","category-hi-lo","tag-tim-grobaty","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/208"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}