FILE - In this Dec. 4, 2016 file photo, members of the Eagles band, from left, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, and Timothy Schmit, recipients of the 2016 Kennedy Center Honor award, applaud during the Kennedy Center Honors Gala at the Kennedy Center in Washington. The Eagles will perform their 1976 “Hotel California” album in its entirety in concert for the first time. Live Nation says it will take place on Sept. 27 and 28, 2019, at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Henley, Walsh and Schmit will be joined by Deacon Frey and Vince Gill for what will be the group’s only North American performances of 2019. Founding member Glenn Frey, Deacon’s father, died in 2016. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

Quite recently, on a frigid winter night as I sat in front of a cozy, crackling fire with the TV remote in hand, I went surfing through the endless array of cable channels that are available to all in this age of cutting-edge couch potato technology. It offers one everything with just one quick click. I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across a music documentary on a channel that I was not even aware was part of my menu, on the fabled rock band, The Eagles. It was a 2004 concert that captured them playing in Melbourne, Australia.

In an instant, the images on the screen brought the late great Glenn Frey back to life again. Time stood still as I took-in studio-perfect live performances from Frey and his bandmates belting out “New Kid in Town,” “Lyin’ Eyes,” the timeless Jackson Browne-written song “Take it Easy” and the rest of their enormous time-worn catalogue. They are the songs that will be forever imprinted on the hearts and in the minds of those who came of age in those times.

I’ll tell that from my perspective, nothing comes close to this music documentary in capturing the essence and the spirit of what I have always believed was America’s greatest band. When the first distinctive chords of “Hotel California” rang out, suddenly a million faded memories and foggy images of the time that I saw the band in concert many years ago at the old Great Woods venue in Massachusetts, were swirling around in my mind with crystal clarity. Even today, I still believe that the lyric in “Hotel California” of “You can check out any time like – but you can never leave,” depicting such a surreal, and otherworldly mental image, might be one of the very best lines in rock music history.

Looking through the haze of those faraway days, it is clear that The Eagles were, indeed, paragons of the halcyon days of what became known as the Laurel Canyon sound; an intoxicating blend of harmony-rich country rock that captured a moment in time. In a heartbeat, they soared upward and totally dominated the music scene in the decades of the 1970’s and 80’s. If we had a musical time machine, we could strap ourselves in and travel back to the early 70’s where the vibrant Los Angeles club scene was an incubator for legions of hungry and ambitious young folk rock musicians who were desperately chasing after lofty dreams of stardom. Along with legends like Rick Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne and Crosby Stills and Nash, The Eagles rode the wave of the Laurel Canyon Sound.

It was a storied time when the asphalt arteries of Los Angeles flowed with the rich talent of a handful of innovative artists who charted a new musical course. In those days, The Eagles, fronted by Glenn Frey and Don Henley, two extraordinarily talented and driven singer-songwriter musicians, were at the tip of the California musical spear. For a freeze frame moment in those early times, they were even the house band at the storied Troubadour club on Sunset Boulevard.

Right from the start, they were so different in the thematic premises of the albums that they crafted and released. Where other emerging artists of the day like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger wrote songs that painted pictures of boardwalk dwellers, highway drifters and blue collar heroes, and Nashville cranked out well-worn scenes of self-pity and crying in your beer at the bar, The Eagles’ songs took listeners down a path. They were rooted in heartbreak, wide open spaces, and the excesses and self-indulgences of life in the Hollywood community. They parted the curtain, giving the rest of us a little peek inside the wild ride lifestyle of the Los Angeles music industry. They fashioned a unique musical vision whose themes focused, not so much on life in the canyons and urban jungles of big cities, but that reflected their belief that modern life in America was unfolding more against a backdrop of western values that were bloomed in the soil of independence, self-reliance and a whole lot of good time hell raising.

Over the years, they used their music to chronicle society as they saw it through their own lens. They never sang overtly about lofty visions of America in the traditional “purple mountains majesty,” style. No, their songs spoke more to America’s social identity in subtle undertones by projecting a strong sense of self. Perhaps this is one reason why they own the record for having the best-selling album ever in America with “Greatest Hits 71-75”. They also have the third best-selling record in American music history with “Hotel California.” Think about what a staggering achievement that is. For it’s not The Beatles, The Stones or Elvis that have two of the three best-selling albums in U.S. history, it is the Eagles. Today, decades after they topped the music charts, their timeless sound still holds out a fresh allure that never grows stale with the passing of the years.

For as wild and reckless as the 70’s and 80’s were, today we live in a hard-driving, competitive, take-no-prisoners world where heroes are hard to find, and are too often disposable. We have created an increasingly aggressive lifestyle where texts and Facebook posts have left face-to-face verbal social interaction with each other on the soft shoulder of life’s highway like a crushed beer can.

Today it feels like the world is spinning at a frenetic pace that can take people on an emotional rollercoaster ride. In these pandemic-driven days of the daily struggle to survive, and not lose one’s grip, I believe that music is a therapeutic ally. For me, the music of the Eagles is still a pleasant and welcomed diversion. When all is said and done, The Eagles are performers who, just for a frozen moment in time, can transport me back to those days when life seemed infinitely easier and the world far less complex. Their music never fails to reinforce to me the message of, ‘Don’t let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy.’

Paul Collins is a Freelance Writer from Southborough, Massachusetts.

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